Hey, guys, it is Ryan. I'm not sure if you know this about me, but I'm a bit of a fun fanatic when I can. I like to work, but I like fun too. It's a thing. And now the truth is out there, I can tell you about my favorite place to have fun, Chumba Casino. They have hundreds of social casino style games to choose from, with new games released each week. You can play for free anytime, anywhere, and each day brings a new chance to collect daily bonuses.
So join me and the fun. Sign up now at Chumba Casino dot com.
No, We're necessary day where I lost terms conditions eighteen plus.
Lucky Land Casino.
Asking people what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Lucky? In line at the Delhi I.
Guess ah, in my dentist's office more than once.
Actually do I have to say?
Yes?
You do? In the car before my kids pta meeting?
Really?
Yes, excuse me?
What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
I never win?
And tell well, there you have it.
You could get lucky anywhere playing at Lucky landslots dot com.
Play for free right now? Are you feeling lucky? No, We're just NECESSARIOI where We're go my long eighteen plus terms and conditions plus you want.
Blot talk Radian.
You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them, Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. 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 Zupanski, Good Evening.
Eleven women went missing over the spring and summer of nineteen eighty eight in New Bedford, Massachusetts, an old fishing port known as the Whaling City. In Shallow Graves, investigative reporter Maureen Boyle tells the story of a case that has haunted New England for thirty years. The crimes, the skeletal remains of nine of the women, aged nineteen to thirty six, were discovered near highways around New Bedford. Some had clearly been strangled, others were so badly decomposed the
police were left to guests how they had died. The investigators, Massachusetts State troopers mary Anne Dill and Josie Gonsalves, were the two constants in the complex caste of city, county and state comps and prosecutors. They knew the victims, the suspects, and the drug and crime riddled streets of New Bedford. They were present at the beginning of the case, and
they stayed to the bitter end the suspects. Kenneth Ponte, a New Bedford attorney and deputy sheriff with an appetite for drugs and prostitutes, landed in the investigative crossairs from the start. He was indicted by a grand jury in the murder of one of the victims, but those charges were later drawn. Anthony DeGrazia was a loner who appeared to befit the classical classic serial killer profile. Horrific childhood abuse, charming, charismatic,
but prone to bursts of violence. He hunted prostitutes in the city by day and served at a Catholic church by day. Which of these two was the real killer or was it someone else entirely? Maureen Boyle first broke the story in nineteen eighty eight and stayed with it for decades, drawing on more than one hundred interviews, along
with police reports, first person accounts, and field reporting. Both during the killings and more recently, Shallow Graves brings the reader behind the scenes of the investigation, onto the streets of the city and into the homes of the family still hoping for answers. The book they were featuring the seating is Shallow Graves, The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway serial Killer, with my special guest, journalist and author Maureen Boyle. Welcome to the program, and thank you very
much for a greeting this interview. Maureen Boyle.
Hi, thanks so much for having me, Dan, I really appreciate it, and I appreciate you a spreading word about this case. Well, thank you very much for your community incredible I appreciate it.
Yes, thank you. It was incredible book and an incredible case, and thank you for this. Tell us first how you came to be the author of Shallow Grades. How did you become first involved with this case? Tell us a little bit about that.
In nineteen eighty eight, I was a reporter at the Sender Times of New Bedford, that's daily newspaper on New Bedford, Massachusetts. I've been a longtime police reporter and I've done a number of pieces and about some drug addicted women who are working the streets in the city. You know, you have to go back to nineteen eighty eight, where people really didn't talk about opiate addiction like they do today.
And what I was discovering back then before this case came out, that there was a number of women who had been been assaulted on the street who because of their addiction, were putting themselves in harms way people would consider harm's way. And I developed a real affinity for the women who are addicted and were really struggling to get out of that lifestyle but really couldn't because of the draw of heroin and how it really had it been in its grasp. Back in eighty eight, slowly I
noticed that women started going missing. There was a detective in the New Bedford PDA who was looking at one particular disappearance, and almost by happenstance, he discovered that a number of other women had gone missing. They didn't all go missing all at once, they were all adults, so there really was not any big alarm initially because the
body hadn't the remains didn't show up immediately. The first body showed up on Fourth of July weekend in nineteen eighty outside of New Bedford, on a small town called Freetown on the highway. Second body showed up in Dartmouth, which is another town outside of New Bedford, you know, at the end of July, and then another body found was eventually found in August, and then they started showing up.
I'm sorry that another one was found in October. So they all started showing up, not all at once, so it was a There was no big alarm initially, but I was interested in it because the sheer number of women who had gone missing and the detective's concern about it, and so I started reporting on missing women. And as the body started showing up with increased frequency where the skeletal remains, such when we knew that there was a serial killer in the area.
As you read in the book, you introduced you introduced the character of Nancy Piva, and also her mother, Judy Santos, and Nancy's daughter Jill. As you read in the book, yeah, pardon me. With Nancy, tell us a little bit about her life, just to demonstrate what you've been just talking about and alluding to. So tell us a little bit about the relationship that she had with her husband, Frankie or and tell us a little bit about her life and her use of heroin and what had happened.
Yeah, Nancy was came from a class, middle class family from the north end of New Bedford. They you know, parents, owned a house. She got married, went to secretarial school, got a divorce if she had a child, got a divorce, developed a relationship with a long term relationship with another person, had a second child, and then after that breakup, she got involved with an individual who obviously her parents, her
family did not approve of. He was not from New Bedford, he had a criminal record, and it appears that he is the one who introduced her to heroin. She was not a heroine hard core drug user prior to meeting him, and once she began using heroin, her life just fell apart and she wound up. She disappeared because while she was walking home trying to she was going to court the next day and she needed money for a court fine, and she just she expected that she's going to go
to jail and was never seen again. But her background was middle class family, working working parents in tact family, and she did not start using heroin until she was in her thirties, and right from the start everything just fell apart. She had a loving harbor and her kids adored her. M. I'm sorry.
Yes, yes, you talk about and introduced Detective dextra Duer, and you talk about the limited technology at that time in nineteen eighty eight, just to remind people there was a time of typewriters and payphones and white out when you made a mistake when you were typing. But tell us a little bit about detective Dextrauditur and also how he comes to think that there's a serial killer operating once these bodies start piling up.
Yeah, John Dextrader, it was a long time both homicide investigator and property crimes investigator, and he had investigated prior to this, several murders that involved of drug addicted women as well as several cases of fishous assaults on some of the drug addicted women who were working the streets. And he was really appalled by what was going on there and started investigating these cases and wondering what kind of person is would do these type of crime. Because
New Bedford is a very close knit small city. It's a type of city where even the crime statistics really are misqueting, because if people see a crime, they report it. So sometimes the numbers are skewed as a result, but I consider it a relatively safe city. So he was very, very concerned about what was going on on the streets and who is this person that is attacking women and if we don't stop it now, it is just going to get worse and worse. So he was very attuned
to these types of crimes. So he had come across the Nancy Tiver's disappearance really by accident. He was at the police station and he was near the front desk when Nancy's boyfriend at the time came into report missing, and John dex Rader, was a detective, was really taken aback because the boyfriend had a long criminal record and he would not have voluntarily gone into a police station on his own. So he was listening to what was going on, and I was wondering, Okay, this guy trying
to set up an alibi for himself. Did he really kill his girlfriend? And he's setting it up like, oh no, I'm really the concerned boyfriend. So eventually John took the police report and got in touch with Nancy's sister, Judy DeSanto's, who worked at city Hall, and he was trying to track down where she might be and gathered some information, but not nearly enough at that time because this was a missing person's case. This was not a homicide case at that time. We do have to remember nineteen eighty
eight is a different error. I mean, technology has changed so much in the last thirty one years, and people sometimes forget that. Back in nineteen eighty eight, we didn't have smartphones. Surveillance cameras were primarily in banks, and those photos were really really bad. People were not shooting video on the street like they are today. And DNA at that time, there wasn't such a thing in the court as touched DNA. Most crimes, they investigators relied on blood types.
Even when it came to fingerprints, not all fingerprints were in the APHIS system. As a matter of fact, many in many states they were departments were just starting to put their fingerprints into a centralized, computerized system. For example, in New Bedford, they did not have their prints in there at that time, so it was a completely different different era. It was really talking to people walking the streets. Departments were not really talking to each other the way
they do today. There wasn't that same ease. So he was really on an island at this point when he when he started the investigation, and as he was looking at Nancy's disappearance, he went into the record room just just gone through some of the missing persons reports and discovered this would have been much later in the summer. Discovered, oh my god, there are so many other women who have slowly gone missing over the course of the spring, in the summer. And it wasn't like the women were
missing gone missing every week. It was a you know, one one month, one another month, and and they were all adults, and these were all handwritten reports. So it piqued his interest, uh because of the women's backgrounds. They were all drug addicted women, and they all disappeared or last seen in areas that were known for drug activity. So he took After two bodies were found in July, uh, that's uh, he figured that those were not neither of
them were were Nancies. Uh, although that would later turn out to be wrong.
Uh.
But after September October, he went to the DA's office uh to share his concerns that you know, here are all these missing women. We've got two bodies that two women's bodies that were found on the highways could there be something more sinister going on? And thank goodness that the DA's office paid attention, and they brought in a specialized UH state trooper from Connecticut who had the best cadaver dog that the dog that is trained to find
dead people. UH brought him and made arrangements to bring him in. But before he was brought in, another body was found. But then when he came in, additional bodies were discovered along highways. John really was key in the beginning of this case in bringing it to the DA's
attention and really getting the ball rolling. And then after that the state police in Massachusetts state police take the lead in homicide investigations, and Josie gonzov and Marian Bill were this two state troopers who then took over or led the investigation from then on there, along with a number of other individuals, both in the sacredlies from the
local department. What is unique about this case, even though all the women are believed to have gone missing from New Bedford, this is not a New Bedford homicide case because none of the bodies were found in New Bedford. They were found in some of the smaller communities that circle New Bedford. So if you think of it as a donut where New Bedford in the center and the bodies were found in a circle along the highways around there.
So it's very interesting when you talk about this incredible dog handler that comes in with this specifically trained and we learn a lot reading about how these dogs are trained specifically for just one rule their whole career, their whole life, and this is the the a cadaver dog. And you talk about how on just when they are going to wrap up a search, then there is a
body found. Tell us a little bit about that unique search with this incredible dog and also what they found at those sites that would give them some evidence or some clues to move forward in the investigation. Was there any evidence like that? Yeah?
I keep in mind this is still even after thirty one years, this is still considered an open investigation. So they are very very careful in Massachusetts of discussing exactly what evidence is found at a scene that could tie them to a suspect. Which is one of the reasons why in a mass this all the time about DNA that your attorney's office and investigators have been very very careful in discussing any the possibility of any DNA evidence.
They will not either confirm nor deny if they have DNA evidence, And part of the reason may be there could be evidence there that could not be tested in nineteen eighty eight or eighty nine, but could be tested in the future because DNA testing has in forensics testing really has changed dramatically over the past thirty one years.
So the.
Short answer is they won't discuss what was found at the scene that could be tied to a suspect, if that answers your question right, although things have been tested over the years, but they're very, very careful in what information is released on that end.
Now you talk about the investigators obviously going through all of the potential suspects, even with Nancy Paiva.
With Lucky Land Slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere.
Really, beloved, we are gathered here today. Has anyone seen the bride and broom?
Sorry? Sorry, we're here. We were getting lucky in the limo and we lost track of time.
No Lucky Land casino with cash prizes that add up quicker than a guess registered Well, in that case, I pronounce you Lucky.
Play for free at lucky landslots dot com. Daily bonuses are waiting. No purchase necessary board. We're prohibited by lack eight team plus terms and conditions apply. See website for details. Judy was boring Hello. Then Judy discovered chumpacasino dot com.
It's my little escape.
Now Judy is the life of the party. Oh baby mama is bringing home the bacon.
WHOA Take it easy, Judy.
Jump.
The chump of life is for everybody. So go to chumpacasino dot com and play over one hundred casino style games. Join today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prices. Jump chump acasino dot com.
No, we're just necessary weight. We're not geted by money.
Team plus terms and condition to place.
They looked at her husband that came forward, or her common law partners that came forward. They looked at everybody surrounding these cases. They had, of course some wild goose chases and tips. You go through all of that tell us how they come to Kenneth Ponte, if that's the right pronunciation of this attorney, How he comes to be suspected.
Kenney Pont was a but he was much younger. He was a heroin addict, and in some ways he was the poster child for recovery because after he had been arrested for possession needle and syringe and possession of heroin, he basically turned literally turned his life around, went to college, went to law school, and eventually his record was expunged
and he was able to become a jorney. However, addiction, as many people now know, is very very insidious, and in the nineteen eighties, cocaine came onto the market and a lot of professionals for using coke, including him. However, he was an attorney and he was at a reputation to uphold, and he did not want to be seen as using and buying coke. So he had some of the girls that he knew from his previous life who were on the street. He would give them money and
they would buy drugs for them. They'd come to the house and use drugs with him. So he came to the attention to by investigators because of his behavior. He knew all of the victims, though that is not all that unusual a small city. He knew all of the victims. He there was a lot of very very strange stories about his behavior with people and behavior with the girls when they were locked up in his house and they were using drugs. You know, I go into it in
great detail in the book. But he's very strange. It will put it that way. He would start hallucinating and seeing things, and some of the girls got a little bit nervous about it. Some of the other girls thought, oh, yeah, he's just crazy. But that is one of the reasons why he came to law enforcement attention. It wasn't because they just pulled his name out of a hat. That they had good reason to look at him very very carefully,
and he was not very cooperative. As mat Sai, He wasn't cooperative at all because he knew his rights and he was a lawyer and didn't have to talk to investigators, and that also got people a little bit concerned. So he moved to the top of the list in terms of suspects for quite some time, an attitude it. He also moved to Florida about two months after the last
victim went missing. So the timing of that, along with his demeanor, his background, and his knowledge for all the victims really put him right in the laser focus of want from the law enforcement.
Now, just to add to all of this, you talk about the leak of information. What does this leak of information do in terms of this case regarding the media, I mean the.
Leak of information in terms of at that.
Time, Well, when does when does the information that that he's come to the attention of the When is that information leaked? And what is the repercussions from that?
Oh?
Yeah, when?
When?
When it? When? It came out? For quite some time, for quite another for a couple of months, they've been you know, kind of talking to him. Uh, he's a very strange. He was a very strange man.
Uh.
When it came out publicly that he was a quote unquote suspect or a person of interest, he at that point just stopped all talking with the with police and got very very paranoid at that point. So that did cause a rift, if you will, between him and law enforcement. And that's kind of ramped up, uh, the pressure on him. So I think if his name had not come out publicly, I don't know how this cap may have veered off
in a different direction. But it did cause some issues at that point because he was then in the spotlight and he got very very defensive. And someone says, and some would argue, you know, rightly, so.
Now when he decides, you say, two months after the last body, and we didn't go through these bodies being found and the investigation up to that point, and who becomes involved in this investigation, A team is formed to look at this case a lot more clearly. What happens though, when he moves to Florida. What do police do as a result of.
His move, Well, they eventually they go down there, They talk with them, police down there keeping a close eye on him because obviously, if someone moves into your town and their name is mentioned in a murder investigation, you're going to want to know. If you're a cop, you're going to want to know what they're doing, and you're going to keep an eye on him. So he some of his behaviors, with his weirdness so to speak, did
kind of follow him down there. Police had been called on different occasions for disturbances at his house, but they did, They did Masachufts authorities at different times did go down there just to watch his house and things like that.
You introduce the characters, sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, and you know, and eventually he did get in some uh, had some problems with a woman that he met down there. No that he met, well, he met through letters, and she flew down there to to spend some time with him, and there was a domestic issue and he wound up in jail on charges down there.
Tell our audiences, you're doing the book about an important character named Bob Saint Jean. What does Bob Saint Jean do for this investigation?
Bob Sanctionen was a former state trooper who worked for the District Attorney's office. The way it works in Massachusetts, there is a number of state Police officers who are assigned to different District attorneys, especially unit assigned to the DA's office, and they investigate homicides and like collar crimes and drug crimes, a variety of those types of things. He eventually left the state Police and was hired as
the chief investigator for the DA's office. So he sort of straddled the civilian side and the state police side. Because there had been some political issues during one of the elections and he he was a he helped coordinate between the state Police and some of the local police
and an investigation. And he's had spoken to UH to Kenny Kahn on h on various occasions to try to get him to UH provide additional information on the case, as as well as working with some narcotics detectives who were also drawn into the case because of the drug element that was involved.
You talk about the district attorney Ronald Pena, and we'll talk about later about his political fight which happens during this grand jury arraignment. Let's talk about district Attorney Ronald Pena and how when does he get involved and when he gets involved, what does he want to do?
What does uh does Ron? Okay, so with Ron's eventual political fight, but I mean these type of cases, especially in small communities, there is always a political element to it, or people try to introduce politics into into criminal justice cases, which you know, personally I think is the wrong thing to do. Politics should never be involved in law enforcement, but it unfortunately, if people have got to be elected for a job, it does become, uh become an issue.
And uh, you know, before this case, Ron had been very been involved in a re election bid where he was up against a state trooper's brother. The troop of the brother lost and run had some hard feelings with state police, and then as a result of this case, he also faced a really tough challenger for re election again in the case. So in some ways this case
did become a lightning rod locally in politics. They Ron, it was Ron Pino is a very bright, very articulate individual, very good looking, very well spoken, and had a lot of very high profile cases during his tenure. And you know type of high profile cases that draw out media attention, such as what's known as the Big Dance case, which was a gang rape case here in Pindy, Bedford in the nineteen eighties, and that got people concerned in the community,
uh from the prosecution of that. They felt that it was overblown.
Or it was.
Showing the city in a bad light. He had been involved in a number of other gaming case hope full of types of cases. So in some ways Ron became a lightning right, put a lightning ride people who either loved him or they hated him. And this case through a lot of attention and a lot of attension on the city, a lot of attension to him, and it became a campaign issue. In some ways. Some people thought that Kenny pont was unjustly being pursued as a suspect,
that it was being prosecuted to win an election. So it became it became uh Ron's handling of the case and the case itself became political when it probably when it when it should not have.
Been the one we talk about. You talk about Kenneth Ponte communicating with the DA, which is I would say somewhat unusual. What was the gist of the conversations? What did ponte Pont have to say to the district attorney?
Well, when most of his conversations went to uh went through Bob Saint Jean. Uh. Any of his conversations with the DA were more public, uh, you know, through his attorney and things like that. He didn't really have you know, face to face conversations with Ron Pino mhm. They were all went through uh, some of the investigators and Georgia. And he had very hard feelings, obviously for the district attorney.
And what would he say to Bob Saint Geane, what was what was the what would Bob say to him? How did Bob feel about the treatment that was given to pot through the media. Did he feel any empathy? What was it?
Well, well, you know, uh, Bob Finching's is very very highly trained and investigator and he would uh obviously just to let him know that there was you know, they were just wanted answers and just wanted wanted him to help with the investigations and would would just you know press him in that regard and insists that they had nothing to do with anything that was released to the press, that the you know, whatever the press was was doing, it's not not his choice.
Tell us about the grand jury, and.
Yes, yeah, the district attorney had developed a uh decided to host a special grand jury, hold a special grand jury in this case, who's an investigative grand jury, primarily to get these people's recollections and the information on the record so that there would be sworn testimony in the case. Uh so that if someone if someone died or something like that, if if if if someone died or something like that, they uh would not be that they would still have the information on record, right. Uh So, so
this went on for quite some time. You now, uh, media was outside the the DA's office for quite some time, I'm sorry, or outside the courthouse for quite some time. The grand jury's secret, so people are in the giving their testimony before the grand jurors, and the media is outside. They can see who's going in there, but they don't know what's being said. So when the people would leave the courthouse, reporters would ask the witnesses, what did they ask you? What did you say? And this went on
for quite some time. However, it's interesting about this, and you know, I was there at the time. I experienced what was going on, and through the research of the book and I was able to obtain some of the grand jury information. What the reporters thought was being said at that time was not necessarily what was being said there. And the direction of the grand jury really was very,
very investigative, particularly in the early stages. The information that they were gathering from people is not necessarily what the public thought was going on. The public, through the news media, thought the grand jury was targeting Kenneth pot especially in the early stages, when in fact it really was a very wide net of suspects that they were looking at. The grand jury looked at a variety of people looked
at as well as the investigators. The investigators looked at a wide range of suspects in the case, ranging from fishermen to even cops. They looked at people who were picking up girls on the street. They looked at businessmen, they looked at lawyers, they looked at doctors, you name it, they looked at them. And some of those individuals were called into the grand jury to address some of the DA's concerns and also as a fact finding finding mission.
So the grand jury's mission initially was to get the facts, get it on record because some of the witnesses, potential witnesses were addicted to drugs or were in recovery or diagnosed with HIV, and in the nineteen eighties and eighties and nineties, they didn't have the same drum cocktails that you have today, and it was considered a death sentence by many, So they really wanted to get all this information on the record so that they would have it
for years to come, or god forbid, someone odd before they could get the information from them. So by having it on the record, they can still continue this very very, very difficult investigation. But it was a bit of a zoo, I have to say, with the grand jury in terms of the UH the way the situation was created outside the courthouse, because you had television reporters, radio reporters, print reporters all gathered outside waiting for witnesses to come out,
waiting for the DA to come out. It was secret, the testimony was secret, but who was going in and out really wasn't And that also created the impression to the public that this was a circus rather than an investigation, which it was not the case.
Outside of the public opinion and their perception, what were legal onlookers, how were they assessing this grand jury special grand jury result?
Some of them, obviously, they were very concerned about the attention that was portrayed to one of their own and wondering, you know, why were different names being out there in the public view. Well, if someone isn't charged for the crime, why is their name being dragged out in public right so that they're quote unquote painted as a killer when
they're not being charged with it. So there was some concern in that regard of how the secret proceeding was being handled because of some of it was the logistics of where the courthouse was and where the grand jury met. The grand jury met in New Bedford Superior Court, which is a very historic courthouse. They met in the first floor. They had two courtrooms in there, one downstairs, one upstairs, and there's a grand jury room, a smaller room, and if you were in the hallway. You could see who's
being who's walking in, and who's walking out. It really wasn't It was no secret how many people were being called in there. You may not know what they said, but you know who went in and you know how long they were in there.
For now we alluded to and we mentioned another person that was a suspect, which was Anthony de Grasia. Tell us about him and why he becomes a viable suspect.
Tomas Gunca became a suspect further into the investigation because a number of the women who are on the street, who were very concerned about their own lives at this point in their own safety, had brought him to their attention. They were describing a man who was sexually assaulting and attacking and choking women that he would pick up on the street. He would quote unquote choke them out. You'd choke them until they lost consciousness and then sexually assault them.
They gave them a description. They eventually I did and arrested Anthony Degrassia on a series of attacks on women. So because of you know the nature of the victims, who the victims were, and the nature of the attacks, he definitely moved also moved to the top of the lists of pretension suspects, and there was a number of He had a number of alleged victims he was charging, so also he he also had a very interesting background to say the least. He had two previous rape arrests,
but he was acquitted on both of them. The and I go into him in detail about one in particular involving to teenage girls.
But he.
And he came had a sort of the sad upbringing. It was alleged that he was abused as a child, so that that came to play in terms of looking at the profile of an individual and a criminal profile. So that also came to playing like, oh, could it possibly beat him?
M hm.
So so two of them were two of the two several main suspects at that were examined. There were that came into the public eye. That said, there was a number of other people who also were examined, and they could not really pinpoint, okay if they were or were not the killer. There just wasn't enough evidence.
In it.
To move it forward. So as a results, ye, I'm sorry.
Getting back to getting back to the grand jury decision, we talked about the political situation that Rob Pena was in and his future as a district attorney. Tell us what happens with the grand jury that was arraigned, and then what happens with the penis bid for election, and what happens as a result with this case. With the news.
Kenny Pond had been indicted by the grand jury on one account of a homicide involving one of the victims who had been staying with him.
Uh.
This was prior to the election. He was in a primary battle with an individual by named Paul Walsh, who came from a very well politically connected family. And when Paul won, he Paul won the election, won the primary, which was a Democratic primary. There were no Republicans Republicans on the ballot, so essentially the winner take all primary he won and Ron was gone part of the case. Part of the reason why I think he won was
because of this case. Because of because Kenny Pont had been indicted so close to the election, people were concerned that he was indicted only to score political points, only to win the elections.
And when they looked at the information gathered from this grand jury as well, there wasn't any ties. There was no ties legally for him for this to move forward to indict yeah.
After, but we have to remember when when people are indicted, it is not the grand jury does not have to be unanimous in an indictment. It's not like it is with a trial. So all the grand jurys didn't I have to agree on it as long as it was a majority, and they moved it forward. And they had been meeting for you know, well over a year. It was, you know, a grand jury from hell if you were sitting on it, because you were in there a long
long time, on and off. It wasn't every single day, but it was grueling for average people who got, you know, called to jury duty and next thing you know, they're sitting on a special grand jury. But the when Paul took Paul Walsh took over as a district attorneys as this act attorney. The first thing he did was review the case and he brought in a special prosecutor, someone who is not from Bristol County, someone who had no
local political ties. And part of that was to take away that the shadow that somehow this was a politically motivated case. So he brought in a special prosecutor. Paul Buckley, who is very well respected in the Boston area and well. First Paul went through all the evidence with the investigators, box by box, piece by piece, and then the investigator did the same, went through every bit of information in the case. And he had and he told me he
had every intention of prosecuting the case. He just wanted to know, Okay, how am I going to build my case here? And as they were going through it, he realized they did not have enough evidence to not only not win the case now, they didn't have enough evidence hard evidence to bring it to trial that a judge would just toss it out. And rather than have it being tossed up well with prejudice, which means that if additional evidence came forward against Kenny Pont, they couldn't prosecute them.
They just dropped the case.
Right now, we'll talk about too go ahead.
So it wasn't a it did not clear Kenny Pont. It just said that there wasn't enough evidence to bring its trials.
There was a woman named Diane Doherty as if we go backwards just a little bit at this grandeury, and she talked about a woman that lived with Pont, which was Rochelle and tell us what she had said. And despite what she said, what was the result of the information.
That she provided, Well, Dian Dohorty gave some conflicting information to afford and as a result, you know, initially that played into the uh, the indictment, but when it came down to uh it's actually moving the case forward, Uh, they could not. They didn't finance her as a viable witness for it. So you know, she Diana told a variety of different crazy stories that they they seemed just too crazy, uh, too far fetched. Uh, later to h
to matter. I mean, the stories that she told ranged and without getting into too much detail of her she they ultimately did not. Initially they sort of bought uh what she was saying, but later warned a doc now she was making allegations that he uh admitted that he did kill one of the victims, and that that played a role into the I think into the indictment.
Mm hmm.
Now you talk about Tony Degrassi and you talk about his fate, you talk about obviously Kenneth Paunts his fate. You talk about the detective Duxtradur and his son getting into the police. But we've throughout this entire book, and we haven't really mentioned it is is the plight of sister Judy Santo's with her sister Nancy Piva finally being identified and the entire challenge and battle and her hopes
dashed with this entire thing. Tell us a little bit about Judy Santo's and that fight to find justice for her sister, Judy.
De Santo's over the years, really and and part of it is because she's you know, living in New Bedford, was able to really keep on pushing and keep on highlighting and see the case to local authorities as well as Nancy's children, who you know, they're now adults. Uh, she whenever possible, will you know, just keep on asking about it. However, some other families of other victims, uh,
one of especially Deborah greenwas Demello. Her her brother and her daughter are very very active in pushing for justice for for her. That was another victim in the case. So there is two families that are really pushing forward to this day, searching for justice, just trying to keep the case alive. Neither of them will really rest until the killer is identified. You know, it's after thirty one years.
A variety of things could have happened. You know, the killer could be dead, the killer could be in jail, the killer could have moved, the killer could have just stopped. But if the killer is dead, I think the public really deserves to know who he is, just so that they can put the case to rest in their minds.
They'll never be justice if the person is dead, because a person hasn't going to go on on trial, but at least a community, the families in the community at large will know who the person was and they won't always be looking over the show. The other issue in terms of justice is that you know that nine moneys have been found, but there are still two victims that are out there that have not been located, Christine Montero and another individual, another woman whose parents This isn't an
interesting situation here, Marilyn Cardoza Roberts. Her father was a retired the Bedford cop and she went missing in in the spring of nineteen eighty and she has not been found. The Christine Montero, who is the youngest victim, she's nineteen. Her mother was engaged to a Dartmouth police officer and
her remains have not been found. So that there's a number of people who have said, and I think and I would argue wrongly that enough attention had not been paid to this case because the women were drug addicted, and if they were the daughters or sisters of police officers,
the case would have been solved. However, in these two cases, you know, you did have two victims who were tied to who did have relatives tried to law enforcement, and those that were investigating the case really did want to solve it and it had nothing to do with oh, we don't care because of their addiction.
In terms of.
Yeah, so duties. You know, the families really are, even after all these years, really committed to justice because it really is a gaping whole in their hearts. They cannot it's unresolved, it will always be there. And as they move forward, and you know, their children reached the age where they're older than were than their mothers. Uh, it's very very sad that there's, you know, there's all of these milestones in their children's lives that these women never
got to see. And most of the women were uh, were mothers and the children grew up without them, and the children never got to see their mothers recover from their addiction and you know, re enter their lives.
Mm hmmm, yeah, and you really delve into the relative normalcy of these people's lives and the close family lives that they had despite this tag of drug addicted prostitute, and and that reality in terms of the suspects, Tony did Grazia and Kenneth Pont what happened to Tony de Grazia and then tell us to tell us what happened happened?
Well they you know, they I detail all of that in the book of what had happened to them. You know that their faiths were very, very sad. But going back to the prostitution elements, not all of the women had records of prostitution.
Uh.
The women the common denominator in the case is UH drug addiction. And you know, a couple of the women had records for for prostitution and because of the their addiction. UH, women may have been in situations where they were uh, they could be compromised, but not all of them were were prostitutes. And even those that were, okay, they were most of most of the women who were were not the ones who were always out on the street. Those
were the ones who survived. So whoever it was that killed them, were able to win their trust in a certain in a certain way. And you know, this is a this is a very very small community, small city, and where the the women were found at least I believe that it is someone local, uh or was local, someone who knows the area, because there is a just the the way the roads are and where the women were found. It was not someone who just you know,
popped into the area briefly and disappeared. They really they did have some type of a tie to the community. And it does seem that they really were trying to avoid the city of New Bedford because none of the women were found in the city and all the all the and it's believes all the women were taken from the city, and you know, all of the women would have known each other because of the nature of a
small community. I have told people in the past that the women would have known each other because they were in that same circle of buying drugs, just as you know doctors, no doctors, teachers, no teachers, educators, no educators. In the drug culture, those that are addicted no other addicts, and they know others and they know dealers, So that would not be unusual beside as a result, can it count?
For example, he knew all of the victims, but in a small circle like drug use, drug dealing, or drug buying, drug addiction, that might not be that unusual, especially given his previous history with addiction. And he was always in New Bedford, he did not live elsewhere. So it was it made you know, it was it raised flags, but it also made sense to But overall, this has been
a very tragic, tragic story for everyone involved. And I really hope that either through forensic science or through the public, someone will be able to come forward and say, Okay, I know who the killer is, not that I think it is, or you know, all this guy is really suspicious that they know of They were either there or they heard this person tell them that they did it. And I really think that there is someone out there
who holds the key to the case. They may not have been willing to come forward back then because they were afraid of the individual. They may have had drug issues of their own. There's a variety of reasons why someone may not come forward. Then. You know, now they're much older, they have kids of their own, they have grandkids, they've left the area, they're sober, and their life circumstances
are very, very different. So I really hope that those the people who are person who has the key to the case and come forward and find it in their heart and they courageous and contact law enforcement in Bristol County in New Bedford to say, this is a person who is the killer and this is the reason. Why. Not because I think it is or you know, this person's crazy, but because this is I was there, or he came home and said this, or I witnessed it,
you know that type of thing. And I think that there is a witness out there or witnesses who hold that key because it has happened in the past.
What about the idea that DNA can solve this. I know that in nineteen eighty there weren't the technological advances, but since then and certainly the testing is much easier. Posts two thousand. Do you think there's any reason why DNA hasn't been used and there's been no exhamation of the two suspects or what do you think about that and that possibility of DNA solving.
This, Well, the DNA may may be able to solve it. At this point. They the key will be any evidence that they have and being able to glean DNA from any evidence that they have. They do have the DNA of Kenny Pont and Tony's grassia, so they don't have to do anything in that regard, but the issue would be UH looking at any evidence that was from the scene and being able to glean any any of the DNA and evidence from that to testing. So keep in mind of the bodies of the women were found months
and months after they went missing. UH. For example, Menti Fiva Nancy Pivo was probably found the quickest. She went missing in July beginning of July. She was found the end of July. However, her remains were largely skeletal by the time she was found because it was just such a hot, hot summer, it was unbelievable and it was so her remains were largely skeletal, and all of the
other remains also were trim basically skeletal. So there was not an awful lot that could be found at the scene at that time, but they did preserve a lot of evidence, and you know, even taking into things that have been degraded over time. As testing continues to improve and may be able to get some DNA in the
future that can be entered into into a system. But you know, it's we wind up in a very false sense of knowledge when it comes to DNA because we see so many things on TV, on show, on cop shows and that you know, oh, there's a touch DNA or there's DNA here, and thingo. Within an hour, you know,
we have a suspect. And it's really not that simple, as you know, and when you're looking at older DNA and especially from scenes that have been out in the element, it's really really difficult to get the right type of sample for testing, for the right type of tests. So as you know, as we continue to keep going, they may be able to get some a match. It is who knows, But I really think it will come down to the old fashioned someone comes forward type, old school investigating.
And it's it's interesting in your book because there's so many times when it looked like that was going to happen, that that the case was going to be solved by the old fashioned manner, that people had come forward, they had said some things, and then all these hopes for the victims' families were dashed. He is saying nine victims, two more potential eleven potential victims of this mysterious serial killer.
I want to thank you very much, Maureen for coming on and talking about Shallow Graves the Hunt for the new Bedford Highway serial Killer. For those people that might want to take a look at your work, tell us how they might find this book. Is there a Facebook page or a website? Tell us about that.
The website is Shallow gravesthbook dot com. The website, that's the website. Uh. You can follow me on Twitter for those that are on Twitter, moreing e boil one. I think that's my Twitter. You know how that goes. Sometimes you forget the uh you know, you create a new one because you forget your password. Uh sure, Uh there more in e boil b O y L E and number one. The Facebook page is uh Shallow Graves Hunt from the Bedford UH serial Killer, and it is with
a colon, not a semi colon. Uh. There's another page out there with a semi colon that's run by Wayne Perry, who is the uh brother of one of the victims.
Uh.
There's another page show great the Shallow Graves and I have an author's page. You can get the book through Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and through your local bookstore ask for ask for a by name and order it. And so there's a variety of boys.
Yes, well, thank you very much Maureen Boyle for coming on talking about Shallow Graves, the hunt for the new Bedford Highway serial killer. It's been fascinating. Thank you very much, Maureen Boyle. Good night.
Oh, thank you very much for having me. I greatly appreciate it.
Thank you, thank you, good night.