Mortal Danger (24 page)

Massachusetts state detectives located the two men that Danny Tavares had named but refused to comment on what, if anything, they had learned from them.

Indeed, the public had no idea that a convicted killer had led troopers to Gayle Botelho’s body seven years before he murdered Brian and Beverly Mauck. When the Tavares connection to Gayle’s murder hit the media in Massachusetts, Washington, and the wire services and the Internet, her family was outraged. They had never heard of Danny Tavares and had known only that a “prisoner” had
led police to their sister’s body. And now he was out of prison and he’d killed two more people.

Lori Fielding, one of Gayle’s sisters, spoke for her family. “I can tell you after nineteen years, it still hurts. A little healing is allowed to take place, and then it starts again. Gayle mattered, and she was somebody’s sister and daughter and mother in spite of the problems she might have had. But she didn’t seem to matter to anyone else.”

Ann Tavares’s fiancé, Kristos Lilles, had his doubts about Danny, and with the news that he had been charged with double murder in Washington, Lilles talked to the media, telling them he believed that the young man who was like a son to him for many years might very well be the Highway Killer.

“He kept talking about them,” Lilles told the
Free Republic
, “and saying, ‘I know that one.’ One was found buried in the yard.”

Lilles recalled the night in October 1988 when Gayle Botelho went missing, even though it had been nineteen years earlier. He and Ann had been at a party, and they came home to find Danny staring out the window at a police cruiser outside Gayle’s apartment.

“They’re looking for Gayle,” Danny said.

“I said, ‘How do you know? Did you talk to the police?’”

“No,” was all Danny said.

Lilles wondered how Danny would know that Gayle was missing if he hadn’t talked to the police. He himself hadn’t known the missing woman. The conclusions Kristos Lilles came to were too horrifying to deal with.

He never asked Danny about Gayle Botelho again. Shortly after that, he, Ann, and John Latsis had purchased their home in Somerset and left the June Street house. And twelve years later, Gayle’s remains were found in the backyard of their former home.

Three years later, corrections officers at Walpole Prison found a kite that Danny Tavares sent to an official regarding his inmate account. It was written on June 18, 2003, and it was one of his threatening letters:

He had blatantly listed the first names of some of the Highway Killer’s victims, and of Gayle Botelho. Was he lying or was he bragging? Ben Benson saw how vicious Tavares could be when he believed someone was holding money back from him. Tavares had first signed the kite but then scribbled over his name.

With the tragedy in Graham, Washington, Daniel Tavares suddenly became bad news for a number of politicians, and Massachusetts voters wondered why a roving monster like Tavares had been released from prison at all.

Paul Walsh, who had just been unseated after sixteen years as district attorney, insisted there was not just cause to charge Tavares with Gayle Botelho’s murder: “The mere knowledge that this guy knew where she was buried can lead you to all sorts of conjecture, but at the end of the day, you need some evidence.”

Perhaps. Any prosecutor hopes for hard physical evidence. It is unwise for a prosecutor to go ahead with a case where there are no fingerprints, no blood or fluid DNA transfers, no suspicious hairs and fibers, no bullets or casings or a gun to compare them to, no tool marks, no car tire imprints, or other evidence to show to a jury. Most prosecutors who face election every four years try to keep their conviction percentages well over 90 percent and prefer not to risk not guilty verdicts. And if a homicide defendant is acquitted, double jeopardy will attach, and he cannot be tried again for that crime.

A number of convictions have been won, however, where there was overwhelming circumstantial evidence and where crimes were committed in a similar pattern.

Despite all the “good time” he lost, Daniel Tavares became eligible for parole in the summer of 2007, after serving over sixteen years in Walpole. However, he had two charges pending—one for spitting on a corrections officer, and the second for smashing another guard with a heavy
cast that had been applied after Tavares had wrist surgery. Bail on those attacks was $50,000 apiece, and he faced ten more years in prison if he was convicted.

Tavares had sent letters threatening the lives of Governor Mitt Romney and Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly. His father in Florida considered him “pure evil,” although he had tried to get his son off drugs when he was a teenager. The elder Daniel Tavares was even more terrified when he allegedly received a phone call from Jennifer Lynn, his future daughter-in-law, telling him that Daniel would soon be on his way to break his legs and kill him. Daniel’s father was sleeping with a gun under his pillow.

In the summer of 2007, Mitt Romney was no longer the governor of Massachusetts; he was among the top candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. One of the appointments Romney had made during his governorship was that of Superior Court Judge Kathe Tuttman. Critics said he had named Tuttman for purely political reasons—to appeal to female voters. She was among a quartet of women appointed to the judiciary in April 2006. Until then, out of forty-two judicial appointments made by Governor Romney, only thirteen had been female.

Tuttman had a good reputation as a former assistant district attorney and as a strong advocate for victims’ rights. She had been awarded many honors as head of the Essex County District Attorney’s Family Crime and Sexual Assault Unit. Many sources called her a “brilliant lawyer.”

On the advice of others, Mitt Romney gave Kathe Tuttman a judgeship. He would live to regret it.

As fate would have it, Daniel Tavares and Judge Tutt
man met for the first time on July 16, 2007, at the Worcester Superior Court. She knew little of his past beyond the fact that he had served his complete sentence for the manslaughter charges, and that this was a bail hearing on the two assault charges involving the corrections officers in Walpole Prison—one in 2005 and one in 2006.

Tavares’s attorney, Barry Dynice, pooh-poohed the charges of any attacks on guards. He pointed out that the Massachusetts Department of Corrections had waited until the very last moment—when his client had been practically walking out of prison—to bring up those charges. He argued that Daniel Tavares had paid the price for his crimes and deserved to be released on his own personal recognizance.

Dynice said Daniel wasn’t a flight risk. He had a twenty-four-year-old daughter, he’d worked hard to earn his GED (high school equivalency), and he was totally amenable to pretrial probation. “He has requested that he be placed on some kind of monitoring system,” Dynice said, “if there’s any concern about this.” (Tavares’s “son” wasn’t mentioned.)

Daniel Tavares was fully capable of putting on a good face and a calm attitude to get what he wanted. He was no longer a wild-eyed, muscular man in his twenties. His hair was gray, and his physique was portly. He had dark circles beneath his eyes and the pasty greenish-yellow prison pallor.

He didn’t look dangerous.

Prosecutor William Loughin tried his best to point out Tavares’s long history. All of his crimes had involved violence, and he had even “committed crimes of violence while he was serving time for a crime of violence.”

But this was only a bail hearing, not a murder trial.

Judge Tuttman looked at the man she’d just met and mistook him for someone who had paid for the horrible crime he’d committed, who wanted only the chance for a new life, someone who was safe to let out on the streets. Although his fiancée was in Washington, she didn’t think he would leave Massachusetts. She didn’t even think it was necessary to have him wear an electronic bracelet or anklet so he could be tracked if he left the jurisdiction.

And he promised to show up for all of his scheduled three-times-a-week probation appointments, to live with one of his sisters, and to find a job.

Judge Tuttman released him on his personal recognizance. He showed up for two of his probation appointments, but he failed to appear on July 23.

And then he was gone. He was on his way to Washington.

A warrant for his arrest was issued, although there was no promise that Massachusetts would extradite him from other states. And, despite the fact that Massachusetts authorities knew about Jennifer Lynn Freitas and had her address, there were no warnings or requests to locate sent to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. Ed Troyer, their media spokesman, commented on what an egregious oversight that had been. It was like letting a mad dog out of his cage while he frothed at the mouth and growled. If only the sheriff’s office in Washington had known who had sidled quietly into their midst, into a small town where nobody worried about locked doors.

“But they didn’t tell us—”

Granted, almost any state would have preferred to see a
man like Tavares outside their jurisdiction. The Freitases, the Maucks, and anyone else who encountered him had no warning at all of who was headed their way.

Mitt Romney, with his rugged good looks, deep voice, and charisma, in the summer of 2007 became the center of a national media firestorm, his reputation sullied—perhaps fatally—by a vicious “punk” he’d never heard of before.

Ironically, Mitt Romney
was in Washington State on the campaign trail when Brian and Beverly Mauck were murdered. Even while the Pierce County detectives continued their investigation, the word of Daniel Tavares’s latest act of violence had spread to Massachusetts—and to New York City.

Rudy Giuliani, then Romney’s chief rival for the presidential nomination, seized upon the story and used it to cast doubt on his leadership qualities. “The governor is going to have to explain his appointment,” Giuliani told the Associated Press, “and the judge is going to have to explain her decision—but it’s not an isolated situation. Governor Romney did not have a good record in dealing with violent crime.”

Mitt Romney called for Judge Tuttman to resign and attempted to put as much distance between himself and his appointee as he could. He said he’d never really known her.

Romney’s spokesman managed to put a spin on the devastating results of Daniel Tavares’s release. He cited the Tavares case as a reason for states that had abolished the
death penalty to bring it back. “This is a dangerous man who killed his own mother,” Eric Fehrnstrom said. “He should have been held on bail, given his violent record, attacks on correction officers and a history of threats against public officials, including Governor Romney. It is because of monsters like Daniel Tavares that we need the death penalty.”

Fingers were pointing in every direction, and no one involved, even in the slightest way, let any blame stick to him or her. Kathe Tuttman perhaps got the most abuse—even though she had been tough on violent criminals in the past. In a poll posted by the
Boston Herald
, asking if Judge Tuttman should resign, 85 percent of readers voted yes, 11 percent voted no, and only 4 percent were undecided.

Darrel Slater, Bev Mauck’s father, was bitter and blamed Mitt Romney: “He was the governor—he picked the judge. He should be answering for what happened.”

But Romney did not apologize or accept any blame. Either way, the kiss of political death marked his cheek. The killings in tiny Graham, Washington, may very well have been a deciding factor for the former governor to drop out of the presidential race.

He still, however, had a chance to be nominated for vice president, depending on whom the Republicans chose as their presidential nominee. Almost to the time of the convention in St. Paul, Romney’s name remained on the short list. In the end, he could not lose the specter of Daniel Tavares, who clung to his coattails like a burr.

John McCain bypassed Romney and chose Sarah Palin, a virtually unknown governor from the state of Alaska.

Nothing is less forgiven than political missteps.

Back in Pierce County, Sergeant Ben Benson and his team were tying up the ends of their tragic case. Daniel Tavares had confessed to murder, but Jennifer Lynn still insisted she had had nothing to do with the Maucks’ murders, before, during, or after. She had admitted that she suspected her husband of getting rid of a gun by throwing it off a cliff along Five Mile Drive and seemed willing to go with detectives to look for it.

On Monday morning, November 19, Detective Elizabeth Lindt and Lieutenant Brent Bomkamp visited Jennifer in the Pierce County Jail and asked her if she would show them where she believed Daniel had disposed of the gun used in the murders—somewhere in Point Defiance Park. She agreed to accompany them.

When they reached the park, Jennifer directed them to the area where she and Daniel had been married. It was gray November now, Thanksgiving week, and the sunshine of late July was long gone.

“Daniel walked down this trail from the parking lot”—Jennifer pointed—“until he disappeared. He was gone for at least five minutes. He told me he went to a ledge over the water, and he threw the gun in. He told me that he was afraid the gun hadn’t made it to the water.”

The parking lot where they stood started at the Vashon Island Viewpoint, and the northernmost trail, close by Commencement Bay, passed by a clearing. Beyond that a cliff overlooks Commencement Bay. About fifty feet down, there was a thick cluster of brushy vegetation before the land dropped off some forty feet into the bay.

Lindt and Bomkamp scrambled down the path to the greenery that seemed to get its energy from the air itself; there was precious little dirt there. But they couldn’t find the gun. It might have been hidden among the Scotch broom and blackberry bushes, or it could have been on the bottom of the bay.

Or maybe Tavares hadn’t thrown the weapon at all but only wanted Jennifer to think he had?

Under the M’Naughton Rule, a killer who has made an effort to cover up his crime is deemed to be sane and cognizant of the difference between right and wrong. For the sadistic sociopath, the delineation between the two is perfectly clear; it just doesn’t matter to him because he answers only to himself. Daniel Tavares, who was fully aware that he had a history of reacting violently to heedless combinations of drugs and alcohol, might have seemed totally insane after he used them, but he knew full well that he was doing wrong. He made several attempts to cover up his vicious acts. He had always blamed others for making him do what he did, or he denied committing his crimes at all. He blamed his mother for sexually molesting both himself and his daughter, although no one else was ever aware of that. He denied any guilt in the murder of Gayle Botelho, and he said Brian Mauck had insulted him and refused to pay him the fifty dollars he allegedly owed for a tattoo. And he attempted to cover up his crime in the deaths of Bev and Brian Mauck.

Although his crimes and alleged crimes were horrific and seemed to have no logical motivation, Daniel Tavares
wasn’t insane under the law, or even medically. His own father called him “evil.” And maybe he was.

There was more evidence that Tavares had attempted to cover up the murders of his neighbors. On December 16, Jeff Freitas called the sheriff’s office to report that he had made a startling discovery when he moved his riding lawn mower out of his shed and began to dump the grass clippings out of the grass catcher. Some clothing dropped out, too: a pair of pants and a pillowcase, both of which had dried bloodstains on them. The jeans were splotched white where Tavares had poured bleach over them. Detectives finally located a burn pile near the Tavares trailer. It had a partially burned blue shirt tangled in it.

Although he had denied it, Tavares
had
changed his clothes and hidden them to keep the investigators from finding his victims’ bloodstains there. He had gotten rid of the gun. He had made up a wildly untrue story to explain his facial injuries. He had told Jennifer exactly what to say to back up his story. He had lied and lied and lied.

Although he avoided the death penalty, it is unlikely that Daniel Tavares will ever again see the world outside prison walls. For her part in helping him cover up the Mauck murders, Jennifer Lynn Tavares is serving a year in the Pierce County Jail.

It wasn’t until after Tavares pleaded guilty to the Maucks’ murders, and received his life sentences, that Detective Sergeant Ben Benson glimpsed the rage that others had described. Benson and Tom Catey had spent many hours interviewing Tavares the Sunday after the homicides
were discovered. And through it all, the suspect had been remarkably civil.

“After he confessed,” Benson recalled, “Daniel sat back and smiled. He didn’t even seem angry or upset.”

But Benson had Tavares brought to his office after his sentencing.

“I asked him if there was anything more he wanted to tell me. He was evasive, and he lied about having a fistfight with Brian Mauck. I corrected him, telling him I knew that wasn’t the truth.

“He came out of his chair in a complete rage, headed right for me. Finally, I saw the monster that his victims must have seen. It was shocking—more so than any reaction I’ve ever witnessed. That, I believe, was the
real
Daniel Tavares.”

It’s only natural to wonder if things could have been different. If time could be rewound, and if information had been shared and red flags given proper attention, are there many lives that would not have ended so soon, and many careers that would not be blemished?

Karen Slater, Bev Mauck’s mother, takes some comfort in her belief that her small but feisty daughter did some damage to her killer. “He had to shoot her between the eyes to stop her,” Karen says. “I know in my heart that it was Bev who gave him that black eye and left bruises and cuts on his face with her elbow. Somehow, that makes me feel a little better.”

Back in Massachusetts, Danny Tavares was allowed to plead guilty to lesser charges of manslaughter and at
tempted manslaughter in the savage murder of his mother and the attack on George Latsis, and he was never charged with Gayle Botelho’s murder.

Many citizens of Bristol County, were horrified when they learned that Daniel Tavares had known all along where Gayle’s body was.

If only he had been arrested in 1988, his mother might still be alive.

If only he hadn’t been released from prison—despite his disruptive behavior—the Maucks might be alive.

If he is, indeed, the Highway Killer of New Bedford—which is a more remote possibility—some of the eleven young women tossed away in the bushes and wild grass beside the roads might have survived.

That is, of course, hindsight.

The current district attorney of Bristol County, Sam Sutter, has reopened the investigation into the Highway Murders and the death of Gayle Botelho.

And so the story of Daniel Tavares may be far from over.