Caught in the Act Read online

  There are more motorist-friendly stops all along today’s interstate highways, roadside plazas that feature an assortment of fast-food marts, information centers and tourist attractions. It is here where commercial truck drivers and pedestrian travelers often converge. One group pulls over because it is convenient, another because it is required. Although travel for private motorists has gotten easier and more anonymous, the regulations with which interstate truckers must comply have gotten more restrictive, and because a trucker’s stops are mandated, they are also documented. So when a dark-blue tractor pulling a semi with Virginia registration tags pulled into the rest area at exit 7 off I-78 in New Jersey earlier that night, it came with a traceable history. There were gas receipts, logbook entries, bills of lading and other shipping documents that identified the truck’s origin, its destination, and everything in between. This particular truck, carrying a variety of nursery and garden supplies, had left Virginia on July 27, making deliveries around York, Pennsylvania, before stopping at the rest area in New Jersey. There was another scheduled stop, in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, on the way to Nashua, New Hampshire, where the driver would refill his truck with goods for the return trip south.

  But first, there was at least one undocumented stop that the driver of this nursery truck was going to make. He removed a black fanny pack from under the cab’s seat and strapped it around his waist. He didn’t have to check the contents because he had packed it himself earlier and no one else had touched it. He secured a knife leg strap to his right thigh and slid a fifteen-inch hunting knife into the KYDEX pocket sheath. Then he grabbed the hooded mask and the pair of gloves from the passenger seat beside him and stepped out of the truck. The mask was brown camouflage in the front and black in the back, and the black nylon gloves had leather palms. Wearing a black T-shirt, dark denim jeans and black sneakers, the trucker slipped unseen into the narrow band of trees behind his rig. When he emerged a moment later in front of Route 173, his hands were covered, his face was concealed and he was ready to kill. He prowled through the backyards of the sleepy neighborhood as if they were his own private hunting grounds. Upon finding a locked door, he moved on, also bypassing any house with lights on.

  When he came across a two-story residence with a wide front porch at 79 Main Street, the windows were dark, and there was a car parked outside. He peered into the passenger window of the car parked in the driveway on the side of the house. Spotting a purse in plain view on the passenger seat, he tried the car door but found it locked. He had a feeling that this was the one, and he was so confident about it that he didn’t even attempt to access the residence from a rear door. He walked straight up the stairs onto the porch and wasn’t the least bit shocked when the front door swung open freely.

  He quickly entered the ground-floor duplex apartment and paused in the darkness, listening for the sound of a television, voices, footsteps, anything at all. There was only silence. On a low coffee table in the middle of the living room was a set of car keys. He grabbed them and walked back outside. After unlocking the passenger door of the car, he snatched the pocketbook and closed the door swiftly to extinguish the interior light. Right there, he removed the small yellow flashlight he was carrying and started to go through the contents of the purse. He dug out the wallet, which contained several credit cards and some cash, but he looked past these at that moment and pulled out the operator’s license, focusing on the picture and the date of birth of the driver. Her name was Monica Massaro. She was blond. Pretty. A beautiful smile to go with it all. She was thirty-eight years old. He could have left at that point, but he felt compelled to stay. And hunt. There was only one car in the driveway, and he figured the woman was unmarried and was alone. He wasn’t done yet. He then went back up onto the front porch and stepped inside the house, taking the purse with him and placing it on the floor just inside the door.

  Before proceeding any further, he removed the knife from his waist belt. He slowly began to make his way through the ground-floor apartment. He walked down a narrow hallway, passed a bathroom on one side and a closed door directly across, which he opened carefully before discovering it was a closet. He rummaged through it briefly, looking for anything of value among the bath towels and sundry items. Around the corner was a bedroom. He could see the large dresser just inside the doorway. He entered the room cautiously, expecting to find a helpless, sleeping victim. Instead, what he encountered was a terrified woman sitting up in bed, having been woken by the sounds of someone prowling around in her apartment. They were both surprised when he walked through the doorway into the darkened bedroom.

  Monica never locked her doors, a habit that concerned her parents as well as some of her friends who were not as free-spirited or trusting. If she had been holding out any hope that this was her upstairs tenant coming in to talk to her about something, or perhaps stumbling home drunk and wandering into the wrong apartment, that thought was short-lived. She had been clutching the remote control for the overhead light and fan, and when she clicked it on, it revealed a hulking figure clad in black, his face concealed behind a mask.

  Monica began to scream and jumped out of bed. The intruder raised the knife and charged her at once. He pressed one gloved hand against her mouth to stifle her screams, but she bit his hand and he pulled it away quickly. Angered, he threw her onto the bed and pounced on top of her as she continued to scream. Then he brought the blade of the knife in his right hand across her throat in a smooth, practiced motion. He opened a deep, fatal wound. Her screams were instantly silenced as blood pulsed from the severed vessels in her neck. Monica died quickly, her killer watching, breathless himself with excitement as she bled to death. Then he proceeded to mutilate her body, stabbing and slashing her head, chest, stomach and between her legs.

  Before he left, the killer went through her personal belongings in search of a trophy to take with him. Finding a necklace on the dresser, the masked man pocketed it as a souvenir. As he left the apartment, he grabbed Monica’s purse, but then went around to the side door at the back of the house to make his escape. After what he had just done, he did not want to risk being seen now.

  Stepping outside, he walked behind the victim’s house until he reached the railroad tracks. He knew the truck stop was bordered on one side by the tracks, so he headed in that direction. Along the way, he started dumping out the contents of the victim’s purse. He tossed out all of the personal effects except her driver’s license, credit cards and cash. The bills and loose change he stuffed into the front pocket of his jeans. Before he got into his cab, he tossed the cards and license into a trash can at the Exxon station and flung the pocketbook up onto the roof of an adjacent building.

  The trucker did not seem to be in any hurry to get away, as he did not leave right away. He went into the Pilot Travel Center, which was part of the Route 78 truck stop, and bought a radar detector. He even had something to eat and slept a little while before he drove off, continuing on toward New England and his next stop.

  Chapter 5

  UNSUSPECTING

  In Chelmsford, July brought the true dog days and everything that came with the sweltering temperatures and high humidity. I’ve always loved this time of year, despite the oppressive heat, but it was the worst time for the air-conditioning unit in our bedroom to fail. It remained in the window for several days after it had conked out; we’d been busy and just hadn’t gotten around to fixing it. Instead, we had been getting by with the ceiling fan circulating overhead.

  The kids’ bedrooms were upstairs, but the rooms were not air-conditioned, and when the weather got like this, it was simply unbearable up there. As an alternative, Shea and Ryan would either sleep on the large sectional in the family room, where there was a ceiling fan and cross ventilation from the perimeter windows, or they would crash in the downstairs guest room, adjacent to our bedroom, where there were twin beds and a fully functioning AC unit in the window. It didn’t seem to matter much, as the kids were hardly ever home at the same time.
r />   That summer, we planned our family vacation down at Cape Cod for the week of July fourteenth through the twenty-second, an annual excursion we make with our best friends, Lisa and Jay, and their family. We hadn’t seen much of our son, Ryan, that summer; he had graduated from high school in June and was enjoying the last of the carefree summer days. In the fall he would be attending Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, so he spent most of his time with his friends from high school, who he would not see as often come September. But we had no trouble getting him to join his mother and father and his little sister on this trip. Lisa and Jay had five children, around the same ages as Ryan and Shea, and the kids always have a great time together.

  It may have been hot and sticky at home, but it was beautiful by the water. I could stay all day on the beach just soaking up the sun and reveling in the beauty of the surroundings. One morning when the weather was not cooperating, the girls, all the daughters, decided to go into town and pamper themselves by getting manicures and pedicures. The rest of us stayed on the beach. Kevin and I didn’t care if it was overcast.

  During their “mani-pedis,” an episode of Oprah was airing on the salon’s television. Various experts were discussing what a person should do in the event he or she was attacked or abducted. The girls listened closely to the advice given by previous victims and law enforcement professionals, who all agreed that a person’s best chance for survival is to fight back and never go quietly. Although the stories of the survivors and the advice of the guests were at once terrifying and enthralling, the reality of being abducted seemed like a distant concern, something that happened to other people, not to them or to anyone they might know.

  The week went by way too fast, and before we knew it, we were back at home, thinking about the workweek and other responsibilities. Shea would be entering her junior year of high school, and she knew how important it was to be ready for the first day of conditioning sessions, scheduled to begin Monday morning, for the upcoming swim season. She was highly self-motivated for a fifteen-year-old. The workouts, scheduled to begin at 7:15 a.m. on alternating days of the week, weren’t mandatory, but they were a highly encouraged prerequisite to the official start of practice. For the rest of the summer, Shea would have to wake up early in the morning for a strenuous workout in the pool. We all had to get up early—everyone except Ryan, perhaps—so it was easy enough to tone down our social activities. Most nights were spent around the house, watching television programs, or if a baseball game was on, tuning in to the Red Sox. We were all avid fans.

  On Tuesday night, July 24, Kevin and I were transfixed by a tragic and disturbing news story out of Cheshire, Connecticut. The previous morning, two armed men had broken into the home of a prominent area physician as he and his family slept. The report said that two recent parolees had terrorized the family for six hours, raping and strangling the doctor’s wife and tying his daughters, eleven and eighteen, to their beds, raping the younger and then setting the beds ablaze. The men bound the doctor in the basement, savagely beat him in the head and torso with a baseball bat, and left him to die. As the house was burning, he managed to escape to a neighbor’s, but he was the only survivor. Medical examiners said his daughters succumbed to smoke inhalation, while his wife died from strangulation.

  At one point during the home invasion, one of the suspects drove the mother to a local bank and forced her to withdraw $15,000. She somehow alerted a clerk that her family was being held hostage, and the police were notified, but by the time they arrived, the women had all been killed. The suspects attempted to escape in the family’s SUV, but they were confronted by a blockade of police cars. They rammed into two cruisers in a desperate attempt to get away, but they were quickly apprehended and arrested.

  I was absolutely appalled. It truly was the most heinous crime I had ever heard about. Kevin and I were too horrified to talk immediately after hearing this report. I knew that we were thinking the same thing: if something like that could happen there, it could happen anywhere.

  A bit later I turned to Kevin and asked, “Do you think we should look into getting a security system?”

  Kevin shrugged and looked at me. “What are the odds of something like that happening here?” he said.

  I began to wonder if the doctor’s wife had asked him the same question the previous week. A sense of unease had been planted, and I began to question if the feeling of safety and security anywhere was just an illusion.

  On Saturday, July 28, I enjoyed a night out in Boston with family and friends. I probably overdid it that night, and I knew I was going to pay for it the next day, but none of us were driving and that may have prompted us all to let loose a little bit. We had a great time, and even though it was another exceptionally hot night, and we were still without an air conditioner, I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

  The next thing I knew, our dog Bosco’s barking was waking me up way too early in the morning. Kevin had already gotten up and was at the shop. He was an early bird, and a couple drinks the night before didn’t faze him in the least. Bosco wasn’t stopping, so I got out of bed to see what was wrong. Either his line was tangled around a tree again or he had seen a squirrel or some other creature roaming around. So I went outside, and sure enough, Bosco’s line was hung up on some rocks. I could not even count the number of times Kevin or I had gone outside at all hours of the night to untangle the dog’s line. I freed him up now, hoping he hadn’t been barking too long and disturbing the neighbors. Then I went back to bed, wanting only to wake up again and start the day off on a better foot.

  As we were roused from sleep that Sunday morning, Monica Massaro’s life had just expired at the hands of a homicidal trucker about two hundred and twenty-five miles away. Our family had no way of knowing that our lives would be the next to intersect with this vicious killer, whose actions were as random as his victims were innocent. Not even he knew who he would target next.

  July 29 was a pretty typical Sunday at our house. Shea had been at a party the night before with her friend Ashley, and they were spending the day together, very likely sleeping in. Ryan was camped out at his best friend Ricky’s house, where he had been spending a lot of his time that summer. I had been thinking about using my free day to go out and do some shopping, but since Kevin and I had been out the previous night, a lazy day by the pool was just what the doctor ordered.

  Kevin came home in the late afternoon, and we hung out for the rest of the day. We decided to take advantage of the kids not being around and went to grab an early dinner at Filho’s, a tasty little bistro about a half hour from our house. Once evening came around, we settled in to catch some of the Red Sox game. They were playing the Sunday night ESPN game against Tampa Bay, when the team was still called the Devil Rays and before they were American League champions. It was a good game, if you like pitching duels. It was scoreless until the bottom of the seventh, when Tampa scored five runs.

  After Tampa jumped out ahead, Kevin decided to turn in. Because it was a nationally televised game, it had started later than normal. Add to that pitcher Dice-K’s deliberate windup and all the extra commercials between innings, and it was late. Kevin still had to get up at the crack of dawn for work.

  “It must be a hundred degrees in the bedroom,” he sighed. “I’ve got to get the unit fixed this week. I can’t take any more of this.”

  It had been hot all week, but that night it didn’t seem to cool down at all. I turned up the speed of the ceiling fan and got up to open our bedroom door halfway to try to allow any cross breeze to circulate through. When I noticed Kevin undressing to get into bed, I saw that he had even removed his boxers.

  “Kevin,” I said, in a chastising tone that he recognized right away.

  “What?” he asked, defensively.

  I pointed to his boxer shorts, which were now draped on the footboard where he had placed them.

  “Oh, come on, Jeannie!”

  “What if your daughter chooses to sleep in the next room?
That wouldn’t be appropriate.”

  He growled under his breath but put them back on.

  A short while later, Shea called from Ashley’s house and asked if she could sleep over. Kevin heard me talking to her and got my attention. I looked over and saw him start to remove his boxers again. He was kidding, and he laughed out loud. I turned away and smiled. I urged Shea to come home because she had swim practice early the next morning, and it would be easier for everyone if she was already here. She was disappointed but didn’t fight us on the decision and agreed to be home by her normal summer curfew time of midnight.

  Chapter 6

  HUNTING HUMANS

  Around 10:00 p.m. Sunday night, July 29, 2007, a blue tractor pulling a semi with Virginia tags was rolling along I-495 North near Chelmsford. The driver was within fifteen miles of Nashua, New Hampshire, where first thing in the morning he would make a pickup from a local plant nursery before heading back. There were no scheduled stops on the return trip, and he was expected back in Virginia by the end of the following day. The seven-hundred-and-fifty-mile return trip could be made in less than twelve hours, so the driver’s personal downtime was limited. It was expected that he would pull over at the nearest convenient spot to get some sleep.

  When he came up on the northbound sign “Exit 33 Visitor Center/Rest Area,” he may have felt the tug of circumstance conspiring and provoking him to pull over. With no other such stops before he reached his final destination, it would have been his last opportunity to indulge a dark compulsion that he likely did not understand himself. He just gave in to it. Whatever compelled him and drove him to such violence, one thing that he had to have been aware of was that this would be his last chance before he headed back to Virginia, so if he was going to do anything, it would have to be now. He entered the rest-stop facilities, where there was only one other tractor-trailer parked. Its lights were dark, though the rest area was well lit. There were no cars around. He pulled into the furthest space behind the other rig and cut the engine.