and prostitutes, dumping the bodies of his victims along the highways outside the city. He clocked up some 11 victims, though two of the bodies are still missing.
The first victim found was 30-year-old Debra Madeiros. She was last seen when she walked out on her boyfriend on 27 May 1988. On 2 July 1988, a motorist stopped to relieve himself near an exit ramp on I–140 and found a partially clothed skeleton. The remains were identified at those of Debra Madeiros in February 1989.
Thirty-six-year-old Nancy Paiva went missing on 11 July 1988. Nineteen days later, a body was found near an exit ramp from I–195, but her remains were not identified until December, by which time her killer had moved on. Both the I–140 and the I–195 connect to the I–495, which runs past Marlborough and Hudson.
Deborah DeMello, aged 34, also went missing on 11 July 1988. Her body was found on 8 November, near the exit ramp on I–195 where Nancy Paiva’s remains were discovered. Three days later a road crew working on the I– 195 found the body of 25-year-old Dawn Mendes. She had gone missing a week before.
On 1 December 1988, the fully clothed skeleton of 25-year-old Deborah McConnell was found just off the I– 140. She had been missing since May. Police came upon her fully clothed skeleton during an extensive roadway search prompted by the other killings. Then the body of 28-year-old Rochelle Clifford was found on 10 December 1988 by hunters in a quarry near the I–195, close to where Nancy Paiva and Deborah DeMello had been dumped. She had been missing since April.
The body of Robin Rhodes was discovered on 28 March 1989, directly across the I–140 from the spot where Debra Madeiros had been found ten months before. Three days later, the body of Mary Santos was found, but not along an interstate. She was found along Route 88 which runs from Fall River to Horseneck Beach several miles outside New Bedford, but the other similarities between her murder and the others led the police to conclude that it was the work of the same man. She had been missing since July 1988. The last body to be found was that of Sandy Botelho, aged 24, whose remains were recovered along I–195. She was found on 24 April 1989, after going missing the previous August.
The police concluded that two other women were victims of the same killer. They were 19-year-old Christine Monteiro, who was last seen in May 1988, and 34-year-old Marilyn Roberts, who went missing in June.
At that time the population of New Bedford was less that 100,000 and, unsurprisingly given their similar lifestyles, several of the victims knew each other. Marilyn Roberts and Christine Monteiro were neighbours. Rochelle Clifford was last seen in the company of Nancy Paiva’s boyfriend, though he was cleared of both killings. Robin Rhodes also knew both Rochelle Clifford and Nancy Paiva, as well as Mary Santos and Dawn Mendes.
The police pursued two suspects. One was Tony “Flat Nose” DeGrazia. He was arrested in May 1989 for the violent rape of several New Bedford prostitutes. He was released on bail in January 1990 after the authorities could find no evidence linking him to the murders. DeGrazia was later arrested again for raping another prostitute. He committed suicide soon after posting bond a second time.
In August 1990 a grand jury indicted attorney Kenny Ponte for the murder of Rochelle Clifford. Earlier there had been an incident involving Ponte, Clifford, another man and a gun. Ponte was a known drug user who had other run-ins with the law. In September 1988—around the time the killings stopped—Ponte shut his law office and moved to Florida. However, in March 1991, special prosecutor Paul Buckley dropped the charges against Ponte on the grounds that he had found no evidence on which to proceed.
There is speculation that the New Bedford serial killer is the same man as Portugal’s “Lisbon Ripper”, who began killing drug-addicted prostitutes in Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and the Czech Republic around the time the New Bedford killings ended. New Bedford has a sizable Portuguese immigrant population. Because his victims in Europe are so widely dispersed, it is thought that he works as a long-distance lorry driver. This would explain why the New Bedford victims were all found near interstates or other main roads—and it may also connect him to the I–495 killings in Marlborough and Hudson. Neither the I–495, the New Bedford slayer nor the Lisbon Ripper has ever been identified.
Newark’s Nixings
In April 1998, Essex County set up a task force to re-examine the cases of 14 African-American women murdered over the previous five years. The women’s bodies were all found in abandoned buildings or vacant lots within a few miles of one another. The women were aged between 19 and 37. Most were prostitutes. However, the method of murder varied. Some were stabbed, while others were strangled or suffocated.
Nine of the 14 were killed in Newark, two in nearby East Orange and three in Irvington. In neighbouring Union County, the country prosecutor appointed a homicide detective to determine if four unsolved slayings of black female prostitutes between 1988 and 1994 could be linked to the Essex County slayings.
New Haven Homicides
Eleven-year-old Diane Toney was last seen alive as she was watching the “Freddy Fixer” parade in the Hill section of New Haven, Connecticut on 18 May 1969. Five months later her fractured skull was found in a wooded area off Route 80 in North Guilford. It was clear that she had been beaten to death with a rock. The rest of her skeleton was later found in the same woods, wrapped in the green polka-dot dress she had been wearing when she disappeared.
By then 10-year-old Mary Mount was abducted from New Canaan, Connecticut. She was last seen on 27 May 1969, chasing her kitten. Her body was found on 17 June in the woods by the Norwalk Reservoir in Wilton, less than five miles away. She had also been beaten to death with a rock.
Three days after Mary Mount went missing, 14-year-old Dawn Cave had a fight with her sister and stormed out of her home in Bethany, some 35 miles away. Her body was discovered in a meadow northwest of New Haven two weeks after Mary Mount’s. Again she had been beaten to death with a rock. Post mortem examinations revealed that the girls had been killed shortly after they had been kidnapped.
New York City police became involved on 9 July, when nine-year-old Wanda Waldonada was raped and strangled in Brooklyn. Witnesses recalled seeing a white car near the scene of the crime. In Connecticut, a white car with New York licence plates had been seen in both New Canaan and Bethany. Its driver had been reported for attempting to lure children away from their homes. But this tantalizing “lead” took homicide investigators nowhere in their search for suspects.
Then in September 1970, 5-year-old Jennifer Noon went missing as she walked home from her school in New Haven, Connecticut, to her home to have lunch. Eight days later her body was found dumped in the woods in the Evergreen Avenue section of Hamden, Connecticut, less than five miles away. She too had been beaten to death with a rock.
Lorry driver Harold Meade was the prime suspect in all four Connecticut murders. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1972 for beating three mentally retarded residents of the Greater New Haven Regional Center with rocks. After his arrest Meade is said to have told police that the mentally retarded people were not his only victims. Some of the witnesses to the girls’ abductions identified him in photo line-ups as well. However, Meade protests his innocence in these cases. He has never been charged with the girls’ murders. Nothing connects him to the murder of Wanda Waldonada in Brooklyn or the white car.
Diana Toney remained unburied for 27 years as some of her family refused to believe that the body was hers and her remains were never claimed. They sat in the evidence room until 1996 when the police raised the money to bury her.
Meanwhile, there were more unsolved murders in Connecticut. Between 1975 and 1990, more than a dozen young women were the victims of an unknown killer or killers in the New Haven area. Authorities believe that at least seven were killed by one man. Detectives received a tip-off that a man named Roosevelt Bowden was responsible. A violent man, he fatally stabbed his one-year-old daughter Tabitha. Prosecutors agreed to a plea bargain for manslaughter carrying a maximum of 15 years in prison. In July 1986, Bowden was paroled.
