Shallow Graves Read online

  As he stood in the aging foyer of the New Bedford police headquarters, listening to Frankie Pina struggle to report his girlfriend missing, John Dextradeur tried not to think of those other cases. Maybe Nancy had just taken off for a few days. Maybe she was trying to get away from her boyfriend. Maybe she was getting high someplace, lost in a drug fog in a rundown tenement. Maybe she landed in a drug-treatment program. He knew Frankie was an addict and suspected that was likely the case with Nancy. He saw one too many addicts go missing, only to reemerge days or weeks later. Often, the detectives in the narcotics office tracked them down on the street corners—or in jail. The families accustomed to seeing this rarely reported them missing—and when they did it was often weeks or months later.

  This time, with Nancy Paiva, something felt different. Maybe it was the panic in the boyfriend’s voice. Maybe it was how quickly he came to the station. This felt bad, very bad.

  In the 1980s, nearly all crime in New Bedford was tied somehow to the drug trade: prostitution, drug dealing, robberies, burglaries, bad checks, shoplifting. The two central spots for drug sales were a section of the South End where addicts sought out drugs in a few bars and neighborhoods, and north of the city center in Weld Square, a neighborhood about two miles from the historic downtown where dealers would sometimes pop up on the streets. Many of the women who turned to prostitution to buy heroin paced this historic, rundown neighborhood along Purchase Street. Sometimes the women just lingered on the corners, watching as johns slowly drove by, annoying residents in the 1911 railway-car barn renovated for senior housing. Most of this sex trade occurred during the day—the busiest time was right before school got out when fathers would stop by before picking up their children, the prostitutes would say. At night, some women would work both the streets and the bars in the city’s South End and in Weld Square. The charge: twenty dollars, enough to buy a single glassine packet of heroin, the devil drug at the time.

  People in New Bedford often recognized the women on the street and sometimes knew how they got there. More than a third of the nearly 100,000 people living in the city were of Portuguese descent, hailing from large, tight-knit families. Roughly 7 percent more could trace family roots to Cape Verde, the African islands colonized by Portugal in the fifteenth century and that gained independence in 1975. Some tracked their ancestry to the early whaling ships, a handful to the captains, but most to crews. People in this city were tight: they put down deep roots and stayed for generations. Families were intertwined, friendships decades old. The long and narrow city had that small-town feel, where, like the Cheers television show, everyone knew your name—or at least someone in your family. Most people felt comfortable reporting even the smallest of crimes and talking with police. Some cops said that openness in the 1980s to report crime was what drove up some of the crime statistics, such as petty thefts and bar fights. The “no-snitch” culture in larger cities hadn’t yet spread to this community. As a result, most murders in New Bedford were solved within a year and were tied to either domestic violence or drugs.

  In this blue-collar fishing community, with its close-knit neighborhoods, the homicide detectives often knew the families of the victim or killer—or both. Sometimes they had been classmates. Sometimes they were relatives. Sometimes they were relatives of friends. Even when there wasn’t enough evidence to make an arrest, investigators usually had a good idea who did it. They would wait, listen, watch. People talked and, even if it was the faintest whisper, someone always seemed to be listening. When the body of a Vietnam veteran, weighted with cinderblocks, was dragged up from the water by fishermen, investigators already knew it was a suicide. That’s because months earlier, an investigator overheard two shaken men pounding back shots at a Fairhaven waterfront bar talking about the guy who paid them to bring him out to sea. He tied himself to the blocks, shot himself, then toppled overboard.

  A defense attorney once described the homicides in the city as assault-and-battery cases gone awry, where instead of going to the emergency room for treatment, the victim went to the morgue. The cases were tragic, yes, but not chilling, the types of deaths seen in other cities throughout the country. Husband or boyfriend kills wife or girlfriend in drunken rage. Crying infant shaken repeatedly by parent, causing brain swelling and death. Man stabbed during fight over spilled drink, a girl, a debt, a wrong word. Teenaged gang wannabe fires gun into a crowd, kills bystander. What police in New Bedford saw were crimes of passion, stupidity, and addiction. These were crimes a community shook its collective head at and pledged to prevent—until the bill for social services was tallied, government funds vanished, a factory closed, fish catches shrunk, and jobs disappeared.

  Overcoming adversity, though, seemed to be imbedded in the municipal DNA of New Bedford. Perhaps the historic motto, penned when the whale oil it refined was used in the days before electricity, helped give it strength: Lucem diffundo—“We spread the light.” Perhaps it was seeing the fishing boats leave the harbor, not knowing if everyone onboard would return. The city had known destruction and had known how to rebuild. As far back as the Revolutionary War, when the British burned 70 vessels and twenty-six warehouses, and the city saw its whaling industry come to a near halt,4 the community was able, at war’s end, to slowly right its economy and send the whaling ships back out so that, by 1857, there were 329 vessels sailing out of the harbor.5 When the whaling industry finally died in the 1860s, the city transformed itself into a booming industrial city famous for fine cloth and yarn.6 Politically and historically, the residents welcomed those seeking a better life. New Bedford stood tall as a leader in the abolitionism movement in the United States and became a station in the Underground Railroad, helping slaves escape to freedom.7 In later years, wave after wave of European immigrants came to the city, filling the mill, factory, and fishery-related jobs.

  New Bedford always seemed to be a city of contrast. It was a city of riches in the early to mid-1800s, when the whaling industry boomed. The lofty mansions of the aristocratic vessel owners sat atop the hill, overlooking the harbor. The families of those who were out to sea or worked in the shops labored below, struggling to survive until the boats returned. Along some of the streets, widows like Lydia Russell, whose husband was killed by a whale, made a living running boarding houses in cramped wooden homes.8

  It was a rough-and-tumble city cloaked in finery.

  Throughout the years, the fishing industry and the bustling waterfront remained the economic spine of the city. Fishermen in the 1980s could make up to $4,000 on a single, ten-day fishing trip, and the boat owners would take in much more.9

  The reliance on the sea also made the community used to death—and always struggling for ways to comfort those left behind. Each year, hundreds of names are read at the Port Society’s annual Fishermen’s Memorial Service. The walls of the Seamen’s Bethel, the downtown chapel opened in 1832, puts names to those numbers. There, memorial plaques with the names of the boats lost at sea—and the men missing with each vessel—are displayed. Nearly every year, a name or names are added. By 1988, there were 235 names memorialized; there were the 11 lost when the Midnight Sun went down in a storm in 1962; the 13 when the scalloper Navigator out for a ten-day trip was lost in 1977; the 6 when the trawler Irene & Hilda went missing in a storm in the Nantucket Sound in 1980.10 It is a testament to the power of the sea and the endurance of the fisherman.

  “O God thy sea is so Great and my Boat is so Small,” reads the inscription for the Irene & Hilda at the Bethel.

  Death in New Bedford was familiar in that way you know a Catholic Mass will soon end when the priest says “May almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” that cemeteries—not makeshift street memorials—are where you honor the dead. The city was built on hard work, perseverance, and the knowledge that some things—such as the rough seas so many died in—are beyond the control of man.

  When a person was murdered nearly everyone in the community was touched in the intricate web of pai
n threading together family, friends, friends of friends, work colleagues, former classmates, neighbors. Finding justice was the one thing in this city on the water everyone believed would happen after a murder, sooner or later. That is why the death of Dorothy “Darcy” Danelson and the unsolved slayings of three other women in the city bothered John Dextradeur so much. There was no closure, there was no justice. There was just a nagging dread that the worst was yet to come.

  After the death of Darcy Danelson, the woman found dead by the railroad tracks, John Dextradeur began reading up on serial-killing cases, devouring articles with “serial killer,” “murder,” and “criminal profiling” in the title—often while sitting in the stands at a local rink as his youngest daughter practiced ice skating.

  What’s that you’re reading? One mother once asked him.

  He showed her the cover: Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives, by Robert K. Ressler, Ann W. Burgess, and John E. Douglas.

  Oh, she answered, flustered, and looked away.

  He just smiled and went back to reading.11

  John looked at his cases with skepticism, taking the word of no one for granted—even that of a cop. When a fellow officer accidentally fired his service weapon struggling with a suspect, John grilled the man for more than an hour—then reenacted the scene sans gun to make sure it was plausible. He would, as the worn adage goes, “think out of the box” and wonder why others didn’t do the same. He believed each case could be solved, and when it wasn’t he took it personally. On first blush, he could appear aloof and tough. Fools, he felt, had no place in police work, and he wasn’t shy about letting people know that. Lazy fools? Don’t ask. He excelled on the job, rising to the rank of sergeant, but the job took a personal toll. By 1988, he was already divorced twice. His eldest child from his first marriage, Christopher, saw his father occasionally when he was younger, but as the years passed—and his dad remarried—they drifted apart. It would take the bonds of blue to bring them back together in 1987, when Chris at age eighteen became a New Bedford police cadet. They now could talk about the job; fatherly advice was now career advice.

  The job, the elder Dextradeur would sometimes say, stole his family life and put a strain on his relationship with his children, particularly his son. He hoped he could now make it right. He also worried about his health. His father had heart problems, and he had his first heart attack at age forty-five chasing a robbery suspect on Union Street in New Bedford. His doctors warned him back then to slow down. He really tried to follow their advice, but it didn’t work out all that well. It was the era of cigarettes, coffee, and fast food for police officers across the country. New Bedford was no different.

  After he took down the information from Frankie Pina that July day, John wondered where this investigation into Nancy Paiva’s disappearance would lead.

  Five blocks away at city hall, Judy DeSantos was hunched over her desk in the election office updating voting lists, unaware her older sister was gone.

  JUDY DESANTOS spent the day of July 7, 1988, in a state of aggravation. It was hot outside and it was hot inside the apartment she shared with her husband and four children. She could feel her temper rising. She had to get out of the house. She decided getting a haircut was the best thing to do. It would lift her spirits. Plus, the beauty school was air-conditioned.

  Her husband had the car, so Judy did what she usually did: walk. She figured out years ago it was easier, and quicker, to walk the mile into downtown rather than drive. You didn’t have to worry about parking tickets either. Today, she thought the walk would “do her good.”12 It would clear her mind, lift her mood, and give her a little bit of exercise.

  As she passed United Front Homes, one of the low-income developments in the city, Judy spotted a dark-haired, petite woman on a second-floor, east-side balcony on Morgan Street. Even from across the street she could recognize who it was, her sister Nancy-Lee Paiva.13

  The two sisters hadn’t spoken much in nearly eight months. The issue was Nancy’s boyfriend, Frankie. Nancy met him through a mutual friend whose boyfriend had been in jail with Frankie. Most everyone thought Frankie was an odd choice for her, and Nancy herself might have thought the same a few years earlier. Maybe she was lonely, maybe she saw something in him others couldn’t. Nancy was the type of person who would look beyond first impressions, who would look into someone’s heart, who was always ready to take a chance. For whatever the reason, the two began to date and he eventually moved in. Three years older than Judy, Nancy was outgoing, determined, and fearless. She spoke her mind, had a wide circle of friends, and, from the outside, seemed in control of her life. As a child, she was adventurous—willing to climb trees to thrilling heights while her sister watched safely below. As an adult, Nancy was still the risk-taker—willing to try new jobs, new relationships, new experiences. Judy, the cautious introvert, worried something would go wrong. Nancy, the extrovert, always wondered what she would miss if she didn’t try.

  Nancy graduated from New Bedford High School then went on to courses at Kinyon Campbell business school in the 1970s, the secretarial school for young women in the 1970s. She married at age nineteen, moved into an apartment in the city’s North End, landed a job at a city business, and had her first child, Jill. “She was happy,” Judy would later recall.14

  When Nancy’s first marriage ended in divorce, she stayed on the same track: working, taking care of her daughter. Eventually, she met Freddie, and the two, while not married, were viewed by family and friends as husband and wife. She had a second girl, Jolene, and worked a wide range of jobs in a wide range of places: general office worker, keypuncher, nursing-home assistant, clerk in a video store, bartender in one of the many working-class establishments scattered in the city. She dreamed of becoming a nurse but knew dreams didn’t pay the bills. Hard work was something both sets of grandparents, immigrants from the Azores, and her parents, born in the United States, had stressed. Hard work and family.

  After fourteen years and one child together, Nancy and Freddie broke up. But Nancy’s spirit, while a bit bruised, was not broken. She took her daughters on a vacation to California and, when she returned, kept up the same life pace as before.

  Then she met Frankie. Things seemed to be good at first. Then they weren’t.

  For nearly two years, Judy suspected something was wrong in that relationship. Her nieces were fifteen and twelve when Frankie entered the picture, and they would sometimes tell her of the fights they heard between the couple in the apartment. Judy saw the bruises on her sister’s arms. Once Nancy’s shoulder was dislocated. Another time there was a black eye. When questioned, Nancy shrugged it off. There was a car accident. She fell. A string of reasons for what appeared to be an increasing number of bruises and injuries.

  The tipping point between the sisters came in November of 1987. Nancy wanted to sell her microwave. She needed money. Judy suspected at the time that her sister was giving Frankie money and knew Nancy must be desperate if she was selling household items. She gave Nancy eighty dollars as a down payment. She called a few days later so they could figure out when she could swing by to give Nancy the balance and pick up the microwave. On the other end, Judy could hear a man yelling in the background. It sounded like Frankie. She heard what sounded like slaps. She could hear her sister crying.

  “You know what your sister wants this money for?” Frankie yelled into the phone, Judy recalled.15

  Judy could hear her sister in the background, crying. “Please don’t tell her.”

  “It’s to buy her drugs. So she can shoot up,” Frankie snapped at Judy on the phone.

  Judy was stunned.

  Her husband took the phone and, in a firm and loud voice, told Frankie to bring back the money or bring over the microwave. Then he hung up.

  Judy waited for her sister to call back that day. And the next. And the next.

  Shortly after Thanksgiving, Judy learned her sister checked into a Worcester, Massachusetts, rehab center about an hour away. “If o
nly she would stay long enough and get away from Frankie,” Judy would later write in a journal. “That was my hope.”

  Two weeks after checking into rehab, Nancy was back out.

  In the 1980s, those struggling with heroin and cocaine addiction discovered inpatient treatment options were few if they didn’t have health insurance, and those programs were often just two-week detox programs, often geared toward men. Two weeks was long enough to get the drugs out of the system but not long enough to stop the craving. It was what recovering addicts called “spin and dry.” Men filled most of the program beds. Women often waited weeks for a spot.

  When Nancy got out of detox, she told Judy in a brief conversation that she went every night to support meetings, such as Narcotics Anonymous, to stay straight. Judy wanted to believe her but, when she later looked back, there were warning signs of serious trouble. When she later called her sister’s apartment after that short chat, Nancy never came to the phone. After a while, Judy stopped calling. Some friends told Judy that Frankie wouldn’t allow her sister to call or visit. Judy wasn’t sure if that was true, but it reinforced her worry that something was going wrong in Nancy’s family. She suspected Nancy was a battered woman. She wasn’t sure how she could help her. She wasn’t sure if Nancy would even let her.

  So, Judy was pleasantly surprised on that hot summer day as she passed the Morgan Street apartment to see her sister on the balcony.

  If Nancy had been downstairs, Judy would have crossed the street to say hi. But Judy was in a hurry to get to her hair appointment, her sister was on the second-floor apartment balcony, and there would be another time to catch up.

  Judy waved from across the street.

  Her sister waved back.

  It was July 7, 1988.

  NANCY PAIVA’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Jill, was living on her own in a small three-room first-floor apartment in New Bedford’s South End in July of 1988, a single mom with two children under the age of two. The place wasn’t perfect, she knew, but it was better than living in what was becoming a battleground between Frankie and her mother. By the time Jill moved out, strangers were in her mother’s life. They were at the apartment at odd hours. Some, Jill knew, were using drugs—likely heroin or cocaine. She hoped her mother wasn’t doing the same. Frankie and her mother were yelling. Hiding in her bedroom, Jill could hear things smash. She could hear thuds. She could hear her mother cry. Her mother who was always the strong one, the no-nonsense, don’t-mess-with-me-or-my-kids one, the person with the answers, the protector of the family, now seemed broken. She seemed beaten, her laugh silenced, her vigor sapped. Her mother seemed afraid. “They would fight and he would say he was going to tell us what she was really and she would beg him not to say anything to us. She would be crying,” Jill recalled.16 Jill packed up when she was pregnant with her second child, shortly after she got in shoving match at the top of the stairs with Frankie. She had the safety of her own children to worry about now.