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You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
On January seventh, nineteen ninety four, residents of the Berkshire Hills woke up to a typical snowy winter day in the majestic woods of western Massachusetts. The quaint New England towns, that idyllic scenery, and the people who lived there could have stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting as an imaginable evil converged on them, appalled that would be cast over the region and its inhabitants for years to follow.
That day, a trial was beginning for a college student who celebrated his eighteenth birthday by purchasing an assault rifle, then opening fire on campus, killing two and wounding four others. Elsewhere, two young girls were accosted in the changing room at the local pool. Another young girl narrowly escaped being abducted at dunpoint on her way to school, her quick thinking
resulting later in profound repercussions. Regarding the case of a young boy who vanished from a strip mall, baffling law enforcement, his body discovered three years earlier by deer hunters in a remote wooded area two hundred miles away. All these events appeared unrelated, but it seemed to police agencies and local residents that the world had suddenly gone mad. After all,
they told each other, these things don't happen here. In chilling, dramatic narrative, Hidden Demons, Evil Visits a small New England Town by Marjorie Metzger details these events and reveals a savage serial killer who lurked in the shadows, but the bravery of a father and daughter and the remarkable work of law enforcement officers would turn the table. The book that we're featuring this evening is Hidden Demons. Evil Visits a Small New England Town with my special guest author,
Marjorie B. Metzger. Welcome to the program, and thank you for this interview. Marjorie B.
Metzger, Hi Dan, thank you for inviting me.
Thank you so much, and congratulations on this extraordinary book, Hidden Demons. Let's talk about right away, just briefly, how you came to be the author and why you wanted to be the author of this book, Hidden Demons.
This is the first book that I have written. I am not a writer by training. I'm a social worker and mediator retired from that. But I was friendly with the police officer and his daughter that are mentioned in the book that I see as heroes. A number of years ago they told me about the January seventh, nineteen ninety four when each of them nay have a criminal and it was quite a unique story that this was a father and daughter event that they both rap somebody
on the same debt. So years later, when I was retired and I had a little time on my hands, I thought, you know, this is really an interesting story and I'd like the world to know about it. And that's when I decided to write the book Color Audience.
About Berkshire County, you'd say Massachusetts population around one hundred and fifty thousand and thirty towns in two cities, specifically a magnet, a beautiful magnet for the ultra wealthy, and one of those cities is Pittsfield, about forty to fifty thousand. Tell us a little bit more about Berkshire County before we talk about January seventh, nineteen ninety four. As you mentioned at the Reed Middle School and around just before seven am.
Berkshire County is located extreme western part of Massachusetts. It is right over the line from New York State. It has a lot of natural beauty. There are lakes hills, there's skiing, there's a lot of family recreational stuff, and it is the mecca of cultural activities. In the summertime, there's Tanglewood, which is a summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. There are three theater groups, there's Shakespeare and Company,
there's Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. There's just more things than anybody could possibly do in the summertime, so it's really a wonderful place. And in the winter time we have ski areas, so people come up to ski and in the fall people come to see the beautiful foliage. So it is really a lovely place and it has always been known as a wonderful place to raise children because it's not heavily trafficked and it's just got a lot
of natural beauty with lakes, a lot of hiking. You can do a lot of outdoor activities, and it's really a wholesome place for children to grow up in families.
Now, in contrast to this idyllic scenario you portrayed unwary seventh, nineteen ninety four to Reed Middle School around six fifty five. You write that A William Mullett noticed a truck near where he was working. Just tell us what he saw and what he later reported to police.
He was bringing his son to school, dropping him off, and it was not an unusual thing for him to do, but he noticed that there was a truck lurking by the side of the school and he was a little suspicious. He asked his son if he had ever seen this truck before or the man in it. So I said no, he had never seen him before. As soon as the man noticed that they were looking at him, he just sort of hid his face and then drove off. It
looked a little suspicious the way he got nervous. It seemed that he got nervous when somebody noticed him.
There was another groundskeeper at the Berkshire Hilton around seven am, and he was a guy Harris was shoveling snow on the sidewalk. What did he witness?
What did he see? Well, first let me tell you about how this progressed. This man in the truck apparently had been coming south on Route seven. Root seven is the road that runs the whole length of Massachusetts and it runs between Williamstown and Pittsfield. So this man was coming south. Apparently he stopped at Reed Middle School, then made a left, continuing south until he came to the center of Pittsfield. At that time, he was in the
area of just the exact center of town. At that time, there was a rotary where north, south, East, and West streets all came together, so it was exactly the center of town. So it's early in the morning and he's driving his truck up West Street and he goes past what was then Berkshire Hilton and he's driving very slowly. Now it was a very snowy morning, and you know, people around here know how to drive in the snow.
But as the man that was working at the hilton realized this truck was going unusually slow, and the man went around the corner, came back around, and he did the same thing again. Now it just looked a little suspicious to him, and he got, you know, just noted it and in the back of his mind that it just looked a little suspicious, and he went ahead. Was clear across the street. From that, a man named Ken
Card was got up early. He took his wife to work because he didn't want her driving in the snow, and he was snow plowing the sidewalk. Now, the sidewalk went from where the bank was on the corner it was also housed the District Attorney's office and down the sidewalk down West Street past KB Toy headquarters. So at that time he wanted just to get it cleared before everybody came into work. So that's the setting of what was happening early in the morning.
You right, that at around seven am, Rebecca or they called her Becky Savarice. She's a seventh grader and she was twelve years old and lived with her single mom, Christine Pioli. Each morning, Rebecca would make the one mile trek to the middle school through downtown Pittsfield with her backpack and her earplugs in her walkman at that time, and she'd make this daily walk. So what happens along the way.
Well, she's doing her normal route. She's walking. If you couldn't just picture this, it's a main road, it's West Street. She goes past the Big Supermarket, which is the big wy she'd passed the Salvation Army. Then the big why. She's going up the hill past KB Toys and she sees this man that you know, she doesn't really pay attention to him, but he looks, as she said, a
little nerdy. And the next thing she knows, the man is standing beside her with a gun in her ribs, and he has a shirt over his hand to cover the gun, and he tells her to keep walking. I want you to walk up to the corner with me, and I want you to get in the truck. So first she thought he was kidding, and then she realized that this was no joke and her mother had always told her. Because her mother knew she was walking by herself to school, she said, if you ever approached by
a stranger, do anything you can to get away. Scream, kick by, do anything. So Rebecca instinctively, and I don't know how she thought to do this under these circumstances, she faked an asthma attack and she said to the man, could I just sit down for a second. And just in the second that she went down, just a little bit, she was able to free her arms from the backpack that apparently he was holding, and she took off running.
Ken Cart was still out snow blowing. She ran up to him and he took her in and they immediately called the police. But what this man that tried to abduct her did not realize that there was somebody parked at the light and he saw the whole thing. At first, he thought it was just a father and daughter having an argument, but when he saw the girl break away,
he knew something wasn't right. So he looked at this man and saw the man's face and got in his truck and he realized that somebody saw him and what he did, which really made this a person that saw the incident suspicious. He drove on this man's right and went through two red lights, and the guy said he knew something then that something was really wrong, so he
said he tried to chase the guy. The light turned and he couldn't continue to follow him, So then he was looking to call the police, and he found a police officer that was nearby, and at the same time that Ken Carr was calling into the police station, this police officer was also calling in, so the police station knew something was really going on when they got two calls about the same incident.
Now you say that they got an identic kit to me composite drawing, and so they got Rebecca and they were very surprised, and to say the least, they were very surprised by her demeanor and her composure. In fact, when they found some corroborating evidence to her story, they were amazed. Actually, thanksplain well.
The police officer who was identifying her and had a lot of experience working with children, and her reaction to all this just seemed very different from anything he had experienced before. I think that the adrenaline sort of had kicked in, but she was smiling, she was it hadn't fully hit her yet apparently, And when he found out in fact that this really did happen to the girl, he was quite surprised by the way she was reacting.
But once he got her talking and he was able to get much more detail as to what actually did take place. Once she gave him her story about what happened, they called in somebody from the district attorney's office to come and do a composite. In those days, they had what they called an identic kit, and the police officers called it mister potato head because what they would do was they take different parts like the eyes and put them together, put the nose together, and they work from
the top down. They'd start with the hair and then they do the eyes and nose, the noun. And Rebecca was very composed and was very very helpful in putting this together. So the whole time that she was with the police, she was a stellar witness to what was going on, telling her story and helping to draw up a composite.
Right away, you introduced District Attorney Gerard Downing and Berkshire County and First Assistant David Capeless. But they're involved in a notorious killer's trial and named Waynelow. Before we get to that, we have this detective Owen Boyington also introduced, and we also have this person named Russell Davis. There was a witness that got witness to the abduction but also keenly was able to recall three of the numbers of the license plate. Didn't know if it was the
first three or the last three. But from that police had a really good lead to investigate, didn't they.
Well, you know, things just kind of fell into place at that time. Russell Davis didn't usually work the night shift, but he was filling in right before he left there was an emergency and he had his glasses on. He was probably exhausted, came out of work and you have to imagine, you know, he's in the hospital, there's all this going on. It's hot, and then he says, last of cold air as he comes out into a Berkshire
morning where it's snowing. He forgot to take off his glasses, so he's driving and when he was stopped at the light, fortunately had his glasses on so he could see very clearly. He was looking through the rearview mirror when he caught three numbers of the license. He probably could have caught more if the guy hadn't taken off driving, but he was unsure with the mirror image whether it was the
first three numbers or the last three numbers. But at least he was able to give the police three numbers of the license.
Now, from that it leads to some good police work. But they look to the neighboring cities of Lanesboro, and in Lanesboro they find somebody with the vehicle registered named Philip Shaley's. Now tell us who Philip Shally's is and what happens with Detective Boyington and detectives or Officer Sorell when they go to question them, what did they find out from Bill Sally's which is quite a bit of information.
Well, let's back up, because they didn't finish answering your other question. Your other question was about the DA. At the time, District Attorney Gerard Downing and his assistant David Capelists were handling the biggest case since they had since Gerard Downing had taken over as DA. I mean, this was really big, the way Low case. It was one of the first, not the first campus shootings. Blame Low was an eighteen year old. He turned eighteen that day.
He had had ammunition sent to the door and when question about it, he said, oh, it's a Christmas gift for my father. Now, he couldn't even rent a car because he was only eighteen, So he takes a cab from Great Barrington, which is south Pittsfield, probably about a half hour south into Pittsfield to a gun shop, buys a gun semi automatic, goes back and shoots up the campus. So this was the first day of well, actually the
second day of the trial. First day was jury selection and Downing and Caples were surprised that they were able to accomplish that one day. So on that Friday, the seventh, they had what was called the view. So the jury en Maass went down to Simon's Rock College to walk the campus and to see where everything took place. When they finished it around noontime, they took the jury to a nice lunch at the Red Lion in Stockbridge, but Capeless Downing had to get back to the offices. They
really had to prepare for their case on Monday. I mean, this was a huge trial. It's taking place in Springfield, not in Field. When they get to the office, the woman Driscoll, Patty Driscoll, who had done the composite with RecA Savarriice, goes into the office and said there was an attempt at kidnapping. And at first Downing said, oh, yeah, was she late for school and said no, it really happened. There was a witness and it happened. He said, well,
where did it happen. She walked to the window and said right there. So it was right under the DA's office. So now the DA not only had this huge case, but they had this kidnapping attempt at kidnapping and it also happened that Rebecca Savaice was a classmate of Downing's son, so it was hitting very close to home for him absolutely. And now I will jump to your other part of your next question, and that is Phil Shalli's. Phil Shalli's was a man who was a car mechanic, an auto mechanic,
but he was blind. He started in high school and he had a disease that was progressive, so he could see a little bit then, but as he got older he lost his vision. But he was really good with cars and he could feel his way around the car. And eventually nobody would hire him because he was a risk, an insurance risk. So he opened his own garage at his home and this man, and it happened to be
the man that attempted this kidnapping, befriended him. Somebody told him that Schalis worked on cars and he had an old, broken down van and he needed somebody to work on the van. So he went to Challis and they decided to kind of trade. He would work on his van and this man would help Shallis do tasks around the house. He had some heavy work that he was doing on the construction on the foundation of his house and this man offered to help him and it was a godsend.
I mean, Shaalis was thrilled to have this guy them and he also could drive them around. He could use his truck. He could drive them around because Sill couldn't drive the truck. So he was thrilled to have the sky. But this morning the guy showed up unusually early to his house and he parked he had barred Phil's truck because his van was being serviced, parked Phils truck in.
There were two driveways. The lower driveway threw some snow on it kind of camouflage it, and then you know, went to the other driveway and started shoveling so that people could get out. There were other people that lived in the house with the challises and they had to get to work, so he started shoveling out. It was just unusual. Then he showed up at that hour and they were wondering what happened, but you know, they didn't really think all that much of it.
Now you talk about Detective Boyington and Officer Sorell coming to the address, there's other people there. There's Sarah and Eleanor and a man named Chester forfa and he also uses Chester's or Chet's vehicles sometimes as well. But the police ask Bill and the family if anybody's used the vehicle, so they tell him about lewis Land, don't they.
After this incident with the kidnapping, all the detectors were called in early before they're shift, and they're all sent out to different quadrants of Pittsfield to try to locate this truck. So Owen had one section of Pittsfield. He didn't find anything. He scoured it and they were all scouring their quadrants of the city and he just said, you know, maybe I should go over to Lanesboro. He doesn't know why he thought he should go there, but he just said it was, you know, he just thought
he'd try it. So he got permission to go. And as he's driving over, he goes past one of the lakes and the snow is coming down. It's almost blinding at this point, it's almost white out conditions. So he goes over, you know, past the lake, makes a left on to Root seven North Street and now he's in Lanesboro. He's crossed over. But when he went into a different town, he had to go to the police station as he's
going there. There's a street called Summer Street, which is quite steep, and he looks up and he just thinks, you know, in this weather, somebody's coming down. I don't think they're going to be able to stop, and somebody might get hurt, and they might just go right into Route seven and hit somebody. So then it goes on and probably about one hundred yards past that street, he turns into the driveway of the police station in Lanesboro and he tells Currell that he's into you know. He
gives them a composite drawing. Sorell says, I've already gone out. I got the beyond the alert for this, and I didn't see that truck anywhere. I went to the mall. There's nothing in's parking lot there. I've gone around. So Boyington says, well, he's turning around. He says he's going to go back to Pittsfield. Well, as he turns around to go south again, he doesn't know what made him look up that street, Summer Street, that he had looked up before. And he's not even on that side of
the road, he's on the opposite side. He looks up and pulls sudden he sees his truck sticking out of the house, the second house up on this hill, so he decides to pull into this street. Now, in those days they didn't have front wheel drive, the real drive, so for him to get up this rather steep hill, he was fish tailing and it was not easy. But he sees this truck parked in the driveway and it's
the black or dark blue. They couldn't really tell the difference at that point, and it had three upper license plate numbers that he knew of that they were looking for. So he turns around. Of course, he can't do anything because he's not in his jurisdiction. So he went back and got Surrell and together they went to the Challice's house, knocked on the door, and as they opened the door, he sees this guy sitting there and he looks quite a bit like the composite drawing. So they asked, you know,
was anybody using the truck. So the guy says, yeah, I used the truck this morning and I came down, but I came directly here from North Adams, and you know, I didn't go to Pittsfield. I came directly here. So he said, well, do you mind coming out and talking to me. So he stepped outside, and Boyington just asked the right questions. He said, you know, I've lived here my whole life, and Sorel's been here forever, and we
haven't seen you before. Are you from here? And the man says no, I'm from Upstate New York and says where he's from in Upstate New York. And then he says where do you work? He says, well, I'm not working now, but I used to work at the Pittsfield Cinema Center. All of a sudden, a light bulb goes off in Boyington's head and he says, this is it. This is it. Three years before this boy was murdered
in Pittsfield, Well, he was abducted in Pittsfield. This body was found two hundred miles away in upstate New York. And this happened to me. Where this man grew up and the last place he was seen was at the cinema center, and this is where this man worked. And all of a sudden, Owen said, this is it. For three years, the murder of Jimmy Bernardo was a mystery. They had no clues, and it's not for lack of trying.
I mean they probably interviewed three thousand people. They had files and files of information that they had checked into and nothing panned out. And all of a sudden, oh, and put it together and said, I think this man not only tried to ob doctor Becka Savarice, but I think he killed Jimmy Bernardo. So they got right on it and called the Pittsfield Police Department said I think we got Jimmy's killer. Get over here, We've got to get this guy.
They also had found this Jimmy Bernardo's bicycle and also his body. Eventually, yes, if you don't mind, what was the condition this body was found? What were some of the horrific particulars.
Well, he was found without his clothes on. He was found strangled. Was first he was strangled and then he was hung. They had to rope around his neck, and he tied him up to a tree so that if he didn't do the job completely strangling him, the hanging part would have done the trick. And he took his clothes off with his kid so that if even that didn't work, he would die of exposure.
There is a massive search ensued that you write and the shock waves go through the community, and also that there's a couple of detectives that have the unenvybl job of contacting the parents of Jimmy Bernardo.
Yes, now, picture of this community, a lot of people know everybody else. Was a small community, a lot of people have children that age, and it was not lost
on the police officers. It was so tragic, so sad, and these police officers who had been working with Jimmy's family felt that they had to get over there and tell the parents, break the news to their parents, to his parents before they read it in the newspaper or heard it on the news, and they said it was the hardest thing they ever had to do.
You talked that.
Now. Lewis Lent is in custody. January seventh, nineteen ninety four. Captain Frank Pace is head a criminal investigation. He is saying you right, that he's heading to Pittsfield, but there's a blizzard. While Detective Owen Boyington is waiting for these people to arrive, he decides to start the interrogation by himself.
Tell us what those results are, Okay, Boyington, Lent was not under arrest yet, and he hadn't been read as rights. All they wanted to do was keep them talking until the New York police got there, and they had to deal with Becca Savaice. That was definitely a Massachusetts case. The Jimmy Bernardo case was Massachusetts and New York state because he was found dead in New York even though he was abducted in Massachusetts. So Owen's job was basically just to keep this guy talking until the New York
police got there. And he hadn't read of his rights yet because he wasn't accused of anything yet and he wasn't asking him questions about Respecca Savaice. The thought was if they could keep went talking, he would get comfortable there. And they figured the more he talked that the more they would get out of him, and they wanted to feel very comfortable there, So that's what Owen was taking. He was just talking to him about everything. But finally, after a few hours he said to his boss, I
can't stand this bullshit anymore. I can't do it anymore. Can I start questioning him? And he said, yeah, go ahead, But at this point Lent had already lied. He had lied. When Captain Boyer came in and said, do you have a firearm identification card and he said, yes, I do. And he looked at it and he said, do you have a gun? He says, no, I don't have any guns. I don't have any guns. But he had the fire
identification card. And as lawyer was walking out, he muttered under his Beth, you're never going to see this again. And Lent heard that and he just shut up. I think he knew. I think he thought he could talk his way out of it up to this point, but I think he was beginning to see that he was in real trouble. So Boynton got him dinner and then ran him his rights and began to question him, although
we really didn't get anything out of it. And then once they arrested him, they had to do the fingerprinting and the photo ID, so they took him out and they did all the things that they needed to do when they arrest somebody.
So based on Rebecca's identification, successful identification of him, and she was shaken up. You write that unlike what we'd see in TV, where she would be separated from him with a plate of glass and he wouldn't be able to see her, she was in the same room as him. To identify him, wasn't she well.
Before she actually had to do the physical identification of him, They showed a photos they mixed his photo in with other people, and she picked him out, and Russell Davis had come back to the police station he did the same thing. They both picked out the same person, but they were a little unsure because he looked a little different in the picture than the one they had seen him with his hat on and his coat on and that,
and they couldn't give one hundred percent identification. They also took both of them out to fill Shallice's house to identify the truck, and because there was snow on the truck, they both said, yes, it looks like the truck. They couldn't give an absolute positive ID of it. So when they came back, they figured really the only way they could get a positive ID was to do a lineup.
So they went out. Police officers went out and they went to bars, they went everywhere else to get people that looked somewhat like Lewis Lyn and they did a lineup, and this I think was the first time they had done that, and they had to do it in a haulway. So they took Rebecca to another room, and I think this was Detective Bowler who was with her at the time. He prepped her for this and he told her what
to expect. He told her that he would give her a sheet of paper and she was to mark down the number of the person if she saw that person on that paper. And as she walked in, that's when it really hit her. She saw the guy and she just that's it. That's him. And lawyer said okay, and then all the men had to say something. They each took their turn and they said something like get in
the truck and I want hurt you. I don't remember exactly what they said, but they all have to say the same thing, so she could hear the voice, but she was sure that it was Lewis Lent from that lineup. But this really shook up the kid for the first time. He saw how noticeably shaken up she was. And while there was nervous too. He didn't know what was going to happen. He didn't know if she was going to be able to identify her. It was going to be a waste. But that kind of clinched it.
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m r dr zip recruiter the smartest way to hire. Now, Marjorie, we were talking about that Lewis Lent Junior is now arrested. Shockwaves through the community. It surprises and shocks the people that know him, fill Shally's and his family, but other people that just can't believe that this person, this mild mannered, helpful christian, has been charged with these offenses. Tell us how police and prosecutors proceed well.
Of course they interview a lot of people that they're interviewing a lot of people, but they just keep him talking. That weekend, he didn't have any an attorney at that point, and he was just lying and lying and lying the first day, anything to just avoid the situation. The next morning when they came in, he said to them, you know, that girl looked so frightened, and I just wondered why she was so frightened. And you know, I have like
sometimes I have this other side of me. It's like another personality and I blank out, and I don't know what's happening to me. I don't know what I've done. So it's his evil other side of them called Steve, and he says it's another personality. So now he's saying he's got a split personality and that it was the
split personality that did it. That he knew nothing of what was going on, but he said that girl looked toughly scared, and I had to wonder why she looked so scared when she saw me, And then she did look a little familiar to me, So you know, this
is what he's doing. At first, and then as by the next morning, Massachusetts and New York had to decide who is going to do what they had to deal with in Rebecca Savaurice case, I mean, that was most recent and present that had to be dealt with, but they also New York was dying to get to this Jimmy Bernardo thing, so they decided that Massachusetts would only question him about Becca Savareice and New York had questioned him about Jimmy bernarda So he talked to Massachusetts police
officers and then when he came to the New York officers, because they really couldn't talk to him the night before, there was just too much going on. He started to open up and he was caught in some of his lies. First of all, they found a receipt where he had purchased a gun, so he couldn't dismiss that. He couldn't lie that one away. I mean, there was a receipt for the gun. So then when they started trapping him in some of his lies, he started talking and he
said that he confessed to Jimmy Bernardo. He told the whole story in gory detail, which I have in the book, and I was lucky enough to get that information from the records from the DA's office. And it's really chilling how he did it and his attitude about it. I mean, you have to realize that this guy was a psychopath and it didn't really bother him, but he didn't if he had to do it, you know, it was just he had no choice, but he had to kill this kid.
Now he also keeps talking not only about Jimmy Bernardo, but there's someone else who's been suspected of being involved with as well. Sarah and Wood.
Yeah, this was a shock to everybody because they were just focusing on Jimmy Bernardo and all of a sudden, Oh, by the way, there's also Sarah Anne Wood. Now Sarah Ann Wood was a sweet little twelve year old. The father, my father was a minister in a tiny little town in upstate New York, and Upstate New York was often where he would just drive around and check things out, you know, just look for somebody that was a good target. And for him, a good target was somebody it looked vulnerable,
and he was always out prowling. And this little girl was by herself. The chain of her bike had come off, so she's walking her bike on a lonely road where there's nobody else around. It wasn't far from the church and from her home. She didn't have far to go. But he pulled up ahead and he grabbed the girl, threw her in his truck and that was the end of it. He threw her bike by the side of the road and just took off and that was the end. So nobody had any idea of what had happened to
Sarah Anne. I mean, they were all out scouting all over the place, but he just took off with her, and it was mystery until he confessed. I mean, they didn't even put it together that he was the one, and he confessed to it.
He also told of his sort of awareness of forensic evidence and the destruction of it, so he was very aware of what law enforcement will be looking for and destroyed evidence subsequently.
You know, I'm glad you mentioned that, because here we have a guy who slipped under the radar for a long time. He was kind of a nebishy looking guy, but I would think of somebody as being really dangerous me just like, you know, a kind of a floppy underachiever. Bobby didn't think he was too bright, but he had a pretty sharp criminal mind. He knew how to cover up his tracks, and he was very focused on what he was doing, and I think for a long time
he was getting better and better at it. And I think also he was getting bolder and bolder because he hadn't been caught. And also I think that his urges were escalating. So I think that, you know, the more he did, the more hungry he had for doing more and more and more. And I think that his undoing was when he tried to abduct somebody right in the middle of downtown Pittsfield, and he didn't know who he
was dealing with, and this girl out smarted him. Now, had he tried to bring up her on an isolated road, she probably would not have gotten away. But this was right in the middle of town and there are other people around. So you know, for all the times that he had gotten away with things, he was just getting bolder and bolder, And I guess he thought that he could get away with it, and probably when he was first taken into custody, he probably thought he could talk
his way out of it. But by this point, you know, there was just no getting around it.
You include letters from him reaching out to people once he's in custody, so it shows that he's quite an intelligent and articulate guy. He's a smart guy. Now with the police, they he had to have these confessions, these dramatic, graphic confessions. He's pretending to help out because he came forward with this information. How about the idea where he'll show where those bodies are? What about that?
He was not about to do that, but what he did do and they thought he was cooperating on Sunday. Now, this all started on Friday. By Sunday when he confessed to Sarahan would the people from her part of the DA from her fart in New York that came right over, and this was night already on Sunday night. He gives them a map in the Adirondecks where her body was, and they wanted to take him right away to go
help find the body, and Di Downing. Da Downing said, there's no way we're letting them out of our custody, because once he's out of our custody, I don't think we're going to get him back. And we need to do the Jimmy Bernardo case here. We need to do the Rebecca Zavarice case here. And I will explain to you a little bit later why he was so insistent
that it happened in Massachusetts. So he gave them this crude map of wearing the Adirondecks he had buried Sarah Anne Wood and her parents were very hopeful that at least they would be able to give their daughter a proper burial. They lost any hope of ever seeing their daughter again, which was of course totally devastating. So it was there was a huge amount of snow in the Adirondecks.
The temperatures were below zero. It was horrible. And for weeks they dug and they searched, and they had almost like it was a dig, an archaeological dig. They were so careful looking for remnants of this child and nothing, nothing came up. And finally they had to give up. And Reverend Wood and his wife were insistent that they wanted Lent to come and help. I don't think they realized who they were dealing with. I don't think that these god sharing people realize that there were people who
had no conscience. This man would not help them in any way. So they became very angry with the A Downing for not cooperating with them in every way to find Sarah's body. But Downey knew that this guy was not going to give up anything, and he really had to prosecute when in Massachusetts. And I'll explain to you why for a couple of reasons. In New York State, as soon as somebody's arrested, they have to have counsel attached to them. With Lent, he did not have counsel
attached to him for that weekend. There was no he assigned him, and he didn't ask for an attorney. Now if he were tried in New York, that would have been thrown out right away because he didn't have an attorney with him. Another thing was that he would have been charged for second degree murder in New York state, and he could be charged for first degree murder in Massachusetts, and first degree murder he would get life and no
chance of parole in New York. If he were found guilty, he would get twenty five years with a chance of parole. And Downing was not about to let this guy ever get out again because he was just dangerous.
Now you set up the reason and for the prosecution to stay in Massachusetts. They also, in their numerous searches, search his former apartments, including the one in North Adams, and they find some very very interesting evidence there. And they also speak to a co renter or his nephew that lived with him at one time, and so they came up with this. They were told of this master place, tell us about this master plan and some of the evidence that they found, especially at this apartment.
His nephew step nephew came to live with him. This kid his parents were divorced and he was hanging around with the wrong kind of kids. He was sixteen years old, and his mother said that he had to She couldn't keep him there, so he chose to go live with Uncle Lou. And yeah, every thought Uncle Lou was a good guy, so he sent him to live with them. And the apartment was adequate size for the two of them.
Was a three bedroom apartment in a duplex, kind of in a Rundown area, a run down apartment but served its purpose. And Lou worked nights. He worked at the cinema center of Knights, So this kid really was on his own a lot, you know, he had free reign. His friends came over and whatever, and when Lou was home, he usually locked himself in his bedroom, so they didn't know what was going on in there, and they couldn't even imagine. Then some Knights Lou wouldn't even come home.
Some nights he would, you know, sometimes he'd come out and be friendly with the kids, and sometimes he would yell at them, just you know, kind of lose his temper. He could be just all of a sudden, his mood could change like that. But he had a padlock on his door. He did not want anybody in there because he had a building project. He told this little friend of his that he was building an aquarium, and he told Phil Shelley's he was going to grow marijuana there.
But really what he was doing he partitioned off his bedroom and he was building these slams that he was going to use as beds to He was going to abduct young girls and he was going to store them in this room and take them out whenever he wanted to have sex with them. So that was his master plan.
So he was in the process of building this dungeon in that was part of his room, soundproofing the walls, and you know, he had every intention of going out and finding people that he could take as his sex slaves, young girls, because all he wanted was girls between the ages of twelve and seventeen. Once they were past that age, they were not attracted to him anymore. And he also didn't I mean he wasn't didn't say he was going
to kidnap boys. But if young boys turned him on, I mean Jimmy Bernardo did, and I'm sure there were others. You know, he would have sex with them, but they were just quickies and that was not in his master plan to have them and his slaves. Those in his room, you're.
Right about February second, nineteen ninety four. There's a or there's a there's task forces contacted. So the task force is set up because there are similar murders that fit the description and similar age and similar geography, location, either where he had been or just in the vicinity of these crimes that he's already charged for. So tell us a little bit about this task force that's set up.
Well, let's have lived in different places. He was originally from upstate, New York and then moved down to Florida because his father was down there in some of his relatives, So we lived there and he would go back and forth from Florida to New York State and anywhere in between. So he had covered a lot of territory, and they reached out to people and they said, you know, if
you have cases, just let us know. The task force was set up to take calls because people were calling from all over thinking that maybe he had been the one that had perpetrated other crimes along the way that were unsolved. So there were so many calls coming in that they had to set up a task force, and the Pittsfield Police Department was overwhelmed they couldn't handle it because they had their regular business to do. So they had the New York State Police come in and they
had mass Usett State Police. Now there were a lot of New York State Police that could come, but there weren't that many Massachusetts State Police because they had to
be in Springfield for the Wayne Low trial. So at that point, Police Chief Gerald Lee called up the head of the Massachusetts State Police and said, we need more people here, and they saw that this was really a big case and sent a lot of people and they set up so at this point they had Pittsfield Police, Massachusetts State Police, New York State Police, and then they called in the FBI. So this task force their job was to take every call and every inquiry, every piece
of evidence, and put it in some usable form. And this was really the first time that this information was computerized. And this is what the task force did, and this is what it was so remarkable. This was the first time this was ever done, and it became the prototype for how the FBI would go about working on serial killers. They set up a computerized system so that any time if somebody pull up and say, you know, we had something happen here, at such and such a time. Was
lewis Lett in this area at this time? And they could say either yes he was or no, he wasn't there, he was some where else at the time. So it was it was organizing all this and the phone was just ringing off. There were just thousands of calls coming in.
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop for a second for these messages.
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Needless to say, this well established and operating uniquely and very very effectively, led to no results in the six months, and it was quietly disbanded. And so we get to the prosecution of Rebecca Savarys, and we talk about in January seventh, nineteen ninety four of the trials. This was a vigorous defense was employed in the pre trial hearings and then February fourteenth, nineteen ninety four, he was indicted
for kidnapping and murder of Jimmy Bernardo. Tell us about what happens in these trials, how they proceed and why.
Well, he got very good defense attorneys. They were appointed by the state, but there was so much evidence against Lent that the only way they could really try to defend it was on technicalities, and these lawyers really dug deep, and I have to give them credit. They thought of almost every angle you could possibly think of for this,
you know, to help the Skuy's defense. And fortunately justice went out and he was convicted from Rebecca Savaie, So that put him away for a while, so they knew that they had, you know, they didn't have to worry about him for a while. But down he wanted to nail him for the Jimmy Bernardo case because he was just terrified of this guy getting out and did not want this guy ever to see the lighted day again.
So they had The prosecution did an excellent job, I mean every term, So I have to say both the defense and the prosecution were excellent attorneys and they all did a wonderful job.
And on both sides, what about Sarah and Wood and that confession, and you write about that. Confessions, despite what people might think, are not enough for convictions alone, are they?
No, it's not nearly enough. And eyewitnesses are not nearly enough because you can have several eyewitnesses looking at the same thing and you'll get totally different accounts of what happened. So that's why the task force was so important at this point to really gather information that was solid to use in court. And that's what they were able to do. They were able to get rock solid testimony and accounts that was very helpful for the prosecution.
That he was sentenced and he is secured with life without parole in Massachusetts. What is the status of the cases that are unsolved as of right now?
It's still an open case. There's a task force mostly from retired law enforcement people, and I think it's an unofficial task force. They had worked with the FBI also at the beginning, and they're looking into other things. They would not talk to me. They did not want other people talking to me. They told people not to talk to me, and I had to respect that for whatever reason. They had their reasons for not wanting to or not
being able to talk to me. So I'm assuming that part of it is to try to find some of the bodies, and there might be other cases that they're working on that I don't know about, and nobody the public doesn't know about it. That's their thing that they're working on.
I want to thank you for coming on and talking about Hidden Demons Evil visits a small New England town. For those that might want to take a look, this is a wild Blue Press release. Do you have a website or do any social media?
I'm on Facebook.
Marjorie Metzger, author, Absolutely thank you so much. Hidden Demons Evil visits a small New England town. Marjorie beat Metzger, thank you so much for this interview and you have a great evening. Good night.
Thank you, Dan, thank you,