Caught in the Act Read online

  Our paths first crossed in the summer between my junior and senior years in high school. I had noticed him around town before then, driving his 1968 Chevy pickup truck. It was baby blue and was always sparkling clean and shiny. But he was the one who had caught my eye, with his incredible head of blond curls and the cutest baby face I had ever seen. I was hooked instantly. I asked around about him and found out that he lived on the other side of Mass Avenue in a house filled with kids—a big Irish family.

  It was during this time that my mother met my soon-to-be stepdad, and we sold our house on Oakland Street, packed up everything and moved about a mile away. Shortly afterward, I met Kevin for the first time. It is actually a rather embarrassing story, but something we both still chuckle about. I was hanging out one evening with a group of kids, including Kevin; I knew that Kevin was very shy around girls and that I’d need to break the ice if anything was ever going to happen between us, so I approached him and asked if he’d buy me a beer. I wasn’t really a big drinker, but I figured all guys like beer. Or maybe it was just the reckless teen—the Christmas caroler gone bad—coming out in me. Anyway, it worked. He bought me a beer, or three, and we got to know each other. He was a perfect gentleman, so it certainly wasn’t a wildly romantic first encounter. It initiated a lifelong bond, however, and I can’t help but smile when I think back on those days. Kevin still shows traces of that boy I fell in love with when I first laid eyes on him. The Mac Davis curls are gone, replaced by a sharp buzz that flatters his chiseled features. No more baby face, but I can still detect some of that innocence peeking out from behind those beautiful eyes. Sometimes I’ll catch a glimpse of that shy young man, now long since replaced with a razor-sharp wit and offbeat sense of humor, and I wouldn’t trade what we have for anything in the world. But it’s safe to say that back then even I never would have dreamed that we would be together for life. We weren’t the only ones, however, who didn’t think we had a future together.

  As I got to know Kevin, I realized how different the two of our families really were. He was the fourth of nine children, seven boys and two girls, and his parents were at least fifteen years younger than my mother and father. His Irish Catholic family was considered blue collar, while my Protestant one was white collar. At that time, there was an underlying socioeconomic division in the different parts of town that each of us came from—only his two sisters had gone to college, whereas my father and brothers had all attended prep school, and we’d all gone to college.

  The McDonough house was a small cape near the reservoir. His father was the owner of an electrical construction company, and his mother was truly an incredible woman who spent every waking moment raising her children. With enough McDonoughs to make up a baseball team, it’s no wonder. But it was a job she took very seriously, instilling in the children the paramount importance of both God and family. The entire McDonough brood would take up a whole pew at St. Bridget’s Church on Sunday, with both their parents looking on as their children sat obediently listening to the words of the priest. I can’t help but laugh when hearing them recalling their memories of what a project it was getting all nine of them dressed in their Sunday best, hair combed, and behaving appropriately while at church under their parents’ close supervision.

  Looking back, Kevin and I were both strong-willed individuals from very different upbringings, so what people saw when we argued were two people prone to volatile outbursts because of our personalities. But there was a constant undercurrent of mutual respect and affection, and what few others saw was that we always reached neutral ground and made up.

  To this day, I am convinced that if I hadn’t met Kevin, my life would have headed in a vastly different direction. I was blessed when I met him, and have continued to be blessed ever since. However, our future almost dissolved before it ever began. No sooner had Kevin and I met than we were suddenly forced apart when my stepfather quickly grew tired of having a teenage girl around all the time and decided to send me off to boarding school. I didn’t want to go, but there wasn’t much I could do about it, and I resented my stepfather for that more than anything. But in a way, I was glad to get away. I didn’t want to stay at home the way things were; it was a difficult living arrangement for everyone. This man could never replace my father, whom I so cherished. So off I went to Cushing Academy prior to my senior year, excited about the prospect of a better educational experience but sad to be leaving behind my friends and my new boyfriend.

  When it was time to decide on a college, I chose Ithaca, in upstate New York, following the same path as my brother Peter. Kevin and I continued to date, though the relationship gradually began to become less serious because of the distance between us. As things became more and more rocky, we broke up for a period of time. Then I had an epiphany of sorts: realizing that I wasn’t very happy being so far from home, and so far away from Kevin, I decided to transfer to Simmons College in Boston. Kevin was happy that not only was I closer to home, but I was attending an all-women’s institution.

  After I graduated, in 1982, we dated for a couple more years before moving into an apartment together on the Belmont /Cambridge line. After a couple of years we thought we had saved enough money to get married and start a family. We tied the knot on September 29, 1985, and we soon bought a condo in Merrimack, New Hampshire, not far from the Massachusetts state line. I began working at Interactive Training Systems in Bedford, Massachusetts, and Kevin settled full-time into the family business, which was also located in Bedford. The fifty mile each-way drive six days a week—we also went back to Lexington every Sunday for dinner with Kevin’s family—occupied far too much time, and I wasn’t sure how we would ever be able to start a family of our own. It didn’t seem as if we had any time for ourselves. Then our son, Ryan, was born on October 12, 1988, and although there were complications with the delivery, making the early part of our son’s life a precarious time, the six months that the three of us spent in New Hampshire were a joyous time.

  Early in the spring of 1989, we found a house we liked back in Lexington, and we moved in, despite not having sold our condo in New Hampshire. The house in Lexington was a fixer-upper, and Kevin put our entire life savings into doing just that, handling a lot of the work himself. When he was done, it was absolutely beautiful, by all accounts our dream home. It was in a great location, just a few houses down from the town’s recreational facilities. It was also perfect because it was centrally situated between both of our parents’ homes. It was the happiest time of our lives, despite the fact that by the time our daughter, Shea, was born, on September 11, 1991, we still hadn’t found a buyer for the New Hampshire property, and we were carrying two mortgages. The monthly payments were slowly draining us financially. To make matters worse, Kevin and I weren’t the only ones in the family feeling this economic pinch—the family’s electrical business was also struggling in a down housing market. There just wasn’t enough work to keep everyone busy and employed with a steady paycheck. But we had to do something, because we were on the verge of losing everything.

  In 1993, after much difficult discussion, as well as tears and heartache, Kevin and I decided to move to northern Virginia, where our best friends had moved several years earlier. There seemed to be some promising prospects in the construction field, and we hoped that the cost of living would be lower. And indeed, Kevin was immediately able to secure a job, so we sold our house in Massachusetts, signed a Deed in Lieu on the condo in New Hampshire, jammed all of our belongings into an enormous U-Haul and off we went. I was emotionally torn by the unknown elements we faced but also filled with hope and the potential for a new life with our closest and dearest friends by our side. It took some time to get used to everything, but we eventually did. We were particularly lucky in that we moved to a wonderful neighborhood where the homes were close together and the people closer, a place where religion and community were central parts of daily life. Our children thrived in an environment that reinforced all the foundational moral elements that Kevin a
nd I valued. We met some wonderful people, some of whom we’ve remained friends with to this day.

  The only drawback to this new living arrangement was Kevin’s absence. Working as a superintendent in the construction field required him to travel for weeks at a time. This was not something that the kids and I were used to. It eventually became too much for us to endure, and fortunately it was around the same time that the economy began an upswing, and Kevin’s father called asking him to return home so he could help run the business. It was just what we were waiting for; despite the wonderful people and enriching lifestyle in Virginia, I was thrilled and excited to be headed home again. Once a New Englander, always a New Englander, they say—and it’s true.

  We found a nice home in Chelmsford to settle into, close to Bedford and affordable. Although it needed quite a bit of work and considerable TLC, we figured we had plenty of time to transform it into our dream home, because this was where we were going to be spending the rest of our lives. One of the first things we did was get a dog, Bosco, a beautiful black retriever mix who seemed to complete our family. We all fell in love with the area immediately. There was nothing not to love. It was a great place to raise a family. For Kevin and me, it was close to where we’d grown up, just twenty miles from where it all began for us. We had come full circle. It was the best of all worlds for us and where we wanted to be.

  By 2007, we had been living in the cozy four-bedroom New England-style cape for eleven years. That June, Money magazine listed our town as the twenty-first best place to live in the country that year. It was a proud distinction, but to anyone living there, not surprising—it’s a quiet, affluent suburb that boasted a very low crime rate. The type of community where you didn’t have to worry too much if you happened to go to bed without locking the door. Downtown Chelmsford is in many ways a picture-perfect postcard of New England life, a Norman Rockwell painting come to life.

  Chelmsford, however, is not exactly rural. About a hundred yards beyond our back door, I-495 cuts a path to points south to Rhode Island and north to Boston, just thirty miles away. We never thought much about the possible ramifications of a major highway running directly through our backyard. At the time we bought the house, the only conceivable drawback was noise, which is something that you really do get used to. Little did we know that it was not the vehicles that were moving past us on the interstate that were our biggest problem—it was the ones that were stopped in the rest area a quarter mile away.

  Chapter 3

  HIGHWAY OF DEATH

  Tuesday, July 17, 2007

  It was about 2:00 a.m., the apparent killing hour for the murderer, who was dressed in black but unmasked as he slipped into the first unlocked door he came across that night.

  Thirty-seven-year-old Patricia Brooks was asleep on the couch downstairs in her Bowers Bridge Road home when she was suddenly awakened by a sharp, stinging pain on the right side of her shoulder and across the front of her neck. When her eyes fluttered open, she saw someone standing over her in the darkness. She could not see much more than the outline of a figure clad in dark clothes. Then she detected the swift motion of an object that was giving off a metallic sheen. It appeared out of the shadows, and she instantly felt a strange cold sensation on her upper body and more stinging pain. She was also aware of a warm wetness around her abdomen. Patricia thought she was dreaming at first, but she soon realized that the object was a knife—a very long one. And it was as real as the figure that was lunging at her and slashing her about the throat and shoulder.

  She saw the spray of blood that was spilling out of her body onto the white carpeting and instinctively grabbed at her throat, clasping one hand over the torn flesh. She started gasping as she tried to fend off the attacker with her other hand and get to her feet, but he was too big and strong. The man was also wearing a cap, and although his face was exposed, Patricia caught only brief, dim glimpses of him. What was not lost on her was his pungent odor, like a wild animal’s.

  The commotion downstairs was loud enough to wake her family, who were sleeping upstairs. Within moments, the sound of footfalls could be heard on the floor above and descending the stairs.

  Believing he had mortally wounded his victim—the bleeding was heavy and Patricia was now motionless—the killer stepped away from her. He was satisfied that if she wasn’t already dead, she would be soon, so before anyone could come all the way down the stairs, he turned and fled the house through the unlocked back door, the same one he had entered through a short time before. He disappeared into the night, leaving Patricia for dead.

  She was still alive, however. She had tricked him by playing possum, and it was in this position, as she lay there perfectly still, that she was able to get her best look at her attacker.

  She watched him leave, waited a moment until she was sure that he was gone, and then she grabbed her neck and felt the multiple open wounds. She pressed the palm of her hand tightly against her throat to slow the steady flow of blood and tried to get up. Patricia was light-headed from the loss of blood, and she fell back down onto the couch. She immediately tried again to get to her feet, more slowly this time. She managed to support herself as she stumbled toward the stairs. All she wanted to do was get out of that room in case he came back.

  “Don’t go down there,” Patricia mouthed as she met her mother and daughter on the landing. They helped her up to the next floor, leaving a trail of blood behind them.

  An ambulance was called, and Patricia was transported to York Hospital. Her injuries were very serious. Several major veins and arteries in her neck were cut, including a nick to both external jugulars. Her esophagus and trachea were damaged as well. She required immediate surgery, but her status was good after she left the OR. Although a full recovery was expected, she was extremely lucky to have survived the attack. Had the blade penetrated a fraction of an inch deeper, she would have died almost instantly.

  In a later interview with police at the hospital, Patricia Brooks told them that her attacker “was dressed for the occasion,” wearing all black, in an outfit she likened to a prison-guard uniform. She said he was also wearing a dark cap, and a wide “tool belt” was strapped to his waist. She mentioned his bestial smell and described him as a large man with a pot belly that had hung over the belt. He was white, with a stubbly beard and chubby face, and she thought she would be able to recognize him if she saw him again.

  The Bowers Bridge Road home where Patricia was attacked was located in a rather isolated area of Conewago Township in York County, Pennsylvania, close to Interstate 83. Authorities in the Pennsylvania townships of Conewago and West Hanover, where Darlene Ewalt had been killed four days earlier, did not know what they were dealing with yet. Despite the increased reports of prowlers in these areas around the time of the slashing attacks, police continued to focus on suspects who had been known to the victims.

  In Dauphin County, Darlene’s husband, Todd Ewalt, remained the focus of the police investigation into his wife’s murder. In the absence of any other suspects, he knew that the police believed he was responsible for Darlene’s death, or at least knew something about it. Although he understood that they were just doing their jobs, he felt like he was being watched all the time, even as he was grieving the loss of his beloved wife and burying the mother of their two children. He wondered if he had cried enough for their benefit. He was almost afraid to laugh or smile, for fear of how he might be judged. All that in addition to the overwhelming guilt he was feeling for not being awake to save his wife from being killed by a knife-wielding madman who murdered her outside their bedroom window while he slept. The worst part was realizing that the police might never catch her killer if they were focusing all their attention on him.

  State police investigators in Pennsylvania, however, soon came to a dead end with Todd Ewalt. With the case growing colder by the day, Dauphin County prosecutors, who had been anticipating an arrest, began to turn their attention to more immediate matters of concern.

  By the end
of July, there were still no new leads in either case, and neither jurisdiction had yet made a connection between the two attacks, which were separated by a distance of thirty miles. The only similarities between the crimes, besides the type of weapon used, were the proximity of the victims’ homes to the interstate. With a network of nearly four million miles of public roadways contained within its borders, the United States has the largest national highway system in the world. Unfortunately, this multilane accomplice had not been fully considered at this point in the investigation, and that oversight would only bring further death.

  Chapter 4

  MURDER ON MAIN STREET

  Sunday, July 29, 2007

  State police began receiving reports of a prowler from residents of Bloomsbury, New Jersey, around 2:00 a.m. Frightened home owners called in numerous complaints of someone jiggling their door handles and trying to get inside. The picturesque borough in Hunterdon County is home to about one thousand people. Although it is surrounded by farmland, it is situated just ten miles east of the Pennsylvania line and fifty miles north of Philadelphia. Interstate 78 runs directly through it. The massive truck stop at the eastern end of town has always been another world unto itself, part of the community yet separated by an invisible boundary. Truck stops like the one in Bloomsbury provide a safe haven for weary truckers, and unlike more generic rest areas that offer bathroom facilities and food for all motorists, truck stops are generally for truckers only and are all but off-limits to other highway motorists.