In A Child's Name
by
Peter Moss

DR. KENNETH Z. TAYLOR.

PROLOGUE.

When the first state trooper arrived at the scene and unwrapped the
padding around the young woman's body, he recoiled in horror.

Who, he thought, was capable of such savagery?

As hideous as the murder was, no one involved in the case could imagine
the religious, regional and ethnic passions that it would unleash,
revealing not only the fragility of American society, but,
paradoxically, its extraordinary resiliency.

In an age inured to excuses, it got down finally to an issue quite
absolute: Good versus Evil.

At stake was the future of an infant, then five months old.

Part 1.

THE MURDER.

Marion, Indiana (pop. 35,874), is sixty miles north of Indianapolis.

On both sides of Route as you enter Grant County, of which Marion is the
seat, fields of corn and soybeans fall away as far as the eye can see.
Silos rise against a cloud-fleeced sky. You know at once that you are in
the nation's fabled heartland-industrious, independent, God-fearing.

Indeed, according to marketing researchers, Marion is an archetypal
American community, ranking twelfth in the country, for instance, as an
ideal place to test new products and advertising campaigns.

These days, though, there's a down-at-the-heels look to the city, as if
time is passing it by, which triggers a certain defensive "Well, it's
good enough for me" posture among local boosters. The population, with a
median household income of $17,031, is of overwhelmingly English and
German stock. Over the years there has been a lot of white migration
from the South-"rednecks," according to old-guard Hoosiers especially from
Kentucky and Tennessee.

About 12 percent of the citizenry is black, none of whom are either
lawyers or doctors.

The two biggest employers in town are General Motors and a French
electronics corporation which, in a transaction that has caused
considerately took over an RCA color TV pictureable unease, rece tube
factory. The most famous native son is the late actor James Dean, who
started his career at the age of four at Zina Glad's Marion College of
Dance and Thcotiic-al Art,-His grave is the major tourist attraction,
along with displays of plates, mugs, jigsaw puzzles, and bubble-gum
cards bearing his likeness.

In basketball-mad Indiana, what gives Marion a special identity is its
high school team, which won an unprecedented three consecutive state
championships from 1985 through 1987.

The high school is the largest in Indiana, with a gymnasium seating
eight thousand fans. A few Years ago, it became clear that academic
needs would be best served by having two high schools, one for the
city's north side, the other for the south, but this plan was scotched
for fear of diluting the basketball program. rquee in front Marion is
also Bible Belt territory. The ma Of a big supermarket doesn't announce
a sale, say, on pork chops, it says, "Love Jesus." A used car dealer
**skip**knows his potential buyers.

His sign says, "Christ is Free."

For years Marion was the world headquarters for the Wesleyan church and
remains today the site of the World Gospel Mission, a nondenominational,
fundamentalist organization that runs militant ministries in Africa,
Latin America and Asia. Besides such traditional Protestant faiths as
Presbyterian, Lutheran and Methodist, there are dozens of other
congregations, among them the Assembly of God, Church of Christ,
Disciples of Christ, Nazarenes, Mennonites, Pentecostals and any number
of Baptist variations. Marion's past.

Nevertheless, an unchristian blot lurks in a photograph On page of
Alistair Cooke's America shows two black teenagers dangling from a huge
elm tree while, a crowd of men and women look on, some of them laughing.
The caption suggests that the lynching took place in the Deep South,
circa 1919. Actually it occurred a little later-and in Marion@n August
7, 1930. A mob of five thousand had seized the two teenagers, accused of
raping a white girl and murdering her boyfriend, and hung them from the
elm, one of many that shaded the Grant County Courthouse.

Jean and Everett Z. (Zach) Taylor moved to Marion from Oak Hills, a
middle-class suburb west of Cincinnati, in 1967. Zach had been a
production-line supervisor at Andrew Jergens, the lotion company.

Both Taylors had grown up in the Cincinnati area, but Zach, then forty,
figured he had reached a dead end at Jergens. A similar job at the RCA
plant in Marion appeared to offer opportunities for advancement.

After methodically sampling Marion's array of religious possibilities,
Jean Taylor chose the First Baptist Church, a large, modern structure a
couple of blocks from the courthouse. Its theology was upbeat, reflected
in messages on a display out front like, "The worse air pollution is not
smog, but a sour disposition."

The Taylors came to Marion with their second child, Nancy, and their
youngest son, Tom.

Their oldest boy, Ken, who was in the middle of his senior year at Oak
Hills High, remained behind till graduation.

Ken Taylor would describe his adolescence in the most halcyon terms, but
with a curious, unsolicited protestation. His mother and father "were
not tyrants at all," he insisted.

"They were teachers, guidance directors, genuinely loving parents."

He'd never forget when he and his mother and father were featured on the
cover of the annual Church of Christ calendar back in Oak Hills.

"Apparently we were the picture' of the American Protestant family," he
said. He couldn't remember why his sister and brother had not been
included. Maybe Nancy was busy changing from her choir robe, and Tom.

nearly six years younger, was probably in Sunday school.

The trouble was that there was no church calendar with Ken and his
parents on it. Once, Jean Taylor remembered, a photographer came by
trying to get members of the flock to pose outside the church for
individual family portraits, but she refused, cottoning neither to the
photographer's hustling manner nor the price he was asking.

Their old neighbors agreed that Jean "ruled the roost" and that she was,
well, "odd." It was little things, nothing really dramatic.

Jean didn't like parties, found them frivolous, and the Taylors never
engaged in any of the usual suburban socializing, did not give or accept
dinner invitations. Life at home was highly regimented, run like a
"quasimilitary camp," one neighbor said. After the dishes were done, the
table was immediately set for the next meal. Friends of Ken and his
siblings were limited to the basement recreation room, and the days when
each age group could drop by was strictly regulated, as was the use of
the backyard pool the Taylors had installed. The mother of a chum of
Ken's remembered the one time she was inside the Taylor home on a
churchrelated mission. Jean had offered her a glass of lemonade and
before she was out the door, Jean had taken the glass and was wiping the
ring it had left even though it was on a presumably impervious plastic
TV dinner tray.

The most memorable incident for all of Ken's teenage friends was when,
enraged by his sister's constant tattling to Jean, he tied her to a
chair "in front of everyone" and painted her hair green. After Jean and
Zach Taylor discovered what had happened, one of his friends recalled,
"You could hear the screams up and down the street. I mean it was weird,
what he did, and how he thought he'd get away with it.

it was like, suddenly, he didn't care."

When Ken joined the Cub Scouts, Jean Taylor became the den mother and
Zach the scout master. But it was in the sports activities of their
children that the Taylors were especially zealous.

Ken was encouraged to participate in knothole baseball, grade school
basketball, and tackle football. His father was always on hand to help
manage and coach, while Jean was ever present cheering and keeping
score. One of Ken's high school coaches, Stephen Moore, said, "Ken was
very serious and dedicated. He didn't have great ability, but made up
for it in effort.

Ken's father was very involved. He was a fiery guy and very, very
competitive.

During his senior year, Ken finally became the starting end on the high
school football team. His sister Nancy, a year behind, played the
glockenspiel in the marching band. By then, though, the family focus had
shifted to Tom, who was an extraordinarily gifted athlete. Jim Lockwood,
a classmate of Ken's, recalled, "You could tell Ken was hurt by the
attention Tommy was getting, but he never talked about it.

When the Taylors moved to Marion, coach Moore remembered Ken's father
telling him that he'd "had enough" of Oak Hills. "I sensed that he was
dissatisfied with the program here and the way things had gone for Ken.

He was hoping for better things for Tom."

Ken's peers in high school found him generally affable and easygoing,
popular enough to be elected vice president of the student council his
senior year. Although Ken could have resided with his maternal
grandparents when the Taylors moved to Marion, he arranged instead to
stay at the home of his best friend, Tom Chatham. Jean was secretly
relieved. Relations between her and her mother had always been tense.

Her mother, by all accounts a remarkably pretty woman, smoked cigarettes
and drank liquor and was, according to Jean, an outrageous flirt who
"sat on men's laps at parties, smiling at them and patting their
cheeks." She was eighteen when Jean was born, and when Jean herself
reached her teens, her mother would introduce her as her "younger
sister." Jean, who had inherited much of her mother's fine-boned good
looks, decided that her mother resented the attention her father gave
his only child, and early on, Jean determined "never to be like her."

Jean herself married Zach when she was twenty, right after Zach was
discharged from the army following the end of World War.

Two years later, when she was pregnant with Ken, her mother snapped at
her, "I'm too young to be a grandmother." One of Zach's great
attractions had been that he alone of the boys who came calling did not
play along with her mother. After Jean announced that she was marrying
him and her mother said, "I don't like him," Jean relished the memory of
telling her, "That's too bad, Mother. He's coming to see me."

For Ken, life at the Chathams' was more like being at a boardinghouse
than a foster home.

Liberated from rigidly enforced curfews and dress codes, about the only
stricture he had was a kidding "be back before sunrise." And driving
around in the eight-year-old white Rambler station wagon his grandfather
provided, he was able at last to indulge in such forbidden delights as
the burlesque house on downtown Cincinnati's Vine Street and some of the
clubs in wide-open Newport, Kentucky, across the Ohio River.

The Rambler also gave Ken, till then shy around girls, a chance to
consummate his first hot romance with an aggressive sports-loving
classmate with shoulder-length brown hair named Patsy Duncan. Rick
Hillman, another teenage pat, said, "That Rambler was the talk of the
school.

Everyone called it the Sex Mobile. It was like Ken needed a daily
injection. He'd pick her up at seven A.M. every day, and he'd always be
off somewhere parking with her."

Ken even gave up the baseball team. He got a job after school in a shoe
store to earn money to date Patsy, and Tom Chatham remembered how he
began skipping lunch to save up enough to buy her an engagement ring.
After graduation, she enrolled in college at Eastern Kentucky and so did
he. Then during their freshman year, she dropped him for another boy.
"He was crazy about her and you just knew he was crushed," Chatham said,
"but he held most of it in. The thing about Ken was that he never really
laid all his cards on the table."

He promised himself, however, that no female was ever going to get the
better of him again.

This vow was made easier when he transferred to Ball State University in
Muncie, Indiana, where the ratio of girls to boys at the onetime
teachers college was close to four to one.

By now Ken was six feet one, one hundred eighty pounds, with beachboy
blond hair and in great shape after a summer working in a small steel
mill in Marion. At Ball State, he meticulously followed a weight-lifting
regime and carefully cultivated an "aw-shucks" manner when he discovered
how that could bring out the maternal instinct in a certain type of
woman. He enjoyed such success dating that it actually became a drag.
Then, as he would tell it, during his junior year Emily Latrelle, an
Indiana farm girl, an English major a year ahead of him, with whom he'd
been sleeping for three months, suddenly said, "Do you want to get
married?" and he said, "Okay, let's do it now."

They eloped to North Carolina. He was twenty.

When he brought Emily back to Marion to meet his parents, he told his
mother, "I wanted to marry someone just like you, Mom."

His sister soon married a career enlisted man in the army who would be
stationed in Germany, which gave Jean Taylor a vicarious thrill since
she was of German descent. Visiting Germany herself was an experience
Jean would never have, since she hated to travel and would not eat in
restaurants or stay in hotels and motels. Tom, meanwhile, was fulfilling
every sports dream his parents had for him.

He became an eight-letter man at Marion High in football, basketball and
baseball, with a collegiate athletic scholarship if not a contract in
organized baseball seemingly a sure bet.

Then Ken had another startling surprise for his mother and father.

He'd been an indifferent student, but he always did quite well in
biology and he announced that he was switching to a premed major.

He was going to be a doctor. The news truly made Jean and Zach take
notice of their oldest offspring. No one on either side of the family
had graduated from college, much less dared such professional heights.

Emily, after graduating, was unable to find a teaching position in the
Muncie area and settled for a secretarial job. Ken also worked as an
orderly at Ball Memorial Hospital. In the end, although his grades
improved considerably, they were not good enough to qualify him for
medical school. But, as Zach Taylor proudly told coworkers at the RCA
plant, Ken had a "fall back" position. He would still be a doctor-a
dentist. He applied to and was accepted by the dental school at Indiana
University's medical center in Indianapolis.

Ken, however, had another version of why he shifted from medicine to
dentistry, one that he especially liked to share with various women
later on. One night while on duty as an orderly at the hospital, a nurse
in the operating area summoned him, handed him a bundle wrapped in linen
and a plastic bag, and instructed him to take it down to the autopsy
room. He vaguely thought that the bundle contained an amputated arm or
leg, but when the nurse said to make sure to use the service elevator,
that the mother and father might be outside, he suddenly realized that
he was holding a dead baby, and the picture flashed in his mind of being
a physician someday and having to face distraught parents with the news
of a child's death. It was something, he'd confide with an appropriate
shudder, that he would never be able to bring himself to do.

In Indianapolis Emily had to take another secretarial job to help
support them. Then Jean Taylor spotted a U.S. Navy ad offering full
dental scholarships in return for four years of active service.

Ken applied and was accepted. While other applicants had better academic
credentials, the Navy judged him to be an "outstanding officer
candidate."

Emily finally landed a teaching post during Ken's second year in dental
school. But it was in Ohio, which meant that they'd be together only on
weekends. And Ken, free not only from his parents but also from being a
husband most of the time, began doing drugs with three other dentistry
students who, like him, sported jeans and dingo boots and sneered at the
"white shoe nerds" making up the rest of the class.

At Ball State he had smoked a joint now and then. But this was heavy
stuff-acid and pounds of pot and bricks of hash from a connection at the
Indianapolis airport.

There was an occasional cocaine score, which they really didn't need
with all the available uncut amphetaminesspeed"-from a chemist at the
Eli Lilly pharmaceutical plant who was researching their effect on
animals. Barbiturates-"reds" and "bluepoints," dopers called them-were
also available from another contact.

And there was an extra added attraction. "You had the drugs, you got the
girls," hordes of them, according to Ken.

During the fall term of his junior year, Emily told him she was
pregnant. At first, she recalled, he appeared pleased and excited.

Then he grew increasingly sullen and remote.

One weekend when she came home, she found three garbage bags in a closet
filled with hashish or marijuana, "I don't know what." She flew into a
rage and ordered him to remove the bags. A couple of months later she
arrived a day ahead of schedule because she wasn't feeling well. Ken
walked in carrying some plastic bags full of pills.

He claimed that they weren't his, that he was holding them for a friend.
"Then get new friends, or leave," she said. She wasn't going to put up
with it, the way he was messing up his LIFE with drugs.

About a month after that, Ken abruptly said, "Look, you can stay here
until it's born and then I'm leaving or you're leaving, one or the
other."

"But what about our baby? Don't you care?"

As she listened in speechless horror, he said, "It's not my kid.

You've been fucking around."

Somehow she forced herself to believe that this was a nightmare that
would work itself out.

Emily was in her seventh month when Ken was working nights as a desk
clerk at the airport's Ramada Inn. He had gotten the job through one of
his buddies in a softball league. Meeting plane crews was a regular
chore, and one evening he drove out to pick up the crew of an Allegheny
flight into Indianapolis. When he spied her, a flight attendant, there
was instant-"electric," he said@ye contact. She was a slim, long-legged
redhead. Her name was Man'lyn Hope. She sat in front next to him in the
hotel station wagon.

After she changed, she came down to the lobby and invited him to have a
drink.

He arranged to get off early and they went into the lounge.

Marilyn was a revelation to him. She was from Brooklyn and lived in
midtown Manhattan. She had vacationed in Hawaii, skied in Aspen, been to
London, Rome and Paris. He'd never met anyone so sophisticated, and she
was a knockout.

She was twenty-nine, four years older than Ken. He told her he was a
dental student and then launched into the story of his switch from
medicine. He knew he was in business when she said she hadn't realized
Indiana men could be so "sensitive."

She gave him her phone number in New York, and when he called, she said
she'd trade, flights with one of the other attendants and be back in
Indianapolis the next week.

While Emily had always been a willing, if docile, sex partner, he'd
never experienced the edgy tension Marilyn exhibited in bed, or her
knowledgeable moves. At first, she didn't know he was married.

When she found out, finally, during one of the trips she was now
regularly making to Indianapolis, she threatened to end the
relationship. He said his marriage was one in name only. He was getting
a divorce.

She'd heard that one before. Forget it. She was going to get married by
the time she was thirty, she said, and time was running out.

She wanted children.

He pulled out all the stops. He'd love nothing more than to have a child
with her.

Look, he said, he'd been crazy in love with a girl in high school and
she had thrown him over. He never thought he'd be in love again like
that until he met her. He had just been marking time.

He'd been with a lot of girls, but none of them meant anything.

He didn't know why he married Emily.

He had realized right away it wasn't going anywhere, and then she
tricked him by getting pregnant.

Give him a chance, he told Marilyn. She'd see.

In June 1974, in her ninth month, Emily came home to find that Ken had
cleared out, no note, nothing. She never saw him again. About a week
later, she learned that he had moved into a trailer with one of his
dental school pals.

When Marilyn flew in, Ken met her at the airport and drove her to the
trailer to prove what he'd done. She was impressed. "See," he said,
"it's just you and me now." He lit up a joint and she shared it with him
to celebrate.

Then his trailer mate walked in lugging a huge bag of pot, dumped it on
the table, and started dividing it. Marilyn freaked out. "My God," she
said, "what if the police come?" Don't worry, he said. He was quitting.
All be needed was someone like her. And in fact, he was cutting down,
especially with downers.

He'd been so spaced out that he hadn't been able to complete a lot of
required clinical work, and it was clear that he would need an extra
year to graduate. He had already written to the Navy's Bureau of
Medicine in Washington about this, explaining that he'd had personal,
family problems. To his relief, the Navy granted his request.

That same month Tom Chatham, now an insurance agent, happened to be in
Indianapolis on business and decided to drop in on Ken and Emily.

He had visited them at Ball State and was fond of her, a big step up
from Patsy Duncan at Oak Hills High, he thought.

Chatham couldn't believe what he saw. Emily, about to give birth,
huddled alone in this tiny sweatbox of an apartment without air
conditioning, the temperature outside over a hundred degrees-Emily,
devastated, weeping.

It was inconceivable that Ken, his old, decent, loyal friend, was
capable of this. He called him and said, "Good God, man, what are you
doing?" He remembered the familiar soft, lazy voice coming over the
line, not at all defensive or a t s rgumentative, saying, "I'm happy.

I've met someone I'm in love with." Ken didn't even ask how Emily was.

Jean and Zach Taylor were beside themselves.

They sdiscovered what had happened when they phoned Emily to see how the
pregnancy was progressing. She told them that Ken had left her.

They phoned him at once at the number Emily gave them and told him that
he had to "try harder, life was a two-way street," and that "you're
supposed to work these things out together."

Divorce was "unacceptable.

"What are we, suddenly Catholic or something?" be said.

He was not being "responsible," they said.

That struck a raw nerve. During his adolescence, responsibility had been
drummed into him endlessly, and for the first time he became openly
defiant. "It's none of your business," he said - Zach happened to be in
town for an RCA engineering conference and called Emily, who said she
was expecting any moment. He got in touch with Ken and said that he
should at least "fulfill the responsibility" of taking his wife to the
hospital, but Ken would not do it. So Zach himself was on hand, along
with Emily's mother, when she gave birth to a daughter around one A.M.
on July 3, 1974.

Privately, Jean Taylor thought that Emily had brought it on herself.

She recalled how much pleasure "Kenny" got out of playing softball, but
that Emily would never go watch him. And she particularly harked back to
the time he had come with Emily to cheer on Tom in a basketball game at
Marion High, and how right in the middle of it, "kind of sullen and
bored," she got up and left. Still, Jean concluded, that was no excuse
for this.

"God will not forgive you," she warned Ken.

"It's not my baby," he said.

Ken never saw the child. Eventually Emily remarried and her new husband
offered to adopt her daughter. She would need Ken's permission and wrote
to him for it.

He refused.

Within five years, on the nigh, of April 16, 1979, Ken would try to
murder Marilyn.

After he had left Emily, he spent the summer in New York at Marilyn's
place. He pretended to enjoy visits to the Museum of Modern Art and the
theater, and loved watching major-league ball at Shea Stadium.

In the fall Marilyn went back to Indiana with him. Although the airline
based her in Boston, she had enough seniority to commute to Boston from
Indianapolis. They rented a garden apartment in a complex near the small
town of Noblesvitle, off Route 37 on the way to Marion.

Marilyn wasn't too happy "living in the middle of nowhere," but Ken had
to finish his schooling. He was sure he'd get an East Coast billet from
the Navy. He wanted to be away from all the dopers he'd been running
with, and she'd say yes, okay, she was sorry, and then they'd jump into
bed for what he called "fantastic sex" and everything would be smoothed
over.

That fall the divorce from Emily, handled entirely by lawyers, became
final. Ken was required to pay twenty-five dollars a week in child
support. Over the years she had to take constant legal action to collect
whatever she could. In December Ken and Marilyn were married by a local
justice of the peace.

Although Jean and Zach Taylor were not more than a half hour away, they
were not present.

Nor would they ever meet Marilyn during the marriage. Earlier Jean had
phoned her son at the apartment. When Marilyn answered, Jean said, "You
could have at least waited until the divorce before you moved in."
Marilyn said, "Who the hell do you think you are?" and Jean said, I'm
Kenny's mother." Marilyn hung up on her.

Ken was impressed. Marilyn was as hard-nosed as his mother.

Every girl he'd previously taken home had gone through the motions of
catering to her. And later, when Jean even tried to make amends, Ken
told her she had been out of line. It was going to take time to patch
things up.

A peculiar event occurred the following June.

Except for occasional joints, Ken was off drugs, although he was boozing
more. He'd always drunk beer, but now he as tossing down a new favorite,
Jack Daniel's sour mash. One Sunday morning he dropped Marilyn off at
the airport in her blue Buick Skylark convertible and went on to a
softball game. After the game he had some beers and a couple of drinks,
and on the way home he ran off the road and hit a utility pole.

He made it back to the apartment, but the driver's side was caved in.

He parked out front and later abandoned the Skylark on a country lane
where the police found it. His story was that it must have been stolen
since he returned to the complex with the car in perfect condition and
spent the rest of the day by the pool without noticing that it was
missing- But witnesses in three nearby apartments said that they had
noticed the parked Skylark, all smashed up, throughout the afternoon.

An attorney for Ken then advised authorities that there had been no
theft and plea-bargained a fifty-dollar fine for falsely reporting a
crime. Ken told Marilyn that he had panicked at the thought of her fury
and begged her to forgive him. What made the whole thing so peculiar to
the investigating cop, Robert A. Smith, was how Ken expected to get away
with such an obvious cock-and-bull tale.

His last act of rebellion in Indiana was to skip his graduation
ceremonies, disappointing especially Jean Taylor. However, a
confrontation between his mother and Marilyn was avoided. He was
assigned to the Navy submarine base in Groton, Connecticut, across the
Thames River from New London. They rented an apartment in a complex
filled with singles and young marrieds in Cromwell, a town south of
Hartford, equidistant from Groton and the airport at Windsor Locks from
which Marilyn could fly to Boston.

Some of the ardor in the marriage had cooled.

Ken felt a new confidence. He was no longer a student, but a fullfledged
dentist, and an "officer and gentleman" to boot.

Little things began to rankle. Like Emily, Marilyn was disparaging of
his passion for sports.

His very first week on duty, when Marilyn was off on a flight, an
enlisted female dental assistant-he remembered her well, "twenty-one
years old, a pretty blonde with blue eyes, a muscular body and coarse
manner'said, "You're some hunk, lieutenant." If he wasn't doing anything
that evening, she and her roommate could make dinner for him and
"welcome him to the base."

After a number of drinks, they started playing strip poker and he had
them both.

They were the first of many. He realized more than ever how playing a
slightly country bumpkin role was such an effective come-on.

They were all the same, he decided-dental assistants, female hospital
corpsmen, female officers, the wives of officers, secretaries complex
where he lived, even business executives, ried or not-they all wanted
him. He loved the oohs and oohs he heard when they saw how big his penis
was and how they'd say, "Please, please don't hurt me."

The trouble with Marilyn was that she believed she could turn him into
her creature.

He had married a harridan. She'd hooked him like a big, dumb catfish,
and he had only himself to blame, They had a serious fight when she
wanted to go to Hartford to see Angela Lansbury in a play the same
evening he was supposed to play in a softball game at the submarine
base.

She began to suspect that he was screwing around. When she was away on a
flight trip, she would call late and he wouldn't be home.

Once they returned from a weekend in New York, and she found a note
under the door that said, "Missed you while you were gone. Where were
you?"

He said that it had to be a mistake, that there was another guy down the
hall named Ken.

A neighbor had told her about the partying in their apartment when she
was off on flights-"every size, shape, color and creed," she was told.

She was mortified when she contracted crabs.

He accused her of getting them on one of her trips. She knew this
couldn't be so, she wasn't fooling around. She screamed at him not to
touch her, and grew increasingly cold and distant.

It always annoyed him that she had retained her maiden name-"If it's
such a big deal," she said " why don't you change yours to mine?"

The breaking point came at a gala given by the commandant of the base.

A gift for each officer's wife was the high point. When "Marilyn Taylor"
was called out, she remained seated.

"What's wrong with you?" he whispered. "Go up and get it.

"That's not my name. My name's Marilyn Hope."

"Relax, will you, and just get it."

. No.

In the end he had to step forward and accept the gift himself, suffering
the humiliation of having to say, "Thank you on behalf of my wife,
Marilyn Hope."

He moved out. He rented a house on the Connecticut coast in Waterford, a
few miles west of Groton. He resumed doing drugs, lots of pot and "black
beauties," a powerful amphetamine in capsule form that many users
snapped open and snorted like cocaine. He had always been a rock music
addict, listening for hours, especially when he was stoned.

The lyrics of Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues" became his battle cry: "I
crawl like a viper through the suburban streets/Made love to these
women, languid and bittersweet/I rise when the sun goes down, cover
every game in town/A world of my own, I'll make it my home sweet home."

A couple of months later, Marilyn called him, sobbing hysterically.

Her father, to whom she was devoted, had throat cancer. Ken rather liked
the old man and did his best to console her.

There were more talks and finally she joined him in the Waterford house.
He traveled with her to visit her father at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center in Manhattan.

For a while she thought it would all work out.

In December 1978, she became pregnant.

At first, as with Emily, it seemed as if he couldn't be happier at the
news, but then he started withdrawing into himself. Marilyn didn't know
about the drugs at the time, but it was clear he was seeing other women
again, stumbling in at all hours of the morning.

Angry and miserable, desperately worried about her father, she told Ken
in her fourth month that she was through with sex until after the baby
was born.

Maybe they should seek counseling, she said, but Ken refused.

In early April Marilyn discovered that three hundred dollars was missing
from a cash hoard she was keeping in the kitchen to buy baby clothes.
When she questioned Ken, he denied knowing anything about it.

They shouted at each other.

Suddenly he raised a clenched fist and she was already starting to duck.
At the last moment he hit the refrigerator door instead and stormed out.
The next time she saw him, his hand was in a cast.

He had broken it.

A week later, the night of April 16, she returned from New York after
visiting her father.

Ken was in the study, poring over a Florida state dental board exam.

He'd been thinking about practicing there after he got out of the Navy.

Exhausted after a harrowing day-her father was back in Sloan-Kettering
for more treatment-she asked Ken if he would make her a cup of hot
chocolate. He'd be glad to, he said, but when he brought her the
chocolate, it smelled funny to her. Ken sniffed it, as though surprised,
and said it must be a residue of dishwasher detergent.

He'd make her another cup. She was touched by his solicitousness, but
she said no, the hell with it, she was beat, she'd just go to bed, and
left him bent over his papers. "Sleep well," he said.

Actually, the chocolate had been laced with chemical chloroform.

If ingested, it can be fatal to the liver. If inhaled, it can cause
death in two to five minutes. In all likelihood, its presence would not
be detectable in an autopsy.

In bed, Marilyn tossed fitfully. Around midnight, she wasn't sure of the
exact time, she sensed a presence in the room. She opened her eyes and
vaguely saw a figure standing in the doorway. It was Ken.

She watched him walk over to her side of the bed and sit down. In the
old days, when everything had been so splendid between them, he'd often
break off studying and come to kiss her good night and wish her sweet
dreams. She thought contentedly that he was doing that now, trying to
make up for what had happened, attempting to comfort her.

She remembered him putting his arm across her chest, so hard that she
said, "Please, you're hurting me." But the pressure continued.

Ken didn't speak. Then "this thing" came over her mouth and nose, and
she smelled the same fumes that had been in the chocolate, only
stronger.

against her face was a kitchen towel, and wrapped inside the towel was a
sponge soaked in chloroform.

She tried to break free, clawing at Ken, trying not to breathe.

Once, for a second, she managed to say, "Please don't kill me!

I'll do whatever you want." Still, he said nothing.

The towel slipped off, and now the sponge was held directly against her.
She could feel its roughness.

Her mind raced crazily. Why was he doing this? Did he hate her that
much? Was it the baby? She was going to die, she thought, at the hands
of her own husband in her own bedroom, "like some stupid soap opera."
She couldn t struggle anymore.

All at once she had the image of her father, battling for his own life.

What would happen to him if she died? Who would look after him?

She thrashed violently in a last-ditch effort. His hold loosened
momentarily, and she was able to roll off the bed onto the floor.

He was right on top of her, trying to get the sponge back on her face.

She twisted over on her stomach.

Now she felt his cast on the back of her neck, and she thought, He's
going to start hitting me with the cast. She cried out, "Oh God, help
me, please help me!"

The pressure suddenly stopped. The light went on. Dazed, she looked up
and saw Ken standing a few feet away, staring at her. She didn't know if
she was hallucinating or what, but she believed God was in the room, had
saved her life, and she got to her knees and began praying out loud,
giving thanks. Then Ken was on his knees beside her, also praying, also
thanking God.

He mumbled, "What have I done? I've got to call the police. They have to
take me away."

Marilyn was so confused. She tried to think clearly. Ken was sick.

He needed help, for sure. But were the police the right answer?

She wondered if Ken would snap again. She decided she had to stay very
calm.

She'd call the Navy chaplain, she said. He'd know what to do. He lived
right down the street. She told him over the phone that something
terrible had occurred, that he had to get right over.

Her face hurt. She looked in a mirror.

She could barely recognize herself. Her face had blown up and was
covered by what seemed to be burns. Later, she was told that they were
caused by the chloroform and the coarse sponge.

When the chaplain arrived, Ken sat there immobile, his head bowed, while
she tried to explain what happened, to make some sense of it.

The chaplain drove them both to the base hospital so that Marilyn could
be treated for her facial injuries and Ken admitted to the psychiatric
ward.

The senior psychiatrist on the base, Commander W. F. Pettit, was on
leave, so Ken was placed in the care of Lieutenant Commander Ronald C.

Smith. Ken confessed to Dr. Smith that he had attempted to do away with
his wife, but his conscience had gotten the better of him.

He said that he was a heavy user of marijuana and amphetamines,
obtaining them from enlisted sources on the base that he wouldn't name.

He had taken three black beauties the Monday night he attacked Marilyn
and at least seven more over the weekend. He had heard voices telling
him to kill her. His first marriage had failed, which angered his
parents. He said his mother was "very judgmental" and that it had been a
"constant struggle" to gain his father's approval. His current marriage
was about to break up. He feared the reaction of his parents and was, as
Ken phrased it, "in a bind."

When Marilyn came to the hospital two days later to check on Ken, Dr.
Smith advised her that her husband was a "homicidal maniac" and that it
was only a matter of time before he "would finish off the job" if she
remained with him.

For her own good, he told her to report the matter forthwith to the
police. Only she could do it.

It was more than she could bear. First her father wasting away, and now
this. Homicidal maniac? She didn't know what to do. Memories of
wonderful moments she'd had with Ken flooded through her. Of course he
needed help, but was prosecution the solution, possibly ruining his
life, his career?

She discussed it with the chaplain, who sympathized with her dilemma.

"But what it boils down to," he said, "is that you can't take the
chance. I understand you don't want to destroy his life, but he did do
this, whether it's drugs or psychosis or whatever. You have to worry
about You and your baby." She contacted the police. She said that while
she wasn't prepared at this stage to sign a formal complaint, she wanted
it made a matter of record that the incident had taken place.

She also said she thought her husband W gone over the edge because he
was afraid that the baby would take attention away from him. And after
an invesowtion, in which additional evidence was gathered, Ken was
charged with attempted murder.

Then Dr. Smith was superseded on "the Taylor caw" by his superior, W. F.
Pettit. The switch was unusual, but the Navy didn't welcome the sort of
publicity a trial would bring. Ken was a popular figure on the base,
most valuable player on the champion intramural softball team, who also
performed the dental work on the top brass. The only complaints about
him were that his "military bearing" needed improvement and that he
fraternized a bit too much with enlisted personnel.

Pettit told Marilyn precisely what she wanted to hear. According to his
findings, Ken was "neither psychol4cally nor physically dependent on
drugs." There was no evidence of "psychosis."

Ken was the kind of man who "has difficulty in dealing directly with his
emotions and tends to allow things to build up to where he experiences
chronic tensions and anxiety."

That, plus excessive alcohol intake and his plunge into drugs, led to
the "alleged incident." He cited other contributing factors that filled
Marilyn with guilt, among them a "growing lack of respect and
appreciation from his wife" and "more recent feelings of abandonment
related to his wife's absence due to her father's sickness."

There was no reference to Ken's philandering.

Pettit also said that Ken had entered group therapy and was undergoing
counseling for alcohol abuse. He had agreed to marriage counseling as
well. Meanwhile, Ken, once released from the hospital, would remain on
the base in quarters for bachelor officers. Pettit urged her to
Cooperate.

In a phone call to Marion, Ken gave Jean and Zach Taylor his version of
what had happened.

He had a problem, he'd lashed out physically at Marilyn. He had stressed
out, he said. Too much coffee and too many pills, pills to wake up and
pills to sleep because of marital tensions. A senior Navy psychiatrist
had said that most of it was caused by the way Marilyn had been treating
him. Now he was in therapy, straightening himself out, building his
"selfesteem" which had suffered greatly. Everything was going to be
fine. The Problem, though, was that he needed ten thousand dollars to
post bond and to retain a lawyer. The Taylors were hardly admirers of
Marilyn. Zach withdrew the money from his savings account and wired it
to Ken. It was supposed to be a loan, one Ken never paid back.
Considering her view of Marilyn, Jean wasn't at all surprised that the
marriage had gone sour.

Marilyn was completely reassured when Ken's attorney showed her a letter
from the superintendent of a state PSYCHIATRIC center, Fairfield Hills
Hospital, who had personally examined Ken.

The possibility that Ken would repeat his assaultive behavior is
virtually nonexistent," he wrote. Moreover, "further psychiatric
treatment on an ambulatory basis would restore this young doctor to his
intended role as someone beneficial to society."

Marilyn agonized over her decision for a time and finally declined to
sign a formal complaint. That ended the matter and under Connecticut law
all the records in the case were sealed.

There hadn't been any media coverage. There would never be public
knowledge of what had occurred. Inside the base, of course, it was
different. According to Ken, even more women flocked to him, intrigued
by what they'd heard. He Particularly remembered the good-looking wife
of a marine officer who had come in complaining of a toothache. He
couldn't find anything wrong. He happened to remark on her excellent
tan, and she asked him how he liked the rest of it, raising her sweater
to expose her breasts. Her husband was away, she said. How about dinner?
Marital counseling or not, he couldn't pass this up. He'd just have to
be more discreet.

Still, as far as Marilyn could tell, she had made the right choice.

When their daughter Astrid was born, Ken was a doting father. In her own
father's last days, he was supportive in every way. And he appeared
steadfast in his therapy.

When he was discharged from the Navy in July 1979, he acceded to her
desire to move back to New York and got a job running a newly
established dental center in Brooklyn. She compromised, too, He didn't
like the city, so she agreed to live in New York's most remote borough,
Staten Island, with its large stretches of green, and singlefamily
houses. In a way it was reminiscent of a Midwestern town, and the
Verrazano Bridge over New York Harbor provided easy access to work-to
Brooklyn for him and to Laguardia and Kennedy airports in Queens for her
security blanket, the flight attendant's job she had never relinquished.

Very soon, however, Ken reverted to his old ways. He started drinking
again. He had to relax, he said, after the long hours he devoted to
building the dental center's business. She found the remnants of a joint
in the house they had bought. While she had never actually seen him
doing other drugs, she noted that he was walking into walls and failing
over things.

Oh, brother, she thought, here we go again.

And obviously he had resumed seeing other women. She blamed herself
partially for that.

Try as she might, she was never sexually comfortable with him after
Connecticut. But it was intolerable, the way he would stroll into the
house at five A.M. She imagined her daughter waking in the morning and
saying, "Oh, here comes my daddy."

There was a new crisis. After one of their rare instances of
intercourse, she became pregnant again. Fearful of the future, of a
repeat of Connecticut, of being alone now with two children to care for,
she had an abortion.

"What is it you want, an open marriage?" she asked him.

She never got a straight answer. "Whatever," he said.

She zeroed in on one particular rival, a young woman he had hired for
the Brooklyn office. She had seen her two or three times and had gotten
a whiff of her perfume. Then, after returning home from one of her
flights, she sniffed the same fragrance in the house.

Marilyn was right. Her name was Teresa Benigna, then twenty-one, a newly
graduated dental hygienist who had dark brown flowing hair and deep-set
electric blue eyes.

She would become Ken Taylor's third wife.

When Teresa Benigna graduated from Moore Catholic High School in Staten
Island in 1977, her father, Albert, wrote in her yearbook, The man you
marry will make the ultimate difference in the outcome of your life.

He must be your equal in intelligence and maturity. No man must ever be
your master. No man must ever dictate the terms of your security
throughforce orfear.

A marriage can only endure through mutual love and respect for one
another.

It's not customary for parents to write in their children's yearbooks,
but the Benignos were an emotional clan. And it would seem even more
unusual for words like these to have been written by Al, as everyone
called him, who was not only Italian, but also Sicilian, a tradition not
especially noted for fostering equal rights for women.

His father had come to New York from Sicily in 1910. Al was born and
raised in Brooklyn. A poor student and an eventual high school
dropout-"The only class I passed was lunch," he liked to joke-he
enlisted in the Navy in 1948, and served as a radioman during the Korean
War.

After his discharge, though, he got his high school diploma and with the
aid of the GI Bill of Rights trained to be draftsman. He then began work
as an assistant architect the New York City public school system in the
department responsible for the design and rehabilitation of school
buildings. After ten years there, he taught drafting for another twenty
years at a vocational high school n Brooklyn.

In 1955, he had married Louise Arico, also Sicilian, a shy, pretty girl,
then working as a secretary for a ship line, whom he had known since
childhood. Three years later, Louise became pregnant. Their rented
apartment inadequate for a growing family, Al started thinking about
buying a house. Financially, Brooklyn was out of reach, so he began
looking in Staten Island. And in 1960, a year after their first
daughter, Teresa, was born, he purchased a threebedroom ranch-style home
in the New Dorp section on Staten Island's south shore.

With a mortgage, he could just make the $17,000 price tag. Until the
Ven-azano Bridge to Brooklyn was built four years later, he had to
commute by ferry. At first, the Benigna house was surrounded by dairy
and vegetable farms. Now, because of the bridge, the area is
middle-class suburban, with blocks of similar homes and wefi-kept lawns,
predominantly owned by Italians.

Indeed, a third of Staten island's population of four hundred thousand
is Italian. The borough, one of five in New York, is a series of
villages, isolated both spiritually and geographically from the rest of
the city. Most other New Yorkers, except perhaps for taking a
spectacular round-trip ferry ride from the skyscrapers of lower
Manhattan past the Statue of Liberty-still the world's best travel
bargain at only fifty cents-have never set foot on it.

After Teresa was born in 1959, a second daughter, Celeste, came in 1961,
and finally a son, Philip, named after Al's father, in 1964.

There were problems with Philip, handsome, husky kid, rebellious, an
indifferent student-but a kid who reminded Al very much of himself at
that age, a kid who in the long run would straighten out.

And there was Celeste, the family beauty, outshining even Teresa.

Her pate luminous gray eyes contrasted with Teresa's vivid blue ones.

She was outwardly scatterbrained, unfocused in school, apparently
marching to her own drummer, oblivious to curfews and chores. Yet Al
never doubted her rock-solid substance. At twelve she'd fallen for a
neighborhood boy named Jeff White and never looked left or right after
that. It brought back memories of his own courtship of Louise.

If he ever questioned Celeste's resiliency, her ability to rise to the
occasion, it was resolved when at the age of eighteen she drove into
Brooklyn to try on a wedding gown for her marriage to Jeff. On a street
under elevated subway tracks she saw a couple of police cars on the
corner with cops crouched behind them, guns drawn. Wow, they're filming
a movie, she thought, and pulled into a parking space to watch.

All at once this fellow with a sawed-off shotgun was yanking open the
passenger door and pointing the gun at her and saying, "Drive, bitch."

And she did.

At the first red light, she said, "Oh no, what'll I do?" and he said,
"Drive through it." There was another red light, and another.

Here she was speeding through red lights, and where were the cops?

she thought.

"Listen," she said, "I'm only eighteen years old. I just tried on my
wedding gown today.

Don't kill me. You notice I'm not looking at you because I can't
identify you. I don't know who the hell you are," she kept babbling on,
"so don't kill me, you hear me!"

She could hear sirens behind her and up ahead more sirens and saw
flashing red lights coming toward her. "Pull over," the fellow said, and
she remembered saying, "Why?" If she had to, she was ready to take him
to California. "Just get out," he said, and she did, and then she
remembered the (eather jacket Jeff had bought her that meant so much to
her and she yelled, "Wait, my jacket!" and the fellow threw it at her,
and then it was her pocketbook, and she cried, "My pocketbook! My
pocketbook!" and I cursing, he tossed it at her as well.

She scrambled away and ducked behind a parked car.

There was a guy sitting on a stoop taking this all in, and she called to
him, "Is he gone?" and then she peeked and saw the fellow with the
shotgun running across the street into an alley and then the cops
arrived and went in after him.

The guy on the stoop, who had not stirred throughout the entire episode,
stared at her bemused and said, "Hey, I thought you were having a fight
with your boyfriend."

Well, she thought, that's New York for you.

Later on, Ken Taylor would know none of this, would not comprehend at
all the spunk and determination of his third wife's sister, and would
dismiss her as a ditzy bubblehead.

Please know that you can always come to me with your problems, Al had
also written in Teresa's yearbook. Above all, always remember this: no
matter how old a lady you get to be, you will always be daddy's little
girl.

Al was concerned about Teresa because she had so much promise.

Unlike her siblings, she was a whiz at St. Charles Parochial School in
New Dorp and was immediately accepted at Moore, Staten Island's elite
diocesan high school, where she continued to get A's with little
apparent effort. He was afraid that she would jettison all of this over
someone unworthy of her. It wasn't that she slept around.

It was just the opposite, Teresa was incurably romantic, always one boy
at a time who was going to be the one whom she would marry and have
children with and be forever happy. And she wore her heart on her
sleeve.

On her page of the yearbook of her current boyfriend, it said, "I love
Pat 4ever," along with a photograph she had picked of the two of them
gazing into each other's eyes. Her favorite verse was from Goethe, about
the true measure of love: "When we believe that we alone can love/That
no one has ever loved so before us."

It drove Al crazy that her boyfriends weren't up to snuff, weren't
nearly as smart as she.

He worried that she could be as submissive with her boyfriends as she
was willful and stubborn at home. It wasn't only his imagination.

one of her girlfriends in high school remembered, "Teresa seemed to be
drawn to, I don't know, like to the underdog. Like she was going to help
them realize their potential. And they, some of them anyway, could be
mean to her and slap her around."

Something else also was deeply troubling to Al. It surfaced one night
during Teresa's senior year when they sat alone talking about college.

Al said that he wanted her to apply wherever she wanted to go, even if
it meant moving away. With the scholarship aid her grades would bring,
he'd be able to scrape together any additional funds that might be
needed.

"I've made so many mistakes," he said, "and as I grow old, I see my life
going downhill, and I want it to be different for you. It's not that I'm
not happy, it's just that I don't think I've fulfilled myself." He said,
"I want to give you everything, but I can't." At the time she was
constantly with a group of girls that neighborhood boys started calling
the "Glitter Chicks'determinedly sporting the latest in makeup, nail
polish, and hairstyles, spending every spare dollar on fashionable
outfits. The other "Glitter Chicks" came from well-off families and to
keep up with them, Teresa, who was an expert seamstress, had to make all
her own clothes. Al told her how much it saddened him that her friends
had beautiful cars and beautiful things to wear which she couldn't
afford.

When he had been hospitalized with back problems for a lengthy period
that temporarily reduced his income, she had lied about her age and got
a job at Burger King and turned over every paycheck to her mother.

"it breaks my heart that I can never be the father I want to be," he
told her that night. "This is how I pay for my mistakes, the reminder
always of them. So whatever college you want to go to, please fill out
the applications."

Then Teresa, eyes tremulous, displaying an unexpected vulnerability,
said that she didn't want to go away right now. "You may think I'm smart
and everything," she said, "but I make mistakes, too, and I cry.

I want to stay at home for a while."

Weeping, she had started out of the room when Al said, "Teresa," and she
turned back to her father and they silently hugged and kissed.

"The thing you remembered most about Teresa in school," Karen Oliveira,
her closest friend at Moore Catholic, said, "was how vivacious and full
of life she was, how she could take the littlest story and make it so
dramatic with her voice and eyes and hands. She just made you feel good.
And she was so caring, When we were freshmen, my grandmother died, and
my mother and father had to go make the funeral arrangements, and I told
her I had to stay home and fix dinner for my little brothers and I
didn't know what I was going to do, I could hardly boil water then, and
around six o'clock she showed up with two pizzas, not store-bought
pizzas, but ones she'd made herself from scratch, dough and all. Not
many fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds would be that thoughtful." In high
school, according to Karen, Teresa tried pot.

"Almost all the kids did, me included. But Teresa didn't like it."

She also tried THC, a distilled form of marijuana that could cause
hallucinations. "It just arrived at the school," Karen said.

"That's what all those references in the yearbook to T-day' mean.

I didn't try it. Teresa did, but only once. She said it made her feel
sick and dizzy. She did take diet pills because she was so worried about
her hips and thighs-it made her mad that Celeste didn't have anywhere
near the problem-and she hardly drank, a little wine and maybe a gin or
vodka at a party. The first time she brought Ken Taylor over, I couldn't
believe it when she asked me for Jack Daniel's. That's what Ken and she
drank, she said, and I had to send out for it. I remember thinking, God,
if she's suddenly drinking something that tastes that strong, she'll do
anything for this guy."

After graduating with honors from Moore, Teresa decided she'd do the
practical thing.

She enrolled in Brooklyn College for an associate degree in dental
hygiene, which offered the prospect of an immediate, well-paying job.

It also gave her some time to decide what else she might want to do.

Besides, she had a new love, a local boy named Sol Aurelia.

While Al thought Aurelia-an accountant with a Wall Street firm-was a cut
above her other swains, he was not enamored of the young man's arrogant
ways. He'd heard that his adoring mother referred to him as "Saint
Salvatore."

How did his daughter find them? he thought. When Al wanted to include
Teresa in a family summer vacation trip to California, Aurelia actually
complained to him, "What am I going to do while she's gone?"

"Baloney," Al said. "Do whatever you want.

You're a grown man. She's still my daughter, she's living at home.

if you two get married, she'll be yours forever. I'm tickled pink to
have her on the trip and she wants to go-" So when suddenly Aurelia was
out of the picture, replaced by this dentist from Indiana, Al wasn't
exactly unhappy. Okay, he was different, but so what? He was from
another part of the country with a different background. It was unfair
to expect him to fit hand-in-glove with an often volatile
Italian-American family which had practically no familiarity with anyone
outside its own parochial community. And it didn't bother Al one whit
that Ken was, according to Teresa, divorced. it troubled Louise Benigna
a great deal, however, and almost at once she and Teresa fought about
Ken. Louise was a devout Catholic, even though Al had long since fallen
away from the church. And Teresa herself, once she finished high school,
had ceased being a communicant of consequence except for the big feast
days like Christmas and Easter.

At that time, none of the Benignos, except for Teresa, knew that Ken
Taylor was in fact still married to Marilyn Hope, who lived only a few
miles away. They did not know, nor did even Teresa, about the sealed
court documents in Connecticut which recorded that he had attempted to
murder her. They had no idea that Ken had a former wife he had left to
languish alone in the pitiless heat of a room in Indianapolis days
before giving birth to a daughter he never saw.

And Ken, in turn, did not comprehend, nor would he ever really
understand, that all the tumult of the Benignos, their combativeness,
their emotional highs and lows, meant little.

He listened to Teresa grumble endlessly that her mother always looked
over her shoulder, always finding fault, he never knew that when Louise,
who suffered heart trouble, had a particularly bad siege, Teresa dropped
everything without a second's hesitation to be by her side, to nurse her
and to run the household. He didn't know that however much Teresa
complained to him about Celeste, she had burst into nearly hysterical
sobs the day Celeste was to marry Jeff White, crying inconsolably, "I'm
losing my sister," while Jeff kept saying, "Hey, come on, Teresa, we're
only going to be living three blocks away."

He had no conception of how this family could instantly and fiercely
unite when it perceived itself threatened.

In truth, Al rather liked Ken. He found him personable and respectful to
him and Louise.

And Ken was a professional man-a dentist. "You can't take that away from
him," he told Louise.

Teresa first met Ken in September 1980, at the Fulton Family Dental
Center in central Brooklyn. The center, founded by two Brooklyn dentists
with thriving private practices, had been under his direction since his
discharge from the Navy. Now there was an opening for another hygienist.

He was immediately taken by her big blue eyes and her "classic Italian
hourglass figure."

Ken's deal with the center provided a base salary against commissions.

In a highly visible location, the center attracted many of its patients
off the street. It was vital, though, to keep tabs on followup
treatments, which produced the major income. After talking to Teresa, he
realized that she was extremely intelligent. He told her that while he
needed a hygienist, his most pressing problem was supervising the
appointment books, keeping the reception room filled and the three
dentists he had hired busy. She would have some hygienic duties, but her
main job would be organizing the office, manning the front desk.

He liked how she made eye contact and said, "I'm sure I can handle
everything to your satisfaction."

He had come to pride himself on being able to enter a woman's mind.

He was sure that she was intrigued by him, but they had talked enough
for him to sense that she was not the kind to hop right into bed, like
one of the assistants in the office who was always available, no
questions asked.

This was going to require some time.

And in another way, time was a problem. He was putting in at least sixty
hours a week at the center, Monday through Saturday.

Besides the office assistant, he had scored with a couple of patients.

Cocaine kept him going. Much of the center's clientele was black.

He despised blacks and made no secret of it. When the psychiatrist who
treated Ken at the submarine base learned that one of the enlisted women
he was seeing was black, he advised Marilyn that it was a perfect
example of how low her husband's self-esteem had sunk. But Ken figured
that streetwise blacks might be good connections, trading off, say, some
dental care for a gram or two. And if he had to pay, so be it.

He'd also discovered a joint on the west side of Staten Island that
featured go-go strippers, a hangout for bikers, where if you knew the
right people, you could get just about anything you wanted. He didn't
have to be concerned with anyone he knew spotting him there, and he
would sit with a drink at the bar watching the girls perform. It wasn't
the anticipation of seeing one of them naked, guys all around yelling,
"Take it off," it was imagining the girl dancing just for him.

Teresa was still driving a used Skylark she had bought her senior year
in high school. One day a month or so after she had been hired by Ken,
she phoned the dental center to say she'd be delayed. She had to take
the car in for repairs. She would be coming in by bus, Look, Ken told
her, the Skylark was on its last legs. He worried about her driving
across the bridge during rush hours in that rattletrap. You didn't know
what could happen. Why didn't she drive to his house? It would be an
easy ten minutes. Then she could ride in with him.

He rather enjoyed the image of Marilyn, now almost thirty-six, peering
into the mirror for signs of wrinkles, having to meet this lush
twenty-one-year-old. And it worked out as he suspected.

Marilyn was in her robe in the kitchen having coffee when Teresa rang
the bell and asked for "Doctor Taylor." She turned glacial and headed
instantly for the bedroom. Ken told Teresa to wait for him in his Buick.
He went to the bedroom to get his briefcase.

"So that's your latest tramp?" Marilyn said.

"Don't be ridiculous. She works for me."

"Yeah, sure. Well, at least do me a favor.

Don't bring your punchboards around here." in the car, Teresa said,
"What was that all about?"

"It's what I have to live with."

Afterward, Teresa would park by the Staten Island side of the bridge
where Ken picked her up every morning.

During these rides, they began to exchange confidences. Teresa told Ken
about her boyfriend, Sol Aurelia, how they'd been going together for
nearly two years and that he was pressuring her about marriage.

She had thought she was madly in love with him, but now she was
uncertain. He was so demanding and once, during an argument, he had hit
her. Her father didn't like him much, but then her father hadn't really
liked most of her boyfriends. This time, though, maybe he was right. She
didn't know what to do.

His life with Marilyn, he said, was miserable. She was an unbearable
know-it-all.

If he said it was noon, she would say no, it's twelve o'clock. On top of
everything else, she was frigid.

Once when he was in the Navy and they were living in Connecticut, she
had even brought rape charges against him. "How can you rape your own
wife?" he said. She eventually dropped the charges, but it showed what
she was capable of. She'd seduced him into marrying her.

She'd been around and knew all the tricks, and he'd been just an
innocent kid in dental school.

She took him like Grant took Richmond. He would have been long gone, if
it weren't for little Astrid. He adored their daughter, he said.

Considering Marilyn's lack of interest in sex, it was a miracle she'd
been born in the first place.

Teresa told him that when she was studying to be a hygienist and had to
learn all about anatomy, she had thought of becoming a doctor.

That was funny, he said. He also had contemplated doing the same thing,
and he related how he'd been a hospital orderly at Ball State and was
handed the body of the dead infant, and when he finished the story,
Teresa uttered a gasp and impulsively squeezed his arm.

They talked about music and traded record albums. She was a fan of David
Bowie, and he gave her two of his old favorites, a Neil Young and a
Steely Dan.

Eventually the Skylark broke down completely, and Ken said he would stop
by for her at home.

Blushing, she said that she had told her parents that he was divorced.

She didn't know exactly why, it just seemed easier.

Well, it was the whitest of lies, he said. He would be, sooner or later.
Meeting her had caused him to think about many things.

Sometimes when Teresa was late getting her makeup on, he'd come in for a
cup of coffee.

Louise Benigna questioned him closely about his divorce. While he wasn't
Catholic, he said, his own parents were extremely religious people who
did not believe in divorce, nor for that matter did he.

What could he say? he said. He'd married too young. He and his wife were
totally incompatible. It had been a terrible mistake, but you had to be
man enough to admit it, pull yourself together, and go on to lead a
productive life.

Louise painted for pleasure, and he complimented her on her work and her
dressmaking talent. Obviously, Teresa had inherited her sewing skills.
He commiserated with Al about the task of trying to teach inner-city
ghetto kids, who with few exceptions didn't seem to care.

Should the Benignos ever need dental work, feel free to call on him, he
said. With their wonderful daughter on hand to help him, it would be his
pleasure.

They had not dated. Occasionally they'd have a drink after work or a
bite at a fast-food restaurant. She made an awful face the first time
she tasted Jack Daniel's, but he noticed that the next time she asked
for it on her own. Then Ken made his move. When Marilyn was flying, she
had arranged to leave Astrid in the care of a woman whom she found
through the classifieds.

The following March, while his wife was off on a three-day trip, he
asked Teresa if she was free that night. He wanted her to think about
it, he said. After all, she was practically engaged, wasn't she?

It was precisely what Teresa had been waiting for. She told Louise she
was staying overnight with one of her girlfriends. They had dinner in a
Manhattan steak house. Then he drove her to his place.

According to Ken, it was the best sex he ever had. He used all the same
raves he'd once reserved for Marilyn. Awesome.

Unbelievable heights of passion. Skyrockets going off.

It was as if in his head Teresa had become Marilyn, and Marilyn was now
Emily.

Early in the fall, Teresa told him she was pregnant.

"Is it mine?" he said.

She slapped him. It was the first time he had been hit by a woman since
his mother had done it when he was a child. To his surprise, he felt
chastened. He apologized and leaned over and kissed her.

"That's some right you pack," he said.

She had no choice, she said. He was still married and she couldn't face
her parents.

She'd have to have an abortion. He didn't argue. When it was over, he
held her hand and said, "Our time will come."

On Thanksgiving Day, after dining with Marilyn, Astrid, and Marilyn's
brother and his wife, Ken left for good, without a word.

Marilyn found a note in the kitchen that said he'd be in touch.

A few days later he phoned to set up a visit with Astrid.

"It's that Italian girl, isn't it?" Marilyn said.

"It's a lot of things," he said. After all the fights they'd had, he
thought, she was actually jealous. She was blaming everything on Teresa.
He still had her number, and he tucked that in the back of his mind.

He rented an apartment on Staten Island and now he could have Teresa
almost every evening.

But never for the whole night. Sometimes they'd fall asleep, and the
phone would ring, at three or four A.M and Louise would be on the line
saying, "Get home." It led to bitter confrontations between mother and
daughter.

Once Teresa shouted, "You don't think I'm a virgin, do you?" Al was
livid. "Never speak to your mother like that again. There are rules in
this house, and as long as you live here, you will abide by them."

The Benignos customarily had a big Sunday dinner. And every so often
there'd be an extended family get-together of assorted aunts and uncles,
nieces and nephews and cousins. On one of these occasions, an incident
occurred that nobody present, including Ken, would ever forget.

Ken was standing with Teresa on the top Step at the front door as her
grandfather Philip, Al's father, made his way slowly along the walk with
the aid of a cane. He was then ninety-three years old, retired from a
lifetime of counseling hundreds of Italian immigrants applying for
citizenship papers.

It was the first time he had seen Ken, and as Ken bent forward to help
him up the steps, he suddenly lashed out, catching Ken by surprise,
causing him to stumble off the steps. "Away," he cried.

"Get away from me!" ?" Ken turned toward Teresa and said, "What did I do
"Nothing," Teresa said, tears of embarrassment streaming down her
cheeks. "He's an old man. He's not right in the head. Let, s get out of
here.

Afterward, inside, Louise said, "Papa, what's the matter?"

"He's no good," Philip Benigna snapped.

can tell.

He's a man with a past."

"What should we do?"

"Throw him out."

Louise threw up her hands, tears rolling down her face as well.

"This is nineteen eighty-two. It's not like the Old days. I throw him
out, I throw her out, too."

That spring Teresa lost her job at the Fulton Dental Center. The two
dentists who owned it were constantly secondguessing Ken. one of them,
Dr. Irwin Azar, would arrive weekly to examine the books. Azar was being
particularly harsh in his review of procedures during an evening visit.
Teresa leapt to Ken's defense- Words were exchanged, and the next
morning, Ken told Teresa that Azar wanted her fired for insubordination.

She didn't care, she said, she hated working there anyway, she would get
another job and, indeed, that same day she was hired as a hygienist in
the office of a Staten Island dentist. Besides, she said, she needed
time for herself. She'd been so preoccupied with Ken that she had
neglected her friends. Maybe she should go back to school for more
study.

"Study what?"

She didn't know, but she was tired of being "the other woman."

Ken had used Astrid as an excuse for dragging his heels about a divorce
for too long. "People get divorced every day," she said.

"And children get hurt every day," he said.

Teresa still did not know about Emily and his daughter back in Indiana.

Nor would she.

She calmed down when he told her that Marilyn had finally retained a
lawyer. Then a couple of months later he said he had some bad news.

Marilyn had informed him that her lawyer had died. "But she'll find
another one," he said.

"The divorce is still on."

"Yes, on hold," Teresa said.

To jolly her out of her anger, he took her on a weekend trip to
Connecticut. It was the first time they had gone anywhere together.

Louise and Al couldn't do anything about it.

They stayed overnight in New London, at a motel Ken had regularly used
for his liaisons when he was stationed at the submarine base. It was
kind of spooky, he remembered, lying next to Teresa, thinking about all
those others.

On February 7, 1983, the eve of Ken's birthday, Teresa sat waiting for
him in the kitchen of his apartment. She had bought him an expensive
stereo set and champagne. First, he'd said, he had to stop by to see
Astrid. But he never came home. Teresa left him a letter: It's now P.M.
You probably don't realize you are torturing me right now, lion.

I just don't know whether you are dead or alive-maybe in the emergency
room of some hospital, maybe at your house on Travis Avenue (excuse
me-"Astrid's house"), whoever s house I don't really care ... I don't
have the guts to call Travis Ave. cause maybe you left a long time ago
and then I would really flip out cause that would mean something really
happened to you ... You are the only one I live for.

I only live for you and I only want to be with you and spend my life
with you ...  I need you to hug and kiss me and tell me you love me ...
Han, please, I don't care if you're divorced or not. I need you, only
you, and I will wait-I mean eventually you will be divorced. I don't
care if I'm too old to have kids. I don't care as long as I have you.

Actually, Ken was at his house on Travis Avenue that night-in bed with
Marilyn.

She had recently undergone plastic surgery to enlarge her breasts.

When he stopped by to be with Astrid, Marilyn said that everything had
gone well and they ought to celebrate. She wanted him to be the first to
see the results. Boy, he thought, weren't women really something?

He was sure she'd had the implants just to entice him, regretting,
because of Teresa, all the times she had rebuffed him. Well, he'd be big
about it, show her what she'd been missing.

He apologized profusely to Teresa on the phone. He swore it would never
happen again.

He wouldn't do anything to hurt her. Time had simply slipped away while
he visited with Astrid and he hadn't noticed. And he had good news,
which was why he had been concentrating so on his daughter.

The divorce was now imminent. At most a matter of weeks. It was going to
be his surprise for her.

He wrote a note for Teresa to find when she arrived at the apartment
later: Understand my feelings of loss, and perhaps you can forgive me.

I could never leave you. I hope you can forgive me ... I love you with
all my heart and will soon make you my wife if you will still have me.

I have gained strength and pledge my everlasting love to you. On my
birthday, I love you.

All my love forever. Ken.

There were many things Teresa would never know about Ken Taylor.

One of them was that right after professing his undying love for Teresa,
he asked Marilyn to drop the divorce proceedings. It had been exciting
with her the other night, he thought, just like the old days, so
exciting to see her practically beg to have him. Besides, there were
other considerations.

A divorce was going to cost him five hundred dollars a week in alimony
and child support.

And Marilyn was going to get the house, which was appreciating rapidly.

Okay, so she had put up most of the down payment@er all, he was fresh
out of the Navy, working his ass off to get a career started-and half of
the mortgage payments, but it still wasn't fair.

"I've been thinking about you and Astrid," he told her. "Teresa's so
immature. Maybe we can work things out and put it back together."

Marilyn hesitated. The truth was she couldn't stand the image of "that
receptionist." Teresa wasn't like the others whom she had never actually
seen. Since her separation from Ken, much of the tension between them
had evaporated.

He'd been really good to Astrid and good around the house, mowing the
lawn and everything, she thought. She had talked about her problems with
Ken to a couple of other flight attendants and they both said, "You
know, if a guy's not getting sex at home, he's not just going to live
without it." She recalled what the psychiatrist had said about Ken's low
self-esteem, how he needed bucking up, but in the end, she decided that
it would be better to let the divorce go through.

Then they would see what happened.

A month later, the divorce was finalized. And on March 27, Teresa's
twenty-fourth birthday, Ken sent a bouquet of flowers to Louise,
thanking her for having brought such a beautiful daughter into the
world.

Teresa was floored. Karen Oliveira remembered that Teresa called her,
exclaiming how wonderful and romantic a gesture it was, how wonderful
Ken was, Neither Karen nor other old high school friends had seen much
of Teresa since this Indiana dentist had entered her life.

It seemed so unlike Teresa, and yet so purposeful. Karen, a 4.0 graduate
of Wagner College on Staten Island, who had gone into commercial
banking, was unimpressed by Ken when she finally met him.

He seemed remote, disinterested, smug, taking @ part in the
conversation. She concluded he had to be responsible for keeping Teresa
away from everyone.

Karen hadn't taken the romance that seriously. After all, Teresa was
always in love, Marriage was usually just around the corner. Now,
though, after hearing about the bouquet that Ken sent to Louise, she
wasn't so sure.

They agreed to meet for Saturday brunch the next week. When Karen
arrived, Teresa appeared terribly upset. She told Karen a bizarre tale.

ccording to Ken, his ex-wife was threatening to blackmail him for more
money. She had photographs of Teresa naked on some beach that she
intended to send to Teresa's parents.

Teresa had not seen them. Ken said he just couldn't bring himself to
show them to her.

"I've never been nude on a beach in my life!" Teresa said. How could
this be? But then, after a momel t, she brightened considerably.

Ken, she said, had told her he had studied the pictures and concluded
that it couldn' have been Teresa, that her head was superimposed on so
neone else's body, and he wasn't going to cave in.

What kind of mind games is this guy playing?

Karen thought. She wanted to say this to Teresa, but she didn't.

She was certain it would be futile.

Their marriage was set for July 10, 1983.

Ken had planned on just going down to City Hall or finding a justice of
the peace somewhere. But Teresa wanted a big wedding.

"Don't worry," she said. "My father will pay for it."

In deference to Louise, she tried to have the ceremony at the parish
church, St. Charles, but once the crusty old monsignor learned that Ken
was divorced, he would have none of it.

They finally settled on the Reform Huguenot Church near Ken's apartment.
Her matron of honor Celeste and her bridesmaids would wear pink and
mauve. Ken said he wanted his brother Tom to be best man, and Teresa
said that she would need his measurements, all the men participating in
the ceremony were wearing light gray tuxedos.

Teresa spoke to Jean and Zach Taylor over the p She told them how
deliriously happy she was, how their son was to her, and how obvious it
was to her t was the result of his upbringing. She couldn't wait to meet
them.

She was the luckiest girl in the world, she said.

In Marion, Jean, occupied by her Sunday school classes at the First
Baptist Church, active in the Women's Baptist Circle, and a regular at
Thursday night Bible studies, felt waves of satisfaction.

Teresa Benigna, Catholic or not, was a far cry from that stewardess who
had gotten her books into "Kenny."

Odd incidents occurred that were largely ignored at the time by everyone
caught up in the preparations.

A week before the wedding, Ken approached Al Benigna and said that his
brother Tom wouldn't be able to come after all. Did Al think that
Teresa's brother Phil would fill in as his best man? Al said that he was
asking the wrong person, but Phil then Weed.

Ken was vague about the reasons why Tom could not come. Tom in fact had
another agenda. The brilliant sports career envisioned for him by his
parents was over. Just out of high school, he wrecked his knee in a
freak accident during a weight-lifting session. No more athletic
scholarships or professional contracts were in the offing.

Living at home, bouncing from one job to the next, he had tuned out
first with marijuana and hashish, and then with cocaine, which he found
easily available on Marion's south side.

Jean and Zach did nothing to address his problem. It was as if it were
an unacceptable intrusion in their ordered life.

On Wednesday night before the Sunday wedding, Karen Oliveira told Teresa
that the bright blue eyeliner she used might not be appropriate.

Why not go down to Garber's, a local department store, the next day and
have the ladies in the beauty salon make her up? If she liked it, they
could do her for the wedding. They went together. Afterward, Teresa
panicked. She was late. She had to pick up Ken. Ken was waiting for her.

Ken's parents would be arriving. "So what?" Karen had said. "You're
doing things for the wedding. How could he be mad at you?" Karen had
seen Teresa upset, but never out of control like this. There was
something in her eyes that was different, close to fear.

When Ken was asked for his list of friends, the only two names he
produced were fellow dentists from the Fulton Center. In all, one
hundred fifty guests attended the ceremony.

At a cookout Al and Louise gave on the eve of the wedding, Jean Taylor
was withdrawn. She wasn't used to, as she said, "that Italian custom of
hugging and kissing."

The hit of the festivities was Jean's mother, who had flown up from
Florida. In a limousine on the way to the church, she said to the
bridesmaids, "Do you ladies mind if I smoke?"

When they said no, she sighed and said, "With them I can't smoke or
drink, can't do anything. I can't wait to get back to Florida, get all
my clothes off, and lie in the sun nude with a gin and tonic."

The reception was held at Dellwood Manor, a popular Staten Island
catering hall. The theme song, from the Boz Scaggs group, was "Love,
Look What You've Done to Me.

Jean and Zach left for Marion the next morning. On her return, Jean told
a neighbor, "It was just like a Hollywood wedding." Marilyn Hope learned
about Ken's marriage when a friend called after reading a notice in the
local paper, the Staten Island Advance.

Ken and Teresa spent their first night as husband and wife in a hotel at
Kennedy Airport. Then they flew to Mexico, to Las Brisas, the famous
Acapulco resort, the culmination of all of Teresa's romantic dreams.
John F. Kennedy had taken Jacqueline there on their honeymoon.

They were to be there a week.

The following Sunday night Al and Louise drove to Kennedy to meet their
flight. Teresa and Ken were not on it. Al made inquiries at the counter.
No, an agent told him, there was no Dr. Kenneth and Mrs. Taylor on the
passenger manifest. They had not boarded the flight.

By now it was almost one A.M. On the way back to Staten Island, Al said,
"They're probably having a good time and decided to stay over.

Maybe they went somewhere else."

"Why didn't they call?"

"Look, they're busy. They're on their honeymoon."

Near dawn, Al awoke. Louise was not in bed.

He went into the kitchen and found her at the table. She was saying her
rosary.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'll call if we don't hear from them."

THREIF, The response to Al Benigna's first call on Monday morning-to the
Las Brisas Hotel-left him reeling. After a pause, a voice said that
there was no Dr. or Mrs. Taylor registered.

Al demanded to speak to someone in authority.

Then a second man, identifying himself as an assistant receptions
manager, told Al that the Taylors had checked out the previous Thursday.

When Al tried to question him further, the man said that he was sorry,
but he was unable to provide any more information. While the man had
been quite polite, Al could sense there was something he wasn't telling
him, a hesitancy in the way he spoke. "I regret, sir, I can't tell you
any more than this," he insisted.

Al next telephoned the Mexican Consulate in Manhattan, which referred
him to the Mexican Tourist Office. A woman there suggested that he
contact the American government representative in Acapulco.

While the United States did not maintain a consulate in the resort city,
there was a consular agent. If anything untoward had occurred, he would
certainly know about it. She gave Al his name, L. J. Bon Urbanek, and
his number.

Al got right through. He explained that his daughter was on her
honeymoon and that she and her husband, Dr. Kenneth Taylor, had,
according to the hotel, checked out well ahead of schedule.

That's all he knew, Al said. It didn't add up.

Urbanek, it then turned out, was quite aware of what had happened.

Teresa was in a hospital, recovering from a "terrible beating."

The Mexican police had charged her husband with the beating.

Al's knees sagged. He gripped the door frame by the wall phone in the
kitchen.

Hospital, what hospital? he said.

The Centro Medico in Acapulco, Urbanek said.

Had Urbanek seen Teresa?

No, he had not.

Had he seen her husband?

Yes, Urbanek said. In jail, where he was being held.

What was the number of the hospital?

After Urbanek gave it to him, he said that if he could be of any more
service to please call.

Al could tell from his distant, bureaucratic tone that he was hoping
that it would be the last conversation they'd have.

He turned to Louise and related what he'd just heard. Tears sprang to
her eyes. There was something else in them, too. Hate. "He did it to
her?" she said.

"That's what they say."

Al dialed the hospital. A Spanish voice answered. He didn't speak
Spanish, Al said.

Was there somebody who spoke English? "Espera un momenta," the voice
said. After what seemed an eternity, another voice said, "Yes?" Al said
he wanted to speak to his daughter, Teresa Taylor, who was a patient. It
was urgent. There was a second long hiatus before the same person said
that Senora Taylor was being wheeled out to a phone.

Al closed his eyes. Wheeled out!

Then a voice so pathetically weak and slurred that he could barely hear
it said, "Hello."

Al struggled to keep his own voice calm.

"Teresa, it's Daddy. Teresa, what happened?"

"I don't know."

"How are you?"

"I don't know."

"Well, what's wrong with you?"

"I don't know."

"Where's Ken?"

"I don't know."

Al couldn't restrain himself. "Teresa, how can you be in hospital and
not know why?"

"Daddy," she whispered, "all I know is that I went to sleep in my hotel
room and I woke up in the hospital. Daddy, I have to go back to my bed
now."

"Teresa, I'll get down there as soon as I possibly can."

He didn't know if she had heard him. There was no answer, and then the
connection was lost.

Al called Celeste and Jeff. They said they'd be right over. Just before
they arrived, the phone rang. To Al's amazement, it was Ken.

"Ken, where are you?" Al said.

"In the hospital with Teresa."

"But they said you were in jail."

"I was. I had to pay my way out. Five hundred bucks.

I got here just after you called Teresa."

"Ken, what's going on?" He and Teresa, he said, had been in their
casita, their viiia, asleep.

Sometime in the middle of Thursday night burglars had broken in and
stolen jewelry and cash. He had been hit on the head and knocked
unconscious, and Teresa had been brutally beaten. When he came to, he
saw her lying in a pool of blood. He called for help. Then he passed out
again. The next thing he knew, the hotel doctor and the police were
standing over him. Teresa was taken to the hospital. He was carted off
to jail. He'd been held there in horrible conditions ever since, except
when the police had escorted him back to the hotel to retrieve five
hundred dollars he had hidden in a suitcase. It was only after he had
given them the cash that he was finally released. He had been the victim
of a sadistic shakedown.

"Al," he said, get down here as soon as you can.

And bring plenty of money."

Al looked at Louise, Celeste and Jeff. "He says that he didn't do it.

He said burglars broke in and robbed and attacked them."

"What else would he say?" Celeste snapped.

There was no way, she said, that her er would leave for Acapulco without
her. Al thought that was a good idea. If Teresa was as badly hurt as it
seemed, having her sister on hand -might reassure her.

Besides, he dreaded going alone.

-He called a friend, a travel agent who had booked the honeymoon trip
for Ken and Teresa.

The agent said he'd Set them priority ticket status and reminded Al to
bring birth certificates as proof of U.S. citizenship. Celeste suddenly
let out a wail. When she had been abducted briefly in Brooklyn, the
gunman had filched the wallet with her birth certificate.

She had never replaced it. Then she remembered that Teresa had an extra
one. She'd use it. Who would know the difference?

They landed in Acapulco on Tuesday afternoon, July 19, Just nine days
after Teresa and Ken were married. On the -Right down, Celeste
remembered how, like everyone else, she hadn't taken Ken seriously at
first. Teresa loved all her boyfriends and planned to marry them all.

When it seemed that this time it was going to be different, she took
another look at Ken.

She personally didn't think he was all that great.

She didn't like the way he always put down New York, his talk of nigger
this and spic that, and how everything was so filthy and the schools so
lousy, and so forth. Of all the guys Teresa had gone out with, the one
Celeste liked the best ended up being a plumber, but Teresa, of course,
wasn't going to settle for that.

Before Ken, none of Teresa's boyfriends had been college graduates.

That was his big attraction, Celeste decided. Intellectually, he was on
her level, and he was a doctor. And even if Celeste found him
uncomfortably "different," she chalked it up to his being from Indiana.

He wasn't a New Yorker.

He wasn't like "us."

"If that son of a bitch touched her, I'll kill him myself," she said.

"Celeste, please," Al Benigna said.

They took a cab to the hospital and were directed to Teresa's room
Nothing they had imagined prepared them for the sickening sight.

Celeste struggled to suppress the scream rising inside her. She
recognized her sister only by her hair. The entire right side of her
face was swathed in bandages covering multiple wounds from broken glass.
The other side was a grotesquely swollen, purplish mass.

Her one exposed eye was no more than a slit.

Her puffy lips were black and cracked. Her mouth was slightly open so
that they could see the broken, jagged fragments of her front teeth.

There was a big bandage on her neck, by her jugular, where her throat
had been deeply slashed.

Ken was seated next to her on the bed. He started to get up when they
entered. They ignored him.

Celeste rushed to Teresa's side, took her hand and squeezed it gently.

"I'm here," she said.

The slit that was Teresa's one good eye widened a little. She tried to
smile. "Hi, sister," she mumbled.

Aghast, Al stared at her. Ken stood there, but it was as though he
weren't present.

"Teresa, how do you feel?" Al said.

"I don't know."

"Who did this to you?"

"I don't know."

"The police say that Ken did this to you. Did Ken do it?"

"No.

"How do you know he didn't do it?"

"Because Ken loves me."

"See," Ken said, speaking for the first time.

"I told You.

Al took him into the hall. Ken repeated the same story he had told on
the phone. Al believed him. How could he not believe his own daughter?

The physician attending Teresa arrived. He told Al that the lid of her
bandaged right eye had a deep cut which had been stitched.

Bits of glass had been removed from the eye itself. The surgery had gone
well, and he was confident the eye would not suffer permanent
impairment.

At the worst, she would have blurred vision for a while. There were
stitches on her face and neck. There'd be scars, he said, but nothing
disfiguring. Best of all, there was no evidence of neurological damage.

Meanwhile, she was on antibiotics lo guard against infection.

When would she be able to travel? Al asked.

The doctor said he'd have to see.

-Ken said he was hungry. He hadn't eaten during his four days of
incarceration. Celeste went with him to find a restaurant.

As they walked down a dark street, she suddenly felt waves of panic.

If he and Teresa had been attacked as he had described, why was this
big, strong guy able to stride alongside her while her sister lay
immobile in a hospital bed? It didn't make sense. He could kill her on
the spot, and who would know?

While they were gone, four men appeared at the door of Teresa's room and
motioned to Al.

After Al explained to them who he was, they said they were police.

They asked where Ken was, and after Al said that he was out for some
supper, they said they would return in the morning. Al started to get
uneasy.

Right after that, a second physician appeared, Dr. Esteban Ortiz Pavon,
who handled medical problems at Las Brisas and who had first treated
Teresa. It was a miracle she had lived, he said.

Lying as she was in a pool of blood, he initially believed that she was
dead until he discovered a faint pulse.

Al had not noticed any visible injuries to Ken, and it bothered him.

He asked Dr. Ortiz what Ken's condi the phone. Al believed him. How
could he not believe his own daughter?

The physician attending Teresa arrived. He told Al that the lid of her
bandaged right eye had a deep cut which had been stitched.

Bits of glass had been removed from the eye itself. The surgery had gone
well, and he was confident the eye would not suffer permanent
impairment.

At the worst, she would have blurred vision for a while. There were
stitches on her face and neck. There'd be scars, he said, but nothing
disfiguring. Best of all, there was no evidence of neurological damage.

Meanwhile, she was on antibiotics lo guard against infection.

When would she be able to travel? Al asked.

The doctor said he'd have to see.

-Ken said he was hungry. He hadn't eaten during his four days of
incarceration. Celeste went with him to find a restaurant.

As they walked down a dark street, she suddenly felt waves of panic.

If he and Teresa had been attacked as he had described, why was this
big, strong guy able to stride alongside her while her sister lay
immobile in a hospital bed? It didn't make sense. He could kill her on
the spot, and who would know?

While they were gone, four men appeared at the door of Teresa's room and
motioned to Al.

After Al explained to them who he was, they said they were police.

They asked where Ken was, and after Al said that he was out for some
supper, they said they would return in the morning. Al started to get
uneasy.

Right after that, a second physician appeared, Dr. Esteban Ortiz Pavon,
who handled medical problems at Las Brisas and who had first treated
Teresa. It was a miracle she had lived, he said.

Lying as she was in a pool of blood, he initially believed that she was
dead until he discovered a faint pulse.

Al had not noticed any visible injuries to Ken, and it bothered him.

He asked Dr. Ortiz what Ken's condition was at the time. Other than some
scratches on his hand and knees, undoubtedly from the broken glass that
littered the room, Ortiz said that he only had a small lump on his head,
certainly nothing that might require attention before he was led away by
the police.

Then Dr. Ortiz dropped a bombshell. On his way to Teresa's room, a nurse
said to him that she had overheard police talking about getting some
more money from the Americans. He advised Al to speed Teresa out of the
country as soon as possible.

After Al relayed this to Ken and Celeste, Ken said that it simply
confirmed everything he'd been saying. It was all an outrageous
shakedown, Al tracked down Urbanek, the U.S. consular agent, who said
that since it was a criminal affair, it was out of his hands. He advised
Al to retain a lawyer.

Before Al had left for Acapulco, a neighbor of his in New Dorp had
provided him with the name and number of a lawyer in Mexico City in case
he needed any legal help.

In the morning, Al went to the central telephone office in Acapulco to
make the call.

To his relief, his neighbor had already alerted the lawyer. After
listening to Al, the lawyer said he would get right on it and told Al to
return to the hospital.

A man a I nd a, woman came to the room. The woman was a very attractive
redhead, the man with her, well-dressed, was obviously Mexican.

The woman did all the talking. Whatever her citizenship, she sounded
very American to Al. She questioned Ken about the supposed break-in at
Las Brisas. Ken gave his version again. When he had finished, the woman
said, "Okay, I guess that's it." Then the man handed Ken a release
absolving the hotel of any responsibility for the assault.

Ken and Teresa signed it.

A few minutes later Teresa's physician reappeared. Now he said that he
was very pleased with her progress and that she was able to leave the
hospital.

Bewildered by these curious and contradictory events, consumed with
getting Teresa safety home, Al booked seats on an afternoon flight out.

He advised the airline that his daughter had been severely injured and
would be traveling as an invalid.

Then Dr. Ortiz reappeared. He offered to drive them to the airport.

On the way, Al and Celeste were on edge worrying that she did not have
her own birth certificate. If the cops wanted to stop them-to shake them
down for more :money, as Ken kept insisting-all they'd need was the
excuse that Celeste had entered Mexico under an assumed name.

But at the airport they were whisked through, bypassing the normal
formalities. Teresa was wheeled to the plane and carried on board.

She and Ken were put in first class. Al and Celeste would be in coach.

Nothing doing, Celeste said. She was staying with her sister.

The crew was the same one as on the flight down, and finally she was
allowed to crouch by Teresa's feet.

Once seated, with a chance to reflect, it occurred to Al that whatever
else had been going on, everyone in Mexico wanted to wash their hands of
the whole business.

Throughout the flight to New York, Celeste remained -close to Teresa,
reaching up continually to wipe the drool from her mouth.

Ken kept giving Teresa pills and taking some himself.

Celeste demanded to know what they were. He said Valium. It had been
prescribed by the hospital, and she should take a couple herself.

They all needed to relax, he said.

Celeste said to him, "You did it to her, didn't you?" and he said, "No,
I didn't," and she remembered how Teresa pushed angrily at her.

They landed around midnight. Louise broke down when she saw her daughter
and had to be supported by Teresa's brother Phil. Teresa whispered, "Hi,
Ma," which produced more tears, but this time in relief. At least Teresa
knew who Louise was.

Teresa was taken directly to Staten Island Hospital. Louise and Phil
stayed by her bedside through the night. Exhausted, Al went home to
sleep, as did Celeste. Ken, After being examined in the emergency room,
returned to his own apartment.

-Hospital records show that Ken was admitted at 12:40 A.M July 21: "Pt.
states he was hit in head and passed Out. Was in Mexico when assaulted.
No bumps on his head noted." They also recorded that while at first Ken
appeared to be "in a dazed state," he was "alert and orientated" when he
left.

Teresa remained in the hospital for a week.

The records note that along with everything else she was suffering from
retrograde amnesia," that she was "very frightened and needed much
assurance," and that she "states her husband told her a group of people
entered the room and beat them UP-.

" After Ken's efforts to persuade Marilyn Hope to drop the divorce,
after all the hints of his getting back together with her, she was livid
when a friend phoned to say that there was a notice in the paper that he
had gotten married.

He had told Marilyn that he wouldn't be around to see Astrid for a week
or so because he was going on a short vacation, possibly to see his
parents in Indiana, and he set the date for his next visit for Monday,
July 19. When he didn't show up, she called the dental center in
Brooklyn.

At first, she was simply told that he wasn't in. Then she was told that
he might not ever be in, that Ken wasn't working there anymore.

Alarms went off in her head. She wouldn't put anything past him.

Maybe he had sneaked off with Teresa to avoid alimony and child support
payments. Maybe she should start planning to sell the house.

She felt funny calling the Benignos, so her sister-in-law spoke to
Louise and reported that Ken and Teresa apparently had been attacked on
their honeymoon in Acapulco, that she was in the hospital, and that he
was being detained.

Marilyn decided she better get this firsthand and finally telephoned
Louise herself. Louise was crying so hard that it was difficult to get a
coherent story. One thing was clear, however.

The police suspected Ken. Then Louise blurted out, "Is Ken a
wife-beater?"

Marilyn hesitated. It was all so confusing.

She didn't know what really had taken place in Acapulco. She remembered
the psychiatrist advising that what had happened in Connecticut was an
"isolated incident." How could she say, Well, he did this, this, and
this, and wind up wrecking his life? What did she owe these people,
anyway?

"You're not answering me," Louise said.

And Marilyn Hope said, "Ken never beat me."

Then, perhaps three days after that, Ken was at her front door, smiling
and saying the lawn needed mowing. He would get right to it.

She really needed a man around the house.

He said that they had been "mugged" and robbed in Acapulco. He had been
knocked out, he said, and Teresa was beaten. He said that he had been
told by various people down there, among them even a lawyer, that the
muggers often acted in cahoots with the cops so that it would look as
though the husband were the assailant, thus absolving Acapulco itself of
any blame, not hurting, you know, the tourist trade.

He said it was Marilyn's fault that he'd gotten married. If she had only
agreed to postpone the divorce. But she had rejected him, and Teresa had
been so relentless in her pursuit. It was important for him to believe
that someone cared for him, loved and respected him. He saw, though,
that it wasn't going to last with Teresa, and he would soon be in the
throes of another divorce.

Yeah, well, she said acidly, in that case he had better get to it before
he knocked up Teresa and discovered what it was like to contend with two
weekly alimony and support checks.

Ken visited Teresa at the hospital everyday.

Louise had warned the floor nurses never to leave him alone with her
daughter. Of course, as a practical matter, this was not possible.

One nurse recalled that she heard a cry from the room, and when she went
in, she observed Teresa stumbling backward against a wall.

Ken was standing nearby. He said that she had tried to get up and lost
her balance. While the nurse thought it strange, there was no evidence
of an assault, certainly Teresa did not say anything, and she reported
nothing about it at the time.

Ken told the Benignos that because he wanted to be with Teresa
throughout her recovery, he was quitting his position at the Fulton
Family Dental Center. He would launch his own practice on Staten Island.
He was even thinking of hiring young Phil as a sort of office manager.

Celeste remembered being present when Ken was on the phone-presumably to
the center-explaining to someone that he would not he returning because
he had to stay with his wife, she needed his support. His voice choked
as he described Teresa's condition, In fact, although none of the
Benignos was aware of it-he had no choice. During his absence, the two
dentists who owned the center, Irwin Azar and his partner Edward Sutton,
discovered that Ken had stolen at least five thousand dollars-actually,
closer to ten thousand-in cash and checks.

They elected not to press charges, they just wanted him out of their
hair.

To hide this, Ken subsequently submitted a letter of resignation which
he showed to Al and Louise. He did not mention that the Internal Revenue
Service had also begun an action to garnishee his wages.

At dinner at the Benignos, Ken went into more details about what had
occurred that Thursday in Acapulco. They both had awakened a little hung
over. The night before they'd been in town to pick up a dress Teresa had
wanted. They'd bought the dress two days before, but a substitute had
been boxed. According to Ken, the girl wrapping the dress had
accidentally spilled Coke on it. Teresa spotted this and there'd been a
dispute, but the guy who owned the store had been very accommodating and
said he would have another dress, in the style Teresa wanted, ready on
Wednesday. Teresa tried it on and looked gorgeous.

Afterward, they fotmd a pleasant open-air restaurant and had a "real
nice time," except that they drank too much.

On Thursday, they lounged around the small private pool that went with
their casita, clearing their heads. In the evening they drove into
Acapulco to a restaurant that a couple of Teresa's girlfriends had told
her about. When they finally located it, it was closed, and they wound
up in another restaurant. They had drinks and ordered dinner, but were
never served, even though other customers, who had come in after them,
were already eating. Teresa got angry, he said, and cussed out the
maitre d'. After they left, he calmed her and they decided to go to a
restaurant at Las Brisas called El Arsenal. Teresa had just taken a bite
into, a mango in her salad when she spied a worm. Now , according to
Ken, she was really in a state, thinking that she had swallowed part of
the worm. She ran to the rest room, sure that she was going to throw up,
but didn't.

As soon as they returned to the casita, though, she headed straight to
the bathroom and this time she vomited. After taking off her rings and a
bracelet and putting them on a night table, she washed and went to bed.
He was starving by now, he said, and ordered room service for himself
Around ten o'clock that evening he thought he might either have a swim
or go to bed himself He opted for bed. He still wasn't feeling all that
well from the previous night.

He got into bed next to the sleeping Teresa.

He was dozing off, he said, when he thought he heard a noise by the
glass door leading to the balcony. He got up and flipped the switch that
illuminated the balcony and the pool below. He didn't see anything, so
he turned off the lights and returned to bed.

He was asleep-it couldn't have been more than a few minutes-when he
received a terrific blow to his head. He felt hands grabbing his feet
and pulling him off the bed. His forehead hit the stone floor.

Ken said that he staggered up, only to receive a karate-like kick in the
back of his neck. After that everything went black.

When he recovered consciousness, he was lying on the floor. He saw
Teresa nearby, also on the floor. She was splattered with blood.

There was blood on the wall. Shards of broken glass were everywhere on
the floor between the bed and wall. He saw the telephone on the floor.

He crawled over the glass to it. His first call reached the kitchen.

He tried again and this time, the front desk answered. He couldn't
recall what he said exactly, but he had cried out for help.

He went to Teresa and checked her pulse.

She was unconscious and bleeding profusely, but she was alive. He was
afraid to move her. He didn't know what might have happened to her neck.
He said that there were pieces of glass in his cheek and in his hands
and knees. He made it into the bathroom to cleanse himself.

He tottered to the balcony to see if anybody was in sight, stumbled on a
step, and fainted. The next thing he knew, he was surrounded by hotel
personnel and then cops.

He wouldn't wish the jail he was taken to on his worst enemy, He was
confined in a compound where the sun beat down mercilessly. Flies and
roaches were everywhere. There was no place to bathe. The only toilet
was an open hole in the ground. The stench was unbelievable.

The food was revolting just to look at. He had managed to bring a ,few
dollars with him and on his second day purchased some doughnuts and
coffee.

They wouldn't let him write to Teresa nor would they tell him how she
was. By Sunday night, he realized that he would have to buy his way out.
He told them that he had money at the hotel, and on Monday morning he
was brought to Las Brisas to get it. He was sure they'd want more, which
was why he had asked -Al to bring as much as he could.

Listening to this, eyes boring into Ken, her normally soft voice up a
notch, Louise Benigna said, "Ken, what I don't -understand is how
nothing happened to you, and my daughter is lying in a hospital."

At that, Ken bent his head, hunched his shoulder, and ,Slowly swiveled
his neck, his hand reaching to the back of his neck, rubbing it lightly,
as if in mute testament to the marvel of his survival from the karate
kick. He acted as if they were incapable of understanding the
implications of the miracle that he was not permanently paralyzed
instead of sitting there at the table dining with them. "I was lucky,"
he said.

The real marvel, Celeste remembered, was how bland and cool he was about
it. Never being at all defensive, not -once raising his voice, never
showing the slightest irritation or temper, as though he understood
completely their misgivings, doubts and suspicions..

"The psychiatrist at the hospital thinks you did it," Louise said.

"What does the psychiatrist know?" he said, waving his hand derisively.
"I know. He's like everybody else. You want to believe I did it, then
believe it. Why doesn't anybody believe Teresa?"

That was the failure of the psychiatrist at Staten Island Hospital,
Karen Oliveira always believed. After talking to Ken, he had concluded
that Ken was guilty of the assault.

However, he was incapable of drawing Teresa out, and became, in her
eyes, simply another one of Ken's silent accusers. Teresa managed to
recall seeing "bare feet" during the attack, but that was before she
retreated into a shell. "Ken would never do that to me," she insisted,
and abruptly halted her sessions with the psychiatrist, Like almost
everyone else, Karen was convinced that Ken had done it. "What
happened?" she asked her dearest friend, and got the same story from
Teresa. But it wasn't what Teresa said, it was how she said it that so
disturbed Karen. Usually Teresa was so animated, so full of life.

Now, though, when the subject of Acapulco came up, she got a faraway
look in her eyes, as if her mind were a blank, and then she'd begin in
this monotone to speak of people breaking into the room. It was not
genuine but something rehearsed, something she was parroting.

Finally Karen gave up. Teresa wouldn't-or couldn't-recall the events of
that night.

It was the same thing for Celeste. She kept hammering at the theme of
Ken's guilt until Teresa turned on her and said, "Stop it!

How would you like it if you were me and I told you that it was Jeff who
beat you up?"

Celeste told Louise, "Ma, you better cool it, because Teresa is getting
mad and she'll want to take off and that'll be that. He's her husband
and you just have to let it go."

That was the overriding fear of the Benignos when they discussed the
situation privately.

"We have to consider Teresa's attitude," Al said. "He's a dentist.

If we treat him badly, he could just pick up and go anywhere, and we'll
never see her again. The best thing is to try to keep them as close to
us as possible."

And for Al, as he hashed Acapulco over and over again in his mind,
nothing made sense.

It'd been their honeymoon! He could imagine they'd had a fight.

Even that a husband might slap his wife around. But it was too much for
him to accept that Ken could have committed this tern@ble crime.

,After she was released from the hospital, Teresa and Ken stayed with Al
and Louise for nearly a month in the room that she and Celeste used to
share. The slightest sound in the night would bring Louise upright in
bed, straining her ears for anything untoward. She secretly wrote a
letter to Las Brisas asking for information about what had occurred.

The executive administrative assistant replied that in his ,opinion, as
well as that of his security director, Ken was .the culprit.

Louise did not confront Teresa with this. She could hear Ken telling
her, What do you expect them to say? Ken even talked to Al about suing
the hotel for its lax security, but since this would require his
returning to Mexico, it was a rather empty gesture.

For Karen Oliveira, there would be another jarring note. To launch his
new practice, Ken had entered into an ,arrangement with two Staten
Island dentists to lease two of their offices and equipment.

The two dentists would also ,share in the profits. The advantage for him
was that the offices were already functioning. But he needed some seed
capital.

Karen's father was a bank otlicer, who coincidentally had been
instrumental in providing financing for the Fulton Family Dental Center.
Teresa asked her to speak to him about helping Ken get started.

,Karen's father was not sympathetic. He'd heard from Karen, of course,
about her views on Acapulco, but besides that, he had met Ken two or
three times and didn't trust .him. "It wasn't anything in particular,"
he later said. "This fellow just didn't come across clear." But because
of Teresa, he told Karen, he wouldn't do anything to prevent a loan,
he'd stay out of it and let the application go through ,the normal
process.

The result was startling. Ken was about as bad a risk as -you could
find. He had no credit at all. In a time when every credit card company
in the country was beginning a -,4nassive, competitive campaign to
enroll new customers, , every card Ken possessed had been canceled.

Sears was after him for arrears sed to share. The slightest sound in the
night would bring Louise upright in bed, straining her ears for anything
untoward. She secretly wrote a letter to Las Brisas asking for
information about what had occurred.

The executive administrative assistant replied that in his ,opinion, as
well as that of his security director, Ken was .the culprit.

Louise did not confront Teresa with this. She could hear Ken telling
her, What do you expect them to say? Ken even talked to Al about suing
the hotel for its lax security, but since this would require his
returning to Mexico, it was a rather empty gesture.

For Karen Oliveira, there would be another jarring note. To launch his
new practice, Ken had entered into an ,arrangement with two Staten
Island dentists to lease two of their offices and equipment.

The two dentists would also ,share in the profits. The advantage for him
was that the offices were already functioning. But he needed some seed
capital.

Karen's father was a bank otlicer, who coincidentally had been
instrumental in providing financing for the Fulton Family Dental Center.
Teresa asked her to speak to him about helping Ken get started.

,Karen's father was not sympathetic. He'd heard from Karen, of course,
about her views on Acapulco, but besides that, he had met Ken two or
three times and didn't trust .him. "It wasn't anything in particular,"
he later said. "This fellow just didn't come across clear." But because
of Teresa, he told Karen, he wouldn't do anything to prevent a loan,
he'd stay out of it and let the application go through ,the normal
process.

The result was startling. Ken was about as bad a risk as -you could
find. He had no credit at all. In a time when every credit card company
in the country was beginning a -,4nassive, competitive campaign to
enroll new customers, , every card Ken possessed had been canceled.

Sears was after him for arrears of nearly $6,000. Ken had to use
Teresa's American Express card to pay her hospital bill.

Once again Ken escaped a confrontation. Karen decided simply to tell
Teresa, after the bank had turned down Ken's application, that her
father's hands were tied, that there wasn't anything more he could do.

Finally, Ken got $7,500 from a bank in Marion after Zach Taylor
co-signed the loan,.

Neither Jean nor Zach rushed east to see their new daughter-in-law in
the hospital, in fact, they never came at all. "Well, there was the
cost, the expense, taking off from, work, that kind of thing," Zach
said, and Jean said, "I felt that the Benignos and Teresa had a lot of
friends and relatives, and we'd be too much.

And the way Ken talked, he was all right."

Gradually Teresa recovered, the scars on her face and neck fading.

Ken did root-canal work and the crowns for her fractured teeth.

He wanted to remove one root entirely. It was sure to abscess
eventually, he told her. But she was adamantly against that. She didn't
want another hole in her head, she said. She was, though, in constant
pain.

Ken prescribed extraordinarily large amounts of codeine.

She returned to her job as a hygienist in the office of Dr. Roland Avis
on Staten Island. He was delighted to have her back.

And like her scars, the trepidation everyone felt also began to fade.

"It just faded in time," Celeste remembered. "We talked about it still,
but as she healed, you know, life just went on and it just kind of got
pushed aside. She'd get so mad if you said anything about it.

" One of the few people who accepted Acapulco according to Teresa was
Angela Arone, a cousin on Al's side. Angela admired Teresa intensely,
had always looked up to her, and she'd said from the beginning, "Look,
Teresa wouldn't lie. If she says that's what happened, that's the way it
did," Inevitably, except for Louise, who had dark forebodings that she
kept to herself, friends began to adopt this attitude' And then even
Louise came to have a new focus. That autumn, Teresa announced that she
was pregnant. It was 6,the catharsis everybody desperately needed.

Acapulco, for any practical purpose, was forgotten.

Ken appeared to be a new man, exultant and proud, hovering protectively
over his wife. To the annoyance of Dr. Avis, he would often visit Teresa
at work, using office .forms there to write out prescriptions in her
name for Tylenol 3, which contained codeine.

Ken's three-room apartment would be too cramped with a baby.

Teresa wanted a house.

She had always been jealous of the house Marilyn had on Staten Island.

Ken said that he wanted to be in the country. They began looking in New
Jersey. She found her dream house in rural Manalapan Township in
Monmouth County. A two-story wood shingle structure on a corner lot in a
relatively new devel4Dpment, it had a backyard swimming pool and was
less than an hour's drive to work for them both.

Although the township was on the verge of a population explosion, real
estate values had temporarily flattened out .and they were able to
negotiate an $89,000 purchase price. On December 3, 1983, Teresa
provided the down payment from her savings.

That December, during one of his visits with his daughter, Astrid, Ken
first told Marilyn that he was going to be a father again. She remained
his true love, he said, and he yearned with all his heart to be back
with her, but now that Teresa was pregnant, what could he do?

He had to stay with her, for a while anyway.

At the end of the year, Teresa resigned from her job with .Dr. Avis.

She said that her husband needed her to help him in his own practice.

Before departing, she confided her worry about finances to Ann Toppino,
another hygienist in the office with whom she had become quite friendly.

Teresa also said that Ken had tried to get her to terminate her
pregnancy.

In March, in her sixth month, right after her twenty-fifth birthday,
Teresa went into premature labor. She was rushed to St. Peter's Medical
Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

She remained hospitalized for four days.

Tests showed that the fetus was unharmed and that she was carrying a
boy. No physical reasons were found for her early contractions.

After talking to her, her gynecologist concluded that her concern over
her husband's practice had been a contributing factor.

Further work in Ken's office was out of the question. Teresa was to have
absolute bed rest for three weeks. After that, she was restricted to
minimal activity around the house. Louise and Celeste were constantly in
attendance.

It was a particularly bittersweet time for Teresa. Her sister had just
discovered that she also was pregnant. Soon after the move to Manalapan,
the house next door to the one she and Ken had bought came on the
market, and Teresa-thrilled with the thought of having Celeste and Jeff
As neighbor'id everything she could to get them to buy it, even calling
Karen Oliveira to ask her father if he would be able to help on the
mortgage. But Jeff, who worked as @,en oiler on the Staten Island ferry
service, decided that they simply couldn't swing it on his salary, and
he and Celeste settled for a condominium apartment in New Dorp not far
from Louise and Al.

,The one echo that reverberated from Acapulco was Teresa's paranoia
about being left alone.

Once, while confined to bed, she asked Al to please install a lock on
the door between the house and the attached garage. She'd been after Ken
to do it, but he never seemed to have time. He was so preoccupied with
building his practice, she said.

When Louise or Celeste weren't available, especially ,after she could
get out of bed for brief periods, Teresa's cousin Angela filled in.

Geography especially had drawn them close together.

Angela, who now had a baby girl of ,her own, was married to Peter Rozek,
a husky Polish steelworker, and lived in East Brunswick, about twenty
minutes away by car.

Angela had been one of Teresa's bridesmaids, and of all those around
Teresa, she was the least critical of Ken. He appeared to her to be a
"nice enough guy, quiet, reserved and smart."

She noticed that Teresa was the one who ths,played all the external
signs of affection, hugging and kissing Ken and holding his hand.

Clearly, Teresa was the "lover." But wasn't that what love did to some
people? she thought. She herself had been a lot like that with Peter.

And of all the people who knew Teresa and Ken, the Rozeks, after the
move to Manalapan, socialized the most with them. Both women had bubbly,
outgoing personalities, and their husbands, athletic and reserved,
shared a common interest in golf and tennis.

Every so often, though, the specter of Acapulco would :return.

Once, in February, the Taylors, the Rozeks, and Peter's brother and his
wife went to a "couples only" weekend at a resort in the Pennsylvania
Poconos. They had adjoining rooms. But suddenly, as they were checking
in, Teresa insisted on the middle room. "If something happens," she
said, "I want everyone to hear it."

Then two incidents occurred which, except for their curix)us nature,
didn't mean that much to Angela at the time. She was the least
judgmental of people, everyone, she believed, had his or her hangups,
and whatever went on behind closed doors really was nobody's business.

But in late March, she and her mother-Teresa's aunt-and her
nine-month-old daughter met Teresa for lunch at a shopping mall.

Midway through lunch, Angela's mother took the child off for a diaper
change, and out of the blue, Teresa said, "Tell me something.

Does Peter ever like to eat you right at your period?"

Angela stared at her and said, "Ugh, no."

"Well, Ken does."

"God, that's gross."

Angela remembered thinking that with Teresa pregnant this couldn't be a
major issue right now. Before anything more was said, Angela's mother
and daughter returned to the table.

Then, three days later, Teresa went into premature labor and Angela
forgot all about it.

In the weeks afterward, whenever Angela couldn't get over to visit
Teresa, who was still fearful of being alone the two of them would talk
on the phone for hours at a clip, "just girl talk," Angela would recall,
"You know, junk stuff, what was going on in the soap operas, stuff going
on With movie stars, what the current stories were, that kind of thing."

Around the beginning of May, a major drug bust was in the news and
during one of their conversations, Teresa said, "Ken smokes Pot to
relax. And, he does coke. He does it to get through the day."

"He treats people stoned?"

"Yes.

A majority of his patients, Teresa said, were on Medicaid. It was
dreary, tedious work, and he'd go into his office and do a couple of
lines. And besides, Ken was killing himself trying to keep his practice
afloat. What with the overhead, the phone bills, and the payroll, and
her not able to be there, the business was losing money.

The pressure on him was endless.

At home occasionally, she said, she did coke with him. He had told her
how it enhanced sex, and she had to admit that he was right.

But she had stopped when she became pregnant.

So Ken was doing coke, Angela thought. So stop the presses! She and
Peter didn't do it, but she knew plenty of others who did.

Angela was deeply touched when Teresa, in spite of instructions to
remain home, came to her daughter's first birthday party on May 20.

And she noticed how Ken helped Teresa to a chaise lounge and made sure
she was comfortable, getting her food and pampering her. Angela
observed, too, that at the Manalapan house he had thrown himself into a
frenzy of activity, planting rose bushes, petunias, azaleas, putting in
a stand of pine trees in the backyard, and turning over and fertilizing
a large vegetable garden. As a matter of fact, she used Ken as an
example to her husband On June 3, there was a surprise baby shower for
Teresa at her house. Angela remembered how impressed she was with all
the cute little outfits decorated with rocking horse buttons that Teresa
had fashioned for her son. That day Peter and Ken had arranged to play
golf and later, while the shower was still going on, Angela glanced out
of a window and saw the two of them drinking beer in the backyard.

Afterward, while driving Angela home, Peter Rozek revealed that it had
been quite a day for him. On the course, Ken had hooked a shot.

Peter had never seen a temper tantrum like it.

You hooked shots all the time, that was part of the game, but this time
Ken had flown into an unbelievable, uncontrollable rage, flinging his
iron maybe thirty or forty yards, stomping around kicking and screaming
and cursing.

And then, when they returned and were in the backyard, Ken picked up
Teresa's calico catwhat was her name, Cleo? Cleo apparently had bitten
him, at least that was what he said.

Anyway, Ken had taken the cat and slammed .it twice against the garage
wall. Peter was sure that was it for Cleo, but to his relief she'd raced
off with eight lives to go.

"Goddamn fucking cat," Ken had said.

A week later, on the night of Sunday, June 10, Teresa was on the phone
with Angela when she suddenly exclaimed, "I'm getting wet. Oh, I think I
broke my water!"

Teresa was admitted to Middlesex General-University @,Hospital in New
Brunswick just after midnight. With stomrach muscles weakened by so much
time in bed, her labor was painful and exhausting, lasting more than
fifteen hours.

At one point, it appeared that a cesarean section would have to be
performed. But then Philip-named after her ,brother and grandfather-was
boren.

That day Ken wrote a note to Teresa that said, Today You shared with me
the greatest gift of all-the gift of life. Your pain, your hurt, your
joy and exaltation have motivated me and inspired me more than you can
ever realize. i would rather die than see you hurt, ever at any time.

Your love for me is endless and totally giving. My feelings for you run
so deep inside me they will forever be a part of me. I must do my best
for you and I always will. I love You so much, Thank you for allowing
this miracle to -transpire. Your husband, with love as always, Ken.

Angela Rozek remembered Ken as a "proud father," who decorated the front
of the Manalapan house with streamers of blue crepe paper and strung
three dozen blue balloons from the trees and shrubbery to greet the
return of Teresa :and baby Philip the following Thursday.

The next day Jean and Zach Taylor flew in from Manhaton.

According to Ken, Teresa could not abide the thought of having her
"haranguing, cantankerous mother" underfoot and her "dingbat sister"
making a nuisance of herself. So Jean and Zach were "pleased to accept
Teresa's humble plea for their guidance with her newborn baby."

Jean was working as a hostess at a Malian restaurant to Supplement
Zach's income, but she was, she said, happy to step into the breach.

She recalled asking Teresa about Louise and Celeste and quoted Teresa as
saying, "my mom bosses me around all the time," and as far as Celeste
was concerned, she wouldn't let her sister look after her cats, much
less a baby.

In his recollection of that time, Zach said, "Teresa and Celeste
definitely did not get along. As soon as Teresa was eighteen, she left
home and the room she shared with Celeste and got her own apartment."

When it was pointed out to him that this was not at all the case, his
face reddened, and he said, "Well, that's what Ken told me.

For Jean, Teresa was then a "nice, sweet girl." Jean was particularly
gratified when she raised the question of Teresa's religious intentions
regarding the baby. Teresa, still angry over her parish priest's refusal
to marry them and acutely aware of Ken's feelings, told Jean that she
was more than open to suggestions. It didn't necessarily have to be the
Baptist church, Jean said.

She would make sure to send Teresa literature on various options.

There were many fine Protestant denominations. Just so long as he wasn't
baptized Catholic.

Those attending the surprise baby shower for Teresa had a different
memory of Jean and Zach's imminent arrival. Teresa said that Ken was
insistent that his mother be on hand, and she, of course, acceded.

But it was no big deal.

In-laws were part of married life. Both Angela Rozek and Karen Oliveira
remembered how Teresa laughed, a little ruefully, about it.

Skip all the mother-in-law jokes was all she asked Suddenly, though, it
wasn't so funny. Jean Taylor was a strict vegetarian, and although she
did not force her strictures on the men in her family, she did with
Teresa. Meanwhile, Teresa was breast-feeding the baby, and the baby
wasn't gaining any weight. "I'm starving. What I need is some beer and
red meat," Teresa complained to Angela, and all I'm getting is raw
carrots and grapes. I can't wait for them to leave."

Teresa and the baby underwent extensive testing but there were no
specific findings.

Finally the infant was put on formula feeding and the weight problem
vanished.

On July 6, Ken took out a $100,000

Equitable Life Insurance policy on Teresa, paying the first premium of
$247 in -cash. Teresa knew about it. She'd had a rough time giving
birth, and if something happened to her, the insurance would cover
nursing and housekeeping expenses for the baby.

Then Ken got stunning news. -Marilyn told him that she was selling the
Staten Island house and moving with their daughter to Pittsburgh, her
flight base.

Ken tried to convnce her to reconsider. He had even more stunning news
for her. Teresa, he said, was freaking Out on cocaine. Ever since
Acapulco, after he prescribed codeine for the pain she was suffering,
she had begun forging his name on prescriptions and also signing his
name to checks to support her habit. In case Marilyn wasn't aware of it,
codeine was more than a pain killer, codeine kept you flying longer
after doing coke and it gave you a soft landing.

Although there was no history of Ken ever previously mentioning anything
about Teresa's plight to anyone elsenot even to her gynecologist-he said
now that this was the real reason for Teresa's premature labor as well
as her inability to breast-feed the baby.

He was at a crossroads. He wanted to leave Teresa, get custody of the
baby, and rejoin his "family," namely Marilyn and Astrid. He feared for
the baby's safety, he said.

He was crazy to think a mother was going to give up custody of her
child, Marilyn said.

No, Ken said, the way things were, he didn't think that Teresa would
want custody. Besides, to ensure that he would win if it came down to
it, he was keeping precise records to prove her drug abuse and thievery.
He was just Waiting until his son was well established."

Then he Would begin life anew.

,He himself had stayed off drugs, he said. He told Marilyn that he had
learned his lesson in Connecticut, had learned a I bout "life,
responsibility, caring." The tables had been turned. He was now in the
same situation that he had put her in.

Later, Ken would embellish this story. Teresa had been to cocaine well
before he had met her. The first night she ent to work at the Fulton
Family Dental Center in Brookn, she offered coke to him. She was wired
on coke all the time. It was the reason why she'd been fired from the
-nter.

Her supplier was her brother Phil, who had Mafia )nnections in
Manhattan. As promised before his wedng, he had hired Phil to manage his
two new offices on :aten Island, to oversee the appointment books, keep
the )w of patients going, and handle the billings. He said that had
caught Phil in a small apartment above one of the Mces with scales and
glassine envelopes, the whole bit, easuring out cocaine for
distribution.

He had pleaded with Teresa, cajoled her, threatened her, it it was
futile. Nothing worked. She wouldn't stop.

When Karen Oliveira eventually heard about this, she dd, "I've known
Teresa all my life.

We exchanged secrets )body else ever heard. If Teresa was doing cocaine
at all, was because of Ken.

She'd do anything for him."

Other than Marilyn, no one was cognizant of Ken's aims. On weekends,
Louise and Al and Jeff and Celeste auld drop by to see the baby and
lounge around the pool. tresa often wore a halter and shorts.

Al, mindful of Acailco, would furtively observe her body for any
telltale arks or bruises. He never saw any.

Once in late August, Celeste, by now more than five onths pregnant, went
shopping with Teresa in Staten land. They were selecting material for
maternity dresses ir Celeste that Teresa wanted to make.

Afterward, driving way, with baby Philip in his chair in the back seat
of her utlass Supreme, Teresa glanced at her watch and said, My God,
it's late. I've got to get home."

"Oh, we're having such fun. Let's go somewhere for coffee. Call Ken and
tell him you'll be late."

No, Teresa said, white-faced. She had to go.

Celeste .ought her reaction was a lit. Teresa had been to cocaine well
before he had met her. The first night she ent to work at the Fulton
Family Dental Center in Brookn, she offered coke to him. She was wired
on coke all the time. It was the reason why she'd been fired from the
-nter.

Her supplier was her brother Phil, who had Mafia )nnections in
Manhattan. As promised before his wedng, he had hired Phil to manage his
two new offices on :aten Island, to oversee the appointment books, keep
the )w of patients going, and handle the billings. He said that had
caught Phil in a small apartment above one of the Mces with scales and
glassine envelopes, the whole bit, easuring out cocaine for
distribution.

He had pleaded with Teresa, cajoled her, threatened her, it it was
futile. Nothing worked. She wouldn't stop.

When Karen Oliveira eventually heard about this, she dd, "I've known
Teresa all my life.

We exchanged secrets )body else ever heard. If Teresa was doing cocaine
at all, was because of Ken.

She'd do anything for him."

Other than Marilyn, no one was cognizant of Ken's aims. On weekends,
Louise and Al and Jeff and Celeste auld drop by to see the baby and
lounge around the pool. tresa often wore a halter and shorts.

Al, mindful of Acailco, would furtively observe her body for any
telltale arks or bruises. He never saw any.

Once in late August, Celeste, by now more than five onths pregnant, went
shopping with Teresa in Staten land. They were selecting material for
maternity dresses ir Celeste that Teresa wanted to make.

Afterward, driving way, with baby Philip in his chair in the back seat
of her utlass Supreme, Teresa glanced at her watch and said, My God,
it's late. I've got to get home."

"Oh, we're having such fun. Let's go somewhere for coffee. Call Ken and
tell him you'll be late."

No, Teresa said, white-faced. She had to go.

Celeste .ought her reaction was a little extreme, but mostly, right .en,
she felt guilty about being so cavalier about Jeff, and she vowed to be
a better wife, like her sister.

Over Labor Day weekend, Ken and Teresa drove with the baby to Marion.

Jean was to undergo colon surgery, and Ken wanted to be with his mother.

Both Jean and Zach remembered that Teresa fell in love with Marion.

If anything ever happened to her, they said she said, she wanted her son
to be raised there.

She attended Sunday service with Ken and his parents at the First
Baptist Church where Philip was "dedicated."

The pastor, Darrel Panis, would recall that Teresa told him how
wonderful it was to be in a church filled with people who wanted to be
there-unlike her own church where attendance was mandatory.

Back home, when Angela asked what life in Marion was like, Teresa said
that it was okay, a little dull, you know, -Smailtown, USA. Jean Taylor
was a "nut case," so was Ken's brother, Tom. The only normal ones seemed
to be Ken and his father. When Teresa told her about the dedication,
Angela said, "You mean he was baptized a Baptist?"

No, Teresa said. It had been explained to her by the pastor. It meant
that Philip had been introduced to the congregation. It wasn't official.
You could not be baptized a Baptist until you reached the age of reason.
The dedication was a first step. Teresa said she didn't know what she
would do, except that she'd never forgive the Catholic church. Ken's
mother was bombarding her with brochures, and Ken's attitude had to be
considered. She was thinking maybe Presbyterian, the local minister was
very nice.

But that wasn't her principal concern.

Uppermost in her mind was Ken's desire for her to return to the office.

With her on the job, they could inch past the break-even point.

She wasn't too happy about it. She wanted to spend her days with the
baby, but she had no choice.

So she went back to being a hygienist for Ken. She would drop Philip off
with Louise in the morning and pick him up at day's end.

On September 29 an unsettling incident caused Angela Rozek to wonder
again about Acapulco.

For the first time, her acceptance of Teresa's story was shaken.

The week before had been Angela's birthday, but she told Teresa she was
just going to celebrate quietly with Peter and her parents.

They arranged for a post-birthday get-together on the twenty-ninth.

Angela was pregnant with her second child, and Teresa wanted to measure
her for some clothes.

To make the occasion more festive, Teresa invited Al and Louise.

She baked a birthday cake and gave Angela a pair of gloves and a silk
blouse. During the evening Teresa started looking for something-Angela
couldn't remember what-and opened Ken's attach case All at once, Teresa
said, "Oh," and lifted a pair of earrings out of the case.

"Ken, aren't these my earrings from Acapulco? I thought they got ripped
off. How did they get in here?"

Angela recalled the way Ken stared at Teresa.

"You're making a mistake," he said. "It was a different pair."

Teresa seemed so bewildered as she looked down at the earrings in her
hand. Finally, after a moment, she said, her voice barely audible,
"Okay."

What so disturbed Angela was how quickly Teresa had acquiesced to Ken,
although clearly there was turmoil inside her. "Wasn't that strange?"
she said to her husband as they left. "It's like she knows something,
but doesn't know."

Other unexpected tensions surfaced. In mid-October, after dropping the
baby off at her mother's, Teresa arrived alone at Ken's main office
where she had a full schedule of patients.

"Where's Ken?" her brother asked.

"Right after breakfast," she said, "he said he had to get something at
the store. He'd be right back." When he didn't return, Teresa said, she
went outside and found a note under her windshield wiper. She showed
Phil the note. It said, "I'm leaving for a couple of days to get my head
together." It also said, "My business is a failure."

"I think he must have gone to Pittsburgh," Teresa said. "That's where
his ex-wife is."

He'd been complaining about not being able to see his daughter, she
said. Teresa told him to invite her to visit them, she was more than
welcome.

He'd said that his ex-wife wouldn't agree.

Well, Teresa had said, was there something in the visitation decree that
gave her that right?

Ken hadn't really answered.

There was more to it than his daughter, Teresa said. It was hard to
fathom what was going on inside his head. He'd even talked about
suicide. She was at wit's end and she was scared.

Despite the humiliation, she was seriously thinking about a divorce.

She told this to Celeste and Angela and also to Karen. And she told them
something else. She said that she had been having nightmares recently,
nightmares in which she heard Mexican voices.

During Ken's disappearance, Karen called Teresa. Her banker father had a
number of gift certificates-for stores like Gucci and Tiffany-from some
of his clients. She was going to Manhattan with her mother the next day,
a Saturday, to use them. Teresa should come along. At first, Teresa said
no, she had too much on her mind, and Karen said that was exactly why
she should come.

It would be like old times.

But it wasn't. When Teresa finally agreed, leaving the baby in Louise's
care, she was subdued, as if she were in another world.

Gradually, though, as the day wore on, Teresa began to recover some of
the spirit Karen always associated with her, giggling over the
outrageous prices being charged at the various Fifth Avenue stores they
went to. They topped off the day with afternoon tea at the Trump Tower.
Karen remembered the startled Yuppies around them, looking at them as if
they were counterfeiters, when Teresa exclaimed, "Well, we got rid of
the money."

That was when Teresa spoke about the nightmares and the Mexican voices.

Karen thought, Good, maybe it's all coming back to her, and she'll get
rid of this guy.

Ken in fact had gone to Pittsburgh. And it had not been that sudden a
decision. He called Marilyn the night before he left and told her what
flight he'd be on.

She had met him at the airport with their daughter. He had a toilet kit
and a camera. He immediately began taking pictures of Astrid.

Then they went to a store where he bought her some dresses.

He said he wanted to stay overnight, which became twd nights. On the
second night, they made love. He could tell how pleased Marilyn was to
be elevated over his new, sexy young wife.

He made certain to compliment her on her breast implants. it had been
really unnecessary, he said. He'd loved them the way they were.

She asked him if Teresa knew where he was.

it didn't matter, he said, she had gone off to her sister's.

She said, "You leave with no clothes, and you're just going to show up
three days later, and she isn't going to say anything?"

She realizes the mamage is ending, he saidmarilyn laughed, and he asked
why. She was looking at his camera, she said, remembering how he would
tell her that he was going out to photograph the fall foliage and show
up three days later.

That was different, he said. She'd been a real bitch then.

Teresa told both Angela and Celeste that Ken had returned begging
forgiveness. He'd been desperate to see Astrid, and Marilyn had made it
so difficult. And then he'd gone off by himself, trying to rethink his
practice, trying to get his act together. He needed a break, he said, he
was trying his best for her and the babyoing to She said that it had
better be so, she wasn't g submit to this treatment.

otherwise, although she hated to say it, she wouldn't hesitate to split
up.

On November 9, a Friday, Phil and his girlfriend Kathy came by the
Manalapan house about ten P.M. Phil brought wine. Ken was very upbeat.

He said that the practice had finally turned the corner. He could see
nothing but light ahead. Phil wasn't so sure. He had found a pile of
followups squirreted away, some weeks old, that he had given eatments
were vital to Ken for review. These follow@up tr any dental practice.

What the hell was going on? What was the matter with Ken? But Phil
decided that this wasn't the up. He'd wait till Monday.

right time to bring it Phil, his girlfriend and Teresa drank the wine.

Ken was drinking Jack Daniel's. Ken fit a joint which Phil shared.

After about an hour, Ken brought out a packet of cocaine and set out
lines on the coffee table they were sitting around. Although Phil would
deny it for a long time, both he and Teresa joined Ken and did a couple
of lines.

At two A.M. or so, Teresa and Ken retired.

Ken had to be in the office in the morning, and Teresa was meeting Cindy
Diaz, one of the "Glitter Chicks" from her high school days, to look at
some fabric at a wholesale house in Brooklyn. Phil and Kathy stayed up
till about four o'clock finishing the wine and then went into the guest
room to sleep. When they awoke, Ken and Teresa were gone.

Ken's Datsun 200SX was on the fritz, so Teresa had taken him to work and
then went to pick up Cindy. Her husband was a commercial photographer.
He was testing out a new video camera and shot a tape of Teresa and the
baby inside and outside the house. Crossing the bridge into Brooklyn,
Cindy remarked that Teresa wasn't her usual ebullient self. Teresa
explained that she was a little hung over, Her brother had been over the
night before, and she guessed she'd had one glass of wine too many.
After lunch on the run, she dropped Cindy off, picked up Ken, and drove
back to Manalapan.

Around three-thirty that Saturday afternoon, Angela phoned.

Teresa had told her that her maternity dresses were ready, and they'd
made a date for Angela to come over at five-thirty.

She was calling to confirm. But Teresa said that she was tired.

She wanted to take a nap. Could they put it off a couple of hours?

"How about seven-thirty?" Angela said.

"Perfect," Teresa said.

Every minute of that evening would be forever etched in Angela's mind.

When she, Peter and their daughter Christie arrived, Angela instantly
sensed tension in the air. She really couldn't put her finger on it,
though. It was as if Ken and Teresa had just had a fight, although Peter
would say that he hadn't noticed this.

Angela had brought two Entenmann's Louisiana Crunch cakes. Great, Teresa
said. She was starving. While she was napping, Ken had fixed her some
supper, "a piece of pork."

"Come on," Ken said. "I made you a whole dinner."

"Well, I'm still hungry."

Teresa put one of the cakes in the freezer and the other on a plate.

Angela noticed a partially smoked joint in an ashtray. It must be Ken's,
she thought. She knew Teresa didn't like the effect of pot, even in high
school.

Ken appeared very hyper. He was holding a Jack Daniels-at least Angela
assumed that was what it was-and while he knew that Peter hardly ever
drank, he kept after him to have a drink.

And finally Peter said okay, he'd have a "Seven and Seven"-Seagram's 7

whisky and Seven-Up. Ken, slamming cabinet doors, couldn't find any
Seven-up. Was plain soda all right?

That'd be fine, Peter said. But when Ken made it, it was so strong that
Peter grimaced after one sip and set the glass down on a table where it
remained untouched for the rest of the evening.

Teresa took Angela into the room across from the kitchen to give her the
dresses she had finished. It was where she sewed. The room was a jumble
what with the washer and dryer, Ken's golf bag, and the weight stand
where he worked out.

As Angela went in, she tripped over a dumbbell with weights on it lying
on the floor and nearly fell. Ken and Peter were in the doorway.

She said, "Jesus, Ken, I almost killed myself on this stupid thing," and
he picked up the dumbbell and placed it near the stand.

The two men went into the living room and watched television.

Peter said that the deer hunting season was coming on. Did Ken want to
go hunting with him? No, Ken said, that wasn't his bag, he couldn't bear
the thought of looking into a deer's eyes after he had shot it.

Except for the room where Teresa sewed and another ,room next to it that
was being converted into a second guest room-there was a big roll of
carpet padding in itthe downstairs was essentially open space, the
kitchen flowing into the dining and living areas.

In the kitchen Teresa put on the coffee and got out plates for the cake.
Angela started talking about what fun it had been going to the Poconos
last February and how they really ought to do it again after the new
baby was born.

Ken had already put Philip to bed. Christie, by now eighteen months old,
was getting rambunctious. Ken asked her if she would like to see her
little cousin asleep. He brought her upstairs and on their way back, he
set her on a step and told her to stay there. Then he got his camera and
snapped some Pictures. Ken could really be sweet, Angela thought.

As they had the cake and coffee, the talk turned to sex. Angela said
that she supposed it was inevitable, that after a while, sex wasn't the
biggest thing, that it was other things which counted in a relationship.
Ken suddenly said that after the "whopping" he'd given Teresa the other
night, she wouldn't be refusing him.

Angela glanced at Teresa, but her face was expressionless, and she
imagined Ken was simply making a joke, however lame, Then Teresa
remarked that she was going back on birth control pills, but she'd
forgotten last month. She'd been late and she had believed that she was
pregnant again, but then she got her period, "You got your perioj?" Ken
said.

"Yes, it's almost over."

Angela never forgot the look that Ken threw at Teresa. If looks could
kill, she remembered thinking, Teresa was dead then and there.

Instantly, she remembered Teresa telling her that Ken liked to go down
on her when she was menstruating.

There was an awkward pause. Christie began acting up again.

Angela said, "It's late.

We've got to go." Ken did nothing to dissuade her. Teresa said she was
really bushed.

Angela helped bring the plates and cups to the sink. The Entenmann's
cake was only half-eaten. "Oh, darn it," Teresa said. Ken had put the
box in the trash can. "It's just sitting there on top," Angela said.

"You can still use, it."

She wouldn't dream of it, Teresa said, and took out a roll of Saran Wrap
and put it on the counter. "Don't bother with the dishes," she said.
"They're nothing.

I'll do them as soon as you've gone." Angela did not doubt she would.

That was Teresa.

Everything had to be spotless.

There were two other items that Angela especially recalled. One was that
Teresa was never out of her sight for so much as a second that evening,
not even to go to the bathroom.

The other was the way Ken behaved as they were leaving. Whenever the
Rozeks came for a visit, they would lug in Christie's portable crib,
playpen and toys. Normally, Ken never lifted a finger. But now he was
running all around, grabbing the crib, folding up the playpen, loading
them into the car.

"You sure you've got everything?" Ken said as they were in their car
ready to depart.

.Afterward, Angela peeked at her watch. It was about a quarter to
eleven. She said to her husband, "Gee, wasn't it funny that all of a
sudden Ken was helping you?"

"Yeah," Peter Rozek said, "it was like he couldn't wait for us to get
the hell out."

The next day, Sunday, November II, Al and Louise didn't expect Ken and
Teresa for lunch.

Teresa had said she'd be at the christening party that afternoon for the
baby of another of the "Glitter Chicks," Lorraine Taibbi. She was
looking forward to seeing the old gang, so many of whom she had been out
of touch with, She would fill in Louise on all the gossip when she
dropped Philip off on Monday morning before going to work.

But Teresa never showed up at the christening, although the Benignos did
not know this at the time.

On Monday morning, nine O'clock and then nine-thirty passed. No Teresa.
Louise telephoned the Manalapan house. No answer.

Well, she thought, they're on the way.

Phil Benigna, who still lived with Al and Louise while working for Ken
and attending night business administration courses at St. John's
University, had already left. And in Ken's main office, he also wondered
what was holding up his sister and Ken.

About 10:30 A.M. his phone rang. It was Ken.

Phil listened to him in utter disbelief. Ken said that he was on the
road. He said that Teresa was spaced out on drug@ocaine and codeine.

She had finally faced up to her addiction and had gone away to seek
rehabilitation. He had dropped her off at the People's Express terminal
at Newark Airport, and now he was en route by car to his parents in
Indiana with the baby.

Teresa had wanted that. She knew he couldn't cope with the child by
himself and hadn't wanted to burden Louise.

Then Ken changed subjects, as if there were nothing more to say.

He instructed Phil to keep an eye on the office, make sure the dentist
he'd hired stayed on the ball, and have one of the girls cancel his
appointments until be .returned on Friday. was hearing. It was -Phil
struggled to absorb what he crazy. Okay, he knew that his sister did
cocaine sometimes with Ken. But at worst she was an occasional user,
like him, like half the kids Phil knew, not an abuser. And the codeine!
He knew Ken had prescribed codeine for Teresa after the persistent pain
she suffered from the Acapulco assault. But Ken had made out so many
codeine prescriptions in Phil's name, telling him simply to bring them
back, that Phil had asked him what the deal was.

He thought that codeine was a painkiller. Could you get high from
codeine?

And Ken, giving another version of codeine's beneficence, had said that
if you took it long enough, it stayed in your bloodstream and acted
almost like a stimulant. He needed it to keep going, Ken said.

"Where did my sister go?"

"She wouldn't tell me. She wants to be alone.

"How the hell could you drop her off at the airport and leave her there
like that?"

"Phil, your sister is very strong-willed. You should know that.

She does what she wants."

"When did she say she's coming back?"

"Two or three weeks. She said she'd phone in three or four days, when
she got settled-.

Phil, don't forget to have my appointments canceled."

Phil remembered how calm and collected Ken's voice was, as if Phil were
being the unreasonable one, asking all these dumb questions.

"Listen, Phil, one more thing," Ken said.

"Teresa doesn't want Al and Louise to be, you know, upset about her drug
problem and being left at the airport. She said to tell you to tell them
that we decided, the two of us, to go to Indiana for a short vacation."
Then, before Phil could say anything more, Ken said, "I'll be in touch,"
and hung up.

Phil stared at the phone in his hand, watching his hand shake. He didn't
know what to do. He had to do something. His mother would be calling the
office any second. So he called her and told her the vacation story.

"Just like that, they're going on vacation?" Louise said.

"Yes," Phil said weakly. "Just like that, Ma.

That's what he said."

By the afternoon, Phil couldn't stand it anymore. He had to talk to
somebody. He phoned Celeste, but got Jeff instead. Celeste was at the
gynecologist. Jeff was home because he was working the night shift on
the ferry. What was up. 9

After Phil told him, Jeff said, "Teresa is screwed up on drugs and she
went to rehab, and he doesn't know where?"

"Those are his words."

"Phil, your sister went to a rehab? That's not Teresa. You're not making
sense."

"I know."

"This doesn't sound right. He said he was taking the baby to Indiana?"

"Yeah. I don't know what to do."

"Did you tell your mother yet?"

"I told her they were on vacation. That was his idea."

"Come on, you have to tell her everything. We got to get to the bottom
of this."

"Okay, I will. But I'll wait till I get home.

Dad's still at school. Ma's there all alone."

That evening Phil confessed to Al and Louise that the vacation story was
a concoction. Al saw Louise turn ashen and slump in her chair.

He rushed to get her nitroglycerin piiis.

She began to sob, "Acapulco," she said. "He did it to her again."

"Please, let's wait and see," Al said. In his heart, he was thinking
that, too, but he was terrified of saying anything that might heighten
Louise's stress, At all costs, he had to remain on an even keel.

The phone rang. But it was not Teresa, or Ken either. Lorraine Taibbi
was calling. Was Teresa all right? She hadn't come to the christening
and there wasn't any answer at her house.

Teresa had taken a trip suddenly, Al said. He did not elaborate.

He did not know what else to say. He felt so incredibly helpless.

"That son of a bitch," Al said and picked up the phone again and called
the Taylors in Marion. Zach answered. No, Kenny wasn't there.

But he was expected. He had been delayed by bad weather. It was snowing
in the Midwest.

He'd called from around Columbus, Ohio, Zach said that it would be at
least another six hours or so before he arrived. Zach did not mention
Teresa, nor did Al ask if he knew anything.

"Have him call me as soon as he gets there," Al said.

A.M New York time, Ken phoned from Marion. The baby was fine, he said.

He repeated essentially the same story that he had told Phil.

"Teresa was spaced out on cocaine and codeine," he said.

That was impossible for him to believe, Al said.

Well, she had this "continuing drug problem," Ken said, that she had
kept hidden from Al because she was aware of his strong feelings about
drug usage, Even if it were true, Al said, he could not understand how
Ken could have left her at the airport and driven off without any hint
of where she intended to go.

"That's your daughter," Ken said. "You know how she can be."

It was like punching air, Al thought. "I don't care," he said, "It was a
very, very bad error in judgment on your part. Inexcusable."

There was a pause. Then Ken conceded that maybe Al Was right. It was a
snap decision. He had been completely nonplussed when Teresa announced
her intentions. Perhaps he shouldn't have gone along with her. There was
nothing he could do about it now. His voice took on an optimistic tone.
Anyway, he said, she'd promised to call in a couple of days and
everything would be fixed.

"I want her reported missing to the police," Al said.

First thing upon his return he'd go to the Manalapan police, Ken said.

As soon as he got baby Philip settled in, he would be on his way.

Be back home early Wednesday. By then Teresa should have called.

That Tuesday morning Celeste had classes at Staten Island Community
College. Although she was a housewife and an expectant mother, she was
determined to continue her education, concentrating on English.

Someday, she thought, she might be a teacher.

She told Jeff to pick her up at noon. An idea kept gnawing at her.

Perhaps Louise was right, that it could be Acapulco all over again, or
something like it. Maybe Ken had beaten up her sister, and Teresa in
embarrassment and shame was biding, not answering the phone.

Perhaps this whole story had been cooked up to allow her bruises and God
knows what else to disappear.

They'd go to the Manalapan house to find out.

She knew it was pretty farfetched, but it offered hope. And hope was all
she had, hope that it wasn't something worse.

They parked up the block so Teresa would not spot them in case she was
inside. They saw Ken's Datsun in the driveway. Jeff tried the front
door. It was locked, He remembered that the door from the garage was
often left open. And it was.

Fear coursed through Celeste at the thought of what they might discover.
The garage door led into the dining area. Straight ahead was the
kitchen. They saw the remains of a cake on the counter, a roll of Saran
Wrap next to it. That was so unlike Teresa. She would not leave a cake
uncovered like that. It simply wasn't her nature.

There was something equally peculiar in the living area. Teresa's key
ring was on the coffee table. Teresa would never leave the house without
her keys.

They checked the sewing room, where Ken's weights also were, and then
the room being renovated. Jeff noticed that some of the old carpet
padding on the floor seemed to have been ripped off.

Upstairs, the two bedrooms and the nursery appeared to be in order.

In the master bedroom there was a removable panel about two feet by four
that led to an attic crawl space. Celeste told Jeff to look inside, and
then she shut her eyes in horrified anticipation. But there was nothing.

They went to the backyard, to the pool. It had been covered for the
winter. Celeste made Jeff peek underneath it. Again, nothing.

She spoke so sharply that Jeff said, "Hey, come on."

She couldn't help it. Her nerves were completely frayed just from being
there.

Kittens mothered by Teresa's cat Cleo appeared, mewing frantically.

Celeste recalled how Ken loathed Cleo. They began calling for her, but
she didn't appear. So they fed the kittens.

Celeste phoned Louise. She told her about the cake and the keys.

That afternoon Al took off from his teaching job and went to the local
precinct of the New York Police Department to explain his predicament.

But the desk sergeant said that he couldn't be of much help.

Teresa not only was a resident of New Jersey, but also her husband was
the proper individual to file a missing person report.

Later, at home, Al took a deep breath and called Angela Rozek.

"We've got a bit of a problem," Al said, choosing his words as carefully
as he could. "Teresa's missing. Ken says that he took her to Newark
Airport. She needed help and she was going off to get it.

He said she was spaced out on drugs."

His voice breaking now, Al blurted, "You were there on Saturday night.

Just what went on? If you know anything about Teresa being strung out on
drugs, please tell me. We have to know."

Angela listened to him, stunned. She pulled herself together and said,
"Uncle Al, nothing like that happened. Believe me, Teresa's not spaced
out. She doesn't do drugs that way." Then Celeste got on the line and
described her visit to the house. She told Angela about the cake.

Angela bit her lip. Something, whatever it was, must have started right
after she and Peter left. She remembered how anxious Ken was to get them
out. And after she had hung up, Angela bowed her head and prayed. "Oh,
God," she pleaded, "don't let anything bad happen to my cousin, Teresa."

On Wednesday Al seized upon a ray of hope.

Celeste had spoken to Cindy Diaz, with whom Teresa had spent last
Saturday morning. Cindy told her that another of Teresa's friends, Irene
Deblasio, had flown from Newark to Michigan on Sunday on People's
Express. Maybe Teresa had gone with her. Besides the Rozeks, Irene and
her boyfriend had spent more time at the Manalapan house that summer
than anyone. Irene was a hairstylist, and she cut Teresa's and Ken's
hair in return for Ken's dental care.

Maybe she knew something nobody else did.

Louise called Irene's mother. Yes, Irene had gone to Michigan to visit
her sister, who had just moved there. But she was unreachable.

The phone hadn't been installed yet. She was supposed to return late
Thursday.

There was no word from Ken that day. Finally, in the evening, he called.
He had returned at last. He had taken a wrong turn near New Brunswick,
got lost, and then was tied up in traffic.

He hadn't heard from Teresa. Had they?

In the morning, he'd go to the police. He was worn out. The long drive
had exhausted him. He apologized for not immediately coming to see them,
but he had to get some rest. He'd be over after he saw the police.

Al told him of the possibility that Teresa had gone to Michigan with
Irene Deblasio. Ken sounded elated. That was great news, he said.

Al added that Celeste and Jeff were going to meet her plane the
following evening. In that event, Ken said, he wanted to go along.

Al put Louise on the line. After apologizing again for not coming by
that night, Ken hesitated and then asked if Louise knew whether anyone
had been inside the house while he was away.

Yes, she said, Celeste and Jeff had been there to make sure it was all
right. Was there something wrong? No, he said, it was just that he
noticed that the panel to the attic crawl area was slightly ajar and he
was wondering why. Well, she thought, his fatigue certainly hadn't
prevented him from checking the house with a finetoothed comb.

A.M. on Thursday, Ken appeared at the Manalapan police station to report
Teresa missing. He did not mention that her absence had any connection
with drugs. According to the notes of patrolman David Visconi: Husband
Mr. Taylor reported to this officer he took his wife to Newark Airport
(People's terminal) on II//84 because she told him she needed space.
Husband relates she feels pressure as a result of working and family
problems  ... Mr. Taylor believes his wife may be in Michigan.

Her girlfriend Irene Deblasio from Staten Island left to visit her
sister in Michigan on II//84.

Afterward, Ken picked up Phil at the office.

They were going to the airport to see if anyone there recalled Teresa.

He had two photos of Teresa, one of them with the baby. He stopped first
to buy a six-pack of beer and then cigarette papers. He appeared very
jumpy to Phil, who was edgy himself. Ken rolled a joint and lit it.

He asked Phil to hand him one of the beers.

Phil refused his offer of a beer, but did take a couple of tokes on the
joint to try to relax a little.

At the People's Express terminal, Ken showed the photos to personnel at
the ticket counter.

No luck. They went into a restaurant and tried the cashier and some
waitresses, and next to a bar.

Still nothing. At a second bar, though, a bartender studied the pictures
for a while and said that yes, he might have seen the lady, or one just
like her the previous Sunday. Ken seemed almost triumphant at this
apparent corroboration of his story.

He got to the Benignos in the early afternoon. When he saw Louise, he
started to cry, as if he was now in total union with them, sharing their
misery. After he regained his composure, he said he'd been so
anxiety-ridden that he hadn't eaten all day. Louise made him a sandwich.

When he left, he shook his head sorrowfully and said, "I love you, Mom,
and I love Teresa.

I don't understand how she could do this to us."

In the early evening he returned to the airport to join Celeste and Jeff
as they waited for Irene Deblasio's plane. He greeted them cordially and
with concern. But when they looked at the screen display, there was no
flight from Detroit for the time they had been given. Jeff called Louise
and learned Irene had already landed and phoned. She had switched to
Northwest Orient.

She said that Teresa had not been with her, and she had no idea where
she was.

As they left the terminal, Ken suddenly said, "How come you guys were at
my place?"

Celeste stared right back at him. "We were looking for something," she
said. "Anything we could find." He did not reply, but she would always
remember the condescending smirk on his face.

In Manalapan, meanwhile, patrolman Visconi ascertained that the airline
kept passenger lists for only twenty-four hours. Cops were always
getting complaints like this, and inevitably such disappearances were
short-lived. And in his log, Visconi now noted, "It appears at this
point his wife wanted to leave her family. No domestic violence was
involved. This case is being closed until such time as it would require
reopening."

On Friday morning, Visconi phoned Ken and informed him that "under the
circumstances, police involvement in the case was limited" and that it
was being closed out.

In his office, Ken told this to Phil as further confirmation of his @.

He took a bundle of letters and said that he was leaving to treat a
patient at the other office and then going home to scan the mail.

With all this distraction, he just couldn't concentrate at work.

Later that morning, Phil called Louise and told her what Ken had said
about the case being closed. Celeste was with her. Both women were
enraged by the news, and together they phoned Visconi, who for the first
time heard about Acapulco, how not only the Benignos but the police and
hotel security staff in Mexico suspected that Ken was the one who had
beaten Teresa, although no formal charges were lodged.

Visconi wrote up a new report for his captain of patrol, Jimmie Potts,
and during the regular afternoon briefing at the Manalapan station, it
was decided to take another look into the disappearance of Teresa
Taylor. A detective, Robert Fausak, drew the assignment.

Around five P.m Celeste called Visconi and was transferred to Fausak.

Celeste was yelling this time. Why was Ken being allowed to walk around?
She was certain he had done something to her sister.

Where was her sister? What was being done to find her? She came on so
strong that Fausak was on the verge of hanging up.

But beneath her ranting, he sensed desperation. He calmed her and got
more details about Acapulco, including a vivid description of Teresa's
physical condition. He winced when he heard about Teresa's fractured
teeth and the dreadful pain she had endured. He was plagued by poor
teeth and he knew that kind of pain. There was nothing worse.

Then Fausak spoke to Al. In his grave manner, Al was even more
impressive. He echoed the family suspicions about what had really
happened in Acapulco, but candidly said that his daughter always
insisted her husband was not her assailant. It gave his apprehension a
special ring of truth.

Fausak sat at his desk. He was an avid golfer and he had a big game on
tap in the morning, probably the last chance of the season to get in
eighteen holes. This case of a missing woman being dropped off at the
airport was a little unusual, but in police work nothing, he reflected,
was truly unusual anymore. People packed up and walked away all the
time, kids, husbands, wives. Originally, he planned to see what
developed over the weekend.

Instead, he phoned Ken at home. Could he come by the Taylor house?

Sure, when?

Now.

Well, okay, Ken said, but why? He thought the case had been closed.

You know how it is, Fausak said. There were always loose ends to tie up.

The Manalapan Fausak drove through had mushroomed since he'd become a
cop. Although it had no defined center, it was what the newspapers liked
to call a "bedroom community." On the north side, developments had
replaced farmland. To the south, where the Taylor home was, at Valley
Road in a subdivision called the Knolls, you could still find open
spaces, but they were vanishing fast. Fausak couldn't afford to live
there. He'd been lucky to buy a small condo for himself and his wife
Joan just across the township line.

A slim, intense man, then thirty-six, Fausak couldn't remember when he
had not wanted to be a cop. He came from a cop family, his grandfather
and two uncles had been police officers in Jersey City where he was
raised, and his father was a detective for the old Jersey Central
railroad. After he was graduated from Delaware Valley College, he
applied to the New Jersey State Police. But instead he took a job
teaching high school general science. The salary was better than a
thousand dollars more a year and, of course, You had weekends off.

Four years later, when Manalapan Township elected to form a police
department-up till then the state police handled local law
enforcement-pay scales had risen and he joined up. He'd been on the job
for twelve years, since the department's inception, and was now one of
three detectives on the thirty-two-man force. Along with the Population
explosion had come crime, mostly home and business burglaries and
sporadic sexual assaults.

Ken greeted him affably. They sat across from one another at the dining
table. Ken said that his wife had been depressed for several weeks
because of work pressures, conflicts with her family, and being a new
mother. He said that the two of them really hadn't any disputes to speak
of. He did not say anything about drugs.

His wife had said that she needed "space."

When she left, she was carrying her Mastercard and about eight hundred
dollars in cash, two hundred of which he had given her. Ken was quite
specific about what she had been wearing-a white sweater, a white
jacket, Calvin Klein jeans, and black patent leather pumps.

Ken said that he had reported her missing not because of any pressure
from her parents, but because she had not contacted him in the promised
three days. Normally, she was very good about that.

At Teresa's request, he said that he had taken their child to stay with
his parents in Indiana because of her mother's heart condition.

Ken added that there was reason to believe that his wife had gone with a
friend to Michigan. Almost as an afterthought, he said that while Teresa
had kissed the baby at the airport, she didn't kiss him.

Fausak couldn't help thinking that it was such an odd remark to
volunteer.

He asked if he could took around the house.

Ken said certainly, but why? Oh, Fausak said, sometimes people are so
accustomed to their surroundings that they fail to spot an obvious clue.

Nothing appeared amiss downstairs. Fausak observed how well organized
Teresa's closet was, shoes neatly placed, the clothes hangers ag turned
in the same direction. There was a space where shoes had been removed
and hangers empty. Everything pointed to a planned departure.

Then in the bathroom, Fausak noticed four toothbrushes in the holder by
the sink. "Whose are those?" he said.

The two on the right were his, Ken said, and the other two were his
wife's.

Gee, Fausak said, for someone who had as many dental problems as Mrs.
Taylor, it was strange that she hadn't taken them with her.

Don't give it a second's thought, Ken said.

She had plenty of them. After all, he was a dentist.

Fausak brooded on his way back to the station. The husband had been too
smooth, too quick to come up with an answer for every question.

And the toothbrushes bothered Fausak a lot.

Whenever he took a trip, his toothbrush was almost the first thing he
packed.

At his desk, Fausak composed a missing person bulletin to be sent to New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. In his physical
description of Teresa, he wrote that her two front teeth were false.

The bulletin was transmitted at II: 15

P.M. At the last minute, Fausak added, "Possible foul play involved. I I
Fausak arrived home about midnight. When his wife asked what had kept
him, he said, "I think I've got my first homicide, " At five A.M. the
phone awakened Fausak. It was the duty officer at the Manalapan station.

There'd been a response to the bulletin from the Pennsylvania State
Police. "They think maybe they've got something," the duty officer said.

"I advised them you'd be in at eight-thirty."

Fausak lay there thinking about Dr. Kenneth Taylor. Was Taylor also
lying in bed awake, thinking? By eight O'clock, Fausak was at his desk.
Actually, there were three additional responses from other states, but
they were all requests for more information. Fausak thought about people
missing throughout the country.

Then state police corporal Gary Millward from the Reading barracks in
Pennsylvania telephoned. He said that the body of a white female, age
somewhere between twenty and twenty-five, had been found in a bird
sanctuary at the base of Hawk Mountain off Interstate 78, about fifty
miles from the New Jersey border. It was a fairly remote area.

The discovery had been made by a fellow picking up tin cans two days
earlier, on Thursday morning at ten-fifteen-93 just about the time Ken
had left the Manalapan station after reporting Teresa missing.

The body had been wrapped in grayish padding, the kindused under a
carpet, Millward said, and was inside a tan sleeping bag. The victim had
succumbed to massive head injuries caused by an unknown blunt
instrument. The absence of blood at the site, a roadside ditch,
indicated that death had occurred elsewhere.

Physically, there was a match with Fausak's bulletin except for the
clothes. She had on a white knit sweater, beige culottes and white
pantyhose. There was also a sanitary napkin, The culottes, pantyhose and
napkin had been wrenched down over and below the buttocks area to just
above the knees. The culottes were torn in back. There was a large
amount of Vaseline, gobs of it, in and around her anus and vagina.

"Bad, huh?" Fausak said.

"Very."

The jewelry on the body, Millward said, included a gold Pulsar watch
with a black face and band, a wedding band, one starburst diamond
earring with the second one missing, a necklace with a gold tooth and
toothbrush charm, and a necklace with a gold tag which was engraved,
Sister."

"What about her teeth?" Fausak asked.

One upper front tooth was completely gone from the blows the victim had
received, Millward said. As for the other one, there were remains of an
original tooth, as if it had been capped.

"I'll get back to you," Fausak said.

The Monmouth County prosecutor's office was ultimately responsible for
law enforcement in the county's fifty-three municipalities, and Fausak
notified its major crimes unit of a probable homicide case.

Next, he called the Benignos, reaching Louise. Could she and her husband
come to Manalapan that morning?

Louise started to cry. "You found her, didn't you?"

Fausak fell back on the technicalities of police procedure. "No," he
said. He needed some more information. He started asking about jewelry
Teresa might have worn. He had barely mentioned the Pulsar watch when
she moaned, "My daughter, oh, my poor daughter."

It was the first time he'd faced a situation like this and he fought his
nervousness.

Fausak started to dislike Ken Taylor very much. To his relief, Al came
on the line. They'd be there at noon, Al said, and suggested that
Celeste might be helpful on the jewelry.

Then Celeste said that Teresa always wore a charm she had given her that
said, "#I Sister."

"Why are you asking? What do you know?" she said, her voice rising.

"Celeste, I don't know anything for a fact.

I'm just trying to get all the information I can.

" Fausak called Corporal Millward and said that he would escort family
members down for a positive identification later in the day.

When Al and Louise arrived, Fausak took Al aside and said, "We may have
to go to Pennsylvania. They've found a body that closely fits your
daughter. But we don't know, we have to make sure." Al said he wanted to
call his son to accompany him.

The moment Louise heard about Pennsylvania, she broke down.

"Louise, maybe it's not her," Al said. "We don't know yet."

"Yes, it's her," she said. "You know it's her. He's no good. He tried to
do it before and now he's killed her."

Fausak excused himself and summoned a first-aid squad. He suggested to
Al that it might be a good idea to hospitalize Louise.

But she would have none of it. Angela and Peter Rozek came in from East
Brunswick, and that helped.

Fausak spoke briefly, alone, to the Rozeks.

What had Mrs. Taylor been wearing on Saturday night when they were
there?

"A white sweater and corduroy culottes, kind of tancolored," Angela
said. "Has someone seen her?"

"It's just that we got a report that she might have been in jeans,
Calvin Klein jeans."

"Believe me, Teresa would never travel in jeans. She was too conscious
of her hips."

Sitting with the Benignos, Fausak wished that he was a million miles
away. He wished there was something he could say.

Finally Phil Benigna arrived. He embraced his mother, and Fausak heard
him whisper, "Don't give up hope, Ma."

Louise went with the Rozeks. Fausak called the local authorities to have
an ambulance alerted. Then he and patrolman Visconi drove off with Al
and Phil in the rear seat for the two-hour trip. For a while, nothing
was said. Then Al started talking about Acapulco, about all of the
might-have-beens. It was difficult to say who he was addressing-Fausak,
Phil, himself After a wordless interlude, Al asked Fausak about when he
had become a cop and what was it like, and Fausak spun out his answer as
long as he could.

At the Reading barracks, Corporal Millward privately showed Fausak some
of the photographs. Fausak shuddered. He'd seen bodies smashed up in car
wrecks, but he had never seen anyone beaten like this. He remembered
hoping that she hadn't felt anything, and then realized that of course
she must have been immediately rendered unconscious.

Nobody could have stood up to such savagery.

Millward led them north to a hospital in Pottsville, the medical
facility closest to Hawk Mountain, where the autopsy had been performed.
Other state troopers were on hand.

The body was wheeled into a corridor outside the morgue.

The face was uncovered by the forensic pathologist.

Phil didn't move. He started weeping. Al moved closer to the body.

He also was crying.

"Yes," he said, "this is my daughter." He bent over and kissed her brow.

The pathologist looked at Phil. "is this your sister?"

"Yes, that's my sister."

Fausak turned away. He had wanted so much for them both to say that no,
it wasn't her, it was someone else.

Formalities had to be concluded at the hospital, forms filled out,
papers signed, and more of the same back at the barracks. It was nearly
eleven P.m. before they began the long, silent return to Manalapan.

Before leaving, Al called Celeste. Jeff answered the phone.

Celeste was at a girlfriend's house. Al told him that Teresa was dead.

While Fausak was in Pennsylvania, Lieutenant William Lucia,
second-in-command of the major crimes unit in the county prosecutor's
office, arrived at the Manalapan station for an update.

He came with Guy Mccormick, one of his best investigators.

Mccormick would be assigned to the case. Before joining the unit, he had
been on the Manalapan force. He had worked with Fausak and got along
well with him.

There was an immediate concern. Ken Taylor couldn't be found.

Three times that day a patrol car had gone by the house. There was no
sign of him or of Teresa's Cutlass Supreme.

Nor was he at either of his two offices in Staten Island.

Concern mounted after Fausak reported that a positive identification had
been made. They wanted Taylor-and the car.

According to Fausak, as soon as the body had been discovered, the state
police mounted a roadblock. A witness reported seeing a vehicle
resembling the Cutlass near the bird sanctuary. He remembered a single
male at the wheel.

He also thought that the car had New Jersey plates. He could not recall
the numbers, except that he was sure the middle one was "6."

The Cutlass's plates were 464

YEE.

Then, around eight P.m there was a new twist. Peter Vanderweit, a
Manalapan police lieutenant, took the call. It was from a man who said
he was Robert Negliaccio, a New York City detective stationed in Staten
Island. He said that he was both a friend and a patient of Dr. Kenneth
Taylor's.

Taylor had phoned him earlier in the day to say that he needed
Negliaccio's help in trying to locate his wife. She had left "spaced out
on drugs." This was the first time that the New Jersey investigators had
heard about any drug use by Teresa.

Negliaccio wanted to know what the current status of her disappearance
was. Could he be of assistance?

Everyone's reaction was that this was a fishing expedition instigated by
Ken.

Negliaccio could be anybody, and even if he were who he said he was, so
what?

Vanderweil treated him cautiously. He did not say that a body had been
found or identified.

The search for Mrs. Taylor was still going on.

Did his caller have any idea where Dr. Taylor was?

Well, maybe, Negliaccio said. He'd left a number in the Pittsburgh area
where he said he could be reached.

When the number was tried, though, a woman's voice on a recorded message
said that no one was there. Fausak was contacted in Pennsylvania and
told to enlist the cooperation of the state police.

The number was matched to an address, but when the troopers arrived,
they found a small, empty office building. There was no Cutlass, nor was
it seen in the parking lot of an adjacent apartment complex.

It was eventually learned that an out-of-date street directory had been
consulted, that the number had been disconnected and reissued, but by
then it didn't make any difference.

Shortly after midnight, Investigator Mccormick had called Celeste.

She shouted, "He killed her, he killed my sister!"

They were doing everything they could to locate Dr. Taylor, Mccormick
said. He wasn't in Manmapan. Did she have any ideas where he might be?

Try his parents in Marion, Indiana, she said, weeping, and gave him the
number.

Zach Taylor answered. Mccormick told him that the body of his son's wife
had been discovered and that he needed to speak to Ken as soon as
possible.

Zach asked if her death had been caused by a drug overdose.

At this point, Mccormick said, he really did not have all the details.

The last thing he wanted was to scare off his number-one suspect.

Zach said that he would try to reach Ken. He was sure that he was in
Pittsbur@to visit his daughter, although he did not have the address.

His son loved that little girl, Zach 99 said. He did not say that the
only time he and Jean had ever seen her was when they came east for
Ken's marriage to Teresa.

Around one A,m. Fausak returned from Pennsylvania to Manalapan.

Al and Phil left for East Brunswick to be with Louise at the Rozeks.

A few minutes later, Ken telephoned.

Lieutenant Vanderweil said that he regretted to inform him that his wife
was dead-murdered-and expressed his condolences.

Ken started to cry. Where had it happened?

What were the circumstances? Did they know who had killed her?

They had no leads at the moment, Vanderweil said. That was why his
assistance was so urgently needed, It was crucial to reconstruct all of
his wife's movements, starting at People's Express.

Right then Vanderweil wanted Ken to think that they were buying his
story 100 percent.

Give him a couple of minutes to make arrangements, Ken said. He called
back and said that he was taking an eight o'clock flight in the morning
from Pittsburgh to Newark.

Did he wish to be met?

No, Ken said, he had parked his car at the airport. He would drive in
himself. He'd be at the station no later than ten. He hoped he could
help.

It was the second time that week that Ken had been with Marilyn Hope in
Pittsburgh.

The week before, when he said he might come out, she had told him that
she would be on vacation in Florida with Astrid. When she returned late
Sunday night, her answering machine wasn't working. On Monday, she
called both of his Staten Island offices. One said that he was on
vacation, the other said there'd been an emergency that had caused him
to go to Indiana.

On Tuesday morning he phoned her from Marion.

He said that he'd been trying to contact her.

"What are you doing there?" she asked.

Teresa had taken off, he said, "all hopped up on coke."

She had gone somewhere to dry out, so he had brought the baby to his
mother's place. He'd drive to Pittsburgh in the afternoon.

Well, she said, she was supposed to attend apta meeting in the evening.
The teachers had gone on strike. But okay, she'd skip the meeting.

Ken showed up around midnight, she remembered. She made him a grilled
cheese sandwich.

He said that Teresa's parents wanted him to report her missing to the
police. What did she think?

"How can you report somebody missing who says they're leaving?" she
asked. "Where did she go, anyway? What did she do?" He said that he had
dropped her off at People's Express in Newark.

"She didn't say anything about where she was going?"

"No.

Then he said that he had a feeling that she was just going to hole up in
a hotel somewhere. As a matter of fact, he had told her that he was
going home because she would probably change her mind and want him to
fetch her.

But he decided to take the baby to his mother's. They had discussed that
thoroughly.

It was for the best. One thing was sure. It was definitely, absolutely
finished between him and Teresa.

"Things just didn't work out," he said.

In the morning, Marilyn said, "Maybe you had better report it to the
police." And he ought to tell them about Teresa's drug addiction.

It would give them a better slant. They'd know what to do.

She recalled that he seemed reluctant. He didn't want . to say anything
about the drugs because of all the prescriptions she forged that he
hadn't done anything about. That could cause him all sorts of problems.
He'd think about it.

He said that he would return on Friday or Saturday.

She told him to be sure to let her know.

Astrid had a birthday party to go to on Saturday, and she didn't wish to
hang around the house not knowing one way or the other.

By two o'clock on Saturday, she was ready to give up when Ken phoned.

He was in Pittsburgh at the airport. She reminded him about the party.

He said that it was fine with him.

Outside the party, they talked about Teresa.

What on earth could have happened to her?

"She wouldn't go kill herself someplace because she thought something's
going on between us, because her marriage is falling apart?" Marilyn
asked. "You know her. Would she do that?"

"Well, with drugs and stuff, you never know,',' Ken said. "You never
know who she might have gotten mixed up with."

"You mean she might have taken off with somebody because the marriage
isn't working, because sexually it wasn't there?"

"I asked her brother about that," Ken said, absolutely not," and he said
"Maybe," Marilyn said, "she wants You to go searching for her, to show
that you care for her. You know how some people are when they're
breaking up. They get crazy." That night they went to a restaurant
called Charlie's Place. "We had a lovely dinner," she remembered, "and
my daughter was thrilled to death. She was all dressed up, and when we
came back, it was late. She fell asleep on the couch, and so did I. He
was watching some movie. I woke up and he was putting pajamas on Astrid,
and I was laughing because it's hard to put pajamas on a sleeping child.
He said he didn't see what was so funny."

After everyone was in bed, the phone rang.

She didn't answer, resenting a call in the middle of the. night.

Then it rang again, and this time she groped for the phone. It was Ken's
father, asking for him. She heard Zach say that Teresa's body had been
found.

The only way she could describe Ken's reaction was in relation to her
own. "I got a sick feeling," she remembered. "I felt like I went dry,
you know, and I was drinking water, and I noticed he was drinking water,
too. I know I cried, Oh, my God,' and he cried. I guess he called the
police about coming back, and then his parents were talking about how
they were going to get to Newark, and I felt, Oh, my God, how can he get
on an airplane by himself, having to go through this kind of thing
alone? So I asked him did he want me to go with him and he said, Yes,'
and I arranged for Astrid to stay where she'd been for the birthday
party. I think it was me who thought that well, I could drive him from
Newark to the police station and drive the car back to the airport and
give the keys to his parents."

Captain Richard Canneto, who headed the major crimes unit, brought a
contingent of investigators to Manalapan to await Ken's arrival.

All the top township police officials also were on hand that Sunday
morning.

From a station window, Bob Fausak saw the Cutlass pull in shortly after
ten A.m. He watched Ken talk to a redhaired woman and kiss her on the
cheek, and then saw the woman drive off.

Fausak greeted him in the reception area and told him that he regretted
the circumstances under which they had to meet again. Ken acknowledged
this with the resigned shrug of a bereaved.

Instead of using an office, Fausak ushered him to one of the interview
rooms. It was intimate and intimidating, barely large enough for a small
table and three chairs.

Fausak introduced Ken to Lieutenant Lucia, who informed him that he was
a suspect. Lucia softened this by saying that almost everyone they were
talking to at this stage was a suspect.

He started reading Ken his Miranda rights, but Ken waved him off
nonchalantly and signed an agreement to be questioned and a form
consenting to a search of the Valley Road premises.

Lucia asked Ken if he'd like a cup of coffee.

Ken said he would, and Lucia left the room.

Outside, he gave Guy Mccormick the consent-to-search form.

Captain Canneto and two investigators in the prosecutor's office for
forensic and technical services were immediately dispatched to the
house.

Mccormick would serve as liaison between them and the interrogators.

Mccormick also began writing up an affidavit for a court-ordered search
in case Ken changed his mind. He had yet to ask for a lawyer.

One object of the interview was to keep it going at least long enough to
determine if any physical evidence could be turned up.

Fausak could not discern the slightest sign of unease in Ken. He was
properly solemn and cooperative, anxious to be of assistance.

When Lucia returned with the coffee, he told Ken that he wanted him to
start from the beginning, from the time he had first met his wife.

Somewhere along the way, he said, there might be someone who bore her a
grudge.

No, Ken quickly said, he couldn't think of a single person he knew who
would want to harm Teresa. The only one who was conceivably upset about
their relationship was Sol Aurelia, the boyfriend she had broken up with
after meeting him. Aurelia, he said, had once hit her and burst her
eardrum.

Lucia studiously wrote down Aurelia's name.

He led Ken through his courtship and marriage to Teresa. Ken did not
mention anything about being married before. Then Lucia questioned him
closely about Acapulco. Ken told the same story. He'd never been
charged. The police had extorted" money from him. In the hospital, his
wife had been given "massive doses of drugs."

While Teresa had been under "a lot of pressure after having gone through
Premature labor along with "problems" with her parents, Ken said that
their marriage was extremely happy. There were no serious rifts between
them except for his wife's growing drug addiction, which had upset him a
great deal. He added that during Teresa's confinement he had to leave
his practice to tend to her and that had hurt "financially."

On Saturday night, November 10, when the Rozeks had left, he said that
he went to bed not long after midnight. Teresa had not. He awoke around
four A.m. and found her still downstairs.

She was strung out again. She told him that she realized that she had to
do something to clean up her act. She could not take care of the baby.
They discussed it for a while, but she was unable to rest.

So he went back to bed alone. Around eight-thirty, she woke him up to
say that she had to get away. Then he took her to the airport.

He was very specific about the jeans she was wearing.

He reiterated that Teresa wanted him to take the baby to Indiana.

He left right after four P.m. He could remember that because he had
spent the afternoon watching a New York Jets football game.

After that there was a break so that Ken could go to the bathroom.

He had remained impressively confident. If Fausak had not met the
Benignos, if he had not spoken to the Rozeks and gotten a description of
how Teresa was dressed that night, if the body had not been discovered
in those same clothes, Ken's version, despite its bizarre aspects, would
have been believable. And in the end, he could have said, well, he was
wrong about the jeans.

Lucia asked him to retrace all his moves during the past week, to
Indiana, to Pittsburgh, then to Manalapan and, finally, back to
Pittsburgh.

There was another break for coffee.

Mccormick grabbed Lucia in the corridor to tell him they had finally
come up with something important at the house. An earring with dried
blood on it, a twin of the one Teresa wore, had been found on the garage
floor.

Fausak left the interview room. Captain Canneto and Manalapan police
lieutenant Peter Vanderweit crowded inside now with Lucia.

Canneto had a Polaroid shot of the earring with a ruler alongside it to
indicate its size.

"Doctor Taylor," Canneto said, "what do you see in this picture?"

"A ruler."

"No, I mean the object next to it."

Ken peered at the photograph. "A cigarette butt?" No, Lucia said, it
wasn't a butt. It was an earring from a matched pair. It had been
discovered in Ken's garage. The other earring had been on his wife's
body.

Still, Ken did not crack. He couldn't explain it. He looked closely at
the Polaroid again.

Maybe Teresa had met somebody at the airport, he said, and they'd come
back to the house and that person had killed her, maybe somebody who was
into drugs.

That didn't wash, Lucia said. A stranger picking her up at the airport,
going back to the house and killing her wouldn't then transport the body
somewhere else. "Doc, did you kill your wife?"

Lucia said.

Ken denied it. What they were saying didn't make any sense. He was madly
in love with his wife. Why didn't they give him the benefit of the
doubt?

"Think about it," Lucia said - "Take your time. It'll 6enefit all of
us." For the first time, he noticed tiny beads of perspiration on Ken's
forehead. He and Canneto left the room.

Vanderweil remained there. He stared at Ken.

"I believe You killed your wife. Maybe there are circumstances we're not
aware of." Ken's eyes started tearing. Vanderweil recalled that he began
nodding ever so slightly.

Lucia and Canneto returned, carrying cups of coffee.

Ken looked up at them. His lips were quivering.

After a long pause, he said, "What would you do if you came down the
stairs one morning and found your wife giving Your five-month-old child
head?"

"Doc, is that what happened?" Lucia said. I Yes."

Then Ken started crying convulsively.

Lucia allowed him a few minutes to compose himself. Then Lucia said, "I
realize it's difficult for you to talk at this time, but we have to have
more information." Under questioning, Ken said that it had happened
about eight A.M. when he woke up and discovered Teresa performing
fellatio on little Philip.

The child, he said, was on the dining area table.

He had started down the stairs when he saw her "doing that to the baby."
He was fed up with her drug problem.

He yelled and Teresa ran into the laundry room. He chased her.

She grabbed a dumbbell bar and swung it at him in the doorway. He ducked
and wrested the bar away.

Then he said, "I gave it to her."

Ken started sobbing again.

"Did you strike your wife more than once?" Lucia asked.

Almost indignantly, he replied, "Of course, what kind of question is
that?" Lucia said that it was necessary to obtain all the facts, however
difficult it might be for him to relate them.

Ken abruptly said that he didn't want to answer any more questions.

What he wanted was a lawyer.

As he was led out to be photographed, fingerprinted, and put in a
holding cell, he kept sobbing, "I just couldn't take it anymore.

In THE INVESTIGATION The grisly details would gradually unfold.

In Pittsburgh, when Ken was eating a grilled cheese sandwich and telling
Marilyn that things just hadn't worked out with Teresa, her body was in
the trunk of the Cutlass parked in front of Marilyn's condominium.

In Marion, the body had been in the trunk all the time that the car sat
in the driveway of Ken's parents' house.

The autopsy revealed that there were nine shattering blows to Teresa's
face and head.

The back of her skull was in three pieces.

Ken had stuffed her in the trunk, cleaned up the blood, put the baby in
a car seat beside him, and driven from Manalapan after the Jets game was
over.

Before leaving, he called Marion and spoke to his father. He would be
coming out with Philip. He'd be there when he got there.

Zach wanted to know if something was the matter.

He'd explain everything when he arrived, Ken said.

In Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, he stopped at a Howard Johnson's to use
the men's room and to change Philip's diaper. The Dallas Cowboys were on
TV. The Cowboys were his favorite team. He went across the street to a
Mcdonald's for a hamburger and fries.

Still in Pennsylvania on Interstate 80, he pulled in for the night at a
Holiday Inn. When he registered, the desk clerk asked how many people
would be in the room and Ken said, "Three."

"Three?"

"Oh, I mean two," he said. "I don't know what's wrong with me."

The Holiday Inn people were very hospitable, sending up a crib for the
baby right away. In the morning, he called Phil Benigna to tell him that
Teresa had gone off to rehabilitate herself.

It was snowing. He phoned his parents periodically to report his
progress. He cut short one conversation with his mother, saying, "I've
got to feed Philip. This is a lot more than I bargained for."

When he finally reached Marion, Jean remembered that as he presented
Philip to her, Ken said, "Son, you're in safe hands now." Jean said that
she had better change and bathe the baby.

Be sure to inspect his penis and wash it thoroughly, Ken said.

That perplexed her at the time, it looked all right to her.

Later, she would say righteously that she now understood why he had made
the request.

There was an awkward moment when Zach told Ken's brother to get the
luggage. Tom carried in a suitcase with Philip's things and an overnight
bag of Ken's that were in the back seat.

The trunk was locked, he said. He asked for the key.

For-get it, Ken said sharply. That was all the luggage. It was Teresa's
car. There was only one trunk key and she had it.

Then he told Jean and Zach how Teresa, drug-crazed, had taken off to
seek treatment, leaving him with the baby. He didn't know where she
went. They couldn't imagine what it was like to live with someone hooked
on drugs.

He said that he intended to stay in Marion for two or three days.

But in the morning, after buying Pampers, he suddenly announced that he
had to leave. He phoned Zach at work and told him, "I've got to go and
find her. It's my responsibility. Maybe she's come back." He said to
Jean that he hoped the baby wouldn't be too much trouble.

Jean recalled that he seemed "very depressed, not like himself."

She found a twenty-dollar bill in her vanity drawer following his
departure. A note was pinned to it that said, "Love, Ken." She was
touched by his thoughtfulness.

After spending the night in Pittsburgh with Marilyn, he headed for
Manalapan in Teresa's car, now her "hearse," he would say. On Interstate
80, as dusk fell, he said that he spotted a sign for the Hawk Mountain
Bird Sanctuary. On "automatic pilot," he turned off the highway and
ended up on a narrow, winding road where he dumped Teresa's body.

Continuing on the interstate, he began to contemplate suicide.

Life without Teresa wasn't worth living, he would join her. And, he
said, when he was inside the garage and closed the door, he connected
the pool-filter hose to the exhaust pipe and snaked the hose through a
rear window of the car. He turned on the motor, took several swigs from
a bottle of Jack Daniel's, and awaited his demise.

Nothing happened. He got out of the car and discovered that the hose had
fallen from the exhaust. He shut off the motor. He started having second
thoughts about suicide.

"Visions" of his children danced through his mind, he would say.

It would be irresponsible of him to leave them fatherless.

He went into the house and called the Benignos to say that he was too
tired to visit them. He phoned his parents and reported his safe return.
No, he said, there was no word from Teresa.

investigator Mccormick subsequently determined that he made two other
calls that night to the same number in Hartford, Connecticut-to a
massage parlor masquerading as a health club for men.

According to the Hartford police, clients were required to undress
before negotiating their preferences in sex.

Also, that night, Wednesday, despite telling the Benignos that he was
too tired to see them, he did drive to Staten Island after all-to the
go-go club featuring naked dancers that he patronized.

Soon after Ken cut short his interrogation at the Manalapan police
station, Zach and Jean arrived in the Cutlass that Marilyn had left at
the airport. They had the baby. Fausak and Guy Mccormick met them.

Fausak's initial impression of them was "Mr. and Mrs. Middle America,
well-dressed, well-mannered people." He said that he was sorry to inform
them that their son had confessed to killing his wife and was now a
prisoner.

Mccormick told them that the Cutlass would be impounded for evidence and
asked for the keys.

They wanted to see their son. Could they?

Fausak passed on the request to Lucia, but Ken told Lucia, "No."

After Lucia personally relayed his refusal, Jean said, "But he has to.

You tell him I said so."

This time Ken agreed to speak to them, but only if Lucia were present.

They met in the detective's room, where they embraced and Ken was
permitted to hold Philip.

He asked them if they had been told about the circumstances surrounding
Teresa's death. They nodded. Then Jean said, "Was that why you asked me
to check Philip's penis and bathe it?"

"Yes," Ken said, glancing at Lucia, as if to make sure he had heard.

Jean appeared to be mesmerized by one aspect of the case. How could he
have driven for so long with Teresa in the trunk? Wasn't he afraid of an
accident or the police?

"Mom, I was driving carefully. After all, I had my little boy with me."

He hesitated, as though more was to be said about what he had done with
Teresa's body. "I loved her and I didn't want to part with her.

I didn't know what to do. I kept her as long as I could. She liked the
outdoors," he said plaintively, his voice trailing off. "She liked
birds."

Suddenly he appeared angry. Why had they brought the baby with them?

Didn't they understand why he had taken him to Indiana, to Marion?

Then Fausak drove the Taylors to the Valley Road house. Ken was moved to
the Monmouth County Jail in Freehold, the county seat. His bail was set
at five hundred thousand dollars.

Instead of the usual 10 percent deposit, the full amount would be
required. He asked for paper and pencil to write letters. He was warned
that they would be scrutinized.

In one letter, addressed to "Mom, Dad, Philip and Tom," he wrote, What I
did was done out of disgust for what I saw Teresa doing and when she
swung the dumbbell at my head, I lost all control. I had become
increasingly disgusted with her periods of withdrawal and associated
losses of money as a result of her habit.

Please help Marilyn and Astrid understand I only ever wanted the best
for everyone I became enraged but only when she swung at me did I touch
her.

Please use this to help you -keep Philip for me. I want you to be his
parents as well as TOM. Fight to keep him for me.

A second letter was to Marilyn and Astrid: MY Mom & Dad know what
happened. I know I can't make it in this environment. I wanted so much
for us all to be together. If only I had slept a little longer I would
not have seen Teresa doing fellatio on my baby. I'm so sick inside and I
really believe I'll be here for a long, long time  ... I truly loved you
and I know that you know it. We were on our way but someone still got in
our way. Maybe it was wrong from the very beginning. Please give Astrid
the best and always let her know just how much I love her.

You gave me the greatest gift in the world-a child.

Try to let her know how much I love you and her. All my love.

He was arraigned on Monday. Zach looked through the yellow pages for
lawyers. One, Barry Shapiro, caught his eye. He remembered that Ken's
lawyer in New London had been named Shapiro. Maybe they were related, he
thought.

As it happened, there was a connection of sorts. Shapiro also resided on
Valley Road, although he had never met Ken. When Zach called him,
Shapiro already knew about the case. It was on the front page of the
region's major newspaper, the Asbury Park Press. A four-column headline
trumpeted, "Dentist charged with killing his wife and dumping body."
Zach explained the situation, emphasizing what he said was the untold
story of Teresa's drug addiction. Shapiro said that unfortunately he'd
recently been elected a member of the Manalapan Township Council and
thus couldn't accept the case because of conflict of interest. He would,
however, appear with Ken at the arraignment.

Ken elaborated on Teresa's drug habit to Shapiro, a youthful attorney
with a child of his own. In the three days preceding that Sunday
morning, Ken said, she had been so wired on cocaine that she hadn't
slept at all. By then she was out of her mind.

There'd be flashbulbs popping around the courthouse, Shapiro said.

Ken was to keep his cool. Let him do all the talking. He'd plead Ken not
guilty. A trial date would be set, and he would be returned to jail.

But that was a formality.

When Superior Court reconvened the following week, he would request a
bail reduction.

Because of Ken's obvious roots in the community, he was confident he
would get it.

And from what Ken was telling him, there were plenty of mitigating
circumstances. Murder was not in the cards, he assured Ken.

Manslaughter or even an acquittal was likely when all the facts were
known. Temporary insanity just might be the ticket. He told Ken that
he'd recommend several defense lawyers. Ken could choose the one he
liked.

As a result of Shapiro's bravura performance at the arraignment, the
next day's headline read, "Suspect's lawyer asserts slain wife abused
infant son." Shapiro was quoted as saying, "I believe that the evidence
will show his wife was a drug abuser and did harm to the child, and that
precipitated the incident that caused her death."

Zach Taylor's comments to reporters made news as well. "Our
daughter-in-law had a real drug problem. It was so bad it was
threatening and affecting the baby."

Zach also called Marilyn Hope and told her that what had happened was
Teresa's fault.

After Ken had found his wife doing oral sex on his son, he went after
her. "She picked up a barbell, and tried to hit him, and he hit her with
it," she remembered Zach saying.

Then, after his arraignment, Marilyn nervously took a collect call from
Ken.

"I don't want you to think I'm a monster," he said. I Do you know what
she did?"

"Yes, your father told me."

"My attorney says I have a case because of what she was doing to my son.
And she tried to hit me. What would you do if it were your child?"

"I have no idea."

"That's my point," he said.

"Look, I don't know what to believe about anything anymore."

"When this is taken care of, I still want to be with you and Astrid. I
still love you. You have to know that. I've been telling you that for
months. I'm not just saying it now." She felt herself beginning to
unravel. "All I know is that I want to stay by myself for the rest of my
life."

"You're just saying that today."

"I can't believe that you could have come to your own daughter's house
knowing what happened. Why are you calling me? They're going to want to
know why."

"Listen," he said, "the first time I felt good was now when I called and
got a busy signal and I knew I would get through to you.

Talking to you gives me strength. You're not implicated in any of this."

"I know I'm not implicated."

"I mean, in case you have any feelings of guilt, you know, about saying
you hoped you hadn't pushed her to this.

"Look, let's get this straight. I said that I hoped she didn't commit
suicide because she thought something was going on between us."

Any second, she thought, she'd fall apart.

"I'm going to hang up," she said. "God bless you."

"Please, wait. Has anyone, you know, talked to you?"

"Not yet."

"I talked to my lawyer about Connecticut. He said nobody knows about
Connecticut. It's off the record. The charges were dropped. It doesn't
have to be mentioned."

She remained silent, afraid to say that everything was bound to come
out, that she would have to tell the truth.

wrote you a letter," he said. "After you read it, if you don't want to
talk to me, I won't bother you again as long as you live-or I live.

I think about suicide all the time. I told the psychologist here that I
can't get the picture out of my mind about what she was doing."

His voice started to quaver. "if you don't want to have anything to do
with me," he said, "I'll go to Indiana and live with my parents and
raise my son there."

"Good." Then, suddenly, he said, "They will never keep me away from you
and Astrid."

"Just exactly what does that mean?"

"She's my daughter. I'm her father."

"Yes, that's right, you are her father," Marilyn said, bursting into
tears. And then she did hang up. The next day she changed her unlisted
phone number. It was the last time she spoke to Ken.

The funeral mass for Teresa was held in her old parish church, St.
Charles, on Wednesday, November 21.

In her grief for her dead sister, a month away from having her own
child, Celeste clutched that part of Teresa that yet remained, a part of
herself as well, she thought-baby Philip.

When her father and brother went to Pennsylvania that Saturday, when the
police were saying maybe it's her and maybe it isn't, she had forced
herself to believe that it was not Teresa.

These things didn't happen to you, they happened to people you read
about in the newspapers. Jeff was working the three-to-eleven ferry
shift and she had not wanted to be alone that evening, so she'd gone to
a girlfriend's house. That had buoyed her spirits because her
giriftiend's husband was a New York City cop, and he had talked about
missing persons and the procedures which were followed and how more
often than not the person missing was found or reappeared.

When Jeff phoned after getting the call from Al, he did not speak to
her. He just said, "Tell Celeste to come home," and she had thought that
at worst he might be a little annoyed that she hadn't been there to
greet him.

One look at Jeff's desolate face was enough.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I knew it!" she screamed. "She's dead. That bastard killed her!"

Celeste bent over her swollen belly, flailing her knees and thighs with
her fists, moaning through her tears. She began beating them against the
wall. Jeff pulled her away, and she began hammering her fists against
him. He did not try to stop her.

Spent, she finally stopped on her own. He helped her to a chair.

"Where's Daddy and my brother?" she asked, and Jeff said that they must
still be on their way back from Pennsylvania.

She thought about her mother at the Rozeks.

She had spoken to Louise earlier in the day.

"Ma," she had said, "let's wait and see." She thought about calling her
now, but she did not know if Louise knew.

"Can I get you something?" Jeff said.

She'd give anything for a stiff vodka, she thought. But she had given up
alcohol during her pregnancy. She yearned for a cigarette, but she had
stopped smoking as well. "Yes," she said, "some water."

Jeff remembered how she suddenly shook her head and stared wide-eyed at
him. "Where is he?" she said. "He could come and kill us all.

Did the police find him?"

"I don't know," Jeff said. Her concern was real, he thought. How did you
deal with a murderer? You didn't know what to expect anymore.

He got her into bed, but sleep was out of the question. "Oh, sweet
Jesus," she said, cradling her head against his shoulder. "I hurt all
over so much. My poor, poor sister."

She began to weep again.

In the middle of the night, Celeste bolted upright. "Where's the baby?"
she said. "The baby!

We've got to get the baby! Are you with me?"

"All the way," he said without hesitation.

Later be would think how momentous a turning point it was for both of
them, and for the rest of the Benignos.

In the morning they went to the Rozeks, Around four in the afternoon,
Bob Fausak phoned from Manalapan and said that Ken had confessed.

Fausak did not go into any details.

His call was an anticlimax. At the Rozeks the mood had moved from
anguish to anger to guilt.

"You know, once it happened, there was no question who did it," Jeff
said. "I mean, nobody said, Was it Ken?" You said, That miserable fuck,'
because everyone knew. And all of the anger from Acapulco came out then.
Not only the anger that now we knew for sure, definitely, that he had
done it to her there, but anger at each other that we kind of went along
with a phony story.

That we had sidestepped what was staring us in the face, that something
of that magnitude had happened at that time, and so we should have been
able to prevent this and we didn't. Look, I can only speak for myself,
but there was a lot of guilt about it. in real life, of course, there
was nothing anybody could have done to prevent it.

But like, all of these emotions, all of a sudden, they hit you, the fact
that Teresa was gone, the fact that we hadn't done anything about
Acapulco, the fact that we couldn't even get this bastard in our hands,
to choke him ourselves.

I'm here to tell you that if Phil and him were in a room at the same
time, I wouldn't want to be between them. And Phil, I guarantee you,
would be the only one walking out of that room. Like if you saw Phil
sitting there, you'd understand. This was his sister, loved her so much,
they were so close."

Inthe evening Phil returned with Jeff and Celeste to their Apartment.

Phil said he was going to lie down in the bedroom. A little later,
Celeste said that she was going in to see how he was.

After a while, Jeff, concerned, looked in on them. Phil was on his side
facing the wall, knees drawn up, his fingers entwined as if in prayer.
Celeste lay behind him, her arms locked tightly around his neck. Both of
them were asleep.

The next day, after Ken's arraignment, Celeste called the Manalapan
house. Zach answered.

"We'd like to see the baby," she said.

At that time she, like the rest of the Benigna family, was unaware of
the story Ken had given the police about why he had killed Teresa.

Zach was all cordiality on the phone. "No problem," he said, and a visit
was arranged for that evening.

Al and Louise accompanied Jeff and Celeste.

At first, both families seemed to be united in tragedy. There were
subdued greetings, some tears. Shortly after their arrival, Jean put
Philip in his crib upstairs. He was obviously cranky and tired.

Although the Benignos did not know it, the Taylors had just returned
with him from seeing Ken in jail. They also did not yet know that the
murder had taken place in the house, that Teresa's body was dragged
right by the sofa and chairs they were sitting on.

Jean served apples for refreshments.

Then Al, addressing Zach, said, "I want you to know that we don't hold
you responsible for what your son did. He's a grown man. It's his
responsibility, not yours, and nothing is being held against you."

Zach's mouth tightened.

"We're here to discuss Philip," Celeste said.

His face flushing slightly, Zach said, "There's nothing to discuss.

" It was at that moment, Jeff recalled, that the battle lines were
irrevocably drawn.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Celeste said.

"Philip is ours. Kenny wants us to have him and we're going to have
him."

Kenny wants it, Celeste remembered thinking.

This creep murdered my sister, and his father is sitting there telling
us what he wants.

"That's my dead sister's baby you're talking about," she said.

"There is something to discuss."

"No, there isn't. As soon as we can, we're leaving for Indiana with
him."

"When?"

"Thursday."

For once, Celeste restrained herself. She shot a warning glance at Jeff
and her parents.

They were all on the same wavelength. If they said anything threatening,
the Taylors might pack up on the spot and take Philip with them, and
nobody could do a thing about it.

"I hope we can see Philip again before you go," Celeste said as sweetly
as she could.

"Certainly. Just call first." Outside, in the car, Celeste said,
"They're not normal people.

Nothing to discuss! Can you believe it?"

"Look, we lucked out with them telling us what they're planning," Jeff
told her.

"We have to do something right away," Celeste said.

The next morning they were at the office of the Benigna family lawyer in
Staten Island.

He'd have to retain a New Jersey attorney, he said, but don't worry, he
would be riding herd on it himself. And on Wednesday, the day Teresa was
buried, "show cause" papers were served on the Taylors.

A "show cause" order was a swifter remedy than the usual legal motion.

It was used in instances of immediate, irreparable harm. At issue, the
papers said, was a custody situation concerning a five-month-old child
whose father had been arrested for the murder of his mother.

"Upon information and belief," there was every likelihood that the
parents of the defendant now in control of the child, a legal resident
of New Jersey, would shortly remove him from the state's jurisdiction.

Pending the outcome of the defendant's trial, Jeff and Celeste asked for
custod of the infant.

A hearing on the "show cause" order was set for the following Tuesday,
November 27. In the meantime, Zach and Jean were effectively Prevented
from leaving New Jersey with Philip.

They could depart themselves, but not with him.

In jail, Ken reacted in fury. How could Jean and Zach have been so
stupid? Al and Louise must have been the prime movers in this, he
reasoned. The last person whom he suspected was that "dingbat," Celeste.

By now Celeste knew about the accusation against Teresa that Ken was
giving as the motivation for his lethal assault.

Her fury more than matched his.

Forensic technicians had found carpet padding fibers in the trunk of the
Cutlass that matched those in the downstairs room being renovated.

At one end of a dumbbell bar without weights, there was a brownish
stain. Tests showed the stain to be positive for human blood. The bar
was lying under Ken's work-out bench.

So many blows to her head would have caused extensive bleeding, but
there was no visible sign of it. Quite a thorough clean-up job, Bob
Fausak thought, for a fellow supposedly in the grips of an emotional
frenzy.

That same Wednesday night a Luminal test was scheduled. Luminal was a
chemical that reacted to the slightest traces of blood no matter how
much a surface had been scrubbed, traces that could not be seen even
with a magnifying glass. The process was conducted in complete darkness.

Fausak obtained a second search warrant and informed the Taylors.

He went out to the house with two forensic experts from the prosecutor's
office and two chemists from the New Jersey State Police Laboratory.

They waited until it was Pitch-black outside. Still, all the shades were
lowered in case of a passing car. Fausak instructed the Taylors to
retire to their upstairs bedroom and turn off the lights.

The Luminal was in a bottle that looked to Fausak like the syrup jars in
restaurants. It had a spray dispenser on top. "You just spray it," one
of the chemists told him, "and let it settle and see what you can see."

The chemists first tried the laundry room, where Ken said Teresa had
swung a dumbbell at him. But only a small spot on the washing machine
faintly "luminesced." They sprayed the room being renovated.

Nothing.

In the passageway outside this second room, though, there was a very
obvious reaction, an eerie greenish light suddenly rising from the
floor. The chemists tracked it around the corner into the living room
area and, retreating slowly now, spraying in front of them, they moved
across the floor past the kitchen to the garage door and into and along
the side of the garage.

Fausak had never experienced anything like it. He felt as if he were in
asci-ri movie.

Initially, there was the same pale green light. It got greener and
brighter. It began to glow. And through its luminosity he could see the
trail of blood. The trail was solid, but with streaks in it, as though
someone had taken a big wet mop and wrung it out and dragged it along
the floor.

The length of the bloody trail measured some fifty-five feet.

The shimmering glow hung in the air, above Fausak's knees. It had become
so bright that he could see the faces of the forensic men and the
chemists. He looked up and at the top of the stairs, he saw the ghostly
visage of Ken Taylor's father staring down at the scene.

Photographs were taken. Then one of the forensic men switched on the
lights. And the trail of blood instantly vanished. It was as if Fausak
had dreamed it all.

He asked the chemists, "What if it's a surface, like a table top, and
it's Formica, or some kind of plastic that's real smooth, would Luminal
work?"

"Sure," he was told. "Nothing's perfectly smooth in this world.

There's always a crack or a pore, some minute imperfection that blood
gets into. Even if you clean it up, there's a residue that Luminof
reacts to, and you saw what happens next."

Maybe, Fausak thought, Ken Taylor's story about his wife running into
the laundry room or the sewing room, the room where his weights were,
and picking up a dumbbell bar and swinging it at him before he got it
away and gave it to her-maybe all of that wasn't the real story.

There was hardly any sign of blood there.

The trail of blood began in the passageway by the entrance to the second
room. Maybe he'd gone into the laundry room following some altercation
and grabbed the dumbbell bar and went after her.

Later, at the Olde Silver Tavern, a popular hangout a couple of miles
down the road from the Manalapan police station, Fausak met with Guy
Mccormick. Mccormick had been busy in the prosecutor's office taking
statements from the Rozeks, the Benignos, Jeff and Celeste, Ken's
parents and the New York City detective Robert Negliaccio, who had
called when Ken dropped out of sight. In questioning Negliaccio, it
became clear that Ken was using his relationship with him to find out
just what the cops in Manalapan did and didn't know.

"You think he came up with the sodomy stuff at the last minute?"

Fausak said.

"No," Mccormick said. "I think he had it all worked out in advance if
the rest of it didn't fly."

SEV'ELN4

!Paul Chalet, the first assistant prosecutor for Monmouth County, was a
stocky, powerfully built man with a bull neck and an incongruously low
voice that really made you sit up when he raised it.

He kept in shape jogging and weight-lifting. It was easy to picture him
as an outstanding guard in football at Albright College in Pennsylvania
where he completed his undergraduate studies.

He also had tried for the baseball team, with less success. "I thought I
was the next Yogi Berra," he said, "but it didn't work out."

He married a schoolteacher while he was still at Rutgers Law School, and
they had two children, a boy and girl. He had always wanted to do trial
work and had an affinity for ,law enforcement. So after a desultory year
with a private firm specializing in civil matters, he joined the
prosecutor's office as an assistant in 1973.

For the past six years, since 1978, he'd been the first assistant,
handling major felonies, including a number of homicides.

And he saw at once that Ken Taylor was going to be the slipperiest kind
of murder case.

Because there was no motive. Once you discounted Ken's explanation of
what had occurred in the Manalapan house, which Chalet immediately did,
there was no motive to offer a jury, no robbery, for instance, no money
at stake, no mistress in the woodpile, none of the usual suspects.

There had only been two people in the house at the time. One was dead
and the other one wasn't telling the truth, and there was little
likelihood that he ever would.

Chalet didn't have to prove that Ken had killed Teresa. He'd already
admitted to that.

It was the circumstances of that killing that counted. He had to prove
that what Ken was saying wasn't so, that the events that Ken described
as having taken place on Sunday morning, November 11, were not the
facts, that he had "knowingly and purposefully" murdered his wife.

And a murder conviction was what Chalet wanted. Any lesser conviction
would be an unacceptable defeat, a miscarriage of justice.

The murder of Teresa Taylor was as egregious a case as Chalet had
encountered. The only one that could touch it had occurred in Chalet's
hometown, Oceanport, and it had an especially personal impact. In this
case, when Chalet viewed the victim, a woman with twenty-three stab
wounds, he recognized her as the mother of his children's babysitter.

The prime suspects were the victim's husband and his girlfriend.

More than a year and a half passed, though, without enough evidence for
indictments. Then, in the middle of the night, around three A.M Chalet
got a call from Bill Lucia in the major crimes unit.

The girlfriend had just phoned him from New York City and confessed to
stabbing the wife on instructions from the husband. She had apparently
broken up with the husband and was sore at him for getting her into this
situation.

The girlfriend was brought in and given a deal to turn state's witness.

Then a lengthy telephone conversation between her and the husband
rehashing the murder plot was recorded.

Chalet learned valuable lessons from that case. One was 'patience.

Another was an insight into the sociopathic mind. Polygraphs were not
admissible in New Jersey courts. But both the girlfriend and the husband
had volunteered to take one in an effort to demonstrate their innocence
to Chaietand passed with flying colors. Still another was a reminder
never to presume what a jury will do. During the trial, the husband
continued to maintain that he was not guilty. His defense was he had
been entrapped by his former girlfriend in the recorded conversation
that became the principal evidence against him.

Chalet was sure he'd get an immediate conviction, But the jury remained
out for hours. He never forgot sitting in his office, playing the tape
again and again, trying to reassure himself that nobody could listen to
that tape-with all of its blood-curdling details-and not convict for
murder. And finally the jury did. The debate in the jury room had been
about the relative degree of guilt, who had been the key instigator?

And now in the Taylor case, he not only had this bizarre crime, but also
an equally bizarre-and novel-justification for it. He'd never heard
anything like it, and that was worrisome. There would be nothing he
could hark back to, nothing where he could declare to a jury with
appropriate sarcasm, "We've heard that one before, haven't we?"

Taylor could claim insanity, but the old Mcnaughton rule out of English
law on that subject-did the defendant know the difference between right
and wrong?-still applied in New Jersey.

Temporary insanity was a possibility, but then how temporary could it be
when Taylor carefully scrubbed down a house in an attempt to wipe out
every vestige of the crime, carted the body around the country for the
better part of four days, sticking as long as he could to the story that
Teresa had gone off on her own for drug treatment? Chalet was most
concerned about verdicts of manslaughter with reckless disregard to life
or manslaughter committed in the heat of passion, After all, Taylor
hadn't hit his wife in the head one time with a dumbbell bar, he'd done
it nine times. Chalet had seen the photographs, and they were gruesome.

The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that Ken had not just
come out of the woodwork. He had to have a history. You didn't just up
and do this, Chalet told Lucia and Guy Mccormick in the major crimes
unit and Fausak from the Manalapan police that it was essential to Comb
through Ken's entire past "What we do is we find out everything we can
about this guy," Chalet said. "Start with the other wife."

But Marilyn wouldn't cooperate. When Lieutenant Lucia contacted her, she
said to talk to her lawyer, a Pittsburgh attorney named Carl Gainor.
Then she notified Gainor to keep her out of this. She couldn't shed any
light on the "incident." It also seemed that she had a few unresolved
problems about Ken, Teresa and herself.

He said she Couldn't understand why I had a house she didn't, etc etc
etc Marilyn wrote. Well, in thefirst year he bought her a house, car,
etc. & was upset that I didn't let Astrid go to his house.

Our divorce argument was that he see her in my house. Visits were less
frequent, usually after work & he payed [sic] me by signing insurance
checks over to me. He was upset with me. Visits were to be on Sundays &
apparently his wife wouldn,t let him come.

Around April last ye, Ken started telling me that Teresa was on drugs &
stealing money from insurance CO'S. She went into Premature labor at 6

months of pregnancy- So I assumed the drug business was true. He said he
wanted to leave her but couldn't until the baby was born & well started
in life. He said he was keeping proof of the drug abuse & thefts so he
could get custody of the, child. After the child was born he wrote a
letter expressing sincere regret for any problems he's caused people in
his life.

It seemed the shoe was on the other foot & Ken had really learned about
life, responsibility, caring. Her, he was in a situation similar to the
one he put me in when he was doing drugs. There were sometimes that he
said he was concernedfor the safety of his child because his wife just
col4idn't cope, He said he wanted to leave, get custody of his child &
be with his "family" (Astrid & myself).

He visited us in Pa. and at that time he told me that she had taken off
because she was using cocaine & was going to straighten herself out, You
ask if I've changed my opinion of Ken?

I've known an extremely gentle man who left me with a note in a lea
cannister. rowing flowers, feeds I've seen a man who delights in 9

rs with a child, try to all stray animals & can play for hou take my
life . y mean things & return with roses. I've heard him so I've heard
him express regret for any pain he's caused t be able to go on living.

anyone with a hint that he may no cry profusely at a sad movie-just I've
seen this man g that months ago. Now I've heard this man's father sayin
to her son, Ken went n's wife was doing oral sex ,his so after her & she
tried to kill him with a barbell. He then hit her.

Have I changed my opinions-?

I'm not a doctor. I'm devastated."have no opinions just don't know what
to think about anything, anymore.

Gainor tried to soft-sell Chalet. Look, she wants to put this behind
her, he said. it's been too traumatic. She ,doesn't believe she can
contribute anything. She did not know about the body in the car.

She was not privy to anything. She just wants to be left alone.

Chalet got tough . Marilyn was a critical witness. He couldn't subpoena
her directly because she wasn't a New Jersey resident.

But he had another avenue, the federal route, under a statute called the
Uniform Act to Secure the Attend-an---- Of Witnesses. If she refused to
talk to his bring her in front Of a investigators, be would use it to
"Believe me grand jury, a less pleasant option. he said, "I'm not
kidding."

Gainor explained the pros and cons to his client, and she caved in.

on November 27, Lucia and Fausak flew to Pittsburgh for the interview in
Gainor's office. Fausak noticed ho cool she was to them, then fidgety as
hell. He expected that. What he didn't expect was how quickly Marilyn
would give them stunning information, almost in relief, as if all of her
pent-up emotions had been uncapped. It happened during the preliminary,
sort of getting-to-know-you conversation before a recorded formal
statement was taken.

Lucia asked if her ex-husband had ever been physically violent, and,
just like that, she said yes, he had tried to kill her once when she was
in bed, half-asleep.

Lucia didn't blink an eye, nodding slowly instead, sympathetically, as
though what she was saying confirmed something he'd known all along.

"And where was that again?"

"Waterford," she said, her words rushing out.

"In Connecticut when he was in the Navy. I reported it to the police.

Stone-faced, Fausak excused himself to call Mccormick back in Freehold.

Then they learned for the first time that he had still another former
wife.

"Do you know what his previous wife's name, previous to you, was?"

Lucia asked.

"At the time? Emily Taylor."

"Are you aware of her maiden name?"

"Oh. I believe it was Latrelle. Yeah."

"Do you have any information regarding their relationship, or any
problems that they may have had?"

"Not really. It was just something where he indicated that he had
previously been madly in love with some gin. She left him and he felt
like he'd never love anybody again like he loved that girl, and he was
dating Emily and some other girls. Emily was the first one that was
interested in getting married, so he decided when he was twenty-one it
was about time, what else would he do anyway? and he got married and he
said from the beginning it wasn't right. According to him, they would
split up, go back, split up, go back, and at one point she got pregnant
and later admitted that she did it on purpose to hold the marriage
together, and they agreed to stay together until the baby was born."

"During this time that you had been dating, or that you is point, did
you have any marital were married, up to the problems?"

,.Yes." Lucia asked.

could you tell me what they were.

Well, I just had a feeling that "When we were married he was screwing
around, you know." to Ken-"Where She recalled finding an unsigned note
are you?"-slipped under their apartment door.

Then she got crabs. "I spoke to a nurse or I called some dental t crabs
working in a clinic, and said, is it Possible to ge clinic?"

and she said well, yes, touching these people, You know, you could get
themnow, at another time, I got scabies, which is like little insects
that get under your skin, those are the dirty sailors, but there -11,
and then it was, we was some question in my mind."

harrowing night after She wept when she talked about the stricken father
in New she returned from visiting her cancer-York and Ken tried to
chloroform her.

"You say Ken was examined at the Navy hospital in the psychiatric ward.

Do you know the name of the doctor or him'?" doctors that examined he
"There was a Doctor Smith. I don't know whether was a captain, it was a
Navy rank. I cannot remember his first name. And another doctor, Bill
Pettit." cussions "Did you have any opportunity to have any ths with
them concerning their findings?"

"I went to see Ken and Doctor Smith said, Do You really want to see
him?" I said yes, and he said, and I don't know if this is in the right
sequence or not, Why would you want to see him?

All he's interested in is doing you in. That scared me. but I thought it
was kind of strange . alking like that. He also said to me, that a
doctor was t . You're an attractive "There's plenty of fish in the sea
guy like this?" woman. What do you need with a set."

"And I did go home- I didn't see Ken. I was up She started crying again.
After a break, Lucia said, "Okay, can we continue on with Dr. Smith?"

"Okay. Subsequently, he called me on the phone and said that I had
better call the police in regard to this matter because he had to
release Ken from the hospital, and he felt that he was a homicidal
maniac. If he got out, all he'd want to do is finish off the job.

I said to him, How come you have to release him, if that's the way you
feel?" and it seemed like he wanted me to report it to the police.

There was something about that the Navy couldn't do it. I called any
number of captains or whatever that I could think of and said how could
this possibly be? How could he say this and then say he was going to let
him out? I wanted Ken to be taken care of. I figured he was really sick.
And yet at the same time I was afraid that he was going to be let out.
So I called the Navy chaplain and we sat down and soul searched what to
do ... Consequently, it was reported to the police. I called the police.
I told them."

"Now I think you said that there was also another doctor involved,
Doctor Pettit. What basically did he tell you?"

"Doctor Pettit said that, as much as I can remember, it was an isolated
incident. It was drug-related, and that the diagnosis of Ken was gross
lack of adjustment to adult life. He told me that Ken had never dealt
with a problem in his life. He gave me an example of constantly putting
things in a closet until one day you cannot get any more in and the
whole door opens up and everything that has ever bothered you comes out.
And that Ken was under a lot of pressure because he was driving back and
forth to New York to help me to go see my father and not too much
attention was being given to caring about him.

He was being left alone. I'm trying to think of what else. Low
selfesteem, which he put into a whole. He explained a lot of things that
were found at the time this incident took place."

"As a result of this incident," Lucia asked, "did you learn anything
about, number one, Ken's drug abuse and, two, his relationship or other
relationships he was having with women?"

"Yes. Ken said he had taken three black beauties that night and was
hearing voices, and it came out in therapy that he had been using a lot
of drugs. I think they said speed, uppers, downers, whatever, and they
found pornography in the wall of the house, like behind the plaster
boards - "

"Who found it?"

"The detectives. They searched the house." by'? Did it involve
"Basically, what kind of pornograp children?"

"The detectives told me that it was homosexual and heterosexual.

One of them said did I want to see it? He said it's just your regular
homosexuavheterosexual stuff, SO I said, No." it was, I think, in the
garbage that there was a picture found of him, like a Polaroid picture,
naked from the neck down and also a letter applying to a sex club in New
York. He didn't want his name used because he was a dentist, and he
didn't want to be involved in homosexual activity if he could help it."

"Did you ever learn of any specific relationships he had?"

"Well, there was one black girl that I know of that I could not believe,
he's so prejudiced, and they said that was part of the low self-esteem.
What he did was to get involved with people that he didn't even think
anything Of."

"Did you ever witness Ken using or abusing drugs?

The only thing I ever saw him do was smoke marijuana."

"On how regular a basis?"

Just occasionally."

You never saw him take any type of pills or take or use another drug,
cocaine or anything else?"

I No.

"You said Ken stayed at the hospital for psychiatric evaluation and then
moved into Bachelor Quarters on the base."

"Right. He went for group therapy and alcohol abuse courses. The Navy
provided us family counseling. We'd meet for lunch, you know, and
dinner, stuff like that. We even went, I think we went for dancing
lessons. it was all in an effort to get things back to a normal keel.

He went to AA sessions. I went to some with him because it was important
to understand alcohol abuse. The Navy doesn't deal in drugs, they didn't
do drug rehabilitation, they said."

"Did you get back together?"

"What happened is I was still going down to see my father and when
things were calming down, I had asked him to go in and feed the cats, or
you can stay in the house on weekends while I'm in New York, and it just
kind of went from there."

"You said that you and Ken lived in Staten Island for about a year and a
half after his discharge. What caused you to separate?"

"Well, I was having difficulty adjusting sexually because of everything
that happened in Connecticut, which the doctors had told us would
happen. But we weren't making too much progress.

At that point in time, I believe he was carrying on with the
receptionist in his office."

"Is that Teresa, the same Teresa that is the victim of -this particular
homicide?" Lucia asked.

"Right. Teresa was his receptionist."

"What was your relationship with him from then on?"

"Well, basically we really tried to keep friendly, I always thought it
was a tragedy that we weren't able to work out our problems.

I realized I was having problems dealing with what happened to me.

It was, like, sad that we weren't able to live with each other after
going through all of that, that we just didn't make it."

"After your divorce, did he keep up his alimony and support payments?"

"Well, he did fairly well until he got married. There would be weeks
when I didn't get anything. I'd think, Oh, God, how am I going to pay
these bills, but then he'd come up with checks, large-amount checks to
cover back periods. I would say that basically I've gotten all the child
support but I haven't gotten any alimony when you come down to the
figures."

Lucia led Marilyn through Ken's marriage to Teresa and the Acapulco
"mugging," as Ken had described it. Then he asked, "What was your
relationship with Ken after you moved to Pittsburgh7"

"It was still friendly. He still expressed wishes that he e back with
myself and Astrid." had always expressed to b that Teresa was abusing
drugs, "Did he indicate to You abusing their child, or anything like
that?"

"Well, I think it was last year. I remember because it was shortly
before I was considering selling the house that he was telling me that
she was pregnant and he told.me that she had been taking drugs.

She was taking codeine, writing out prescriptions on his pads, forging
his name, that she was signing his checks and taking money. I figured he
th because he said she went into must be telling the tm ought to myself
that if you're tak-premature labor and I th o doctor.

I just told ing drugs, that could do it. But I'm n out him, You should
really tell her doctor because what ah the baby?" to you that she ever
abused the "Did he ever indicate child?" sions when he was " He had just
said on different occa coming over and didn't come that there were
extenuating circumstances like, You don't know what it's like at
home-I'm concerned for the safety of the child." He was never really
specific about it. He just said she doesn't seem to be able to cope."

"In Pittsburgh, on Tuesday, November thirteen, were you visited by Ken
Taylor?"

"Was that the thirteenth? Two whole weeks in between, already?

Yeah, yes, he came to the house."

"Did you see his car?" f my house."

"Yeah, it was parked out in front "Did he ever indicate to you in any
way that he had any involvement in Teresa's death or disappearance?"

I No."

"Were you ever approached by Teresa's mother regard- , e wi thing any
problems you might have had in your marriag Ken?"

"Well, at the time the Acapulco incident had happened, she was going on
and on that her daughter was brutally beaten."

"Is there any specific reason why you didn't tell her about the incident
in Connecticut?"

"Uh, well, the psychiatrist said it was an isolated incident, a product
of his problems at the time and, you know, how could I just say, Oh,
well, he did this, this, and this, and ruin his life?"

I still don't know what happened in Acapulco.

They could have gotten mugged. So, you know, I really didn't know how to
answer."

Until then, listening to her, Bob Fausak felt sorry for Marilyn.

He didn't after that.

At the major crimes unit in Freehold, when Fausak phoned him from
Pittsburgh, Guy Mccormick put in a call to the Waterford Police
Department. He was transferred to Detective Sergeant Joseph San Juan.

Sure, San Juan said, he remembered the case. How could he forget it?

It was, Mccormick reflected, the ultimate unfunny good news/bad news
story. The good news was that San Juan bad confirmed everything Taylor's
ex-wife said. The bad news was that Paul Chalet couldn't use it.
Mccormick put it all in a formal report: The undersigned contacted the
Waterford, CT, PD, in order to ascertain whether or not Kenneth Taylor
had any contactt with that agency.

Det. Sgt. Joseph San Juan said he believed that Kenneth Z. Taylor was a
lieutenant stationed at the Grato Naval Base and that on April 1979,
Kenneth Z. Taylor tried to kill his wife who at that time was Marilyn
Hope.

According to Sgt. San Juan, Miss Hope was in bed when Kenneth Taylor
stuck a chloroform soaked sponge in her face and nearly smothered her
with it. Sgt. San Juan advised that Taylor was arrested and charged with
attempted homicide but the case was later dismissed because Marilyn Hope
made an impassioned plea before the Court to have the charges dropped.

San Juan further advised that during the course of their investigation,
the police found all sorts of sexual . The correspondence was to related
correspondence photographs various smear type magazines and nude
photographs of Kenneth Taylor were also discovered. These nude photos
were of Taylor's genital area and had been apparently taken by Taylor
himself while utilizing a mirror.

This writer was advised by Sgt. San Juan that since the charges against
Taylor were dismissed, he is not permitted to send this writer any of
his reports concerning the investigation.

He did supply this writer with a name of a female who was believed to be
Kenneth Taylor's wife prior to his marriage to Marilyn Hope.

she is Emily Latrelle with an Indianapolis, and residence. An attempt to
contact Emily Latrelle was made at the number given, but there was no
answer.

Chalet couldn't believe it.

He phoned an assistant in the appellate bureau of the Connecticut Chief
State's Attorney, explained why he was the dropped charges calling, and
was told that once someo in a criminal case in Connecticut, it was over,
erased, What's more, none of the investigative documents could be used
in another jurisdiction. It was all in Connecticut's erasure laws,
General Statutes, paragraphs 54-142a (a).

"Listen, I really need that material. I thought we were all on the same
side," Chalet said, fuming.

I'm sorry," the assistant state's attorney said. "I wish there was
something I could do."

The same day that Marilyn Hope was being interviewed by Lucia and
Fausak, a hearing was held in the Monmouth County Juvenile and Domestic
Relations Court regarding custody of Philip Andrew Taylor, age five
months, Judge Julia L. Ashbey presiding.

Having prevented Ken's parents from taking Philip back to Indiana, Jeff
and Celeste were now asking for full custody. Barry Shapiro, the lawyer
who had represented Ken at his arraignment, appeared in behalf of the
Taylors. The infant could not be in better, more experienced hands, he
argued. Not only did the baby's father, who had not been convicted of
anything, desire that he be placed with Jean and Zach, but also his late
mother had often declared that she wanted him raised by his paternal
grandparents if anything ever befell her and her husband.

Judge Ashbey temporized, ordering a shared custody pending the outcome
of Ken's trial.

The child would remain with the Taylors at the Manalapan house except
from Tuesday at eight A.M. until six P.m. on Thursday when he would be
with Celeste and Jeff in Staten Island. The judge also ruled that when
Celeste entered a hospital to have her own baby, these visits would
cease until her obstetrician forwarded a letter to the court stating she
was physically able to care for Philip. The thought that the Taylors
would be bringing him to see her sister's murderer tormented Celeste.
But at least her certainty that she would never see him again if he were
taken to Indiana was no longer a concern, for now anyway.

Chalet had no direct interest in these proceedings. Still, he had them
monitored in case something pertinent occurred. And it did, Investigator
Barbara Coleman reported that the doctor who delivered Philip testified
that there was no indication that Teresa Taylor "had been or was on
drugs of any sort when Philip was born."

For Chalet, even if Teresa had been on cocaine night and day, it didn't
come close to justifying what was done to her. After reading the autopsy
findings and seeing the photographs, he had no trouble concluding that
if anyone had been deranged by drugs, it was Ken.

The medical language did not begin to communicate the sheer horror of
the damage.

"MASSIVE HEAD, FACE, AND CRANIOCEREBRAL INJURIES DUE TO BLUNT FORCE
TRAUMA," it said. "FRACTURES, COMPOUND AND COMMINUTED, BASE AND VAULT OF
SKULL, BILATERAL, WITH FOCAL EXTRUSION OF BRAIN. ACUTE DIFFUSE
SUBARACHNOID HEMORRHAGE, BILATERAL, SEVERE, CEREBRAL HEMISPHERES,
BASILAR AND SUBTENTORIAL."

Ken Taylor had pounded the fourteen-inch-long steel dumbbell bar with
its wicked, protruding clamp, like the business end of a hafnmer, over
and over again into her face and head with unbelievable force.

Her mouth was smashed in.

Most of the blows had struck the left side Of her face and head.

One had slammed in just above Teresa's right above that, in left eye
below the brow. Another was her forehead. Four more surrounded her left
ear, one or two higher lit). One of them resulted in a bloody each side,
@o and a half inches long and half gaping wound a full matter oozed.
Three an inch wide, through which brainer head additional blows had been
delivered to the back of her head through which more brain matter
leaked, penetrating SO deep and landing with such ferocity that they
shattered her skull into three separate sections.

Still, Chalet wanted drug screening for codeine and cocaine. The medical
examiner in Pennsylvania assigned the task to a nationally recognized
bioanalytical toxicology lab headed by a Drfrederick Riedets. The report
said that 121 nanograms per milliliter of codeine had been found in
Teresa's body. There wasn't any cocaine. But there was
benzoylecgonine--04

parts per million-which was a break-down product of cocaine.

Chalet called Rieders. He was sure to be a prosecution witness, and it
was important to know how he would phrase his findings in plain English.
pretty good. The amount After talking to him, Chalet felt P cutic antiof
codeine, Rieders said, was a normal therap pain dosage.

"Would your findings corroborate or negate a contention that at the time
this individual died, she was drug-crazed by cocaine?"

The level of benzoylecgonine indicated recreational, not abusive, use of
the drug, Rieders said, Cocaine started breaking down right away, so it
was hard to tell whether it had been absorbed the day death occurred. It
could have easily been two or three days before. In any event, there
wasn't enough to induce a deranged or crazed state.

There was also a .04 alcohol reading. Almost certainly, though, this was
due to the body's decomposition.

"That's what you would testify to?" Chalet said.

"Of course," On a medical basis, short of no evidence of cocaine at all,
it was the best news Chalet could have gotten. As far as he was
concerned, that was it. Still, whoever Taylor's defense lawyer turned
out to be, it was a safe bet he'd try to work the cocaine angle for all
it was worth. And who knew how this would affect some juror pondering a
murder conviction? Hey, she did do coke, didn't she?

On that score, Chalet couldn't discount the possibility that the defense
would come up with a witness or witnesses who would swear that Teresa
was addicted to cocaine. Sooner or later, before trial, he'd know that.
Under New Jersey discovery statutes the prosecution had to disclose all
the tangible evidence it planned to use. But so did the defense.

Chalet wasn't going to wait around for any surprises. Besides digging
into Ken Taylor's past, Mccormick and Fausak were to unearth everything
they could about Teresa. From then on, they worked together on nearly
every investigative aspect of the case.

Like Fausak, Guy Mccormick, then thirty-six, roundfaced with no-nonsense
eyes, came from a cop family. His dad had been in police work for
forty-one years before retiring as chief of detectives for Monmouth
County. Married with two sons, Guy had been dogged about improving his
professional capabilities. He had started out as a dispatcher with the
Manalapan police while pursuing a degree in criminal justice at Trenton
State College. After becoming an investigator in the prosecutor's office
in 1977, he continued his studies, earning an M.A. in public
administration.

By now, five years in the homicide division, with fifty-odd murder cases
under his belt, had given him a less than salutary view of the human
condition.

From the beginning, he found Ken's explanation of the events leading to
her death not only ludicrous, but typical despite its grotesque details.
Suspects in cases like this always reverted to type. As soon as they
confessed, they trotted out a reason to exculpate themselves, to try to
make themselves look better.

What did fascinate Mccormick was the defendant himself. He hadn't
encountered such dark reaches of the soul before. This wasn't a guy you
instantly sensed was bad. On the surface everything was rosy.

]Ken was a professional nialri, charming, a dentist with a promising
future, a nice house, a nice wife whom he claimed to love, a new baby
,boy, and suddenly all the information you're beginning to ,develop
about him is totally contradictory. Mccormick realized that he was
dealing with truly unfathomable evil.

The first thing he and Fausak did was to check all the pharmacies in the
Freehold and Manalapan area and along the Route 9 corridor leading to
the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike into Staten Island.
They found a number of codeine prescriptions, usually Tylenol #3, for
Teresa. Others were for Phil Benigna-five in alland for a Tom Taylor,
Ken's brother. Neither cop then knew that Tom had a drug problem of his
own and had visited Ken and Teresa.

Angela Rozek had already said that Teresa confided to her that Ken did
cocaine and that she occasionally joined him. Then they interviewed
Irene Deblasio.

" What is your relationship to the deceased, Teresa Taylor, and how long
have you known her?"

"Good friends, around twelve years. Until she started going out with Ken
Taylor. Then I really didn't see her. We kept in touch once in a while.
Then when she got back from Acapulco, I went to see her in the hospital.
She wrote me a letter after she got pregnant. I called her and we began
our friendship again. I would cut her hair and Ken's, :and he did my
dental work.

I went to the baby shower that was held in her house, Then we, my
boyfriend and I, started hanging out there on Sundays and would sleep
over.

"When was the last time you saw Teresa Taylor?"

"Monday, November fifth. I went to the office for a dental visit.

I told them not to make an appointment for the following Monday, as I
was going to visit my sister in Michigan, and was going to be gone four
or five days, I told them I was leaving Newark Airport early Sunday
morning and was flying People's Express."

"After the office visit, when you told Ken and Teresa of your trip, did
you see or speak to Teresa at all?"

"No.

"After arriving home from Michigan, did You speak to Ken Taylor?"

"Friday morning, I called and woke him up, around nine A.M-, just before
I went to work.

I was worried and called, and asked if he'd heard from Teresa. He said
no. During our Conversation, I asked if maybe she had recalled Acapulco
and her attack and he said, I don't know, why do you ask?" He said
everyone thought she was with me, and so did he. He just didn't seem
worried on the phone. I haven't spoken to him since."

"How often, and how many times, have you visited and stayed the night
with the Taylors?"

"Six to eight times, the past three months."

"Did you ever see Ken Taylor assault Teresa, or see any indications that
she had been assaulted?"

"None whatsoever."

"To Your knowledge, did Teresa ever use or abuse any type of narcotic
drugs?"

"She used to take diet pills all the time, and was on pills from the
doctor during her pregnancy. She also was on codeine because of her
teeth."

"The times that you stayed overnight at Teresa and Ken's house, was
there any type of drug used socially?"

"Just once. There was cocaine there when we arrived. My boyfriend and I
brought some marijuana with us. Ken and he smoked it, but Teresa Wasn't
offered because she didn't use it.

Ken had cocaine. We were watching Star Search' and I asked Teresa to ask
Ken if he had any cocaine to buy, She did, and later there was cocaine
on the table. Ken didn't give it to us. It was just on the table. My
boyfriend gave Ken fifty dollars. Ail of us, including Teresa, did the
coke."

-,How many times, while at Ken and Teresa's house, did you all use
cocaine?"

"One time. it was either the second or third visit."

"What led you to believe that Ken Taylor had cocaine, or could get
cocaine?"

"Because he was a dentist, a doctor- "On your other visits to the Taylor
residence, or to the offices on Staten island, did you observe Teresa or
Ken using any type of drugs?"

".Just drinks. Teresa drank light, not a lot.

That night we all got drunk-that night being when the cocaine was on the
table."

In your twelve-year association with Teresa, have you ever seen her
under the influence of alcohol or drugs?"

"W, would drink socially when we went to clubs, prior to her marriage.

I never saw her use any drugs, just the ones for diets, as she worried
about her weight."

"Did Teresa ever indicate to you any problems with Ken and their
marriage?"

"None. She had mentioned to me that with the baby, the house and the
business-that they had a lot of financial pressures. ny of her more inti
"Did Teresa ever indicate to you a mate problems?" just one time.

The past month or so, my boyfriend mentioned that we were having sexual
problems. Teresa mentioned that she had the same thing, and Ken just
smiled. The remark was to the effect that I didn't want to have sex as
often, or at all."

"Are youaware of the incident in Acapulco and what occurred?"ital in
Staten island, "I didn't recognize her in the hosp -she was so badly
beaten and bruised. Later, the first time my boyfriend and I went over
to her house, she brought out pictures from Acapulco and spoke at length
about the incident. She said they had gone out for dinner, got
boisterous at the table, and Ken advised he felt that Teresa pa bly had
insulted one of the waiters, and that's why someone got even with them.

Ken went on to say that possibly the sliding glass door to the room was
unlocked, and that they were both sleeping, and someone came in and hit
them over the head. Teresa said that she recalled a pair of bare feet
but nothing else."

Irene Deblasio was going to make a hell of a witness, Mccormick thought.
Matter-of-fact, perfect pitch on truth. She didn't have to volunteer
that one-time cocaine snorting. Put this together with the toxicology
report and what Angela Rozek had said, and it was an ideal antidote to
any defense claims that Teresa had been drug-crazed-and abusive to the
baby.

You could not have found a better, more caring mother, Cindy Diaz told
them. Teresa was always on the phone reporting little Philip's progress.
Like Irene, Cindy had known Teresa since they were teenagers. They had
drifted apart somewhat after Teresa met Ken, but she never saw Teresa
doing drugs. Besides the Rozeks, Cindy was the last of Teresa's friends
to see her alive on Saturday, November 10-in the morning when they'd
gone shopping in Brooklyn.

"Did Teresa ever indicate any problems that she had with Ken?" Mccormick
asked.

"No, not really. Only that they had money problems," Cindy hesitated and
then she said, "it seemed like she was afraid to get Ken upset.

Like being late." That day after they got back from Brooklyn, Teresa had
said, "I've got to go.

I'm going to be late. If I don't pick him up on time, Ken will kill me."

They had been running behind schedule, Cindy said, because her husband
had videotaped Teresa and the baby.

Mccormick perked up at that. What was the tape like? Could he have a
copy?

She hadn't seen it yet herself, but yes, she'd ask her husband for a
dupe.

It was one thing, Mccormick thought, to have testimony about what a
lovely mother Teresa was. But she would remain an abstraction to the
jury. This way, the jurors could actually see her as a person.

Cindy Diaz also supplied the name of Teresa's old boyeemed friend, Sol
Aurelia. When questioned , Aurelia still s miffed that Teresa had
dropped him, but he said that during the two years they had gone
together, he had never known her to do cocaine.

In Brooklyn, an abrasive Dr. Irwin Azar said that he had fired Teresa
because she "talked back" to him. He was unaware of any drug problem
with either Ken or Teresa-In his last weeks at the dental center, Ken
was having federal tax troubles. Ken's explanation for having stolen
thousands of dollars in cash and checks from the center was that he
needed money to cover expenses for his honeymoon in Acapulco. If Azar
never saw Ken Taylor again, it would be too soon.

Avis, Teresa's next In Staten Island, Dr. Ronald employer, said that
she'd been a first-rate hygienist who brightened up the office. No
problem of any sort- Avis's partner, Dr. Stanley Weinstein, thought that
Ken was an "undesirable individual." According to Mccormick's notes,
Weinstein had additional comments: into Dr. Weinstein recalled Kenneth
Taylor coming the office to see Teresa and from his office he would call
different pharmacies and order prescriptions quite a bit and that
Weinstein felt that Teresa used to pick up these prescriptions.

This is one of the reasons he also advised how on never trusted Kenneth
Taylor. He resumed work and one occasion after Teresa Taylor injuries in
Acapulco, Mexico, Ken-recovered from her rform some dental work on
Teresa neth was going tope Taylor at Dr. Weinstein's office, but Teresa
was very apprehensive about letting her husband perform it and s that
auld not let it occur. Dr. Weinstein believe she w Teresa Taylor was
frightened by Kenneth Taylor.

Besides reporting that Ken had wanted Teresa to have an abortion, Ann
Toppino, the hygienist who worked with her in the Avis office, also said
that Ken and Teresa had a big fight that left Teresa terrified "because
of the look in his eyes." At the time, Ken was still renting his Staten
Island apartment.

The landlord of the two-family house recalled that Ken and Teresa
regularly had "loud arguments." On one specific occasion after
considerable yelling, the landlord's son said that he heard "something
or someone" being thrown against a wall followed first by silence and
then apologies from Ken.

Fausak canvassed neighbors in the Knolls development in Manalapan.

Had they seen or heard anything unusual?

One housewife on an adjacent block remembered screams coming from the
general direction of the Valley Road house which woke her up in the
middle of the night. She looked out the window but didn't see anything.
Her husband confiirmed her story. A second husband and wife, four houses
up Valley Road, also heard the screams.

Neither family phoned the police. They thought someone else would do it.

Nor could they pinpoint the exact date. It was either two or three weeks
ago, close to a weekend. Two weeks would have put it around the time of
the murder.

The weekend before, Ken and Teresa were to attend a Sunday gathering at
the Benignos.

That same night Irene Deblasio and her boyfriend planned to come by.

But Teresa called to cancel.

She said Ken had slipped in the bathtub and hurt his ankle. Yet on
Monday, when Irene went in for dental work, he seemed fine.

Dr. John Babinski, a dentist Ken had hired for his new practice, said
that he really didn't know much. While he worked in one of the offices,
Ken was in the other, Ken and Teresa seemed like a happy couple, both
devoted to the baby.

Other employees in the two offices, all women, cited Teresa as being a
"good mother."

One, a young Vietnamese, reserved praise exclusively for Ken as a caring
father. It seemed that she was trying to find something detrimental to
say about Teresa, Mccormick thought, but couldn quite do it. He wondered
if Ken had a relationship with her.

Everyone, however, had the same version of Acapulco. Intruders had
broken into the room, knocked out Ken, and beat Teresa.

A.M December 7, the call came into the Manalapan police station while
Mccormick and Fausak were on the road interviewing. The caller, "a
distraught female," according to the dispatcher, asked for "the
detective or whoever is taking care of the case about Teresa Taylor."

She refused to give her name.

The station's reel-to-reel recorder was activated and the call was
switched to Captain Jimmie Potts.

"I was calling about that man, you know, who killed his wife.

Kenneth Taylor. We were on vacation in Acapulco when they were there.
The newspaper didn't say .. "I'm sorry. I can barely hear you," Potts
said.

" that you know, he beat her up."

The connection was bad. Potts thought about asking her to call back.

He decided not to.

There was real tension in her voice. He could lose her for good.

"Yes?" he said.

"On their honeymoon. In Acapulco."

"Yes?"

"We were at the hotel. There was a big scandal about him."

" Yes?"

Potts said. The woman's voice had a slight accent, but because of the
connection, he couldn't place it.

"And I really wanted to know what is happening to him. I mean, he killed
his wife."

"Okay. The case is still developing. Could I have your name, please?"

"No, I don't want to leave my name. I have a family."

"I understand," Potts said. "But you understand, too, that your
information could very possibly help us."

"Well, I just, uh, you know, I was wondering if he could get away with
this? You know, it bothers me."

"I don't know what you mean, get away' with it?"

Well, is there going to be, you know, any punishment for what he did to
her?"

"Are you talking about the Acapulco thing, or the-?"

"I am talking about the girl, Teresa!"

"I know," Potts said. "But is it Acapulco, or the murder?"

"The murder. The thing in Acapulco-you know, I stayed there with my kids
and my husband.

All I know is that the girl at the front desk told me that Teresa didn't
want to prosecute.

She was hurting and he had told people at the hotel that there were four
men who broke into the room, or two men. Then we found out the truth
that he did it ... that, you know, he beat her all up on her honeymoon."

Potts sensed the tension in his own voice now. The woman on the other
end of the line was getting close to what she was really calling about.

The thing was to keep her talking.

" You were staying at the hotel at the same time?"

"Yes," she said.

"And what month is this?"

"This is July, nineteen eighty-three. The second week in July.

"Yes.

"We rode to the hotel from the airport with them in the van. We were the
only others, my four kids, my husband, and I. And then we invited them
to our room, you know, for a drink because it was their honeymoon.

We drank a toast to their wedding."

Her voice started to falter.

"Yes!" Potts said.

Finally, it came.

"We didn't see them after that," the woman said. "Then when we were
leaving, he was in the lobby with the policemen and he called my name.

I looked up at him and I saw his growth of beard. I asked him what
happened. He said he had been in jail for four days. He said, We had a
fight." And, you know, I just thought that he had a fight with people in
Mexico, in a bar or something. But then he started saying, My wife,
she's in the hospital,' and I said, "What did they do to her?" He said,
No, not them, me.

We had a fight and I beat hen"' Oh, boy, Potts thought. she said.1

was wondering if you knew this, "Okay, let me speak to you a second
here.

What you are telling me is very, very important. It could mean all the
difference in the trial. Can't you please let me talk to you
person-to-person, so you could give me a statement on this? It's
extremely important."

"I'm afraid."

"There's no need to be afraid. He's still in jail."

"He's in jail?"

"Yes, he's not out."

"But I'm afraid, though. He could be running around loose.

"He's not going to run loose. There is no need to be afraid."

"No?" I'm positive," Potts said. "I'm married myself and I would tell
the same thing to my wife."

"You know, if something happened and he got free "He won't hurt you,
believe me. Right now, all he's interested in is getting out of this
thing. But you know, every little bit is going to help. What you're
telling me would certainly help."

"Let me think about it. I want to talk it over with my husband."

"All right," Potts said. He could feel the sweat running down inside his
shirt. "I'm not trying to force you into it, of course, I'm not.

And you know that, ah, look, it could be a thing where the prosecutor
could take your statement and he might not have to use you on the stand.

This information could be background and it would certainly help in the
trial."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know, I don't know for sure what's going to happen. I don't
have a crystal ball.

But let's suppose they say, Well, gee, this is an isolated incident,'
right?"

"It's what?"

"An isolated incident when he hit her, you,know, with a blunt
instrument. Well, now we can show there is a pattern and your statement
where be said, I did it'-that could be important.

Really, you ought to bring that forth."

"I really want to."

He had her, Potts thought. Just a little more coaxing. "Okay," he said,
"I don't want your last name. What is your first name?"

Then it was back to the beginning. "Oh, I don't want to Say it.

I think I'm really afraid ... It's just terrible, awful."

"I know. That's why You ought to give a statement. All I'm asking is
your first name."

"I wonder about the young girl's parents.

They didn't mention anything about her mother.

Is the mother alive?"

"Is the mother alive? Yes, she's alive. Yes,"

"Oh. they must be going crazy. Because the newspaper said that the
little boy, their little child, was given to his parents." He was the
one going crazy, Potts thought.

"Well, that I s a matter for the courts," he said.

"I know, but I would think "Sure. I know what you mean."

"It's so terrible. I have a daughter, twenty-three."

Potts grabbed at that. "So you know what this mother is going through?"

"Yes, it's terrible, horrible. Maybe he needs help, But he shouldn't be
allowed to get away with this."

"Well, we don't want him to get away with it.

Whether it's help he needs or whatever, I don't want him to get away
with it either."

"I'll call you back in a couple of days."

"Let me have your first name so I'll know who I'm speaking to.

"J'd rather not. What is your name?"

"Potts. Captain Potts. With two t's."

"You know how I feel. I'm just afraid."

@"I assure you there's no reason to be afraid. Even if he got out on
bail, he'll only Want to save his hide. He's not that dumb, you know,
that he'd try to harm somebody."

"Let me call you back."

Potts resigned himself. It was the best he would get. The thing now was
to try to make sure she would do it. "All right," he said, "when would
you call me?"

"By next week, I promise. Tuesday or Wednesday."

"And you won't give me your first name?"

This time, there was a pause.

"Sorayda," she finally said.

"Sorayda? What is that?"

"It's a Spanish name."

"Ah, Spanish. It's very pretty."

"Thank you."

"Okay, Sorayda, my first name is Jimmie. I hope to hear from you."

Potts decided to make one last attempt. He invoked the name of Kitty
Genovese, a young woman who was walking home one night in Queens, New
York, when she was attacked and stabbed to death. It triggered an
enormous scandal.

Potts explained what happened. People in buildings all over the
neighborhood heard her screams for help. Yet not one called the police.
"They didn't want to get involved," he said.

"Oh, that's terrible. I know what you are saying. I wish I could have
helped that young girl, Teresa. But she's gone now."

"You can still help her, Sorayda. And others, too. If he were left to go
free, he may repeat something like this again, and what's the next
person going to do?"

"Yes, he could do the same thing."

"And I would like to think that somewhere, some way, Teresa is crying
for justice. Can I come over and speak to you?"

"I'll call you back."

There was a finality in her voice now. "Okay, please do," Potts said.

"Thank you for taking the trouble to call me now. I really appreciate
it. I'll wait for your call on Tuesday, maybe even Monday if you can."

But the call never came.

Faster EIGHT On November 28, ten days after he had come into the
Manalapan police station, Ken retained Jack Venturi, a
thirty-three-year-old defense lawyer with a brash, boyish charm.

He was the third candidate who had been recommended by Barry Shapiro.

The other attorneys, both older, were too authoritarian for Ken's taste.
Venturi recognized at once, however, that Ken desired major input into
the defense strategy, and he made it clear that while he would give him
his best advice, Ken would ultimately decide what qvenue to pursue.

Ken liked the fact that he and Venturi were close in age, which led to
an easy rapport. He liked how Venturi said at the outset that there was
"no way" the state could obtain a murder conviction. He liked the idea
that Venturi was from New Brunswick in Middlesex County, not Monmouth,
so Venturi wouldn't have to "kiss any courtroom ass."

And he especially liked learning that Venturi not Only was the father of
a young daughter and son, but also that his own marriage was on the
rocks.

He immediately told Venturi about Teresa's drug habit. She was
insatiable, he said. When she got high, she would do big amounts of
cocaine-one to two grams, even more. All that Thursday, Friday, and
Saturday, during one of her binges, her fatal hinge, she had not slept
at all. He said that she was an intensely sexual woman in normal
circumstances, so Venturi could imagine what her sexuality was like
doing coke. But nobody could know what it was like to experience the
shock of seeing what she was doing "to our son."

According to Venturi's notes, Ken said, "Then it hit me, all of it, Her
forging prescriptions, signing medical insurance checks and cashing
them, using our money for cocaine and codeine.

She couldn't care for our son when she was high. She used to beg me to
do it for hen'please, Ken, I can't handle it when I'm high." I shouted
at her, What the fuck are you doing?" and she ran, and I went after her,
and she came at me with the dumbbell bar and I hit her." Venturi said,
"Maybe she was just kissing the baby. You're certain she was doing that?
You weren't imagining it? I know she was," Ken said.

"I saw it. Her head was bobbing up and down. What else would make me do
some-thing like this?"

Granted that Ken wasn't undergoing a grueling cross examination, Venturi
still found his demeanor impressive. He appeared to speak more in
resignation than anger. "I loved her," he said.

As far as Venturi could see, the willful and knowing elements for murder
in the New Jersey criminal code weren't there. Manslaughter was the
likely outcome.

He sketched out the various scenarios.

Aggravated manslaughter@efined as reckless indifference to life with a
high probability that death would result-carried a twentyyear sentence,
with a "hard ten" with no time off for good behavior. But it was a far
cry from the mandatory thirty years without parole-or the death
penalty-that would result from a murder conviction.

There was also reckless manslaughter-which was the same as aggravated,
except it incorporated the possibility instead of the probability of
death, and had a ten-year sentence with a hard five.

And, finally, manslaughter committed in the "heat of passion," induced
by provocation. There was some sentencing leeway here-a ten-year
maximum, but with a chance for as little as three years. Privately,
Venturi thought that a successftd reckless manslaughter defense,
considering what had occurred, would be a win. Proving heat of passion
would be a real triumph, but he believed he had a chance based on the
combination of drug use, problems in the marriage, seeing what Ken said
he saw Teresa doing, Teresa then attacking him with the dumbbell bar-all
of it arguably sufficient provocation to "arouse passion." In the
Monmouth County Jail, Ken said, "What else?"

Suddenly it began to dawn on Venturi that Ken wasn't interested in
mitigating factors leading to a lesser sentence. He wanted to get off
completely. To be found not guilty of anything.

"Temporary insanity."

Ken bridled instantly. "I don't want that," he said. "I am not insane. I
have no problems in that regard." He reacted as if personally insulted
by the suggestion.

Venturi attempted to explain that legal and medical insanity were not
quite the same, although, of course, there would be some overlap.

But his client was adamant. Later he learned that Ken had rejected one
of the other attorneys because of his insistence on temporary insanity
as the only workable strategy.

Well, Venturi said, there was self-defense.

And the defense of a third party, the child.

Ken leaned toward him, smiling. "That's what I want, he said.

There was a problem, though, Venturi said.

The moment Ken had taken the dumbbell bar away from Teresa, selfdefense
no longer existed.

Staring right at Venturi, Ken said, "I was under a lot Of pressure.

I was disoriented when I said that to the police, if I said it.

But there were two dumbbell bars. You have to understand. I was mad as
he[( when I yelled at her from the stairs. She looked at me, bug-eyed.
She tore off through the kitchen. I chased her into the laundry. I saw a
flash, a blurred movement. She swung a bar at Me and I tried to get out
of the way. She got me in the shoulder. I lost MY balance and fell on my
back in the doorway. She pounced on me.

She was pounding my chest. There was another bar holding the door, like
a doorstop. I reached over to my left and grabbed it. I rolled out from
under her and got to my feet. She charged at me with her head down, like
she was going to butt me or something. I hit her in the head.

She's like dazed. She came at me again, and I hit her again.

That's all I remember. That's the truth."

Surveying Ken's tall, muscular frame, Venturi said, "I have to tell you,
it won't be easy to establish this."

"Sometimes the truth is hard to believe," Ken said.

Venturi wished he had never mentioned self-defense. He should have
maintained that this was a manslaughter case, period, and gone from
there. But if he had, he was sure he would not have been retained.

And Jack Venturi wanted this case. The fee was very good-$20,000 down
plus an initial $5,000 for expenses, $15,000 more if the indictment was
for capital murder, a $10,000 bonus for a ten-year sentence with a
three-year minimum, and an additional $5,000 for a straight acquittal or
an acquittal by reason of temporary insanity.

And it was a high-profile case, at least locally, the kind that defense
lawyers coveted, especially one, like Venturi, who had been practicing
on his own for less than two years.

The book on him in the northern New Jersey legal community was that he
was smart, thorough and resourceful. A slender, well-groomed man,
unfailingly polite, an avid skier, and skilled in Tac Kwon Do, a Korean
version of the martial arts, he seemed to have a way with juries.

After one trial, a juror said to him, "A lot of us thought your client
was guilty, but we liked your style, so we gave you reasonable doubt."

"Jack comes off as the sort of fellow a mother would want her daughter
to marry," a lawyer 154 who had observed him in the courtroom said.

"Excellent body language." Unlike many defense attorneys, Venturi had
never been a Prosecutor. And there was nothing special in his
background-his father was in the scrap steel business-to direct him
toward criminal law. But when he was still a kid, he read The Story of
My Life by Clarence Darrow, and after that, he never wanted to do
anything else. He devoured everything he could about the great attorney.
He couldn't remember the number of times he'd journeyed to see revivals
of Inherit the Wind, the play dramatizing the famous Scopes trial which
pitted his hero against William Jennings Bryan over the right to teach
the theory of evolution. He never forgot that Darrow's victory, with its
far-reaching consequences, rested on what was derided at the time as a
"technicality."

Venturi grew up in New Jersey. After- his graduation from New York
University Law School, he clerked for a Newark Superior Court judge who
primarily handled criminal cases, then joined the Public Defender's
Office. Next, he was recruited by one of the state's most Prominent law
firms before striking out on his own, Since then, he had enjoyed a
string of notable successes. In the prosecution of a major marijuana
smuggling ring, his client was the only one to be acquitted.

He also got an acquittal for a police sergeant accused of attempting to
maim a drug dealer, who had claimed that the sergeant was trying to
shake him down. And in the face of a battery of high-priced legal talent
and expert witnesses, he had recently won a sevenhundred thousand-dollar
liability action against the, Ford Motor Company.

Now he would be defending Ken Taylor. The case wasn't of the magnittude
of a Scopes trial. But in one of the most notorious crimes in Chicago's
history, the thrill killing in the 1920s of a boy named Bobby Franks,
Darow also had saved the defendants Leopold and Loeb from certain
execution on the grounds Of temporary insanity.

Personally, Venturi did not believe that Teresa was sodomizing the baby.
His instinctive feeling was that if cocaine had been involved, both of
them were doing it that night and that something explosive had happened,
a fight of some sort that escalated out of control, probably grounded in
something sexual that his client wasn't prepared to talk about yet.
Still, for Jack Venturi, that didn't constitute murder.

All right, he told Ken. For now, self-defense would be their strategy.

But prudence demanded that it be reconsidered once the evidence the
prosecutor intended to use was obtained through the discovery process.

He wasn't ready to totally abandon either manslaughter or, for that
matter, where they an insanity plea. When they knew precisely stood, Ken
could make a definitive decision about how he wanted to proceed.

"That's fine," Ken said, smiling again, a rather satisfied succeeded
smile, Venturi thought-as if pleased that he had tness of his cause, as
if in convincing Venturi of the righ that was all that really mattered.
erthought, Then as Venturi was leaving, almost as an aft Ken said,
"There was an incident in Connecticut with my ex-wife they might try to
bring in. It was an assault and battery. She refused to have sex and I
tried to scare her with some chloroform.

But the important thing is that she dropped the charges, so I don't
really see what they can do.

it was always the same, Venturi remembered thinking.

the charges You never got the whole story at first. But if had in fact
been dropped, this didn't sound like much. He wondered, though, what
other booby traps might lie ahead.

The next day he filed a notice in Superior Court for a reduced bail of
one hundred thousand dollars.

On December 3, five days after Venturi was retained, Cindy Diaz and her
husband were stunned to receive a letter from Ken: I've wanted to write
to you but MY grief and sorrow have you because prevented me from
communicating- I chose Teresa and I thought very highly of you andfelt
you knew us and how we felt about each other. Teresa and I had a great
relationship. We truly loved each other. We loved our son more than
life.

This is a tragedy beyond anything I've ever known.

I am not at liberty to discuss what happened or what caused the whole
situation. I can say that Teresa had,(amily problems which in my mind
led to her excessive drug habits ... I can't be specific although I wish
I could to clear up many of the questions concerning our relationship.
Unfortunately this can not be discussed until my trial.

Another matter that several people keep throwing out is our honeymoon.

What happened is exactly as Teresa and I explained it to everyone, I
have an investigator who will prove this as it seems her family wants to
try to use this against me. I've lost my wife and my life will never be
the same. Teresa and I were blessed with joy and happiness and closeness
that people just don't find in this world. The judge, jury, prosecutor
and my lawyer will settle the case and in that I put my trust ... but
another issue is at hand which is a total miscarriage of justice.

I'm not askingfor help but understanding and the Truth! Celeste is
trying to take my boy!

Her caring for my son is beyond my wildest imagination. Teresa told me
and all her friends how much she objected to her mother and Celeste
caring for Philip and how poorly they cared for him with
improperfeeding, sleeping etc. You both know Teresa was opposed to this.
As you surely recall TERESA asked my parents to come from Indiana the
week she gave birth because she didn't want her family hanging around
getting in the way and screwing up the works. My parents love my son
like their own, they truly love him and can give him the best of care.
Yet in court Celeste and Louise acted like their relationship with
Teresa was the best possible and we all know how unjust and untrue that
is.

If not for me please try to understandfor Teresa and my son. You will
not have to do anything except answer to this fact that Teresa did not
want Celeste andlor Louise caring for our son.

Now that Celeste is going to have a child I can just imagine the horror
show of her trying to take care of 2 babies, And YOU KNOW which one of
the 2 babies would get her attention as well as I do. I'm distraught.

I've lost my wife and now these people are trying to take my ,son.

Once again the facts WILL be brought out at the trial, all of the facts,
so please keep a clear head about that but do try to consider my request
in behalf of Teresa, myself and Philip for his custody until my trial is
over I'm sure you have mixed emotions so just forget about me and think
of Teresa and our son. If I have rambled on I can't help it.

God bless you.

Merry Christmas.

P.S. I hope I have read you correctly and can trust you in this matter.

Your confidence here will be most appreciated.

Cindy read the letter in utter disbelief She was revolted by Ken's
references to his "love" for Teresa and how he had "lost" her. She
fervently hoped that he was right when he wrote that "his life would
never be the same," but not in the way he meant it.

,But what appalled her more than anything was that not one of his
premises in the letter was accurate. Teresa had never put down Louise
and Celeste as he described. Sure, Teresa had complained about her
mother, just as she would complain about her own mother, and Celeste was
always the "kid sister." But it was Ken who had really put them down,
calling Louise a "disaster," characterizing Celeste as "airbrained," and
saying, "I don't know where she's coming from."

What was he up to? Was he trying to convince himself Of something?

Scramble her brains?

Change black into white? There had to be some reason, she thought.

When she showed the letter to her husband, he said, "Is he crazy?"

Jean and Zach told Venturi that they didn't know all that much about the
"incident" in Connecticut, but they confirmed that Marilyn had not in
fact pressed charges and that the case was dismissed.

He could confirm this with Ken's attorney in New London, Max Shapiro,
who, Zach proudly noted, was the law partner of L. Patrick Gray, the
director of the FBI under President Nixon. Ken had succumbed to work and
domestic pressures and too many of pills. It had been "merely a bout of
marital discord." B h Ken and Marilyn underwent counseling and
everything appeared to be fine until Teresa entered the picture.

Prior to the current "incident," Jean said that she had never heard
anything about Teresa and cocaine. She had always found her a "sweet,
loving girl." It was shocking to think that she had driven Kenny to
this. "He couldn't have been himself He loved her deeply.

That was his normal self. He wouldn't intentionally hurt her." Then she
said, "At least twice while Teresa was nursing the baby, Philip spaced
out' due to drugs in the milk from breast-feeding.

And several weeks ago Teresa was stoned' and dropped him from the
couch."

Although Jean was not an eyewitness to these events, she stated them as
facts. She added that possible cocaine sources for Teresa were a
girlfriend who visited the home frequently," her brother, Phil, and
"Kenny's dental office employees." Zach said that efforts should be
launched to dig into Teresa's background and past associations. He was
sure that there was plenty of dirt. Venturi replied that he had hired a
private investigator.

In a follow-up memo to Venturi, after visiting Ken in jail, Zach now
recalled signs of Teresa's drug addiction: Ken and Teresa visited our
home in Marion-Labor Day weekend with the baby Philip.

It was very noticeable Teresa had some kind of problem. She would
snifffrequently, drank black coffee, smoked ct'garettes, had headaches
and ate very little food. Went to bed frequently.

He also suggested that she had lesbian inclinations: On one occasion at
a ballgame my wife was in the front seat of our car with Philip and
Teresa was in the back seat. She began to stroke my wife's hair and
complimented her on how smooth it was and that my wife should put color
on it and she kept stroking my wife's hair and talking nice to her.

Jean asked her to stop.

When we were here in June and my wife was taking care of Philip and
Teresa-one day they were going shopping. My wife had on a green
checkered short suit with hose. My wife said, "I should change clothes.
It doesn't took good for an older person like me to go out and look like
this." Teresa said, "Young or old, you look good to me," What this had
to do with anything only became evident to Venturi when he received
discovery material from the prosecutor's office.

One of Guy Mccormick's first investigative steps had been to subpoena
records on telephone toll calls made from the Manalapan house beginning
Saturday, November 10, through Sunday, November 18, when Ken confessed
to killing Teresa.

Mccormick determined that Ken had made two calls to bl massage parlor in
H@ford on Wednesday night after having disposed of Teresa's body in the
Hawk Mountain Bird Sanctuary, calls that Ken would deny making,
insisting that it was a billing error.

But the records also disclosed that early on Sunday, November 11, about
three hours after Angela and Peter Rozek had seen Teresa alive for the
last time, twenty-six ,other calls were made from 2-.23

A.m. to 5@.48

A,M. They had been placed repeatedly to San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Las Vegas, Chicago and New York City.

Some of the calls to the same number were ,made in rapid succession, a
minute or two minutes apart.

Mccormick dialed them all. A few had been disconnected, but most were
still operational.

All but three were pornographic hot lines featuring women spinning
sexual fantasies. The remaining calls were to a whorehouse in Manhattan
where available services were described and prices quoted.

Since there were only two adults in the house at the time, Mccormick
assumed@orrectly-that Ken would claim Teresa had made the calls.

@ on Ken. Even Mccormick also ran a though his income was $110,000
annuay, he Was unable to obtain normal commercial or personal credit.

He also had an outstanding debt of about $26,000 to the Navy Federal
Credit Union.

Mccormick wondered how much of it had gone up his nose.

The grand jury convened on December 14. Paul Chalet's Principal witness
was Lieutenant Lucia.

Chalet led him step-by-step through the events from the time Teresa was
reported missing until Ken arrived at the Manalapan police station, The
crucial part of his testimony came after he described how Ken finally
broke down and admitted killing Teresa and said that he had seized the
dumbbell bar from her and hit her with it.

Then, as Chaict expected, a grand juror said, "There seems to be an
indication that she had a drug problem."

"Well, that's what Doctor Taylor says," Lucia answered.

"According to him?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Chalet interjected. "He told us she was using drugs."

"He said she was a drug addict?,' "I don't know about addict. She had
some Problems with drugs. We have a continuing investigation and we
have, I would guess, established that she did use drugs on Occasionto
what extent she used drugs we're not sure. Isn't that correct?" Chalet
said, addressing Lucia.

"That's correct." Another grand juror said, "Did You ever check his
story out? Or wasn't that necessary, about where he said he had been-to
Pittsburgh and back?"

"You have been to Pittsburgh?" Chaict said to Lucia, "Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"You've interviewed his former wife?"

"Yes."

"You have taken an extensive statement from her?"

"That's correct."

Chalet, uncertain about whether he would ever secure the documentation
he needed, did not mention Connecticut, The following Friday, the grand
jury again convened. After the forensic evidence had been presented,
including a graphic description of the fifty-five-foot trail of blood
revealed by the Luminal test, Zach Taylor took the stand.

Almost immediately, Chalet addressed Teresa's alleged drug abuse.

"Following their marriage in July of nineteen eightythree, how often had
you visited them in New Jersey or Staten Island?"

"The next time we saw them after the wedding was when the baby was born
... That was in June of eighty-four. We were here for ten days."

"And then you went back to Indiana?"

"Yes, sir."

"Prior to her death did you again see them?"

"Teresa and Kenny and the baby, they visited us Labor Day weekend.

They were there for two days."

"During your visit to the house in Manalapan, did you iobserve any drug
use by Teresa or by your son at that time?"

"No, sir."

"Were you personally aware of any drug use at any time by Teresa Taylor?
Through your own observation."

"Not personally, not through observation. If you mean actual taking of
drugs on" Taking drugs, seeing her under the influence of a drug?

"On the Labor Day visit, we noticed something was different. But my wife
and I, I am saying we, we didn't know what the problem was."

"When you say noticed something different, what do you mean, noticed
something different?"

Zach repeated almost verbatim what he had volunteered to Venturi after
visiting Ken-that Teresa smoked, drank coffee, had headaches, and spent
a great deal of time in bed. "She seemed to be just, I don't know how to
explain it," he said, "really kind of a different person."

Chalet snapped, "All right. Did you ask your son about that at that
time?"

Zach shifted uncomfortably in the witness chair. "No, not that I recall,
no, I don't think so."

Then, for the first time, the grand jury heard about Acapulco.

"Now, were you aware of a problem that Teresa and Doctor Taylor ran into
on their honeymoon in July, nineteen eighty-three?"

"Somewhat, yes."

"When you say somewhat, tell me what you know about what happened in
Acapulco, Mexico."

To the best of my recollection, Kenny said that, Kenneth said that the
room was broken into and that he was knocked out, he was dazed and he
started to come to, and then he was knocked out.

"When he awoke, there was glass, I think he said glass, on the floor
from a broken lamp.

He saw his wife, I don't recall whether he said that she was on the
floor or still on the bed or what, but his first thought was that she
was dead.

She had been beaten and cut and he called the front desk, I guess, I am
not sure whether he called the front desk or the police, or whatever.

"When they came," Zach Taylor said'they took them both to the hospital,
as I understand, and Kenny was released and he was arrested by the
Mexican police.

Chalet turned away from Zach, looked at the grand -jury and looked back
at him. "Her injuries, would it be fair to say, in his relating the
story to you, were more severe than his?"

"Yes.

"The information that you related to us just now, is this Your
recollection of what you were told by your son, your best recollection?"

"I would say yes. But I have a difficult time because Mr. Benigna said
things to me on the phone. All of this conversation is on the phone."

"Between you and your son?"

"Yes."

"Did YOU talk to your son about the fact that he was held by Mexican
authorities and what happened?

What did he tell you about that?"

"He just told me that he was arrested. And that he was put in jail and
apparently in Mexico they don't feed the prisoners. He wanted some food
and one of the guards said, I'll get you food for fifty dollars."

He got a cup of coffee and a roll ... I don't know exactly when they
released him. But he got out by paying a five-hundreddollar fine to a
Mexican policeman that just stuck it in his pocket, so to speak."

"That's what he told you?"

"Yes."

"What did Teresa tell you about the assault?

Did she tell you she knew who did it? Did she give a description of the
people who did it?"

"Teresa said she did not recall anything. She saw no one, absolutely no
one - - . First she was on the bed asleep and then she was in the
hospital. Maybe even unconscious in the hospital."

Chalet then took Zach through Ken's explanation of why he had brought
the baby to Indiana. Periodically, Chalet would interject, as he had
concerning Acapulco, "Is that the story your son told you?" and Zach,
increasingly red-faced, answered, "Yes." Finally Chalet asked what Ken
had said to him at the Manalapan police station on Sunday, November 18.
"What did he tell you about what happened with Teresa?"

"When we went into the room where he was, I believe Mr. Lucia was with
us and-he, I really don't recall what he told us except that-I honestly
can't say what he told us. I am trying to think here whether the police
told us what he told them."

"I am asking you what your son told you ... I want you to use your best
recollection. I realize this is difficult for you and you're under oath.
But it would seem you should be able to remember a conversation with
your son in an incident where he is telling you about the death of his
wife."

"Okay, I believe he said that he woke up on Sunday morning and Started
down the steps and he looked d own and saw his wife performing oral sex
on the baby. And he yelled at her. She got up and ran. He ran after her.
And dumbshe swang [sic] at him with a, what I would call, a at that
bell, which is a piece of work-out equipment, and point in time, that's
as far as he could talk."

(When Ken got his copy of the grand jury proceedings, he starred and
underlined this last sentence and scrawled t in the margin, "Good.

STOP." He also wrote, as if i were a reminder to himself, "Defendant
crying, emotional."

Chalet hadn't planned on introducing Acapulco.

Unlike some grand jury proceedings that wound up being minitrials, this
one was fairly cut-and-dried. The only issue was whether there was
probable cause to believe a murder had been committed, and Lucia's
testimony took care of that.

Acapulco had been an impulsive decision, a hunch more than anything.

Chalet only knew of the suspicions of the Benignos and the anonymous
phone call. Still, he thought it might be a good idea to place it on the
record. It went right to the issue of Ken's credibility. If he had lied
about one thing, why not another? And the moment the grand jurors got
wind of a previous act of violence between the Taylors, they sat
straight up in their chairs.

Chalet had already decided not to seek a capital murder indictment.

He was not a strong advocate of the death penalty, mostly because of his
reservations about its deterrent effect. If he had it his way, the ideal
punishment would be life without parole. In Taylor's case, under New
Jersey statutes, conviction called for a mandatory thirty years, which,
considering the defendant's age, added up to practically the same thing,
In New Jersey, execution was by lethal injection. But since the U.S.
Supreme Court had legalized the death penalty, to date not one had
occurred in the state. And there were other practical considerations.
Without any assurance that either Connecticut or Acapulco would be part
of the trial, getting a first-degree murder conviction presented enough
problems. Chalet did not want a jury wrestling with the death penalty as
well. If a debate started over that, the elevator could start dropping
through the various levels of manslaughter, and who knew where it would
stop?

The indictment was returned on Friday, January 4, 1984. Jack Venturi
told reporters, "Doctor Taylor is naturally very upset and depressed.

But on the whole his health is good and he is looking forward to a trial
date to exonerate himself.

In his motion to reduce bail, Venturi emphasized the importance of
having his client immediately available for the preparation of his
defense, an effort now being severely hampered by incarceration that
served no real purpose. The defendant was established in the community
and would not leave the court's jurisdiction. He was the recipient of a
U.S. Navy scholarship, which was awarded after a thorough investigation
that attested to his "outstanding" background and character.

He had never been convicted of a crime. He had achieved professional
success in both his military and civilian careers. He was financially
responsible, having faithfully provided support to children from two
previous marriages. His wife's death had occurred only after his client
saw her abusing their baby "in a sexual manner and while he was being
attacked by her with a deadly weapon."

Venturi was surprised by the vehemence of Chalet's Certification in
Opposition. This time, not bound by rules of evidence which apply in a
trial, Chalet did introduce Connecticut. Based on interviews by his
investigators, the defendant not only had seized the dumbbell bar from
Teresa and "gave it to her," but also had attempted to kill his second
wife while she was sleeping.

He was a violent man and a threat to those he came in contact with.

Chalet's certification charged that Kenneth Taylor's three marriages had
been marked by irresponsibility, violence, and financial problems.

His investigators had learned that the defendant abandoned his first
wife when she was on the verge of giving birth, had never seen their
child, and was thousands of dollars in arrears in child support.

It noted Ann Topp no's statement that Ken once tried to persuade Teresa
Taylor to have an abortion.

The defendant not only had stolen money from previous employers but also
owed the Navy Federal Credit Union some twenty-six thousand dollars. If
he got the OPPORTUNITY, tblre was every indication that he would flee
the court's jurisdiction.

After the court documents became public, the revelation about
Connecticut was big news. The headline in the Asbury Park Press was,
"Alleged killer tied to a t attack.

no her On his COPY Of the certification, Ken circled Chalet's name and
wrote, "ASSHOLE!" He told Venturi it wasn't fair. Chalet Was treating
him, "a formerly happily married, devout family man who had survived a
freak encounter with destiny," as though he were a serial killer, a "Ted
Bundy or Richard Speck Or Charles Manson." He begged Venturi, "Get me
out of here, Please. I want to be a free man!" His fourteen-man cell
block was a cramped hovel, squalid, filthy, " There was "no Privacy,
constant noise, one shower stall, terrible food and no physical
contact',-as he Put it-"with loved ones."

Venturi did his best.

He countered that his client denied telling the Police that "he got the
dumbbell away from his wife and gave it to her." Furthermore, "Upon
information and belief, Dr. Taylor did see his first wife twice after he
separated from her and he saw his daughter.

Dr Taylor did pay child support.

There are canceled checks showing (this]." As far as Connecticut was
concerned, Venturi declared that "the charges were dropped against Dr.
Taylor because there was not sufficient evidence to Proceed with the
charges.

"In reply to the statements of Mrs. Ann Toppino, Upon information and
belief, Teresa Taylor never got along with Mrs. Toppino very well.

Teresa told Dr. Taylor that Mrs. Toppino's husband, also a dentist,
would bring cocaine and sell it at Teresa's place Of employment to the
employees.

Also, Dr. Taylor was very happy when Teresa became pregnant. It was
Teresa who was not happy because her mother and sister both said she
should not get pregnant so soon after the incident which occurred on her
honeymoon in Acapulco.

She was too unstable from the incident to have a baby."

In regard to Chalet's allegation that the defendant absconded with funds
from the Fulton Family Dental Center, Venturi declared, "There was a
profit-sharing plan, and, therefore, the money was not stolen."

And any debt burdening the defendant had been for Teresa's benefit:
"Following the incident that occurred in Acapulco while he and Teresa
were on their honeymoon, Teresa was very unstable.

Dr. Taylor felt it would be much safer if they moved away from the
Brooklyn, New York, area.

Dr. Taylor therefore borrowed from the Naval Credit Union to open his
own offices and capitalize his business, and he and his wife moved to
New Jersey.

"For all of the foregoing reasons," Venturi submitted, "it is
respectfully requested that Notice of Motion for Reduction of Bail be
granted."

Venturi's motion was denied.

He then requested an adjournment of the February 19 trial date.

"This is a murder case," he wrote, "that requires extensive preparation
and investigation. My trial schedule is busy throughout the winter into
April and there is no way I can be adequately prepared for this case
before May.

A new date was set for May 20.

Paul Chalet was delighted. He still had a great deal of investigating to
do himself.

In jail, Ken railed on about Chalet-calling him "that pig of a man!" To
his mother and his brother, Tom, who had come to Manalapan after Zach
returned to his job in Marion, he said, "A murder indictment is one
thing, but a conviction is something else. Don't worry.

I'll beat this yet.

Al Benigna gave the letter to Chalet. Dated September 13, 1983, it was
from Las ]3risas in response to Louise's request for information about
the beating Teresa had received-the same letter that Louise feared
confronting her daughter with, afraid that it might cause Teresa to pack
up with Ken and leave for good.

Signed by the executive assistant manager, it said: have just received a
copy of Your letter addressed to Dr. Ortiz, The answers to the questions
in your letter are as followy: The approximate time Mr. Taylor
telephoned regarding the incident was 9..30 p.m t which time he used the
expression "attack, attack,', and the Assistant Manager who received the
telephone call reported him as panting as if he had bee doing a lot of
exercise.

The Assistant Manager and the Security man, together With the bell
captain, went to the room immediately and found it in a terrible state
with broken bottles, blood stains on the walls and your daughter lying
on the floor on the side of the bed nearest the telephone, it appears
she had been trying to reach the phone, but didn't make it.

According to our records your daughter was taken to the hospital between
20 and 30 minutes after the initial call.

Unfortunately, your daughter was in no condition, in fact she was
unconscious, to make a telephone call to you that night.

Whether she tried prior to the incident, we do not know.

As you may know, Las Brisas is not open to the public, strangers cannot
get into the hotel without the knowledge of our Security Department.

In addition to this, there was a security man on duty in the area of
your daughter's room and he would have seen anyone entering or leaving
the casita and would have stopped them if they were not guests of the
hotel. We are convinced that the injuries your daughter sustained were
caused by someone in that room and not by someone outside it.

I am sorry to have to be so frank, but all indications lead the police
to believe that Mr. Taylor was responsible.

I understandfrom Dr. Ortiz that he will be sending you the medical
report from the hospital. The police report is basically the same as I
have set out above. The only addition I can make is that Mr. Taylor was
released because your daughter did not, or could not, sign a complaint.

In early January, right after the indictment was returned, Reyes
Quinones, a Spanish-speaking investigator in the major crimes unit,
spoke by phone to Dr. Esteban Ortiz Pavon, the attending physician at
Las Brisas. According to Quinones: The Dr. stated that he had been
notified of an attack which had occurred within the room of the Taylors
in which Mrs. Teresa Taylor was just about killed ... Mr. Taylor had
stated they had been attacked but once questioned by hotel security and
local police, Mr. Taylor admitted that he was the perpetrator and Mr.
Taylor allegedly signed a release form releasing the hotel of any
liabilities. Dr. Ortiz Pavon stated that from the beginning he and the
authorities realized that the attacker was Mr. Tayldr and not an
outsider.

Dr. Ortiz Pavon further stated that Mrs. Taylor for reasons unknown
would not press charges against her husband. The Dr, feels that she
would not because she did not want to see her new husband go to jail.

investigator Ortiz Pavon stated that he would send this Dr. a copy Of
his report and would attempt to obtain am a copy of the local police
report.

fie feels, however, since Mrs. Taylor would not sign a complaint, that
there are no official Police records.

Quinones then reached Gabriel Santoyo, the Las Brisas security director,
who put a Miguel Lugo on the line. Lugo had been on the scene the night
of the assault: Lugo stated that on the day in question, he responded
with ten other officers to the Taylor quarters ...  Mn Taylor was
apprehended and transported to a local police station where, after
approximately 12 hours of interrogation, he "unofficially" admitted that
he was the perpetrator that had assaulted his wife.

This investigator requested to know if a formal Police report was
prepared on the aggravated assault and I was informed that once Mrs,
Taylor came to her senses, she refused, stating that they were on their
honeymoon, she loved her husband and did not want to see him go to jail.

Then Santoyo gave Quinones the name and number of the Police Precinct
chief. Santoyo said he was a personal friend of the chief's, Be sure to
use him as a reference.

Despite repeated tues, Quinones was unable to reach the chief. It seemed
that he was off in the mountains somewhere chasing crooks.

At last Quinones got through to the deputy chief, whereupon events took
a mystifying turn. After Quinones explained that he was calling at
Santoyo's suggestion, the deputy chief said that he "could not help"
because Santoyo had been transferred from Las Bn'sos and no longer was
in charge of security here. Quinones was about to say, ,So what?"

when the deputy chief hung up. Brisas. To his astonishment, Sanbaffled,
he called Las o said that he had toyo got on the phone right away-
Santoy no idea what was going on. "Obviously, I have not been
transferred," he said, "and the police have made no attempt to reach
me." in any case, Santoyo said that . he would be happy to supply all of
the hotel's own investiga-s wrote a formal request to the gen-tive
reports if Quinon, the eral manager at Las Brisas. A copy should be sent
to resident manager as well as to him. m promptly.

Quinones said he would dispatch the By now it was January 3

I.

In the meantime, Detective Bob Fausak drew the additional assignment of
trying to track down the anonymous female caller who claimed to have
been at Las Brisas and heard Ken admit that he had beaten Teresa-if she
existed.

After listening to the tape, Fausak believed that she did. She'd talked
too long and expressed too much concern in too cultivated a voice for a
simple crank call.

He made his own call to Las Brisas seeking a list of reservations for
the week Ken and Teresa were there. A horrified spokesman replied that
the essence of a great luxury hotel like Las Brisas was privacy.

Releasing a guest list could ruin its reputation.

Then Fausak learned that Las Brisas was owned by an -ompany, the Westin
hotel chain headquartered American r . formed that the only in Seattle.

When he called, he was in person able to help was the chain's senior
general counsel. He was on vacation, unreachable, Then he was ill.

Aware of the difficulties Quinones was experiencing, Fausak started
wondering if the counsel's illness might have a diplo-malic side to it.

were in contact. The same Privacy But eventually they ell over five
hundred issue was raised. There had been w ek in question- Who guests at
Las Brisas during the we knew if somebody was with somebody else's wife
Or husband? A lot of very important people stayed there.

The counsel conjured up an avalanche of lawsuits.

Look, Fausak said, this was a major murder case. If necessary, a
subpoena would be issued.

The counsel said that he doubted a wholesale fishing expedition would
stand up in court.

And in any event, it would take a long time. He wanted to be of
assistance, however. Couldn't Fausak be more specific?

Fausak decided to take a chance. A survey of press clippings after Ken
Taylor's arrest showed that outside of local media coverage and coverage
in eastern Pennsylvania, where the body had been found, the most
prominent article had been in the tabloid afternoon daily, the New York
Post. It featured photographs of Ken, Ken and Teresa, and little Philip
with a screaming headline that said, S.I. DENTIST ACCUSED OF BEATING HIS
WIFE.

Fausak said he'd settle for reservations made from the tri-state
area-New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. The Westin general counsel
agreed because of the "extraordinary circumstances of the matter you
have under investigation," with the condition that Las Brisas would not
be identified as the source if any guests were contacted.

There were twenty reservation slips. Fausak saw them for the first time
on January 3

1, the same day that Quinones was mailing his request for investigative
reports from Las Brisas. He combed through them, searching for the name,
"Sorayda." It wasn't there.

In his office, Paul Chalet took stock. He had two perfect Inuilding
blocks for a wilni murder case. Ken Taylor had tried to kill his second
wife in Connecticut. Except, as it now stood, he could not use the
evidence. And he had a witness who could testify that Ken Taylor had
savagely assaulted Teresa in Acapulco. Except that he did not know who
or where this witness was.

Chalet determined to focus on Connecticut.

His repeated conversations with an assistant state's attorney in
Connecticut finally opened the door a crack. While the records would
remain seated, his investigators could speak to the Waterford cops.

Chalet had another thought as well. Since Ken Taylor had been on active
duty at the time, there must have been some inquiry conlup-i,-d by the
Navy. He told Guy Mccormick to took into it, Mccormick knew a special
agent in the Naval Investigative Service (NIS) who was stationed rip s
Neck ammu,lit is, Monmouth County, at the nearby Colt nition depot, For
once, there were no obstacles. The agent said that He would launch a
file search immediately.

* On February t5, Mccormick an, Fausak met in Waterford with the two
officers who had been on the case, Sergeants Joseph San Juan and Joseph
Faidman. The ground rules were that Mccormick and Fausak could take
notes from what was read to them, although in reality they did
consider-able reading themselves.

,According to these record-, Marilyn had called the police late in the
afternoon Of A-Pr" 18, 1979, the day after Ken tried to hiorofotm her.

They basically confirmed what she had told Fausak and Lucia in
Pittsburgh.

other asper in in Waterford But it was ts of the isivestigatio that
revealed at least the nature, if not the genesis, of the unfathomable
evil Mccormick had perceived in Ken Taylor.

one of the first persons the police had talked to was Licut, ,nant
Commander Ronald C. Smith, the Navy psychiatrist who initially treated
Ken. He had described Ken as ,-homicidal" and had urged Marilyn to bring
charges against hire': Dr, Smith advised that Kenneth Taylor had told
him that he had planned to kill his wife after he figured out how to use
the chloroform. He further advised Dr. Smith that he took the chloroform
from the ship he was assigned to, USS Fulton, Taylor had carried it off
the ship a -ouple of days before, carrying it in his briefcase, Taylor
had done this because of marital problems he no longer could
ioip-,r2Lte.

(The actual Waterford police report would state-.

TAYLOR told us he is presently married for the second time. He has been
divorced from his first wife for several years. He told us his second
wife is four months pregnant. He wanted to get out of the second
marriage but was afraid to because of pressure from friends and family
... he is afraid of people saying, "I TOLD YOU SO.") Dr. Smith advised
the investigating officers that in his opinion there was no doubt the
incident was planned and that Kenneth Taylor knew what he was doing.

He said that he had never seen anyone plan so calmly and coolly" to
murder someone and carry the plan out. He could not find any mental or
physical disorders which would cause Taylor to act as he did.

In an interview two days after the attempt on Marilyn's life, Ken
corroborated the events of April 17: Kenneth Taylor advised
investigating officers that at approximately 0100 hours, April 17,
things started to rush through his mind and he thought of killing his
wife. In the past he had thought of it but he never attempted to carry
it out.

He decided to use chloroform. He wasn't sure if it would kill her but if
it did not kill her, it would render her unconscious and then he could
suffocate her.

Taylor further advised investigating officers that he did not know where
the chloroform came from or how he got it in the house.

After the struggle ended this conscience having gotten the better of
him), he put the sponge in a Ziploc bag and told his wife to call the
police.

He called the Lawrence and Memorial Hospital to advise that he was under
the influence of drugs and needed help. The hospital advised that since
he was in the Navy he should contact the base hospital.

Kenneth Taylor also advised the investigating officers that before hhe
attempted to kill his wife, he had taken three black-colored capsules
but refused to say what they were or where they had been obtained.

Mccormick and Fausak Then, to their amazement, enumerated seven
TCAS'Oils learned that Ken had actually why he wanted to murder Marilyn.

They were: 1. Verbal abuse from his wife.

2. Lack of respect from his wife.

3. The, fact that his wife chose to retain her maiden name after
marriage, 4. Lack of affection.

5. Sexual abstinence. be bisexuals 6. Belief that his wife may a boy
child, 7. Statement by his wife that if she bore she would prefer to see
the boy gay rather than athletic.

Ken had been interviewed on April 19, two days after he e base hospital.
That evening was admitted to the submarin he was war-he phoned the
Waterford police. He said that ried that his wife might discover some
obscene material he had hidden in his clothes closet.

"She's been through enough," he explained.

A search warrant was obtained and executed the samenight. In fact,
earlier that day, Marilyn had turned over some Pornography she found in
a garbage can bib included a nude photo of Ken from the neck down.

She also had found a letter folded in the headband of his hat from a

"Cary" to "Ken" that was "homosexual in content."

The Waterford police then seized more salacious matter including another
photograph of Ken's genitals, a stack of Polaroids of naked women, and
correspondence to and from various "swingertype magazines."

pad on his desk written in his own hand were In a memo doing away with
Marilyn that the same seven reasons for as first interr@ he had verbally
given the cops when be w gated. The list was dated April Ken must have
Written it minutes before he went into the bedroom with the
chloroform-soaked sponge.

The Waterford police files reflected the bitter dispute that erupted
between Dr. Stwth and his immediate superior, Commander W. F, Pettit, on
how to treat Ken. It came to light in a call to Smith by Detective Paul
Liparulo: During this conversation, Dr. SMITH told Detective LIPARULO
that Dr. PETTIT had just returned from vacation and had taken over the
case involving TAYLOR.

Dr. SMITH told Detective LIPARULO that he still remains very strong
concerning his examination results of TAYLOR and that TAYLOR is
homicidal and not in any way insane or mentally distorted. TAYLOR should
face criminal prosecution. SMITH said he is more than willing to appear
in Court on this matter.

Dr. SMITH said that since TAYLOR is an officer in the Navy, Dr. PETTIT
had taken over the case and he (Dr. PETTIT) is conducting a "coverup"
concerning TAYLOR. Dr. SMITH said that Dr. PETTIT had told him as well
as other hospital personnel that nothing in fact is wrong with TAYLOR.

Dr. SMITH said that Dr. PETTIT'S only treatment planned for TAYLOR is
out-patient care and no formal hospitalization. Dr. SMITH told Detective
LIPARULO that Dr. PETTIT felt that he (Dr. SMITH) should not have
participated in the investigation with the police.

It a)) became academic when Marilyn eventually withdrew her complaint.

Mccormick and Fausak couldn't help dwelling on the might-have-beens for
Teresa had Dr. Smith prevailed.

With the abrupt suspension of the Waterford investigation, many
inconsistencies were left unresolved. Among the most significant was
that while Ken claimed not to have been himself because he had taken
three black beautiesa potent form of speed-4n the hours immediately
preceding the murder attempt, "There was no indication of drug use or
Taylor's being under the influence of drugs at the time he was admitted
to the submarine base hospital. Urine specimens were taken on April 17,
the admission date, and the results were negative for drugs."

And there was a hair-raising footnote. After he had confessed to trying
to kill his wife, Ken's main regret was that "many years of education
and schooling would now be wasted." Ten days after his trip to
Waterford, Mccormick got Ken's file from the Naval Investigative
Service. It included a narrative clinical summary by Dr. Pettit that
essentially absolved him: HISTORY. This 30 year old married Navy dentist
with 2 years 10 months continuous active duty presently stationed aboard
the USS FULTON was admitted to Navy Submarine Medical Center, Groton,
Connecticut, on 17

April 1979 after evaluation in the Emergency Room. Dr. Taylor and his
wife were brought in by a Navy chaplain whom they had called.

Dr. Taylor indicated that on the day of admission while at work he drank
twelve cups of coffee. In addition, that evening, he drank an additional
eight cups of coffee and took three "Black Beauties" (each tablet
containing 10 mgs. of amphetamine and 10 mgs. of dextroamphetamine). He
indicated that he had also smoked one or two joints of marijuana.

As the evening progressed, he noted feelings of a "driving sensation,"
feelings like wanting to "stand in a corner," and a feeling that his
head was expanding. Over the next several hours he noted progressive
restlessness, irritability, tenseness, palpitations and anxiety.

He went to his spare bedroom to study for his [Florida] board
examinations.

During that time, he noted progressive intrusive homicidal ideation
towards his wife and experienced hearing a voice from within himself
telling him to kill her. After a period of hours of struggling with
these impulses, he indicated that he soaked a towel with chloroform ,
went to where his wife was sleeping and held the towel to her face. When
she reacted to the towel, there was a brief struggle and he indicated
that he suddenly became more fully aware of what was happening and what
he had done. He and his wife prayed together.

Afterwards, they began seeking means for him to get to the hospital.

He denied previous plans to kill his wife. He denied plans for behavior
or the disposal of her body should he have killed her.

He indicated that he took two "Black Beauties" on Saturday, three "Black
Beauties" on Sunday and the additional three "Black Beauties" on the
night prior to the alleged incident. He indicated that approximately
three weeks prior to that, he had taken two "Black Beauties" one day,
followed by three "Black Beauties" on the next day and on the third day
three additional "Black Beauties."

It was on that day during an argument with his wife that he struck the
refrigerator, breaking a metacarpal bone in his right hand. He indicated
that this was an option to hitting his wife.

He denies regular amphetamine use, though indicating that he had taken
them infrequently to study for major dental school exams. He admitted to
Valium use, 1-2 tablets a day for approximately one year while in dental
school.

He had experimented with LSD on two occasions and for a period of time
in dental school had taken 50 mg. Seconals about twice a month.

In addition, he had taken cocaine on two occasions in 1976. He admitted
to the regular use of marijuana, one or two joints on a regular but not
daily basis since approximately 1971.

He indicated that he used marijuana as a way of releasing anxiety and
tension. He admitted the use of coffee, 10-12 cups a day, on a regular
basis and smoking 2-3 packs of cigarettes on a daily basis.

He gave his alcohol history as: first drink, age 17, first drunk at age
18. He indicated in 1975 he had a car accident while under the drinking
about twice a week, 2-3

drinks and becomes drunk about once a month.

He indicated that he required the equivalent of about one pint of whisky
to become drunk.

Dr. Taylor admitted to progressive marital discord over the previous two
months. He indicated that he had experienced feelings of lack of respect
and lack of affection from his wife.

He indicated that he has marked difficulty in expressing his feelings
and a marked fear of having verbal arguments with people, especially his
wife.

PAST HISTORY revealed he is the oldest of three children from an intact
lower middle class family. He admitted to severe nail biting at 8-9

years of age during a time his younger brother became the center of his
father's attention.

He did well in grade school but had difficulties in 7th grade when he
broke his foot. He graduated from high school and was vice president of
his senior class. He lettered in basketball, football and baseball.

He graduated from college and attended dental school by working part
time and attending dental school pan time.

He married initatly during his junior year in college and was divorced
after a year of separation in October, 1974. He married his present wife
December, 1974.

He described his father as a 52 year old industrial engineer who is a
quiet man, a hard worker and proud. He indicated that he got along well
with him but that his father's level of interest in him seemed
proportional to his athletic achievements. He described his mother as a
52 year old housewife who is "overly concerned about making everyone
happy." He indicated that she "dominates in subtle ways" and tends to be
very interfering with his life.

MENTAL STATUS EXAMINATION. At the time of admission he was described as
"quite calm, collected, oriented." Initially, the patient was started on
5 mgs. of Stelazine a day and Artane, 2 mgs. 4 times a day
[tranquilizers], with the diagnosis of acute psychotic reaction
secondary to drug abuse.

He was initially under the care of Dr. Ron Smith, LCDR MC USNR.

On April 1979, Dr. William F. Pettit, CDR MC USN assumed primary care of
the patient after the patient's request for a change of physician.

Over a period of 6 days hospitalization, the patient became more aware
of his difficulty in dealing with his emotions in an appropriate and
effective manner. He indicated increased realization that he tended to
hold things in and had difficulty finding adaptive outlets for the
expression of his feelings.

He appeared actively motivated for treatment and read a book on feelings
within 24 hours after receiving it. He appeared motivated for individual
and group therapy and showed marked insight into his difficulties.

He is not felt to be drug dependent. There is no evidence of psychosis
or clinical depression. He denied suicidal and homicidal ideation.

A final report by Dr. Pettit included the test results of the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), which is designed to provide a
comprehensive profile of an individual's personality adjustment range.
According to the report, it revealed an "essentially unremarkable
pattern" for Ken. "The MMPI profile suggests no evidence of neurosis,
psychosis or character disorder."

Dr. Pettit continued: My general impression is that this man has chronic
difficulty in dealing directly with his emotions and tends to allow
things to build to where he experiences chronic tension and anxiety. A
great deal of his difficulty in expressing his feelings directly is
secondary to his tremendous need for acceptance and fear of rejection.

In addition, my impression is that the alleged incident was the result
of a combination of factors which had built to explosive proportions: 1.
Growing discontent with his marital relationship, accompanied by
feelings of "total emptiness, hopelessness and helplessness" with regard
to his marriage.

2. A growing feeling of lack of respect and appreciation from his wife.

ect and their rela3, Fear of loss of his parents' resp tionship if his
marital relationship failed.

4. Chronic anxiety related to his inability to express emotions and
frustrations in an effective, appropriate manner.

5. More recent feelings of abandonment related to his wife's absence due
to her father's sickness..

6, Toxic effects of nearly 3,000 mgs. of caffeine in combination with
four days of sympathonlimetic tablets culminating in transient homicidal
impulses.

During the two weeks' period of time since his discharge from the
hospital, the following has been noted: 1. The patient has actively
participated in group and individual therapy.

2. No evidence of alcohol addiction. Even so, Doctor TAYLOR, upon my
recommendation, will begin attending a 36 hour course on alcohol
education on 15

May 1979.

He and his wife at this time plan to attend the course together.

3. He and his wife have sought out couples' therapy from a civilian
therapist and will begin this in the near future.

4. Over a 14 day Period he has taken approximately 14 tablets of
Stetazine for anxiety and tension. He has denied recurrence of homicidal
ideation. His mood and mental status are normal and appropriate to his
present life situation.

it is the opinion of the Medical Board that the diagnoses am I .

Acute toxic drug reaction (amphetaffiines, caffeine and marijuana) with
transient homicidal impulses, 2. Situational adjustment reaction of
adult life with severe marital maladjustment.

It is the recommendation of the Medical Board that LT TAYLOR be placed
on six months limited duty during which time he should attend group
therapy one or two times per week and individual therapy as deemed
indicated.

Short-term use of anti-anxiety agents to be utilized as seen fit.

He was also encouraged to markedly reduce his use of caffeine. In
addition, he has been encouraged to gradually initiate a physical
exercise program to heighten feelings of selfesteem and for the relief
of tension.

LT TAYLOR has been informed of the findings of the Board and does not
desire to submit a statement in rebuttal.

The "Medical Board" consisted of Pettit and Smith. Both were signatories
to the final report, although Dr. Smith would later declare that he had
no choice.

The report-based on a key premise that aberrant drug abuse had largely
caused Ken's assault on Manly@went up the chain of command to the Navy's
central personnel files, where it lay forgotten until Mccormick's query.
It was dated May 14, 1979, Nearly a month elapsed before-on June 11-lab
tests which had been requested by the Naval Investigative Service showed
that no drugs, including amphetamines, were evident in Ken's system the
night he was admitted to the base hospital. By then, apparently, it no
longer mattered .

The NIS inquiry, conducted separately from the psychiatric evaluation of
Ken, concentrated on possible drug use by him and other personnel on the
base with whom he was in regular contact.

A dozen officers and men were interviewed. Ken himself "declined to make
any statements on the advice of retained legal counsel."

The chief of the dental unit said that Ken had been "informany cautioned
about his continual fraternization with "enlisted persons."

One sailor, who had returned to civilian life, admitted buying marijuana
for Ken. The rest denied knowing anything about Ken's drug use or
marital status and refused to waive their rights.

Two enlisted females were named as having had affairs with him.

Both denied any "romantic links.

Confidential informant NL-P-1, who is in a position to provide reliable
information, was interviewed. NLP-I related personal knowledge of
SUBJECT's frequent use of marijuana and occasional use of amphetamines.

NL-P-1 is aware that SUBJECT purchased illegal drugs from enlisted crew
members aboard the USS FULTON.

NL-P-1 related that the SUBJECT frequently smoked marijuana during lunch
hour and as a result would treat dental patients while under the
influence of marijuana- And buried in the NIS files, almost a throwaway
tine, was a notation: it appeared that the SUBJECT prescribed codeine on
numerous occasions when the treatment did not require it."

The Naval Investigative Service closed its books on Ken Taylor with a
teletype to headquarters: THE CHARGE OF ATTEMPTED MURDER AGAINST SUBJECT
WAS DISMISSED IN SUPERIOR COURT, NEW LONDON, CT, WHEN SUBJECT'S SPOUSE
DECLINED TO TESTIFY AGAINST HER HUSBAND - - CT STATE LAW REQUIRES THAT
IN THE CASE OF A DISMISSAL THE RECORD IS SEALED. NIS FILES CONTAIN NO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION PERTINENT TO THIS INVESTIGATION.

.

After reviewing the Navy records, Paul Chalet told Mccormick to locate
Dr. Ronald C. Smith.

If the defense resorted to an insanity plea, temporary or not, he'd be a
crucial witness. Chalet allowed himself a small satisfaction.

Let the defense call the other psychiatrist, Pettit. Let Pettit explain
how Kenneth Taylor's "lack of self-esteem" prompted him to savage poor
Teresa.

Chalet also knew he would have to redouble his efforts to obtain the
original copies of the Waterford police files. Even if he couldn't
introduce them because of what he considered Connecticut's inane legal
restrictions, he counted on putting the cops and Marilyn Hope on the
stand, and he did not want any factual slipups in questioning them about
what had occurred during the early morning hours of April 17, In the
Monmouth County Jail, Ken told Jack Venturi, "You've got to keep
Connecticut out of this. I did that one. But I didn't do Acapulco. I
swear to you, that's the truth.

Ken loved Jack's idea. Venturi was going to bring in the eminent
psychiatrist, Dr. Robert L. Sadoff, as an expert witness for the
defense.

In one of the most famous murder cases of the 1970s, Sadoff had appeared
on behalf of Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret doctor accused of
slaughtering his wife and children. At the time, Sadoff had said that le
of committing in his opinion MacDonald was incapab such a crime.

Sadoff was a recognized authority in the use of sodium amytal, popularly
and inaccurately labeled a truth serum. if the testing went badly,
Venturi did not have to provide the results to Chalet under the rules of
discovery. Like polygraphs, sodium amytal tests were inadmissible in New
Jersey courts to determine guilt or innocence, on the grounds that they
had not been established as "scientifically reliable." ironically, case
law stemmed from a conviction that was reversed after the prosecutor
claimed a defendant had to be guilty because he refused to submit to the
barbiturate.

The problem was that, as with polygraph tests, a true sociopath could
manipulate the "truth."

Or, as Dr. Sadoff made clear to Venturi, "It should be noted that people
can lie under the influence of sodium amytal and they can also fantasize
and give answers that are not reflective of objective truth.

Mostly, the person may believe that what he is saying is true, but it
may not be verified by the facts of the case." In criminal matters,
Sadoff said he used sodium amytal exclusively to recapture lost memory
when a defendant had amnesia regarding a particular event. While his
score was not perfect, he "usually" enjoyed success. Still, he
acknowledged that there was no standardized measurement for the test.

Interpretation was left up to the individual "operator or physician
conducting the interview," and the unfortunate fact was that the results
were not accepted by all psychiatrists.

Privately, Venturi was hoping that Sadoff would find that Ken was loony.
That way, he believed that he could get the test in at the trial as a
"diagnostic aid," which the NNEW Jersey Supreme Court had ruled
allowable. And it was a hedge against another possibility.

Defendants that Venturi successfully represented gave him high marks.

Those in prison were less kind. He could easily see Ken appealing a
murder conviction on the grounds of incompetent counsel for not
exploring a temporary insanity defense.

A preliminary psychological examination was completed by an associate of
Dr. Sadoff's on January 25. The sodium amytal session was set for March
6. Ken could hardly contain himself.

"You'll see," he told Venturi.

Before then, though, Venturi had a whole new set of problems.

Some of the discovery evidence from Chalet had arrived. Topping the list
were the sex phone calls the night Teresa was killed, calls that had
gone on until almost six A.M. Venturi had to hand it to Ken.

Nothing appeared to faze him. "Look," Ken said, "I didn't want to tell
this to the police or anybody. Even you." The events of that night
weren't quite as he had said thus far.

He just hadn't wanted to hurt Teresa any more than necessary.

Around midnight after the Rozeks had left, he said he told Teresa, ,I'm
going to bed. You should come to bed, too. You haven't slept-" notes,
Ken reiterated that Teresa According to Venturi's sday. She'd been
snorting coke, had not slept since Thur working on a half ounce of it
that she had gotten from her ice interview with Cindy Diaz as brother.

He cited the poi Cindy on Saturday proof. Teresa had gone shopping with
that she "looked like shit." And morning. Cindy confirmed g over, right"
Teresa at least admitted that she was him "I told her to come to bed.
She said, Well, I'm going to do a little bit more coke and then I'll
come to bed." I ittle more coke, you're not coming said, Teresa, you do
a I to bed till you wear down I'm going to bed. I wake LIP about "I said
the hell with it, across the hall.

two, two-thirty- Teresa's not in bed. I go a on The baby's asleep.

Okay, I take a leak. I hear Teres the telephone downstairs. So I go to
the top of the stairs and I said, Who the hell are you talking to in the
middle of the night?" She says, Come on down here, I want you to listen
to this."

So I go down and listen, and she's got a phone sex ry sexual girl,
granted, but she's thing going. She's a ve where'd she get the numbers?

Jeff never gone this route. W . the and Celeste had been over, and Jeff
left a Hustler magazi . c was on the table.

with all these numbers. The magazin ay? She said, I'm "A female was
talking sex to her, ok -going to dial another number." Sometimes it was
a tape and mostly tapes. Then Teresa wants to have sometimes live, on
the phone. Okay, oral sex with me while I listen to this sen while this
went I said, whatever. I can say I had an orga on and I hung up and went
back to bed. e first "I woke up again, about seven I would say, and the
thing was Teresa wasn't in bed. The baby's not in bed. I went to the top
of the stairs and looked down and saw what I saw."

This time, Venturi decided to push Ken a little harder. The autopsy had
shown that gobs of Vaseline had been smeared in and around Teresa's
vagina and anus. What about that?

Ken didn't miss a beat. While Teresa was performing fellatio on the
baby, he said, "She's got her hand between her buttocks. Her culottes
were down. Not down to the floor or down to her knees, but down, half of
her ass is showing. I know it flashed on me that second that I noticed
that she had her hand between her buttocks. And I saw what was going on
on the table and I ran to the bottom of the stairs to make sure I saw
what I saw."

How could Teresa have run so quickly to the laundry room with her
panties and culottes at mid-thigh?

Well, she did, Ken said.

Not your best, Venturi thought. Then Venturi brought up something else.
At the time Teresa's body was discovered, the culottes were ripped open
in the back, all the way along the seam of one leg, as if someone had
tried to tear them off her.

When he had seen them, Ken insisted, the culottes weren't ripped.

They were unzipped.

Other discovery material included the interview with Mardyn Hope about
Ken's attack on her and the subsequent meetings between Mccormick and
Fausak and the Waterford cops.

Ken said, "First, they say they can't give out any information because
the charges were dropped. The case was sealed. Then they go ahead and do
it. How can they'? You have to object."

Also included were the evasive, conflicting reports that Reyes Quinones
had received from the Acapulco hotel @unty people and the local
police-and the anonymous phone Call Captain Potts had received from a
"distraught female" about a fight between Ken and Teresa at Las Brisas.

All Venturi had seen at that stage was a one-page memo by Potts that
said, "The caller was finally coaxed into giving her first name which
she provided as SORAYDA' (her spelling).

"Who's this Sorayda?" Venturi asked.

"I don't know," Ken said, "I'll try to think."

On the evening of March 6, Ken was driven a few miles from jail to a
hospital in Neptune, New Jersey, for the sodium amytal procedure.

After assuring Ken of confidentiality, Dr. Sadoff said, "Dr. Taylor.

Ken, can I call you?"

"Yes.

"Good. What I'm going to do is give you just a little bit of an
injection at this point, as a test dose, to see if you have any
reaction.

I assume that you will not because you told me that you are not allergic
to medication."

"That's correct." Ken, in a short-sleeved shirt and slacks, was lying on
an examination table, a video camera trained on him, his face turned to
his right, toward Sadoff.

" You may tend to inject words that you don't mean and have slips of the
tongue, but that's all right. We'll all be aware that it's the effect of
the medication and not you.

"Okay. "With brisk confidence, Sadoff said, "I'm going to have you
relive the experience of the death of your wife and also have you relive
other experiences. And by reliving,' what I mean is to have you actually
be there, rather than telling me about it in narrative.

I want you to see what's going on, look around you-" "Okay.

-and that way you'll actually experience what happened. What'll happen
is, you may have some emotional reaction to it and that's all right.

And you might shout or scream, you might cry, you might do a lot of
things. Again, that is all right. Okay, I'm slowly injecting it.

Are you feeling any numbness yet on your tongue?"

"No, not yet."

After asking about his childhood pastimes and his family, Sadoff said,
"Did you have a favorite?"

"My brother."

"What's he like?"

"Tom was a very good person," Ken said. That was Why he wanted the baby
to be in Tom's custody-with his ,her-while awaiting trial after his
father had to return to Marion.

"Tell me something about Your mother."

"There again, a very good person. I don't know. She's a religious
person, but she's very strong in the tends to try to keep the family
together. She's family. She with children.

That's another reason very good my son." wanted her to have "How was she
with YOU, growing up?"

For the first time, Ken paused. "Uh, very patient. Very understanding,
loving, caring."

"Were You her favorite?"

"I would say so. II "How did she show it?"

"Well, she didn't show it in any other way than just what I picked up.

I know she was very proud of me for what I did with my education.

She told me she was disappointed with my brother not doing anything with
his education."

"Are You disappointed with him, too?"

"I am."

"And yet you trust him enough to take care of son?" your "Oh, yes.

The problems we had were just Problems.

That's all they were. Man to man. But we always discussed it."

 ...  How old were you when YOU had your first sexual experience?"

There was no discernible change in Ken's demeanor. He said that if
Sadoff meant intercourse, he was around sixteen or seventeen and that it
was "fine."

"Have You had any negative sexual experience, or have they all been
pretty Positive?"

Sex had been "Positive" even with Teresa, he said, even "knowing what we
know."

"Knowing what we know about what?"

"Maybe ... maybe she was a bit over-sexual, but I didn't see that as a
problem."

"By over-sexual, You mean what?"

Ken appeared to be searching for an answer.

"Oh, she, let's see. Well, the bit with the telephone calls."

"That was her idea?"

"Yes." sitting in the examining room out Of K-"" Jack Venturi, the
moment when Ken would line of sight, kept waiting for showing the
emotions that stoa ,retivittg" these events Ken through all Sadoff had
predicted. But as Sadoff took of the woes and heartaches of Teresa's
supposed drug addiction-indicating at one point that the baby had become
high from Teresa's Milk-The remained completely laidback,
conversational, his only body movement to cradle his head with his left
hand to make himself more comfortable on the Pillow.

Finally, when Sadoff asked about Acapulco, Venturi was sure there'd be
some turmoil. But Ken, recalling the breakin by unknown intruders,
remained dispassionate. The only new element he added was that he had
glimpsed two men in the room. "When I got up to look around, I was
kicked in the back of the head . I saw the man that kicked me and I saw
a man across the room from the waist, maybe midchest to mid-thighs.

That's all I saw," The way he said it, it Waq as if he were describing
something that had happened not to, him -and Teresa, but to another
couple.

--How,s my pulse?" Ken asked.

"Normal, regular. Seventy, seventy-five."

Then Venturi listened in amazement as Sadoff introduced the night that
Yen had attempted to chloroform Marilyn Hope. Although Ken had confessed
to at least three Water-ford cops, to a Navy chaplain, and to two Navy
psychiatrists had written down that he tried to kill her-ha'll actually
r ted to do so-he now told Dr. ,e,ve n reasons why he wan Sadoff, under
the influence of sodium amytal, that his intent "We were in our ffthg
was to rape Marilyn, not kill hen e maybe sixth year of marriage, he
said.

--She had becom completely frigid and considered me a pig. A male pig.

I will, with numerhad had sexual relationships, affairs if YDU o-as of
the girls in the Navy. That night I took the chlor@ form, put it on a
sponge and put it to her face, tried to render her unconscious and rape
her."

Ken looked a little drowsy. His voice had begun to slur slightly.

He had already tried out the rape version on Venturi. Maybe it's what he
really believes, Venturi thought.

Maybe he is nuts.

But then Ken made a small slip. He said that he had immediately called
the Waterford police. "I said, You must send policemen after me.

I've attacked my wife." They said, is she hurt?" And I said, No,
apparently not." And they said, Well, in that case, we cannot send the
police." So I called the chaplain."

Unfortunately, Venturi noted, it was on record that the police weren't
notified until the following day when the Navy psychiatrist Smith urged
Marilyn to report the assault, And Marilyn, not Ken, phoned the
chaplain.

Only when Sadoff began to discuss the night of Teresa's death did a
dramatically different twist in the sequence of events unfold, totally
different from what Ken had told the police in Manalapan, different even
from what he had elaborated on with Venturi. Now Ken was saying that for
a good part of the time, on November 11, he was not asleep at all, but
had been up-with Teresa.

" At about two-thirty, I woke up to urinate. I said, Teresa, what are
you doing still up?" She says, Well, I've been high and I'm just getting
high. I'm going to come to bed pretty soon."

At seven-thirty I woke up. No. ]Excuse me. At three-thirty I woke and
she was still up. At threethirty we began these, what I call sex calls
on the telephone. She wanted me to talk to a woman and have the woman
talk to me while my wife performed sexual acts on me.

"What kind of sexual acts?"

"Not intercourse. Oral sex. Petting and one time, anal sex."q Hearing
this, Venturi thought about Teresa's ripped culottes. He remembered his
gut reaction that something explosively sexual had taken place,
something that got out of control.

:"On you?" Sadoff asked.

Yes, while the woman was talking to me. This lasted approximately three
hours. I think you have a telephone bill that will last [sic] that
amount of time. List the amount of time."

"From three to about six?"

Staring vacantly into space, Ken said, "Can he under-stand me?"

:,Sure," Sadoff said.

Okay. of these telephone calls. She used her credit card. She asked me
to do the calling.

She was embarrassed. For whatever reason, I don't know. She used [sic] a
telephone call with her credit card. So I did. Two people would not
accept the fact that it was her card. I said, Fine, we'll call someone
else."

Thereafter I went to bed. Four-thirty. At seven to seven-thirty, I'm
guessing more seven-thirty, I woke. My wife was not upstairs. I looked
in my son's room. He was not there. He was not asleep. I thought, She's
downstairs changing her [sic] diaper.

So I went downstairs and this is when I couldn't believe my eyes."

:"I want you to be there.

"I am."

:"Can you be there?"

"I am." :"What do you see?"

,I am. I'm at the stairways. I believe there's eighteen stairs."

Ken raised his left hand and gestured vaguely with it, then cradled his
neck again. He had some trouble articulating. "Orange carpet, white
whales. Right whales ... rails.

I walked two-thirds of the way down the stairs and she didn't see me.

Now she's got good ears. She hears sounds all night. And wakes me. I
say, Teresa, that's just the house settling in or expanding.

There's nothing to it-' 4

What happened here? Oh, this is the night my wife was killed," he said,
his voice quite calm. "I got halfway down the, stairs and I said to
myself, believe my wife is doing fellatio on my son."

I got to the bottom of the stairs and I was convinced. I said, What the
fuck are You doing?" She looked at me very glassy-eyed, very-her eyes
were red.

Very glassy-eyed. Drug-crazed. She had probably done a gram of cocaine
that night. A gram of cocaine.

"She had her culottes pulled down, And now I did not know this at the
time, but I have since been informed at the autopsy, that she had
smeared Vaseline all over her buttocks, her anus and perineum. Now she
was fellating my son on the table and trying to put her fingers into her
anus or rectum, anus or vagina, I don't know."

He paused. "She looked at me, as I said, and ranscurried-her skirts and
pantyhose were down. I've been questioned on that. Okay, how fast can a
woman run with her panties down?

She scurried. Across the hall, approximately twelve to fifteen feet
across the room into the hall and then into the laundry room. I picked
my son up off the mat, because I knew he would fall over, and put him in
the baby bed." Ken took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

His voice got lower. "I followed by wife to the laundry room and she
tried to kill me. She tried to kill me. She swung a set of dumbbells at
my head. I've since been informed that they are twenty-five to thirty
pounds, which is not surprising. She was five-seven, uh, two-three, but
she was strong."

He yawned. "I didn't know if she would try to render me unconscious,
knock me out, which is the same thing, or run in and hit my son.

So I fought. I went down, somewhat. I grabbed the barbell that was
waiting [sic] by the door to hold the door open as a doorstop. I picked
up the doorbell [sic] and I hit her in the head. She fell to the floor.

I fell to the floor. And I slumped against the floor. It was like I hit
the wall and then just slid down. Moments, probably twenty to thirty
moments later, I came out of what I call a robot or trance-like stance.

A trancelike stance.

After that, I had become a robot. I check my wife's vital signs and she
had none. She looked like she was in bad shape. Apparently, she was in
bad shape. Apparently, I hit her more than once.

Apparently, the autopsy report says nine, uh, skull fractures."

Throughout this, Ken's tone stayed very matter-of-fact.

Sadoff urged him to try to recall more. "Try to be there. You hit her.
With the barbell?"

"Yes."

"How many tinaes do you remember hitting her?"

Ken cupped a hand over his eyes, as if in reflection. "Twice.

And she fell. I hit her once and I hit her on the way down, and she
fell."

"Do you remember hitting her more than that?"

"No, sir."

"Is that the first time you remember twice?

Usually you say once."

"The second time was when she was grabbing at my leg as if to punch me,
claw me or trample-me."

"Have you ever told anybody you hit her twice?"

"No, sir ... I think I told my lawyer."

"Because he told me you hit her once. Can you remember hitting her a
third time?"

"No, sir."

"Fourth time?"

"No, sir."

"You think you did or do you think you could have given her nine skull
fractures by hitting her twice?"

"No. I believe I hit her more,"

"Why don't you remember?"

Ken did not respond. He pursed his lips and frowned.

He scratched an ear.

"What happened that you don't remember7" Sadoff asked.

"Well, it's not that I don't remember. It's just that nine cumulated
fractures could come from three blows."

"Why couldn't it come from two blows?"

"It could. I'm just saying the odds are better that they could come from
three."

"Or they could come from nine blows. Do you think you hit her nine
times?"

"They were all in the same area."

"Ail in the same area? So a couple of good swings might have given her
nine fractures.

You didn't have to hit her more than twice, did you?"

Ken sighed deeply. "I-I don't know."

"Well," Dr. Sadoff said, "You remembered everything else up to that
point in great detail."

"I know she was breathing."

"She was what?"

"Breathing."

"She was breathing. And you know you hit her.

You remember hitting her twice?"

Ken yawned again. He did not answer.

"Why do you think if you hit her a third time or fourth time," Sadoff
coaxed him, "that you wouldn't remember?"

"That I wouldn't?"

"Yes."

"You mean with this medicine in me?"

"Now, yeah. Even now, if you'd hit her a third time, suppose she's lying
on the ground.

You take that barbell and you keep smashing her and smashing her.

Wouldn't You remember?"

"I don't believe so ... I have dissected skulls and I know where the
bones come into each other. And I know that a fracture here," Ken said,
pointing at his head, "is most likely going tto fracture two or more
bones."

"So You could have hit her only twice."

"That's very possible."

I Okay. Then you went into some kind of trance?"

"Yes. I remember slumping against a door."

"What was on your mind when you hit her?"

Sadoff persisted. "What were you thinking?

What was going on?"

"I was thinking, I've saved my life and my son's life. I did not know
she was dead until I came out the trance. "Did you intend to kill her?"

"No."

"What was your intent?"

"My effect-my intent-was to defend myself."

"Against what?"

"Against the attack that she was doing to me with the swinging of the
doorbells [sic] on my head."

"How did you save your son's life?"

"I knocked her in the head and removed the doorbells."

What makes you think she would have harmed your son?" she was already
harming my son."

"How?"

The slurring in Ken's words was more evident.

"By performing fellatio on him."

How'd you feel-"

"It's not harmful physically, but I can just imagine the child's complex
later in life when he goes to his mother for fellatio."

-How did you feel when you saw her fellating your son?"

"Berserk," Ken said, his face expressionless.

"Berserk? Why should that make you so berserk?"

"Because I knew she was high. A few hours before we had these phone
sex-while she was doing that to me and having me and the woman on the
other end. I just thought, This is enough.

This really is enough." Sadoff waited for a moment and then said, "When
you told me how you saw her doing this to your son, you didn't sound as
though you were berserk. You were just describing it very calmly to me.
But in fact you got very upset?"

"Yes."

"Why aren't you upset now, talking about it?"

"I am. But I think I'm sodium amytaled out."

"When you talk about it without the sodium amytal, do you get more
emotionod?"

"Yes. I usually get emotional and tear."

You're crying a little bit now. You were somewhat emotional."

"I cried a lot with Doctor Cook (Sadoff's associate]." Did you?

Why?"

Ken smiled. "Boy, you have a way with questions. He mentioned my
daughter. My daughter and I were very close. The fact that I can't
communicate with her-can't call her. I can't write to her. I can't see
her. Can't hold her.

I can't Play with her."

"You seem to have more feeling about her than you do about your son?"

A "No, that's not true."

Then Dr. Sadoff asked, "Do you know of any other mother who has ever
fellated her son?"

Ken's voice was slurring even more as Venturi leaned forward to hear the
answer.

"Yeah."

"Who?"

"A sleazy couple. In Ohio,"

"People you knew?"

"Yeah."

Quickly-perhaps too quickly in the view of another psychiatrist who has
seen the tape-Sadoff said, "Anybody in your family?"

"No."

"Did what you saw between your wife and your son bring back any memories
about you and your mother?"

Clearly impacted by the sodium amytal now, lids heavy, Ken said, "Yeah,
because she had done it to me that night."

"Not your wife. I'm talking about your mother."

Ken appeared to gather himself. His voice rose. "My mother? No.

"

"This is your son's mother doing it to him.

Did you have any feelings at all about your mother at that time?"

"No. None whatsoever."

Venturi had wanted questions that might buttress a selfdefense strategy
and Sadoff said, "The harm that your wife did to your son by fellating
him was one thing. Did you think she was going to harm him physically as
well?"

"Not until she ran into the laundry room and picked up the barbells
[sic] and tried to kill me."

"Did you think she might do something to him?"

"I thought that if she rendered me unconscious, she would kill him."

"Why? Why would she do that?"

"Teresa was very strung out. We're talking month f cocaine and codeine."

"Okay, how do you account for that trance4ike stance that you said you
had?"

"I think I was not believing, but believing.

Not being able to believe my wife was dead.

That she had been so good to my son. Except for the feratio. And my wife
had been so good to me."

"When did you come out of that trances"

"Three hours."

"Three hours?"

"Not even. Two hours."

"Two hours. When you came out of it, what did you do?"

"First, the very first thing I did was walk to see if MY son was in the
infant seat, and he had fallen asleep. Then I hurried back to my wife
and she had no pulse."

',She had no pulse? What were you feeling at the time?"

"Well, I know I had hit my wife in the head, uh, twice, and I believed
she was dead."

What did you do?"

What did I do? I wrapped her in a carpeting pad that's used for
carpeting. I brought her to the car and put her in the trunk of the
Oldsmobile. I decided to take my son to Indiana and then come back and
either one of two things: turn myself in, report what had happened, or
kill Myself." In Marion, he said that he said, "Look, my son, you're
safe with your [sic] mommy." Why, Sadoff asked, had Ken driven around
with Teresa's body for so long?

"So long. Because it was cold and the body gases were not starting to
smell a lot-"

"Why didn't you bury her?"

"I didn't want to leave her."

"Why not?" loved her. What happened was just a freak. We were so happy
together.

I had been married three times. I knew what hell was in marriagesi knew
what the problems were. We just didn't have those. We were best friends
at first. We were totally supportive of each other and very loyal."

So you kept her as long as you could?"

"Right."

"Why didn't you kill yourself?"

"I tried ... I began thinking of my children, my parents, my family.

They don't deserve this.

They've lost Teresa. Losing me is not going to help, I'll take my
chances, I'll go to jail." Finally, Sadoff said, "Anything you want to
tell me or ask me that I didn't ask you?" And Ken said, "I wanted to
know, and I think Jack [Venturi] mentioned this to me ... that there was
a psychosexual problem or possibility with me."

"With you?"

"Yeah."

"With respect to what?"

"Well, I don't know. I didn't know how to understand that. I'm not a
homosexual. I've never raped anyone. I attempted to rape my second wife.
I have not been with children.

I've been with two women. I've never been with a man.

"Two women at the same time?"

"Yes. But I don't know what that means-Psychosexual possibility in
relation to me."

"I'm not sure we can answer that right now."

"Well, okay, let's face it. I had the Acapulco thing, I had this thing,
I had the chloroform."

"The Acapulco thing you said was people who broke in." Ken's eyes had
been shut. They opened immediately. "That's right," he said.

"So if that's true, there's no psychosexual problem, is there?"

Ken nodded. "Right."

"Okay," Sadoff said. "I think that's enough.

Are you tired? You think you'll be all right?"

"I could sleep," Ken said.

Dr. Sadoff took Venturi aside. This was about all they could get, he
said. But he could state right now that Ken was not legally insane,
temporary or otherwise. He knew what he was doing.

Sadoff said that he would put it all in his report, of course.

Venturi had no doubt he would.

Sadoff was getting two thousand dollars plus expenses for the
examination.

it was just as well to cut it off, Venturi thought. One thing was sure.
Paul Chalet would never get to see this tape. Chalet would have a field
day with it-Ken's denial, despite all the Connecticut records to the
contrary, that he had tried to kill Marilyn, Ken's new admission that he
had been up for hours with Teresa in the Manalapan house, the anal sex
that night, the way he had suddenly linked Acapulco with his violent
acts in Connecticut and Manalapan.

Venturi could hear Chalet in court. Just what is the truth, Dr. Taylor?
What is it that we're supposed to believe?

Would you mind giving us a road map?

What bothered Venturi the most, though, was the whole ambiance of the
videotape-how flat and emotionless Ken had been, with no sense of
reliving anything.

In any event, the test was now irrelevant.

Without an insanity plea, the tape could not be introduced.

Venturi hoped that if Sadoff wrote the right kind of report, perhaps he
could bring in elements of it without mentioning the use of sodium
amytal.

After resting and being permitted to view the tape, however, Ken was
elated. He was vindicated! The tape backed up everything he'd been
saying about what Teresa was doing to the baby, how she had attacked
him. He kept pressing Venturi. Wasn't that so?

Venturi didn't want to get into a debate. At last he ventured that
perhaps Ken had been a little too cold, like an "ice man."

Suddenly, Ken's eyes hardened, his body went rigid. But he didn't say
anything. There was only that stare.

Then Venturi got a letter from Ken laced with repressed anger.

Jack, After the interview on Wed 316185

I understand some things about my case and my personality. Until the
last 2 years I was not "cold" as you and others are describing me.

There are several reasons for this. First of which is I have had a very
tumultuous and tough adult life. I've had a lot of pain, hurt and
disappointment. I've seen a hell of a lot and I've lived a hell of a
lot. I've been through some times that could change the toughest of
individuals. I'm a strong person but I've been through so much hell that
I've become hardened. I can handle pressure and I always have. I have
always been the clutch performer but over the years all these clutch
performances have worn the edge andflattened my personality.

I can handle pressure just as always but I've become the "ice man."

I love my family and children like nothing else and more than ever.

In all of the athletic events and teams I've participated with I've
always and consistently been the clutch performer and I've always
provided. In the Navy my captain depended on me to carry the load for
the clinic. There were times when he said I saved his ass by carrying
the load and keeping "Production" while our staff was cut into half and
we still got the work done.

In Brooklyn I worked 60 hours a week, managed 10 girls, four dentists,
the "books" for the office and trained the dentists as well as did at
least one half of the entire patient load.

It was hell but I did it. (Dental school did a number on me also-I'd
rather discuss that issue than write about it.) In fact, I'd rather
discuss the whole thing so I'm going to stop writing.

I've seen and done so much that I know why I've hardened.

A memo accompanied the letter. It was written in big block letters,
almost as if Ken had been stabbing the paper with his pen: COLD?

1. AS A HOSPITAL ORDERLY-1.3

ALL NIGHT "DEATH" WATCHES (2

OF THESE PEOPLE DIED WHILE I WAS "WATCHING" THEM).

2. WALKED INTO ROOM TO TAKE VITAL SIGNS AND FOUND PATIENT HAD DIED WHEN
I BEGAN TO TAKE PULSE.

HAD TO TAKE 4

BABIES TO THE MORGUE WRAPPED UP AND PUT THEM IN THE FREEZER WAITING
AUTOPSY (4

SEPARATE OCCASIONS).

4. ASSISTING A SURGEON IN SURGERY-HE DID NOT TELL ME WHAT HE WAS DOING.

HE TOLD ME TO HOLD THE BOY'S (16

YRS) LEG. HE PICKED UP AN INSTRUMENT AND AMPUTATED THE BOY'S LEG FROM
THE THIGH. I WAS left HOLDING THE LEG. HE LAUGHED!

HAD TO CARE FOR A QUADRIPLEGIC (29 YEAR OLD MAN), TURN HIM, CLEAN HIM,
HOLD URINE BOTTLE FOR HIM.

11. I'VE HAD WOMEN COME TO ME-IN THE NAVY OFFICERS' WIVES, ENLISTED
WIVES, DENTAL ASSISTANTS, PATIENTS, ETC. ETC.)-AND DO EVERYTHING FROM
ASKING ME TO TAKE THEM TO ACTUALLY WALKING INTO My ROOM AND TAKING OFF
THEIR CLOTHES. I HAVE HAD A COMMANDING OFFICER OF A SUBMARINE ASK ME TO
TAKE HIS WIFE WHILE HE WAS OUT TO SEA. I HAVE BEEN BOMBARDED BY WOMEN IN
SO MANY WAYS I BECAME COLD. I COULDN'T BELIEVE THE NUMBER OF WIVES AND
OTHERS, GIRL FRIENDS, ETC WHO CAME ON TO ME. I REALLY DIDN'T LIKE IT.

(THEY CAME TO MY HOUSE!) Is IF I APPEAR TO BE COLD, MAYBE I AM.

BUT THERE A REASON FOR EVERYTHING.

I HAD A LOT OF SLEAZY TYPE GIRL FRIENDS.

DRUGGIES, GO-GO GIRLS AND EVEN 2

HOOKERS. THEY WOULD PICK ME OUT. 6

DIFFERENT TIMES GO-GO DANCERS ASKED ME TO TAKE THEM OUT AFTER THEIR JOBS
WAS [sic] FINISHED THAT NIGHT.

I TOLD DR. COOK ABOUT A HITCH-HIKER WHO PRACTICALLY RAPED ME.

SHE WAS GORGEOUS. THIS JUST DOESN'T HAPPEN TO PEOPLE.

AIRLINE STEWARDESSES (SEPARATE INCIDENTS) PICKED ME UP ON FLIGHTS (NOT
INCLUDING MARILYN HOPE). EACH ONE GAVE ME A NOTE-ONE TO MEET HER IN
INDIANAPOLIS AND ONE TO GO TO THE BACK OF THE PLANE WITH HER.

JACK, IF I APPEAR COLD, THERE ARE GOOD REASONS.

BROKEN MARRIAGES TOOK A LOT OUT OF ME.

LOSING AST'RIID WAS DEVASTATING. THAT LITTLE OIRL LOVES ME. I CAN'T
THINK ABOUT HER WITHOUT TEARS COMING TO MY EYES.

IV. DRUG ABUSE-NO EXPLANATION NEEDED.

V. TERESA Abruptly, Ken's handwriting changed to script.

She was the epitome of what I wanted. She was by no means the most
attractive woman I had.

She was chubby. Teresa was so good to me and loved me so totally.

We were best friends.

We were best lovers. She was the onp woman I could have lived a lifetime
with. Teresa and I could say anything to each other and do anything
together.

After all the bullshit with women, Ifinally found the one woman I loved
as a person. We were partners. We were friends, lovers, spouses,
business partners, parents, homemakers, etc. etc. Jack, I've lost her.

The one woman, the one person, my best friend, is gone. She's dead.

You wonder why I'm cold?! I could have spent my entire life with her and
been forever happy.

Yes, I'm cold. I've lost my wife, my profession, my daughter, and now
people are trying to take away my son. I have memories and nightmares
that would put most people in a strait jacket but I continue to
function. Yes, I'm cold but I love my family and children. I want to
have a St . mple life caring for my family and giving them the best I
can. I want my freedom and need it. Now that I'm certain about what
happened, I know for sure I'm okay.

P.S. I could go on and on about the experiences and situations in my
life that have hardened my exterior but i think you get the message.

Venturi also had asked Ken for his comments concerning many of the
people Mccormick and Fausak had interviewed. Checking them off one by
one, he wrote back that they were all either dope addicts themselves or
liars..

But on one score at least, Jack Venturi knew that Ken was absolutely
correct. To avoid a murder conviction, Connecticut had to be kept out of
the trial.

Right then, Venturi more or less forgot about Acapulco.

On March II, five days after Ken's exposure to sodium amytal, Paul
Chalet now decided to send Mccormick and Fausak to Acapulco. Reyes
Quinones went as their interpreter.

On the face of it, Connecticut would seem to be all Chalet needed to
show a pattern of deadly, knowing and purposeful violence by Ken that
culminated in Teresa's murder. But he was determined to leave nothing to
chance. Ken Taylor had to be put away for the rest of his meaningful
LIFE, and whatever that took, Chalet was prepared to do it.

Nearly a month had passed before the Las Brisas security log concerning
the alleged assault on Ken and Teresa was received and translated by
Quinones. As soon as he read it, Chalet knew he had to pursue the
matter. One report noted that while Teresa was lying in a "pool of
blood," her husband "did not appear injured."

Another said, "Mr. Taylor had a tiny cut that did not look that it could
be caused by a blow." A third observed that the bed in which Ken claimed
he and Teresa were asleep was "stfli made up."

For use in the trial, all of this had to be followed up.

And there was something else. No reports from the local police had been
forwarded. Chalet warned Mccormick to be diplomatic about the
five-hundred-dollar Payoff Ken claimed to have made to get out of jail.

The tortured body of a missing American drug enforcement agent named
Enrique Camarena had just been found in Mexico, and the U.S. press was
filled with stories about corrupt Mexican police.

Quinones had made arrangements for the three of them to stay in the same
room-casita 249-that Ken and Teresa occupied. First thing on their
arrival, Quinones called the elusive police official he had vainly tried
to reach by phone from New Jersey, Comandante Alvaro Gutierrez Mendoza.

]But Gutierrez was still unavailable. This time he was said to be hot on
the trail of some bank robbers. No one could predict when he'd be back
in the office- They then interviewed Gabriel Santoyo, the Las Brisas
security director. According to Mccormick's notes: Santoyo advised that
he was at home when he received a call asking him to respond to the
hotel. He was also asked to summon the Police.

He related that when he got to Room 249, there were several persons
present.

Taylor was sitting on the balcony and Mrs. Taylor was within the room.

Santoyo recalled having a hotel employee, identified as Jos Romero, ask
Taylor why he had assaulted his wife and with that Taylor became
somewhat excited and began to yell. Mrs. Taylor was taken to the
hospital and Taylor was taken away by the police. there had been any
incisantoyo was later asked if the time of the assault dents involving
intruders around 1983.

He advised that on Teresa Taylor on July 14, Las Br-isince he has been
with the Security Forces at sos-for the past five years-there have only
been two incidents of such assaults, one in May, 1984, the other in
June. in both incidents, the perpetrators were apprehended.

Santoyo advised that in 1983 there were reported thefts at the hotel.

it is believed that most of A. these thefts are committed by certain
employees, but unless they are caught in the actual crime, the union
they belong to protects them from being fired.

Chalet had wanted a complete rundown on the hotel's security setup.

Santoyo took the investigators on a tour. Mccormick was impressed-three
twenty-two-man shifts a day, five mobile patrols and a foot patrol
covering a perimeter chain-link fence.

Mccormick and Fausak also questioned Miguel Lugo, who was in charge of
security that night. According to Lugo, he immediately called in both
the incoming and outgoing guard shifts and assigned some forty men in
all to scour the area around casita 249. The hotel's main entrance was
locked: Taylor was outside the room on the balcony with Jose Romero.
Lugo went on the balcony and had Romero ask what occurred.

Through Romero, Taylor stated that one individual wearing blue pants had
entered the room and hit him while he was lying on the bed sleeeping.

Lugo stated that he was very suspicious because at that time everyone
including Taylor believed Mrs. Taylor was dead and that Taylor was not
upset. Lugo reentered the room and went over to Mrs. Taylor. He placed
his hand on her chest and felt a slight heartbeat ... Lugo went back to
the balcony to have Romero tell Taylor that his wife was still alive and
that an ambulance had been summoned. Taylor just sat there emotionless
and remained emotionless even after Mrs. Taylor started to moan and call
out for help. Lugo went to her and attempted to comfort her. After doing
so, Lugo had Romero ask Taylor for a better description of the
assailant. Taylor responded that "he was like you," indicating that he
was about the same size as Lugo.

Lugo had Taylor stand and related that he could not understand how an
individual the size of Taylor could have been assaulted by anyone as
small as himself.

Lugo examined Taylor and observed fingemafl scratches on the inside of
both of Taylor's forearms. He also noticed a small, very slight reddish
mark on Taylor's forehead, but did not observe any other injuries on
him. Lugo added that he recalled that the Taylors had received room
service at approximately 9:30 P.m. and that some of the food had been
eaten before the assault had occurred at about 10:30 p.m.

The doctor arrived and attended to Mrs. Taylor who was taken to the
hospital. When she was being taken out, she began to moan in pain and
ask for help. Taylor made no attempt to comfort her.

The next day Mccormick and Fausak solved the mystery of the red-haired
woman who visited Teresa's hospital room when Al Benigna was there.

She was a guest of the hotel herself, a bilingual Texan who'd been
pressed into service by the Las Brisas reservations manager, Valentino
Nada, to help obtain a release from the Taylors.

Nada confirmed that Ken was brought back to the hotel by police on July
18-the day Ken said that he had paid the five-hundred-dollar bribe-and
that his belongings, which had been placed in a vault, were returned to
him. That was all he knew about it, Nada said.

Nada gasped when Mccormick showed him a photograph of Teresa's smashed
face after her body was discovered in Pennsylvania. Nada thought it had
been taken at the hospital.

That was exactly how she had looked then.

Like Nada, ]Dr. Ortiz Pavon, who initially attended Teresa at Las
Brisas, also thought it was a picture taken at the Acapulco hospital.

According to Ortiz, when he first entered the casita, Ken was lying on
the floor between the room and the balcony: The doctor attended Kenneth
Taylor first because without observing any trauma to his body, he
believed that Taylor might have been shot. The doctor was 210 unable to
find deed him incapacitated. He then turned his attention any sps of
injury that would have ren-to i eresa Taylor who was sitting slouched on
the floor in a corner of the room.

Dr. Ortiz advised that Mrs. Taylor appeared dead. She was covered with
blood. There was blood all over the walls, as well as of, the floor
where she was located. Mrs. Taylor's Pulse was weak. She was given
immediate attention for her eye and a deep gash in her throat.

Teresa Taylor had been beaten up so badly that she had defecated
herself, He advised that he did notice an odor of alcohol on Mrs.
Taylor's breath, but he failed to notice the same on Taylor because he
was only with him a short time. He also advised that he did not know
whether or not Mr. and Mrs. Taylor may have been under the influence of
drugs.

While he was in the room treatingn4rs.

Taylor, Taylor was placed in a chair on the balcony by security people
who were speaking to him. He said that Taylor acted very calm and cool
during the incident.

 ...  A couple of days after the assault, Dr. Ortiz related that he went
to the Centro Medico Hospital to pay a Courtesy call on Mrs. Taylor.

He said that Taylor Was there with her and that when the doctor asked
her what had happened, Taylor appeared to become frightened.

Mrs. Taylor said that she Preferred not to discuss it. When Mrs.
Taylor's father arrived at the hospital, Taylor again became
frightened-that he was nervous and shaking and repeatedly asked the
doctor when his wife would be able to travel.

Mrs. Taylor's father asked Dr. Ortiz Pavon what had happened and the
doctor stated that he really did not know. He was afraid of a lawsuit if
he had given his opinion that it was Taylor who assaulted his wife.

Mrs. Toy[Or's father then said that they wanted to leave the hospital as
quickly as Possible, so the doctor transported them to the airport.

Mccormick and Fausak sensed that many of the hotel employees they were
questioning were fearful of somehow saying the wrong thing, something
that might put the hotel in an unfavorable light and cost them their
jobs. This occasionally made them sound hesitant and imprecise.

But not Jose Francisco Romero, an assistant manager who had been on duty
that night.

Romero was the witness they'd been hoping to find. He not only was
forthright and fluent in English but also had a vivid recollection of
events from the moment when, manning the switchboard, he heard the
words, "attack, attack." The caller, he said, was "definitely a mate,"
his voice "weak," almost as if he were "faking" it.

Romero commandeered a jeep. With another assistant manager and a
security guard, Romero drove along a roadway and hurried down a flight
of stairs that led to casita 249 and an adjoining one, 250, which was
then unoccupied. He rang the bell and heard moaning inside the room.

It seemed to be right on the other side of the door. The door was
double-locked. He told the guard to radio for assistance. He went around
the casita and down an incline to a wall that enclosed the pool.

Lights were on in the room and on the balcony. From his vantage point,
he spied Ken lying halfway out of the balcony door, his head at the top
of the steps descending to the pool. He was moaning.

Scared, Romero retreated to the roadway stairs for perhaps ten minutes
until security reinforcements arrived. He returned to the pool wall.

Ken no longer was on the balcony.

Romero scrambled over the wall followed by several guards: Mr. Romero
stated that as soon as he got into the room, he smelled blood and
excrement. He observed Taylor now lying on the floor of the room by the
bathroom. Taylor was clothed in a short@leeved shirt and yellow swimming
shorts. He appeared in a daze. The shower staff door was open and the
water running, His legs appeared wet.

Romero then turned to the corner of the room where he saw Teresa Taylor
on the floor covered with blood, A& wearing a pink baby-doll type
nightgown. The under her was covered with blood. There was a when green
glass water bottle on the floor, as well as broken glass on the bed.

Romero advised that the sheets to the bed had been turned down, but the
bed did not appear as though anyone had been in it.

Romero went outside until a doctor arrived.

The entire area was searched by hotel employees, both on foot and in
jeeps, but no one was discovered. Taylor "as brought to the balcony
where Romero translated for Captain Lugo of the security force.

Lugo asked him to, ask Taylor where he was from, how he had come to Las
Brisas, what the name of his wife was and what his Profession was.

Taylor answered all these questions correctly, to the point and without
hesitation.

When the Police arrived, Romero said that he continued to act as an
interpreter. Ken volunteered a possible suspect. While he was shopping
with Teresa in Acapulco that afternoon, they were approached by a boy
trying to sell them jewelry. They rebuffed him and the boy became angry.
He said that it may have been the boy who came into the room and
assaulted him, hitting him Over the head with a green glass water
bottle." He described the boy as being Mexican, about eighteen, wearing
jeans and a red shirt Romero said he went with the Police and Ken to the
station where Ken kept to his story about an intruder.

The police also tried to question Teresa at the hospital, but she was
"incoherent," In room 249, the bathroom and dressing area were to the
immediate right. Beyond this, also to the right, was a kingsize bed.

Past the bed was a sliding door to the balcony. To the left was a
minibar, a round marble table, and chairs.

Except for a shattered glass lamp, the broken water bottle, and the
spread now on the bed, Romero said the layout was the same as it had
been the night of July 14.

A heavy green water bottle-like the One that caused the (nost damage to
Teresa, the one that Ken had cited among other items that he might have
been hit with-was on the minibar in the corner of the room farthest from
the balcony door. Was that where water bottles were normally placed?
Yes, always, Romero said. That was interesting, Mccormick thought.

These supposed intruders were so well prepared that they had to creep
past the bed, past Ken and Teresa, to obtain a weapon to attack their
victims.

Mccormick and Fausak asked Romero to help them recreate the scene that
night. Mccormick and Romero went outside. Fausak lay on the floor by the
door inside the room and moaned.

Yes, Romero said, those were the moans he'd heard.

Fausak moved to the balcony door where Romero first saw Ken and moaned
again. From outside the front door, the moans couldn't be heard.

Romero estimated that it had taken him about three minutes to get around
the casita where he saw Ken on the balcony. Then, ten minutes later, he
actually entered the room and found Ken on the floor by the bathroom.
The sequence was repeated with the shower on and off.

The results were the same. For a guy who claimed to have been knocked
senseless, Mccormick thought, Ken had been pretty active.

As if he were Teresa, Romero cowered against the wall away from the bed
in a fetal position, hands up, trying to ward off blows. Both cops
stared at each other. Both had the same thought.

Fausak said it first. She must have known who her assailant was, that it
was her husband.

Mccormick and Fausak had only lately become aware that battered wives
quite often returned to their brutalizing husbands or refused to press
charges against them because of shame, humiliation, guilt and fear.

Hadn't that been the case with Marilyn Hope? However incomprehensible it
was to him, Mccormick decided that it was also true of Teresa.

Fausak had another notion. Maybe the trauma of the awful beating Teresa
suffered had wiped out her memory of it. There were plenty of case
histories on that score. He recalled some of Teresa's friends mentioning
that she had started hearing "voices" about Acapulco.

Maybe it was all coming back to her. But Fausak realized that he would
never know. Nobody would.

Despite repeated Phone calls to Acapulco Police headquarters by
Quinones, Comandante Gutierrez remained unavailable. The hell with it,
Mccormick told Quinones. Gutierrez was obviously ducking them.

They'd go down there unannounced.

Fausak stayed behind to diagram and photograph the area around the
casita, check out the Placement of guards and the frequency of security
patrols. Casita 249 was located below a hotel roadway. The concrete Wall
around the private pool it overlooked was about three feet high.

Beyond the wall, toward Acapulco Bay, was a ten-foot cyclone fence
topped with barbed wire. From the fence there was a sheer rock drop of
approximately fifty feet to a Public road.

Fausak drove along the road and surveyed the cliff. Anything was
possible, he thought, but it would have taken Spiderman to scramble up
there. If someone had anticipated a cache of thousands of dollars in the
casita or, say, the Hope diamond, it might have been worth a try, But
even the valuables that Ken claimed were missing were hardly the stuff
for a daredevil climb like this.

And, according to Romero, neither the closets nor drawers in the room
showed any signs of having been rifled.

Sure enough, Cornandante Gutierrez was behind his desk when Mccormick
and Quinones arrived, ushered in by his ravishing secretary.

If Gutierrez had really been away, Mccormick couldn't help thinking, she
might have been the reason.

Mccormick did not mention the difficulty in contacting him. Nor did
Gutierrez, a rather short man with a bland round face and alert black
eyes. Of course he recalled the savage beating of the American woman at
Las Brisas, he said. As a matter of fact, he had gone to the hospital to
speak to her, And, almost as if challenging Mccormick to dispute him, he
added that Senora Taylor out Of gratitude for his concern gave him her
watch, which he in turn had given to his wife.

It was clear, Gutierrez said, that the assailant was the husband.

During one of his hospital visits, he himself had heard Taylor
"apologizing" to his wife for what he had done.

Ting lightly, Mccormick inquired why charges had not been brought
against Ken. Ah, said Gutierrez with a shrug, it would have been
different had a Mexican been involved. But since this was purely an
American affair, the realities of the tourism business demanded that the
aggrieved party sign a complaint.

After all, Gutierrez pointedly said, who needed a "bad press"?

Because Mrs. Taylor had refused to file charges, no police reports were
on record.

Mccormick asked if he could talk to some of the men who had been on the
scene. No problem, Gutierrez said, and Mccormick at last got what he'd
been after. Armando Vallarino, a bilingual officer specializing in
tourist problems, had conducted the interrogation of Ken at the jail.

Over lunch at the best restaurant Mccormick and Quinones could find,
Vaflarino said that during hours of questioning, Ken kept insisting that
two "terrorists" dressed in black with black masks had assaulted and
robbed him and his wife. Finally, Vailarino said he said to Ken, "Don't
make a fool of me." If anyone was going to be beaten to a pulp under
those circumstances, it would have been "the man," not the woman.

"You are lying," he told Ken and slapped him.

Mccormick got the impression that it was a pretty good smack.

After that, Vallarino said, Ken looked at him and confessed that he had
a fight with his wife, but that she had started it.

Vallarino also said that the American consular agent for Acapulco, L.

J. Bon Urbanek, had come to the jail. The next day Mccormick visited
Urbanek. For Mccormick, Urbanek personified the stuffy striped-pants
State Department type always being caricatured in cartoons.

Urbanek said that he only "vaguely" remembered the incident. That was a
little odd, Mccormick said. Were that many Americans beaten that badly
in Acapulco? Hadn't the victim's father telephoned Urbanek at least
twice? And wasn't it true that Urbanek had been to see the husband?

Urbanek stiffened. He'd have to cl@ @ with the embassy in Mexico City.

He excused himself, re@ several minutes later with the smug air of a man
who knew his bureaucracy.

Before any information could be released, a formal request in writing
had to be forwarded to the Department of State in Washington.

"You ever work for the State of Connecticut?" Mccormick asked.

"What?"

"Never mind," Mccormick said.

After interviewing members of the hospital staff and obtaining a sworn
deposition from Vallarino-Coinandante Gutierrez declined to Provide
one-the three investigators returned to New Jersey with assurances from
Vailadno, Romero, and Dr. Ortiz that they would testify.

In his Freehold office, even Paul Chalet was ready to concede that a
case against Ken for murder was just about buttoned up.

As yet unaware of Chalet's Acapulco foray, Jack Venturi got a testy note
from Jean Taylor. After the birth of Celeste's first child, a girl, the
Monmouth County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court not only had
restored baby Philip's shared custody between the Whites in Staten
Island and the Taylors in Manalapan, but also had given Celeste and Jeff
an additional day.

It was simply outrageous, lean wrote. Each time the baby was returned to
her, he had a severe diaper rash.

Obviously, Celeste was an unfit mother who didn't know how to care for
an infant, who didn't have the slightest interest in cleanliness.

Venturi should see how "Kenny's" eyes ]it UP With joy when she brought
Philip Dn her daily visits to jail and owupset he was about what was
happening to his son This was news to Venturi. His client, presumably
with weightier issues on his mind, hadn't mentioned it.

Zach also wrote an angry -letter to Venturi, demanding to know why
nothing was being done about -smearing Teresa's character."

Venturi Promptly replied, "Please be advised that I do not know anything
about this."

In retaining a Private deter'tve agency' Venturi had, of course, counted
on some evidence of Tere8a's past drug abuse turning up.

That was critical in establishing her behavior on November 11.

But no substantiation could be found she was addicted to cocaine, or to
verify Ken'% claim that loving, anything else for that matter. She
appeared to be a generous Person. The, worst that could be said about
her was that she had a temper, hardly grounds, for killing her, Ken
supply any names7

He had, he said. There Couldn't Irene @131aslo, the Rozeks, Teresa's Old
was Cindy Diaz, boyfriend, and her brother. They were all lying, Venturi
didn't have any.

pressed him. How about his friends? He ildhe hadn't had time to
socialize. He'd bets too busy bing his practice.

The picture wasn't totally break, though.

Following the sodium amyw session, the analysis Venturi received from
Dr. Sadoff was better than lie had dued to h(3pp-- it said inly without
psychosis and that he find he is currept . psychiatric treat-is not
mentally ill- He does not requtr'e eed lego(IY in that Mnt. He is
mentally competent to proc his current legal he knows the nature and
consequences Of in preparing his situation and can work with counsel
defense. spect to his state of mind at the time Of the de7fh With re of
his wife, it is my Opinion that Dr. Taylor was in -such a state of mind
that he believed that his wife was having fellatio with their son and
that she posed a significant threat of harm to the son since she had
been under the influence of drugs and alcohol and that he found her
"crazed witit drugs." Furthermore, his state of mind was affected by her
attack upon him, knocking him down with one of the barbells kept in the
laundry roomffe believed l,f t the both his life and the e 6,f his son
were in danger a hands of his wife- He reacted instinctively by Picking
UP the nearest object in order to stop his @e from harming him and
harming his son, too. He hit her with the object and his recollection
even under sodium amytat is that h hit her only twice with the door
weight.

There is no indication that Dr. Taylor was Mcnaughto insane at the time
of this occurrence and there is no indiccation that he was hallucinating
or distorting his perception. He is consistent in his reports about her
attack on him an on the baby. In my opinion, he acted to protect himse
and his son from serious bodily harm or death at the han of his wife who
was under the influence of drugs and act irrationally.

Now he could at least put Sadoff on the stand as an expe defense witness
concerning Ken's state of mind. If he stipulated that there would be no
reference to the use of sodiu amytal, he didn't see how the court could
refuse him.

Sadoffs credentials were impeccable. After all, he'd jus been the main
witness in a widely publicized appearanc before a New Jersey legislative
commission weigtti changes in the Mcnaughton insanity test-knowing righ
from wrong. Sadoff testified that the test was fair, that i was a
tougher standard than those of many other states, and he had carried the
day.

As soon as Ken read Sadoff's report, he saw it as the certain key to his
acquittal. All the hostility he had displayed after Ventuji's "ice man"
remark vanished. In his new euphoria, he wrote to Venturi: "IF THE STATE
SENATE PUTS SO MUCH CONFIDENCE IN DR. SADOFF'S OPINION, THEN THE LOCAL
COUNTY ASSISTANT PROSECUTOR, MME AND JURY SHOULD HAVE CONFWENCE IN HIS
STATEMENTS CONCERNING ME. I THINK the JURY SHOULD BE VERY MUCH
ihfprfssed WITH HIS CREDEN77ALS AND CREDLEILLFTYI" A ftrry of excited
memos from Ken followed: JACK, After reviewing initial discovery,
digesting the repoyi concerning the sodium amytal interview and knowing
what's true and what is not true, I have drawn certain conclusions.

There are several false statements being made, especia6

219PERER MAAS by my in-laws, which we will not be able to prove as
false. The way I see it, it's their word against mine.

(1)I didn't have them fill prescriptions and give them to me. Any
precriptions written for them were for them.

(2) Teresa abused my prescription writing privilege. I did writenumerous
prescriptions for her@ (3) I did not use drugs in my office during
working hours.

I didcocaine after work on several occasions before I left to go home.

(4)Acapulco is a total frame by the Mexican police and Las Brisas hotel
security to cover their asses against a law suit. Jack, I tell you I did
not do it. Any and all statements to the contrary are false and
fabricated to protect the hotel against liability.

(5)Agar & Sutton-I told you from the beginning that I did steal from
them and I told you why I did it.

(6)The sodium amytal depicts the incident at my home with Teresa.

Anything to the contrary either comes from a) false witnesses and b)
pressure andlor disorientation when I made my statement to the police
concerning the manner in which Teresa was struck.

(7)Disposition of Teresa's body and all actions andlor sta(ernents
concerning the incident that I made are all efforts on my behalf to
staff the eventual and inevitable discovery, so I could make my
"goodbyes" to Marilyn and Astrid as well as ascertain my son's health
and safety in the custody of my Family.

Anything else in the additional discovery will be what it is and I'll
give you an honest evaluation of the material.

Among the "false witnesses" that Ken railed against over and over again
was a Joseph Shamonsky, a man he had never met, who lived near the Hawk
Mountain Bird Sanctuary.

Shamotisky had been questioned by the Pennsylvania State Police in one
of the roadblocks that had been thrown up in the area the morning after
Teresa's body was found. He reported seeing a vehicle in the sanctuary
zzo "bout twenty minutes after midnight. Like Teresa' lass, the car was
two-toned with a white top. It had Jersey plates and Sharnonsky
remembered that, like so's, a "6" had been one of the numbers. The Inale
driver, he said, appeared to be unfamili s road.

or wit Although Shamonsky was the most marginal of wi in the
investigation, @is ,amo Popped UP repeated Police summ@es, ana elery
mention of him seem drive Ken into a frenzy.

"Not true!" Ken wrote. , witness is in error, he wrote another time.

"LIES! scribbled in a memo to Venturi.

At best, it simply meant that Ken might have returned to Manalapan
before leaving Teresa's body at Hawk M @n- What made it all the more
bizarre was that his e tioll Of where he had actually 90no-to a 90-go
dance j after telephoning the Benignos, his parents and a mas Parlor in
Hartford-hardly enhanced his character. B insisted' "There were two
blond dancers that evening. "same-r will confirm this! Ask Loti the
harmaid if I there- I'm certain she,ll remember. We talked!" It was as
though Ken had finally unearthed a factual fl in the case against him,
however inconsequential, wouldn't let 90

Of it, like a dog with a bone.

He- appeared fixated by w, Ha Mountain: Statement was node that the area
where Teresa's ho ""lo'nd "F beat'tly wooded. f alied his f also.

Ho ever, my , Intent was not to hide her body. In my confus state I
wanted to leae her at this sanctuary as a place Peace and natural
beauty, knowing she would be I had said my goodbyes, left ouyon with m
moth and father and was then prepared y MY life. to return home and en
On March to Venturi: 20, with the trial date two months off, he wrot
Jack, t you to be aware of 2 cases that have come I wan down here.

First, Joe Mulvahill. I sent you an article concerning this guy, He
killed his wife. He knocked her out with n drowned her in the bath tub.
a baseball bat and the He got a 10 yr flat for manslaughter.

Second, Joe Taylor. 27 yr old State Trooper.

He knew his girl friend -as cheating on him.

He went to her house, took his pistol with him and broke in the door.

He shot the man twice and his girlfriend once.

20 yrs, with a 10 yr stipulation The man died. He got for manslaughter.
cases and in light of the sodium In light of these two to feel better
than these two amytal results, I have nt. I know YOU I re guys. All I
want is to be a loving pare our best and I pray my self-defense will let
me doing y walk out of here-Venturi had tried to nudge Ken toward a
defense of manslaughter committed in the heat of Passion. The stumbling
block was always the likelihood of some prison time.

Now Sadoff's report had made Ken even more obstinate. Wasn't sodium
amytal the ,truth serum"? Hadn't everything he'd ely what he had said
said under the barbiturate been precis all along? The sodium amytat
proved he was innocent. Venturi didn't seem to be able to get through to
him that lacking an insanity defense, there was no chance of citing
cedure.

One thing was sure, Venturi the sodium amytal Pro arkable facility for
not thought. He had a client with a rem hearing what he didn't want to.

if he got Dr. Sadoff on the stand, what Venturi hoped to on how Ken
"reacted instinctively" do was focus narrowly performing feltatio on the
baby and when he saw Teresa her. That way, he could establish the then
was attacked by that rocketed him out provocation and subsequent passion
of control -The last thing he wanted was to delve into the business see
Chalet salivating of the two dumbbells. Venturi could over this.
Unfortunately, the one without weights w one with blood on it. The other
dumbbell, the on] Teresa could have used, had the weights in place, came
to thirty pounds.

Well, Ken had said, "she was a lot stronger than you'd think."

Maybe so, but Venturi wasn't eager to dazzle jurors with that
proposition.

Besides, it opened up another delicate question. Why didn't a man as big
and as strong as Ken simply take the dumbbell from her?

So far, Venturi had emphasized the advantages of a defense based on heat
of passion. Now he tried a negative approach-ticking off all the
problems inherent in a selfdefense strategy.

The autopsy report said that Teresa's shattered skull had nine separate
fractures. Even if he argued that this did not necessarily mean there
were nine blows, it surely indicated there had been more than the one,
possibly two, that Ken recalled.

Venturi had been researching this question.

Five blows was about the best he could expect the medical examiner to
grant in cross-examination.

"In a nutshell," Venturi told Ken with as much irony as he could muster,
"even five is a bit excessive, you know, for self-defense."

And to claim he had gone into a "robotlike trance" would be too much for
a jury to swallow..

Venturi wanted to say, "Look, dummy, you're paying me to save your ass,
so listen." He wanted Ken to say, "Okay, I just went batshit when I saw
what she was doing and I don't know how many times I hit her because I
just was out of my mind at that point."

But the words had to come from Ken. Venturi couldn't write this script
for him. The canon of ethics aside, he wasn't about to risk Ken-or his
parent@oniing back at him in an appeal if it didn't work out, asserting
that he had caused his client to commit perjury.

Venturi told Ken, "Think this over carefully before you tell me
anything. We'll discuss it again in a couple of days."

But Ken remained mesmerized by his sodium amytal performance. He was
sticking to his trance story.

On April 15, Paul Chalet, after weeks 43f cajoling, at last got copies
of the original Waterford police files concerning Ken's attempt to kill
Marilyn. A covering letter from a Ccjnnecticut assistant state,s
attorney warned about the state's erasure laws. None of the documents
could be directly introduced in Kenneth Taylor's murder trialchaiet
didn't care, He could now subpoena Marilyn and the cops involved and
question them with confidence, included in the documents he received was
a letter from the superintendent of a state psychiatric center,
Fairfield Hills Hospital, who had been retained by Ken'% attorneytt,e
-Contents Of this letter, above all else, had persuaded Marilyn not to
press charges Nothing would appall Chalet more: Exam,nation revealed a
depressed and an-riousappearing white mate who was clearly cooperative
and in every respect attempted to be helpful during the interview.

lalltowg'esthmeyr tirmupthrfeustsiwoinththat during the Xaminalio, me.

Other than the aforesaid depression and anxiety, lor showed no gross
psychopathology other than and history which made it clear he suffered
to a su degree from a Passive, submissive, dependent pery (which is not
ts f or a person's lifestyle). In addition to the It.

Taylor gave a history of both alcohol and amphe abuse.

The Lieutenant conveyed to me that on the night crime he was not only
depressed and extremely res &v wife but had been abusing amphetamines
and that that night he heard a voice telling him to kill.

A to his story, he did attempt to chloroform his Pleaded with him, he
interrupted his activity, su which they both prayed. Through a chain of
he ultimately wound up in a base sick bay where a thst, who examined him
briefly, Purpmtedly made ament to the wife that [be) mightrepeat his
assaultive be and allegedly recommended that a complaint be made police.
On the other hand, subsequent to this the Lieutenant was seen and
treated by a more senior Aist on the base and in fact remains in
treatment at the of this examination. Further, that not only has the "
wife returned to live with the accused but also they em on a course of
ma?ital therapy at the recommendation base psychiatrist.

/I became apparent through the interview that the tenant has an
extremely long history of being unable to with women and has never been
able to pp-operly ha,7die ings real orfancied lion by helpless rage
mifimit should he stated on one occasion in a rage he struck a wall with
his rather than strike his wife, which to me indicates some of control.
Further, that though under the influence of trolled substances at the
time of the act, he was a regain control of Ins behavior and abort his
attempt.

It was the last sentence of the letter, however, that Chalet found so
sickening: I should also state that in view of the treatment in which he
has already embarked and the new insights and personality changes which
have begun that the possibility of his repeating assaultive behavior is
virtually non-existent and that in this instance on the one hand
incarceration would not help and on the other hand further psychiatric
treatment on an ambulatory basis would restore this young doctor to his
intended role as someone beneficial to society.

Along with the Connecticut files, Chalet got good news from Guy
Mccormick. A fruitless hunt had been going on for Dr. Ronald C. Smith.

Apparently the Navy recorded the wrong social security number when he
was discharged from active service and Mccormick couldn't find him
listed with the American Psychiatric Association in Washington.

Finally, after several false leads, the Naval Investigative Service
located him in Huntington Beach, California. In ill health, he had given
up counseling, but had no trouble remembering Ken. After a phone
conversation with him, Mccormick wrote: Dr. Smith advised that he was
the first one to treat Kenneth Taylor before Mr. Taylor went under the
care of Dr. William Pettit. Dr. Smith advised that Kenneth Taylor had
informed him that he had in fact been planning to kill his wife and that
he had been stealing chloroform from the ship he was on.

Dr. Smith advised that Taylor had in formed him that he was planning to
kill his wife because she was not responding to him sexually and that he
was getting more response from sexual-related ads that he had placed in
"swinger-type" sex magazines. Taylor also advised that his wife was a
constant nag.

Dr. Smith informed this writer that Mr. Taylor had even hr ought in
several of these sex magazines and showed him the ad he had placed as
well as a nude picture of himself that he sends out. Dr. Smith advised
that Kenneth Taylor had bizarre sexual ideas and that Taylor was
sexually perverted. Dr. Smith related that Taylor had advised him that
he would dress in his wife's clothing and masturbate.

Then, in reviewing his reports, Mccormick realized he never followed up
on the videotape that Cindy Diaz told him her husband had made of Teresa
and the baby on the Saturday morning before Teresa's death.

"Oh, my God, I forgot, too, Cindy told him.

The next day, when Mccormick picked it up, she also gave him a xerox of
the unnerving letter she and her husband had received from Ken shortly
after his arrest, the one that had asked their help in preventing
Celeste and Jeff from sharing in the custody of baby Philip.

Mccormick took the tape home first to view it. It was everything he
could have wished for. His wife Anne was crying before it was over.

It showed Teresa, young and attractive, completely oblivious to the
camera, kissing and cuddling Philip, her love for him unmistakable.

"That should take care of what kind of a mother she was," Mccormick said
after he ran it for Chalet.

"Yeah, if we can get it in." Chalet knew that Venturi would bitterly
resist its admission into evidence. The tape realty carried an emotional
wallop.

Mccormick kept brooding about all the sex phone calls from the Manalapan
house during the dark morning of November, 1984. If Ken ever took the
stand, no psychic powers were required to predict what he
would,claim-that a drug-crazed Teresa made them.

He asked the Benignos if Teresa had ever been away for an extended
period, visiting them or any of her girlfriends. No, the only times they
could remember was when she was having pregnancy problems and, of
course, when she went into labor.

So then Mccormick took a flyer and subpoenaed Ken's telephone records
during the last months of Teresa's difti-22 cult pregnancy.

And he got a match. The night Of the Inurder, three calls were to a
whorehouse in Manhattan. The same number was called on another night,
June I 1-when Teresa was still in the hospital, only hours after she had
given birth.

Mccormick began to regret that Chalet wasn't going for the death
penalty.

In late April 1985, a month before the trial was scheduled to begin,
Mccormick and Fausak interviewed Emily Latrelle in Indianapolis.

The Waterford cops had spoken to her by phone during their
investigation, but she said that while her former husband had temper
tantrums and demanded her "undivided attention and affection," he had
not been via-lent to her.

ed to reach her, her number had When Mccormick tri Indianapolis police
been disconnected. He contacted the and received a call back from the
principal of the school where Emily was teaching. The principal said
that Emily had not seen Ken for ten years and was very distraught about
being dragged into this. Was it really necessary to interview her?

Mccormick replied that he was sorry, but it was a murder case and the
prosecutor had to get every scrap of information he could about the
accused.

, arrangements were Through a local attorney she hired made to meet with
her at Indianapolis police headquartersshe had dark brown hair and a
healthy body. She was -necked blouse and skirt and wore practi-dressed
in a high her hands folded on cally no makeup or jewelry. She kept a
one-word descripher lap. If Fausak had to come up with tion of her, it
would have been "nice." She looked like, well, a school teacher, Fausak
thought.

Mccormick asked, "How long has it been since You either heard from or
saw Mr. Taylor?"

[ haven't seen or heard from Mr. Taylor since the time of our separation
in June, 1974

 ...  I first met him when we were both students at Ball State
University in Muncie, Indiana."

"How long were you married to Kenneth Z. Taylor?"

"Somewhere between four and five years."

"Could you please explain the circumstances surrounding your eventual
divorce from Mr. Taylor?"

"During my marriage to Kenneth Taylor, he began to become involved in
drugs and was seeing other women. Near the end of our marriage, he met a
gal, I believe her name was Marilyn Hope, whom he went out with and when
I was nine months pregnant, we separated and were divorced later that
year."

"Could you please elaborate about Mr. Taylor's being involved with
drugs?"

"During our marriage, Kenneth Taylor and I went to several parties
during college and there was pot being passed around, and we would
smoke. Then, as the years of our marriage grew on and I began to work
and become the breadwinner, and the people I associated with were quite
different than the people he was with, he wanted to continue this kind
of experience. I was really not very interested. At that time I could
begin to see that we were starting to goapart and had dffferences.

Near the end of the marriage, approximately six months before we had
separated, hehad stored in the spare bedroom closet of our apartment
three large garbage bags of pot or hashish, or whatever it was. I went
into a fit of rage and they were removed immediately.

Then later on, another month or two, when I was home from work ill, and
he did not expect me to be there, he came in with several large
quart-size plastic bags full of pills, and again I went into a rage."

"What was Mr. Taaylor's occupation at this time?"

"Full-time dental student."

"You mentioned that you were the breadwinner."

"I was a teacher."

"Were you supporting the two of you?"

"Yes, I was."

"Was there any indication that he was going to leave you'7" Till then,
her voice had remained flat, matter-of-fact.

Now Fausak could sense the tension in it.

"Ken and I were having differences," she said, "but there were no plans
for us to separate. I came home Oild out." day and he had packed his
bags and move "What was your physical condition Mccormick asked, at the
time that your husband left you?"

I was nine months pregnant." contact with Kenneth Z. "IF,mfly, has there
been any I Taylor since the birth of your daughter?"

A hand came off her lap, tlutteting aimlessly. "I have not seen Kenneth
since he left that one day in early June, 1974," she said.

"He did file for divorce lateran that summer or that fall  ... There was
no need for me to be present at the hearing since Kenneth was the One
who filed- He was ordered to pay twenty-five dollars a week in child
support.

He did pay very inconsistently for the first two or three years.

The child support would come to me in strange amounts, like th@y-two
dollars, fortynine cents or One hundred twenty-two dollars and two
pennies- Tnose kinds of checks were being sent. Somewhere along the
second or third year, I hadn't received any child support for some time.
I attempted to contact Ken while he was in the Navy and did speak with
him very briefly on the phone, for maybe a minute or two, concerning
payment of the rupporti have filed for contempt of court on several
different occasions."

"Did Mr. Taylor display any indications that he was upset or unhappy
with your Pregnancy?"

"Uh, early in the pregnancy, before I had gone to the doctor to find out
for sure, Ken indicated at that time a lot of delight. He told many of
his friends that I was pregnant, seemed to be very happy and pleased
with the idea we were having a child. Throughout the remainder Of the
months, he may did not show any affection toward me One way Or the
other."

S,the looked at Mccormick as if he might have an answer.

"He didn't, You know, Show any extra CONS'derat'o[L because of the
pregnancy," she mid, "but also I can't say that The neglected me during
that time, either .

"Do you recall any particular occasion where there may have been a
physical altercation between you and Mr. Taylor?"

"Only after we separated. I was speaking to his parents one evening on
the phone. They wanted to speak to their son and I informed them that he
had moved out, that he had decided, evidently, that he no longer wanted
to be married. They asked where he was staying. I gave them the
telephone number of a friend I believed he was with. They said that they
would call him and get back to me. Later on in the evening, they did
call and did say that he was coming over and to expect him shortly. When
Ken came into the apartment, he was very angry, the most anger I'd ever
seen him display. He picked up a basketball and threw it at a rocking
chair and broke the back of the chair.

"Emily," Mccormick said, "could you please tell us if you have been
contacted or received any correspondence from either Mr. Taylor or
members of his family in regard to this current case and the charges
pending against him?"

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She gazed into space, then at
her lawyer, then back to Mccormick.

"Yes," she finally said. "I have received a couple of different letters
from his mother.

Kenneth's mother, I guess, has tried to keep me informed of the
happenings involving her son. She wrote to me about the woman he was
m@ed to, the now deceased Teresa Taylor, and gave me some of her
background, whereby she stated Teresa had been involved in drugs since
she was approximately fifteen years old and was a person who had become
very sick with sex. She stated to me that she, Teresa, had made
telephone calls on the night before the murder-many different long
distance telephone calls where she would talk to a sex line by phone.

She stated that the bottom half of her body, or from the waist down, was
covered with Vaseline and this was something to do with her sexual
perversion that she had gone off into."

Mccormick and Fausak stared at one another.

Mccorrock said, "Emily, at this point, is there anything else that you
would like to add?"

I "No.

As they were leaving, Mccormick felt compelled to say, "You were lucky
he just left you."

"Yes," she said. "I know." Afterward, Fausak said, "That's some mom he's
got."

"Yeah," Mccormick said. "I wonder what her apple pie's like?"

On May 1, with the trial scheduled to begin in three weeks, Chalet
received disturbing news.

He was depending on the testimony of Jose Romero, Dr. Ortiz Pavon, and
officer Armando Vallarino to bring Acapulco into the trial. According to
Reyes Quinones, Romero was still coming. But Ortiz was begging off. Not
only was he the physician for Las Brisas, but also for several other
hotels in Acapulco. He couldn't afford to take the time off. Worse,
Vallarino said that obtaining a visa, making travel arrangements, being
apart from his family, and losing salary was too much for him. He sent
his regrets.

Vallarino's testimony was essential. He was the only available witness
who could testify that Ken had admitted assaulting Teresa.

"He knows we'll reimburse him?" Chalet said.

"Yes, sir," Quinones said. Chalet told him to get ready to return to
Acapulco. Then he called in Fausak. Now the mystery woman "Sorayda"
became the center of attention. With everything falling into place, with
Vallarino, a cop, presumably available to provide evidence, she had
wound up, as Fausak put it, "sort of on the back burner."

"Find her," Chalet said.

Sifting through the reservation slips was like scanning tea leaves.

The problem was that if it hadn't been a crank call, the woman had
obviously changed her mind about coming forward. If Fausak started
blindly phoning all the names on the slips, there was nothing to prevent
the person who made the call from denying it and nothing he could do
about it.

Fausak kept reviewing the tape@ It didn't help that the connection had
been bad to begin with.

But perhaps the sixth or seventh time he listened to it, he caught
something that hadn't registered before-the woman had said she'd been at
Las Bxisas with her husband and kids.

Wait a minute, he said to himself. He remembered a show on television,
"Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." The guy had said that Las Brisas
was one of the top ten hotels in the world for romance. It catered to
newlyweds, to couples on a second honeymoon, to husbands and wives with
a lot of bucks and a yen to get away for a few days. It wasn't a place
where you'd expect "families" to stay.

Fausak went back over the registration slips.

This time he found one that said "Mr. & Mrs. L. Pe@no & Family, the Only
One with that notation and the only one that reserved two ROOMS, 510 and
511. The home address was in the affluent Long Island suburb, Locust
Valley.

There was the name of a Long Island travel agency on the bottom of the
slip, and to make doubly sure he was right, Fausak phoned the agency and
asked to speak to the manager. He said, "My name is Bob Fausak. I feel a
little silly calling, but maybe You can help me out.

I was at Las Bfisas last year-in July-4nd I met a family named Peraino.

We had drinks and so forth, and I'd like to contact them again, but I've
lost their address."

"Oh, Yes," the manager mid- "Louis and Sorayda Peraino. Lovely couple.

They use us often. They went down there with their boys, I believe.

Great boys."

"That's them."

"I'm sorry, though. I can't give out their address.

But if you drop us a note, I'll see that it's forwarded."

"I'll do that. I appreciate it."

The home Phone number was also on the registration slip. Fausak dialed
it.

"Mrs. Peraino? Sorayda Peraino?"

"Yes."

Fausak identified himself and said that he was calling about the call
she had made to Captain Potts the previous December 7 concerning the
murder of Teresa Taylor.

"You are mistaken. You are mixing me up with someone else.

"I know you are the same party. I know you were at Las Brisas when
Teresa Taylor was there."

"No, no. I tell you, you are wrong,"

"Mrs. Peraino, I have to inform you that your call was recorded. Your
voice is identical to the one on the tape. It is very important that you
speak to me."

There was a pause, and then she started to cry. "That poor, poor girl.

Why did he do it to her?"

"This is one of the reasons we need your help- "Is he still in jail?"

"Yes. He will be going on trial very won."

There was another pause. That was really why she had called, she said.

To find out where he was. She couldn't believe it when she read the
article in the New York Post. She had wanted to come forward.

"But I discussed it with my husband and he said the police must already
have the evidence if he'd been arrested and is in jail."

She was nervous enough as it was. Fausak didn't want her to know that,
at the moment anyway, she was the key to proving the Acapulco assault.

He said, "We have other witnesses. But we need all the corroboration we
can get-you know, to verify everything. How did you happen to meet
Teresa Taylor and her husband?"

They met in the van coming in from the airport, she said. "We learned
that they were newlyweds. We invited them to our suite the next night
and we had champagne to celebmte their marriage. They stayed for about
an hour, and we talked about getting together later in the week.

But we never did," she said, starting to cry Yes?"

"I was in the lobby," she said. "We were getting ready to check out when
I saw him-Ken Taylor-in the lobby. He was with two men, detectives I
think. They were in civilian clothes, but he said they were police. He
was disheveled.

He said that he had been in jail. He and Teresa had been drinking, and
she bit him on the ankle and he hit her. And knocked her teeth out, and
that he was a dentist and they wouldn't let him treat her."

AV "Did he say anything else?"

"Well, that he might need money to get out of jail." Soirayda Peraino's
sobs were uncontrollable now. "IMANK you, Mrs. Peraino," Fausak said.
"I'll be in contact with You again." He phoned Chalet at once. 1:
Sorayda," he said'. "I found her.

" Fausak could tell how excited Chalet was, not by the tone of his
voice-Chalet always maintained a very lowkey level@ut the way he hopped
on every answer. Usually, when YOU answered something he'd asked, he
would kind of weigh it before going on to the next question.

"What did she say?" Chalet said, the words tumbling Out. "What did she
say about Taylor?

And then what? When are you going to see her?"

"I just said I'd be in contact again," Fausak said. "She was real jumpy,
but she didn't say no."

"Get together with Mccormick," Ctwet said.

"Go see her." When Fausak called her back, she was reluctant, but
finally agreed to receive them.

On May 7, Pausak and Mccormick drove to the Locust Valley home.

It was big and white with pillars in front, a sweeping lawn with huge
old trees, a carriage house, a swimming pool and a tennis court. Rich
and gorgeous, Fausak thought.

Sorayda Peraino turned out to be extremely tive.

She had long black hair and wore a gray silk dress with a double strand
Of Pearls around her neck. Fausak figured she was in her Wd-thirties.

He was astonished to learn that she had sons and daughters in their
twenties. Her husband was at her side, older, an Obviously Prosperous
businessman who owned a chain of discount stores retailing electronic
equipment and home appliances.

She reiterated how she and her husband first met the Taytm. Then
Mccormick asked her, ,when did you next encounter either Kenneth or
Teresa Taylor?"

"On the last day of our week's stay, I saw Ken Taylor.

It was in the lobby of the hotel. He was standing on Me with two
Mexicans. I believe they were Mexican policemen. That's what Ken Taylor
said. Ken had seen me in the lobby and called my name.

He told me he had to get his money, to get bail to get out of jail, and
asked me would I lend him some money if he didn't have enough."

"What did Ken Taylor tell you regarding his situation?

"He told me, We had a fight." I thought he meant in town, and I asked,
Where's Teresa?" He said, She's in the hospital." I still thought they
had a fight with someone in town.

And I asked what hospital was Teresa in and he began to tell me that he
and Teresa had fought. He told me that they wouldn't let him see Teresa,
that he had knocked her teeth out, and they wouldn't let him fix her
teeth, that he was a dentist.

"He went on to say that she had bit him on the foot, and I hit her,'
that they had been drinking and had a fight. After I walked away, upset,
I spoke with a Mexican lady, who worked for the hotel, and she told me
that it was terrible what happened to his wife, that he had called and
said that four Mexicans had broken into the room, and he did admit to
the police that he was the one that beat his wife up. The lady said it
was terrible what he had done to her on the honeymoon."

"Do you recall Kenneth Taylor saying anything while at your suite when
they came over for the honeymoon drink?"

I He was very quiet, but while Teresa was saying something about his
being a dentist, and them being married, and speaking about clothes she
had purchased, he replied, Now that she's my wife, I'll straighten her
out."

"Anything else you can recall at this time?"

"The only thing is how bubbly a person she was, and how quiet he was.

He did tell us that he was a Vietnam veteran during our conversation."

Mccormick could see how tense she was becoming and cut off the
interview. They'd gotten what they wanted. Fausak had brought a
typewriter and transcribed her statement on the spot.

Sorayda Peraino read and signed it. Her husband, present throughout,
signed as a witness.

"I won't have to be at the trial, will I?" she asked. "I don't believe I
could do it."

"I really can't answer that," Mccormick said.

"She'll be a fantastic witness," Mccormick told Chalet. "She's
intelligent, cultured, and she doesn't have a stake in any of this."

"Is she willing to testify?"

"I think You're going to have to talk to her yourself."

In the Monmouth County Jail, Jack Venturi said to Ken, "Remember telling
me the name Sorayda' didn't ring a bell? Well, her whole name is Sorayda
Peraino. Any bells now?" Then Venturi gave him a copy of her statement
to Mccormick and Fausak.

After he read it, Ken said, "Yeah, now I remember. She was that weird
crazy bitch we met down there. This is all shit. Why would I tell her
that? Jesus Christ, Jack, even if I ltad beaten Teresa, would I go
around saying it? Give me a break. The woman is certifiable.

Why would I say I was a Vietnam veteran?"

The next day Venturi received a memo from Ken that wasn't quite so
dismissive of Sorayda Peraino: SORYADA [sic] Upon arriving at the hotel
with my escort of 5 policemen, I noticed Soryada in the lobby near the
reception desk. When she saw me, she exclaimed, "What happened to you,
Ken?"

I was in bad shape. I was filthy, dirty and very shaken fro?n no food,
clothing change or shower for 4 nights. I had not shaved and in short I
looked like a bum from sleeping on the floor of the jail as there were
no beds or mats to lie on.

I told her I had to pay the Police $500-00 to let me go see Teresa.

The police (one on either side of me) stood behind me slightly.

The other 3 police were scattered ah the lobby: one talking to the man
at the reception des out k and the other two talking to hotel employees
(2 maids).

I told her Teresa had been beaten badly and that I had cut on the arms,
hands and also Cut been hit on the head, police had told me Teresa had
oat, i told her the on the f from her beating and that I wanted to be
able broken teeth f and try to make to at least repair the da@age lo her
teeth her comfortable. for I told her the police had taken me to jail to
cover up the hotel security deficiency . I told her the Police had not s
I had not done anything, just charged me with anything a tead of damage
that they wanted to lay the blame on me ins their reputation with their
tourist trade.

At that point, Mr. Nita Loper, who was at the reception k me to an
Office where all of desk, came to me and too . From there i could see
that our belongings were located talking to SORYTWO police who were
standing near me were ese 2

"police' ada. (She spoke Spanish and therefore th explained to her in
Spanish their version of the story-) Upon viewing our belongings, I
noticed that we were missing the tricolored gold bracelet, a gold
cigarette len by the police lighter and MY Cross pen that had been sto
captain, Gutierrez Mendoza. After meeting with Teresa IR her hotel (sic]
room, I discovered she was missing 2 pair d engagement ring.

of earrings and her diamolz th USAA insur-There was an insurance claim
made wi once in San Antonio, Texas- Because the items were not
individually insured, we were paid a lump sum Of $500 allowed for stolen
jewelry(I believe it was $500. I valued the total loss at $2,500, as I
recall.) having unburdened himself about the missing Then Ken, reat from
his harsh comments to jewelry, appeared to ret.

Venturi about Mrspemino: Soryada was in an excited state trying to check
out of the hotel and appeared to be upset, she spoke fluent Spand 1. I
feet certain ish and did seem to like both Teresa an" official version"
ritat she misunderstood me and got the from the police.

AL Venturi assigned his own investigator to talk to her. At least he
needed to know how firm she was in her story But the investigator
reported that she refused to see him. That was unsettling.

Now Venturi knew he had two big problem@Acapulco as well as Connecticut.

Venturi again moved for a reduction in Ken's bag from $500,000 to
$100,000, with a provision allowing him to post 10 percent of it.

He argued that the prosecution's case was gravely flawed, The police
allegation that his client seized a dumbbell from the deceased and
struck her with it was false. His client "instinctively picked up" a
different dumbbell while under attack.

As evidence, he cited a "truth serum" examination of his client by a
psychiatrist who was "world-renowned," who "has administered this very
test on hundreds of occasions."

Furthermore, the defendant not only was a homeowner in the community and
in the midst of a custody battle over his ten-month-old son, but also
had every expectation of being found innocent.

Chalet's response was brief. They'd been through this before.

The defendant's story was basically the same, Dr. Sadoff's "opinion"
notwithstanding. The finding in the first bail hearing was "reasonable."
On the eve of the trial, "It would seem foolhardy to allow the defendant
an opportunity to flee the jurisdiction."

The judge appointed to try the case, Michael D. Farren, denied Ventuii's
motion. Citing Ken's lies about putting Teresa on a plane and then
changing his story when her body was found, he said, "I think the proofs
are very strong for a conviction - " He added that since sodium amytal
or the "truth serum" would be inadmissible in a trial, he didn't see why
it should be admissible in a bail hearing.

At the Monmouth County Jail, Ken fractured his ankle in a pickup
basketball game. He was transferred to the jail's medical wing.

"It's better there," he told Venturi.

"There's more freedom."

239 Part III I i THE TRIAL On May 8, the day after Fausak located
Sorayda Peraino, Venturi officially notified Chalet, "Be advised that
Dr. Kenneth Taylor intends to claim defense of self-protection and
protection of another."

That surprised Chalet. He'd always thought it would be manslaughter in
the heat of passion.

If Ken ever took the stand, he wondered how Venturi was going to explain
away the dumbbell that was bloodstained, the one without weights, with
only its wicked clamp.

How could Teresa, with little upper body strength, have been able to
swing the only other dumbbell, loaded with thirty pounds of weights, at
Taylor?

Still, the critical element in this defense, like the others, was "state
of mind." Which was why prior instances of Ken's violent assaults were
so critically important to prove.

When Judge Farren, in denying bail reduction, said that there was
probable proof for a conviction, he didn't specify what kind of a
conviction.

Venturi moved to keep both assaults out of the trial. The As ther,would
-,et the tone for the rest decision one way or alo age victory or defeat
of the proceedings, would, in fact, Ptes for thedefense. Venturi figured
that if he could exclude ]co, the big hurdle left would be Connecticut
and Aca.01, Teresa. The argu-r he had killedi Ken's cover-up ties arte
panicked.

nient there, of course, was that he had f,arren set the hearing for may
He was a hard read. A cherubic-faced man, regarded as either highly
intelligent or very shre*vd depending on your politics, he had been
prominent in Republican party affairs. the prosecutor's office when.

Chalet He was an assistant in at he entered t)rivate practice, and
started there. After th arne the assistant county counsel. When a
Republi-later bec appointed can, Thomas Kean, was elected iz()vemor, Oc
court. This was his first big trial.

Farren to the Superior autian about making -ounting on Farren's c
Venturi was r invite a higher court reversal.

To decisions that might Venturi would rely on Rule 55 of the exclude
Connecticut, d that state,$ Rules of Evidence, which esseraially Provide
had committed a similar crit'e on a evidence that someone inadmissible
in order to specified, previous occasion was n 10 commit the crime infer
or prove a defendant's dispositio then being adjudicated. out Rule 55,
SO he Chaict expected Venturi to trot provided that Rule. Rule 49, which
asserted another rulin , includ-55

could be preernptej to prove other issue-, Of fact ing motive, intent,
plan or knowledge.

,Intent,' was at the heart of it, he argued. and wife was "higmy The
attempted murder of his sec upon probative of the defendant's later,
fatal attack Teresa Taylor. Both were ,sparked by Mounting nlarita'
pressures." in Manalapan, Ken admitted, "I Just couldn" anymore."

in Connecticut, he had Z@mplained of take, it which he, could no longer
tolerate." new problems wh the defen- In Acapulco, the assault on the
victim showed dailt,s ,Malicious intent in the Present matter."

The fact Othe "is of no e-etise-that it occurred at an T, earlier time
n.

He important Was that it did happe que,ace," What was etent witwas
prepared, Chalet declared, to present "COMP nesses ... who were privy to
the situation as it then eris ted and comments made by the defendant
regarding same."

Neither previous act, he emphasized, was being offered to prove the
defendant's disposition to commit the "present offense," but to "prove
motive and intent and refute the defendant's claim of self-defense."

So, in the end, after all the months of detective work, the painstaking
gathering of facts, the tracking down of witnesses, the chances of a
murder conviction would hinge on narrowly interpreted technicalities
about the admission of this evidence.

Farren reserved his decision.

Then, on May 15, he dropped a bombshell. He disal)owed the introduction
of Connecticut, citing Rule 55.

Chalet was stunned-and steaming. Clearly, the connection was there.

First, one wife and then the next one, rationalized by bizarre
explanations from Taylor. That was the real relationship, Chalet
thought. But there was nothing he could do. Farren was obviously worried
about the legalities. In an instant, half of Chalet's case, designed to
show that Ken's self-defense plea was a sham, had been thrown out.

Perversely, Farren left the door open on Acapulco. He wasn't going to
decide that until the trial. His ultimate decision would rest on "clear
and convincing evidence" that Ken bad savaged Teresa on their honeymoon.

Venturi told his investigators to redouble their efforts to talk to
Sorayda Peraino. And if Chaict brought up any cops from Mexico, he'd
hammer them on the payoff Ken had made.

The trial date, scheduled for May 20, was postponed to give everyone a
chance to regroup. Judge Farren announced that jury selection would
commence on May 28.

For reporters covering the courthouse, a case that had once appeared
fairly cut and dried was suddenly too close to call. The headline in the
Asbury Park Press was, "Defense Says Wife Caused Her Death b Attacking
First." y As soon as he got back to his office, Chalet immediately
dispatched Reyes Quinones to Acapulco. He wanted the Mexican cop,
Vallarino, of course, but he also wanted Quinones to try to convince Dr.
Ortiz Pavon to change his mind about testifying.

Chalet wanted to show the jury the horrible photographs of the dead
Teresa's battered face, then he wanted to show them to Ortiz and have
the jury hear Ortiz say that they looked just like Teresa after her
beating in Mexico.

But two days later, Quinones reported that it looked hopeless as far as
Ortiz was concerned.

He would not jeopardize his position with the various hotels he serviced
as an oncall physician.

The word on Vallarino, however, was all good.

Quinones had gotten him his visa and settled on an expense advance.

They'd be flying out the next afternoon. Then Quinones called back.

He'd managed to get Vallarino to the airport when he suddenly refused to
board the plane.

"He says he can't do it," Quinones said.

"He's afraid."

"Of what? Being asked about the money Taylor paid?"

"Yes, I'm sure of it."

By now the furor in the media about the link between the murder of the
U.S. drug agent-Enrique Camarenaand corruption in Mexican law
enforcement had reached new heights.

"What's the atmosphere down there?" Chalet asked d.

"Hostile. Very hostile," Quinones said.

"Then the hell with it. Come on back before something happens to YOU."

Chalet had Fausak and Mccormick set up a meeting with Sorayda Peraino at
her Locust Valley home. The moment Chalet laid eyes on her, he realized
how impressive a witness she could be. And just the way she held her
husband's hand, he saw at once the conflict within her-her desire to
have Taylor punished and her almost palpable fear that he would strike
back at her.

Fausak remembered how Chalet's physical presence, already imposing
enough, seemed to fill the room, his voice can understand your low,
authoritative, comforting. "I apprehension," he said. "I have had many
similar cases, and I can assure you that not one witness of mine has
ever suffered retribution of any kind. Information about where you live,
or anything else of a personal nature, will not be asked." Fausak could
sense that her husband, listening to Chalet, was more at ease than
before. He squeezed his wife's hand encouragingly.

Chalet said, "I must tell you that if justice is to be served, your
testimony is extremely, vitally, important. It is your civic duty."

"Why me?" she said. "Do I really have to?"

Chalet could have issued a subpoena. He didn't mention it. He wanted her
to come voluntarily. "You are the ontloyr means we have," he said, "to
show that Kenneth Toy beat his wife in Mexico." He stared at her.

"Mrs. Peraino, there's a dead woman up there somewhere looking down at
us, at you, who wants you to tell nothing more than the truth.

She is calling out for help.

Somebody has to help her."

"What would I have to do?"

"You will have to come to court twice. The first time will be to let the
judge hear what you have to say. And depending upon the judge's ruling,
if he decides to admit it into evidence, you will have to testify again
in front of the jury. Kenneth Taylor's lawyer will cross-examine you,
ask, you many questions, but if you tell the truth, as you will, there's
nothing to worry about."

"Somebody from his lawyer, some investigator, has been trying to see me.
I refused."

"Mrs. Peraino," Chalet said, "you don't have to talk to anyone you don't
want to, including me."

"Thank you."

That's it, Fausak thought. Even if she hadn't said so outright, she was
going to testify, "We'll let you know when," Chalet said.

"Detective Fausak will come for you and drive you down and back."

Then, in Freehold, Chalet's secretary put in a call to the State
Department's Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.

He already had sent two letters asking for any information that the
consular agent in Acapulco, Urbanek, might have filed about Teresa's
beating, There had been no response.

"We're processing it," an Ivy League voice said. "The Mexican Desk has
been contacted."

"Goddamnit," Chalet said, "this is a murder case. Let's get on with it."

Chalet hadn't decided which Benignos he would have testify. For sure,
Al. And Teresa's brother, Phil. But he was going to have a serious talk
with Phil first.

Dr. Frederick Rieders. the toxicologist who worked on Teresa's autopsy
report, would testify that Teresa had been a user but not an abuser of
cocaine. That was hard, medical evidence.

Still, there had been cocaine residue in her body, and Jack Venturi
wasn't going to let it slide by the jury. Chalet had to confront this
before Venturi did.

For Chalet, the most likely time Teresa did cocaine consistent with
Rieders's findings would have been on Friday night, November 9, when
Phil and his girlfriend visited the Manalapan house.

Questioned initially by Mccormick and Fausak, Phil said that Ken was the
only one who had ingested cocaine. Chalet didn't buy it.

He sumrfioned Phil to his office-with Al.

Chalet said, "We have to know the truth about any drug use by you and
Teresa. It's going to be raised by the defense and if you care about
Justice being served, I have to know everything, and I don't think I do.
Exactly what happened on November ninth when you and your friend were
over there?"

Mccormick remembered glancing at Phil's father. Al had his eyes fixed on
his son.

" Let's begin at the beginning," Chalet said.

"What time did you arrive?"

Around ten, ten-thirty."

And you stayed overnight, is that right?"

:"Yes."

"And then what? You said you brought some wine, two bottles.

"Yes, me and Kathy drank most of the Wine, Teresa had two or three
glasses. Ken drank straight Jack Daniel's. He smoked a joint. I smoked a
little of it,"

"What time was this?"

"I'd say about eleven."

"What were you doing?"

"Just sitting on the couch and talking, You know. I think Teresa was
showing us a photo album."

"What else?"

"Taylor brought out some coke, a packet."

"Who used it?"

Phil hesitated. His eyes teared. "Myself and Teresa and him.

"Had You ever seen Teresa use cocaine before?"

"Yes. Once."

"How about Kenneth Taylor?"

"I saw him do it all the time. Even in the dental office." Phil said
that Ken and Teresa had gone to bed around two A.M. He and his
girlfriend stayed up until four watching a movie on television.

When they awoke in the morning, Ken and Teresa had left the house.

Chalet believed him. In their investigation, Mccormick and Fausak hadn't
been able to find any evidence that Phil was either a big user or dealer
in drugs as Ken claimed. He could have stuck with his original story,
but he was willing to admit the truth in front Of his father. That
couldn't have been easy.

Jack Venturi noticed in one 0, Mccormick's Acapulco reports that the
consular agent there said nothing could be released on the Las Brisas
assault without State Department clearance. Funny there hadn't been
anything more on this.

So on the off chance it might be useful, he made his Own request, simply
addressing his letter to the Department of State, Washington, D.C. He
Promptly got a reply from the Information and Privacy Coordinator,
Foreign Affairs Information MANAGE249PEER MAAS ment Center. There would
be a fee. Surprised that he had even gotten this far, Venturi sent a
fifty-dollar check, He also contacted three different toxicologists to
see if Ken had been harpthey would refute Rieders's testimony.

ing on it continually as the trial approached.

And to Venturi, it did seem to defy logic that the amount of cocaine in
Teresa's body could be accurately measured after so many days of
decomposition, a body practically devoid of blood. He sent Rieders's
analysis to the toxicologists and then spoke to them by phone.

The news was bad.

All three said that on the basis of what they'd been given, they agreed
with Rieders and would so testify. It still didn't make sense to
Venturi. He called one of them toxicologists Philadelphia, who had come
highly again, S. K. Niyogi in recommended, and asked him to take another
look. A lot was at stake here. Niyogi said he would, but he didn't think
it would make any difference. Well, okay, Venturi thought, he'd have to
appeal to the jury's common sense. No matter what an expert claimed,
Teresa had been dead for too long. Too much time had elapsed and an
unknown amount of the cocaine could have easily dissipated before they
finally got around to doing the toxicology.

Then Ken volunteered thumbnail sketches of the Benignos as potential
witnesses. as he Al Benigna, he scribbled, "could be the toughest is the
most intelligent." He "went to Mexico to bring us home and saw firsthand
the corruption and police behavior and said he knew Teresa and I were
mugged. YET now he se he knows the eyican cops will has turned on me
becau to." He stick to their story about me beating Teresa, etc e added
that Al also had once invested money in a business venture and when his
partner lost it, he "tried to have his partner killed!"

Ken didn't see Louise as being very dangerous on the stand "except to
create sympathy for Teresa." He said, She says that she made me a
sandwich after I came back from Indiana. She doesn't say that she
nsisted on making me the sandwich-" Phil was a "no-good thug and dope
dealer."

Teresa "begged me to give him a job to get him out of drugs." Phil also
had threatened him. "Jack," Ken wrote, "you've got to get this in to
show how prejudiced he is." During one of the shared custody nights when
Celeste and Jeff had his son, he called from jail to see how the baby
was, and Phil answered and said, "KEN, I'M GOING TO KILL YOU. I SWEAR TO
GOD I'M GOING TO KILL YOU."

Nothing, however, appeared to drive Ken into more frustrated fury than
Jeff and Celeste.

"JEFF WHITE-calm but not intelligent. Jeff can lie' very well but should
be easy to manipulate and confuse. When first married, they sold coke
for their income ... CELESTE WHITE-very stupid woman.

Very easily confused. Very confusing in her explanations. Can be very
easily manipulated to sound like she's confused ... I can't
overemphasize how confused and how excitable this woman really is.

She is also very emotional and has literally no common sense. She is a
pathologic [sic] liar."

At least something had dissipated, Venturi thought-the cool, almost
eerie confidence Ken displayed when they first met. A last exhortation
came from him on the eve of his appearance in court: Jack, Before we go
to trial I want to let you know something about me that we will have to
deal with. I did not beat MY precious wife on our honeymoon. I did not
at anytime or anyplace sell cocaine.

I loved Teresa more than I love living. She meant the world to me and
now my world is gone. Anything elve you want to think about me, and God
knows you have enough, okay, but just know what I state above is true.
I'm guilty of certain accusations, I'm not pure and you know it.

But believe me, I loved Teresa. I'll do anything to protect my children
and I did not sell cocaine.

I realize this will be a very difficult case.

God bless you for your skills, effort and concern.

He signed it formally. Dr. Kenneth J. Taylor.

Jury selection took two days. Sixteen jurors, twelve men and four women,
were impaneled. The final twelve to deliberate a verdict would be chosen
by lot. Over the winter, media coverage had been extensive and generally
antitaylor, Venturi thought- He questioned prospective jurors on how
closely they had followed the case. He challenged anyone who said that
they had read or heard about Las Brisas-or Connecticut, even though
Judge Farren had excluded it. He searched for anyone who'd had a bad
experience with dentists, and found two examples. He tried for younger
jurors who might have a passing familiarity with the drug culture, its
ups and downs, Chalet sought solid, middle-class citizens with a strong
sense of fight and wrong, and he wanted men who could put themselves in
Ken's place when Teresa was supposedly attacking him.

In the end, both Chalet and Venturi got a mix they could live with.

Chalet was philosophical about juries. Betting on them was a fast way to
go broke. Still, he was confident of winning, especially if he could
bring in Acapulco.

During his opening statement on Thursday, May 30, Chalet's normally
quiet demeanor disappeared, his voice now raised dramatically in scorn
and outrage. They were gathered in this court, he said, to render
judgment on a "brutal, senseless" murder. "I will call upon you for a
murder conviction for this defendant because that's what he committed
when he smashed the head of Teresa Taylor into pieces on November
eleventh, nineteen eighty-four."

Kenneth and Teresa Taylor had met, married, and had a babbaby boy.

"It could have been, should have been so right, but it turned out so
wrong."

He had viciously bludgeoned his wife. He "cracked open" her skull with a
dumbbell bar.

She had succumbed to massive head injuries and fractures, "nine of them
in all." He carefully cleaned up a house splattered with her blood.

With his wife's body stuffed in the trunk of a car, Chalet said, he
carried the infant to Indiana.

And for a week, he tried to cover up his crime. He lied to his wife's
family. He Bed to his parents.

He lied that his wife was addicted to drugs and left him voluntarily
because she needed "space." The jury would hear of twenty-six phone
calls of a sexual nature that night when the defendant claimed to have
been asleep.

He dumped his wife's body, her culottes and pantyhose pulled down to
mid-thigh, her sweater blood-soaked, in a Pennsylvania ditch.

And what did he do the night before he finally reported to the police
that his wife was missing?

-go saloon to watch topless dancers He went to a go perform.

At that, Venturi was on his feet, demanding a mistrial. Judge Farren
waved him off.

And where was he when members of his wife's family were identifying her
corpse? He was in Pittsburgh, visiting his ex-wife.

The jury would hear, Chalet said, that as Manalapan detective Robert
Fausak pursued his investigation into the disappearance of Teresa
Taylor, at the urging of her family, he found the defendant at home,
"calm, businesslike, not overly worried."

It was only after many hours of police interrogation, and being
Confronted by growing evidence against him, that the defendant broke
down at last and admitted what he had done.

Even then, Chalet continued, he fabricated a "sordid" story that his
wife, crazed by cocaine, was sexually abusing her baby and attacked him
with a dumbbell bar when he tried to stop her.

A toxicology study, however, revealed just a minimal amount of cocaine
in her body. And how did he "defend himself"? By his own admission, he
had seized the dumbbell bar from his wife and then beat her to death.

He quoted Ken as saying, "I just couldn't stand it anymore. She was
stealing my prescriptions and taking my money." The state would prove
that this plea of selfdefense, along with everything else, was baseless.
As he spoke, Chalet had been moving closer to the table where Ken was
sitting. Now he jabbed a finger inches from Ken's face.

"This perverted tale," he cried, "is just that. A perverted tale by a
sinister and calculating mind."

In preparing his opening statement, Venturi had written himself a
reminder: "I don't have the flair for drama as Mr. C. does."
Nonetheless, he couldn't resist one sally.

The jurors, he said, would be removed from the courtroom from time to
time while "lengthy arguments" took place. It would be because "I
anticipate in this case what I call the kitchensink prosecution of
Doctor Taylor, and that is that the state will try to introduce into
evidence anything it can, including the kitchen sink, in order to arouse
your passion, your sympathy, your prejudice and inflame you against
Doctor.

Taylor."

Chalet shouted an objection.

I will sustain the objection," Judge Farren said. "Mr. Venturi, please
confine your remarks to what you contend is the position of your
client."

"That is our position, your honor."

"I understand that is your position. The prosecutor objects to the
position. I sustain the objection."

Venturi thought he got a couple of smiles and some sympathy when Farren
rebuked him. Then he reverted to his basic themes: "Sadness, grief,
loss. Be sure to speak in sorrow. There are no winners here." Dr.
Taylor, he said, was guilty of terrible mistakes. He was guilty of
obstruction of justice, of "giving false information to the police."

But he was not on trial for that. He was being charged with murder.

"I could see during the prosecutor's opening," he said,"that some of you
were sitting there uncomfortably, knowing that you are in the presence
of a man who took the life of another human being. I can understand
that, and I would be, too, if I thought for one second that this man,
Doctor Kenneth Taylor, was a murderer.

But the evidence will not show that." jury. "You see, ladies Venturi
slowly approached the and gentlemen, this is not a murder.

This is a family tragedy." He said, "The marriage was not a trouble-free
marriage, but there was a loving, caring relationship between the two of
them, and one of the problems during the marriage was Teresa's abuse of
cocaine and codeine.

And also alcohol.

"That night, the night of the incident, Teresa was unfortunately using
all three of those substances. During the course of that evening, Teresa
could not and did not sleep.

Doctor Taylor had awakened from his sleep, and th e doctor and Mrs.
Taylor had marital relations that might, in some circumstances, might be
considered unusual.

"When he awoke that morning, and he walked down the stairs, he saw
something that was just shocking and unbelievable to him that the
prosecutor referred to in his opening. And it was shocking and
unbelievable because Teresa Taylor was such a good mother. He could not
believe his eyes. He did yell and scream and he did chase her into the
weight room, the sewing room, the extra bedroom, but he did not take any
barbell away from Teresa. As he saw her, she was in a crazed state. For
whatever reason, she was acting crazy, irrational."

There was another barbell, Venturi said. "She was not a weak woman by
any means. We are not talking about heavy barbells here. We are talking
about small dumbbells, and when he went into that room, he was
confronted with her coming at him with one of those barbells.

She hit him on the shoulder with it and knocked him on the floor.

And on the floor, acting as a doorstop, was the other barbell, and
fearing serious bodily harm, not only to him, but his baby boy, he
instinctively reacted and picked up that other barbell and started
swinging it at Teresa.

"He remembers at least two blows, maybe more," Venturi said, but "at
some point, he blacked out." When he came to and found her dead, he
"panicked."

Yes, Dr. Taylor made up a story and stayed with it for too long.

"He did not want anybody to know what he had seen. He did not want to
tell that perverted tale referred to by the prosecutor.

" The only issue, Venturi said, was whether the state can prove Dr.
Taylor guilty of murder "beyond a reasonable doubt" or "whether he is
not guilty because, at the time of this incident, he was acting in
imminent danger of serious bodily harm to himself and his baby."

The trial was adjourned tiji Monday.

The headlines were good, lack Venturi thought. One had Ken "forced to
fend off wife." Another said, "Dentist claims wife sexually abused
child." Could be the jury was seeing it that way, too.

Over the weekend, when Jean and Zach visited Ken in jail, Jean said,
"How could Jack let that awful man say those terrible things about you?"

"I don't know, Mom. Did you see his pig eyes?

He's an animal. He'll do anything to hurt me.

Please pray for me."

"JL On Monday morning, June 3, Venturi began building a record for
appeal. He wanted Fatten to remove himself as judge because of his
prejudicial pretrial comment, reported in the media, that the "proofs
are very strong for conviction, " Farren declined.

Jean and Zach brought the baby to court. He instantly drew the attention
of photographers and TV crews. Chalet objected. It-was a cheap maneuver
to get sympathy" for the defendant.

Venturi argued that his client's Parents had come all the Way from
Indiana to attend the trial. To do that on the days they had custody,
they had no choice except to take him with them.

"I have no objection," Farren said, warning Zach, though, that a
"courtroom was like a church when the pastor is speaking, or something."
Any disruptive outcries and the baby had to go.

Things grew testier between Venturi and C-baiet when Venturi moved to
let Dr. Sadoff testify without any reference to sodium amytal.

Venturi had already entered a letter from the psychiatrist saying that
the barbiturate "should never be used in order to prove the guilt or
innocence of individuals but, primarily, to help recapture lost memory."

Sadoff wrote that in three previous cases he had "testified on the
results of the sodium amytal as a general conclusion about my evaluation
and examination of the individual, without mentioning specifically the
sodium amytal." In his opinion, as it concerned "Dr. Taylor," there "was
a proper response to the sodium amytal and material was recalled that
had not been remembered without [its] use," Chalet resisted. He could
not effectively cross-examine Sadoff without viewing the videotape.
Venturi had promised to deliver it, but had reneged so far. Moreover,
Chalet said that he might call his own psychiatrist to the stand who
also would have to see it.

Farren gave Venturi two days to make up his mind.

Either Chalet got the tape or no Sadoff.

Chalet's initial witnesses were cops and technicians who testified about
forensic evidence-which included a description of the body when it was
found, the blood onthe dumbbell without weights that was introduced as
the murder weapon, and the bloody fifty-five-foot drag marks that the
Luminal test revealed in the Manalapan house.

Chalet asked a Pennsylvania state trooper named Eugene R. Taylor about
the padding Teresa's body was wrapped in. "There was separate padding
for the head?"

"There was a smaller piece of some padding, yes sir."

(In his trial notes, Ken wrote: Jeer. Was really worried about
protecting her after I killed her. What the hell kind of logic is that?
LUNACY, that's what, you dumb, big, stupid clod! Well, shit!

At least the jury knows I wanted her body protected. After I killed her?
OH, BOY, Jack. WHY DIDN'T WE SEEK TEMPORARY INSANITY???)* *This and
other parenthetical, italicized observations by Ken Taylor on the
following pages were taken directly as written from his trial notes or
his comments on the that transcript.

There was also a multi-colored towel next to the body, Trooper Taylor
said.

(Towel? Holy Christ! A towel? Why did I put a towel inside the padding?
Must have been one of the towels to wipe up the blood on the walls and
floor. What did I do with the rest of the towels? Good question,
asshole! What a fucking mess this is.) "All right," Chalet asked. "You
did not find blood at the scene?"

"No, sir."

"Okay, did you look?"

"Yes, sir."

(SIR, SIR. WHY DON'T YOU KISS HIS ASS WHILE YOU'RE UP THERE, TAYLOR.

TAYLOR? WHAT A NAME FOR THE STATE'S FIRST WITNESS.) Chalet's main
witness that day was Dr. Richard Bindle, the Pottsville pathologist who
had conducted the autopsy. Venturi objected to the introduction of
photographs showing Teresa's hideously battered face and head. Not only
were they unnecessarily in color, but, he said, they had been enhanced
with a "reddish tint" that made them all the more revolting and, indeed,
the jurors were visibly shaken when they saw them.

Chalet said that the doctoring claim was ludicrous. Farren turned
Venturi down. He asked for a mistrial.

Duly noted and denied, Farren said.

(OF COURSE YOU SELF-SERVING SLOB. WHY NOT?

WHY NOT DIG HER UP WHILE WE'RE AT IT?) In the dispassionate voice of a
man who had performed more than fifteen hundred autopsies, Bindle said,
"I first examined the back of the body. The anal area and genital area
were examined first. I observed a marked amount of ointment, white
sticky material, about the buttocks, around the anus and vagina and on
the menstrual pad. This material resembled Vaseline to me."

"Could you describe the quantity of it?"

"It was a copious amount. It was globulous-globs stuck on the hair and
on the pad and on the skin and inside the orifices." Bindle said, "There
was a torn pair of tannish-colored corduroy-like culottes.

They weren't in place at the waist.

They were pulled down to the mid-thigh level.

There was a zipper inthe posterior area that was torn.

There were focal bloodspots to the front."

(I should have changed her clothes before I moved her.

Goddamnit, I couldn't even bear to look at her. Too late to cry now.

Stupid. You tucked up!) "What is focal?"

"Focal means in one or two places."

" Now, during the course of your autopsy, did you find a number of
lacerations to the head area?"

"Yes."

"And could you tell us the number of lacerations that you found?"

"I found nine lacerations."

Chalet led him step by step, photograph by photograph, through Teresa's
fatal wounds.

"This was a six-centimeter laceration-which is about two and a quarter
inches in length," Bindle said.

"This was an open, gaping laceration and the underlying skull was
exposed and I could-one could observe the inside of the cranial cavity
and see the brain. There were loose fragments of the brain on the
surface." Bindle said, "Yes. This is a chromo-colored photograph of the
left eye area and the forehead and demonstrates a close-up view of
lacerations one, two and three." Chalet asked, "Now, did you find any
evidence of past injuries on the body?"

Before he could answer, Venturi approached the bench. "Judge, everybody,
and including defense counsel, would like a break. My client is getting
a little upset."

Then he objected to any reference to past injuries. They weren't
relevant "to any findings in connection with the death of Teresa
Taylor." No one had any doubt what he had in mind-the looming issue of
Acapulco.

Chalet kept a straight face. To complete the record, he had to have a
complete rundown on the victim's external physical condition.

"This jury is not going to decide this case because she had a scar on
her neck," he said.

"All right," Judge Farten said. "I will overrule the objection.

I'll permit the testimony of the doctor as to what his findings were
when he conducted the autopsy of the decedent. If she had a fractured
leg, he would be permitted to testify to that ... I will also caution
the jury at this juncture that we don't know what caused these other
injuries, and they're not to speculate." Boxed in, Venturi said in that
case he'd just as soon skip it.

"I'd rather no further attention be drawn to this by such an
instruction."

Almost all the evidence of prior trauma inflicted on Teresa's face about
which Bindle testified was a result of the Las Brisas assault.

Venturi still had no idea what Farren would do about letting that in.

Chaict, with nothing to lose, was betting that he would admit it Then
Chalet asked, "Now, in going with your general review of the body, did
you find any more of that Vaselinelike substance?"

(VASELINE your ass Chalet! WHAT GIVES with your obscession [sic] with
vaseline already?) "There was a marked amount of Vaseline-like ointment
material present in the vagina and also the inguinal arc and pubic hairs
and the hairs were described, as I said, matted together.

They were all stuck together by this ointment."

"Okay. Anything else significant about your general observations of the
body?"

("The body"!! Lord have mercy. They're going to bury me behind this.)
"There was early-an examination of the external aspect, early signs of
decomposition, skin slippage where the skin like peels off with little
pressure and greenish discoloration at the abdomen, which were signs of
decomposition." (THAT DOES IT. I just bought a 30

YEAR BID.

Slipping skin, green abdomen-turn out the lights, this party's over.

This jury is sick to their stomach. I'm finished.) The autopsy had
revealed a .04 alcohol content in Teresa's corpse. In his opening
remarks, Venturi had singled out alcohol as one of the substances she
abused the night she died.

" Now," Chalet said, "associated with decomposition of the body@f a
body-is alcohol formed?"

:"Yes." Now, could you say whether or not within a reasonable degree of
medical certainty that this point-oh-four percent reading could he
consistent with that decomposition?"

:"Yes, I could say that. I have an opinion."

"What is that?"

"That it's consistent with decomposition rather than clange."

:,Rather than the ingestion of alcohol?"

"It is also consistent with ingestion of alcohol."

Oh, it is? In this case, do you have any opinion as to which it is?"

Yes.

"Okay, And what is your opinion?"

"I found evidence of advanced gas in the blood vessels and throughout
the system, indicating fermentation was taking place, or decomposition,
I could attribute it to de-composition." Venturi objected, A proper
foundation had not been laid.

Opinion wasn't medical certainty.

Judge Farren interjected, "Are you testifying within a reasonable degree
of medical probability that the amount of alcohol found in the body was
due to decomposition as opposed to ingested alcohol?"

"Yes, I am."

Farren told Chalet to proceed.

Once more Chalet returned to the presence of Vaseline, and the ripped
culottes. But it was difficult to prove that profound sexual perversion
played a part in Teresa's death.

There was no evidence of sperm.

Like Venturi, Chalet was convinced that something explosive had occurred
that night.

His theory was that Ken had murdered Teresa in a rage after being
rebuffed by hen He knew that cocaine could trigger intense desire and
then just as easily prevent performance. He believed that all of the All
phone calls to sex hot lines were made by Ken "in some sort of a frenzy"
after Teresa was dead. It made sense out of the senseless.

Connecticut had shown the bizarre sexual way" Ken's mind worked.

"It's my feeling that he killed her and then made the calls," he told
Guy' Mccormick.

Chalet had no way of documenting this, of course, so given the absence
of sperm, he did what he always did when faced with the unknown.

He'd bring it up first, beat Venturi to the punch if the defense tried
to make something out of it, at least demonstrate to the jury that it
was really of no consequence as far as the defendant's guilt was
concerned, perhaps even set jurors to wondering why wasn't there sperm
in such an explicitly sexual context? Besides, the more he thought about
it, Chalet wouldn't put it past Ken to claim that Teresa dialed the
calls as part of some kinky sex play with him which she had initiated.

"Now, first, as regards to spermatozoa, could you tell us what tests you
did, and the results?"

"I prepared smears from the vagina, from the anal area and the oro
cavity, and the results were all negative for spermatozoa."

"All right. Now, if you accept for the moment, Doctor, that the death in
this case occurred on November eleventh of nineteen eighty-four, and the
body was found the fifteenth of November, and you did your autopsy oy on
the sixteenth, if there was sexual activity prior to death, immediately
prior to death, within a reasonable time of the death of this person,
and then you had the intervening time before you did the-before you did
these tests, would you expect to find spermatozoa?"

"Yes.

"Could you tell us why you expect to find it?"

"Spermatozoa are cells that are present in semen. They are male sex
cells that fertilize the egg and when a personif ejaculation occurs, and
semen is deposited in the vagina, say, and the evidence of semen is
spermatozoa, what we find-if that person-in a dead person, spermatozoa
can be found for several days after death because there is no gravity
mechanism or drainage mechanism to rid the body of this spermatozoa and
it's possible to find identifiable spermatozoa many days after death."

"And how much before death would intercourse with ejaculation have had
to occur to find that?"

"About a day ... providing douching or bathing didn't take place or
providing-depending upon the activity of the subject, too."

"You found none?"

"No.

"Would the presence of that Vaseline substance have any effect on your
ability to find the spermatozoa?"

"No," Dr. Bindle said.

"Now, Doctor, as a result of your examination of the body, the autopsy,
as a result of the history of this matter, and based upon your training
and experience, do you have an opinion, within a reasonable degree of
medical probability, as to the cause of the death of Teresa Taylor?"

"My opinion is that Teresa Taylor died of massive cranial cerebral
injuries secondary to a blunt force trauma."

"Could you just briefly review your autopsy findings?"

"Objection," Venturi shouted.

"I'll sustain that objection," Judge Farren said.

-examination, the best Vent In his cross un could do was to wring an
acknowledgment from Bindle that the number of blows Teresa had received
might have been "six or seven" instead of nine. So he tried another
tack.

"And if there was a door frame, or the edge of a door frame exposed, and
the head was forcibly thrown back into the edge of that door frame, that
could possibly cause one or more of the lacerations that you referred
to-is that correct, sir?"

"I would think it would be unlikely to get that extensive a fracture of
the skull underneath the laceration."

"Unlikely, but not impossible, depending upon the force of the head
snapping back?"

"Yes, anything is possible."

During the sodium amytal procedure, in his latest version Jr of the
events of that night, Ken had said he'd enj oral and anal sex with
Teresa at her behest. If he e the stand in his own defense, he was sure
to repe because of the sperm issue, Venturi focused on an enzyme called
acid phosphatase, a component of semen. Hadn't it been found in Teresa?

"Yes, very low levels."

"But there were findings of same?"

"Yes.

And you also indicated that the acid phosphatase activities would have
decreased during decomposition-is that correct?"

"Yes.

"And there was a severe amount of decomposition in terms of this
examination, correct?"

I Yes."

"So that one could assume that if there was examination at an earlier
point in time, there would be a higher level of acid phosphatase
activity?"

"Yes." I Then Venturi zeroed in on Teresa's alcohol content.

"Now, you rendered an opinion that the finding of alcohol was not
inconsistent with alcohol being used-is that correct?"

" It's inconclusive either way. That's what I think I said.

"So that if Doctor Taylor told the police that his wife was using
alcohol that evening, that would not be inconsistent with your
findings?"

"No, it would not be inconsistent."

Venturi remembered how the jury took that in.

It was vital that Teresa be perceived as a willing accomplice to the
events of November I 1, events that spun out of control.

But then, in his redirect questions, Chalet picked up on the alcohol.

"I'm a bit confused. When we talked about a point-ohfour percent alcohol
reading, it was my understanding that your opinion was, within a
reasonable degree of medical certainty, that the reading was a result of
decomposition.

Am I correct or am I wrong?" yes, that was my opinion."

"Okay, defense counsel then asked you a question about whether it would
have been consistent with the consumption of alcohol and your answer was
yes. I don't understand the two."

"I meant that without knowing any other facts, the level of
point-oh-four would be consistent with the intake of maybe one or two
drinks, or the decomposition. When these other facts came out, I said
decomposition."

"So that in this particular case, the autopsy of Teresa Taylor, you're
telling us that point-oh-four percent is the result of decomposition?"

"Yes."

"Now, the low level of acid pbosphatase in the body. If there was a high
level, it would break down during decomposition?" seline, whatever "Yes
... we have this contaminating Va that substance is, that could
inactivate some of the enzymes. There is a lot of factors."

en in the vagina, "Let me now get-if there were no seen to break down
the anus, then would it necessarily have from those higher levels?"

"This level we got could be a normal level.

it's not diag-nastic of anything." u're telling me is from the acid "All
right. So what Yo , you can't tell us phosphatase that you got in the
body anything about whether or not this person had sex shortly before
her death?"

"No, I can't." iscount the acid "Okay. So we've got to completely d
phosphatase?"

"Yes - "

"As far as the spermatozoa, you found none9"

" Yes Venturi thought held muddied the waters. He was certain of it when
Chalet suddenly and angrily approached the bench, complaining that
during Bindle's testimony, Venturi's client had been "constantly shaking
his head in agreement or disagreement. I ask the Court to request
counsel to have him not react to witnesses." Venturi said, "I think it's
humanly impossible. He's on trial here for his life."

"Let me intermpt," Judge Farren said. "He's not on trial for his life."

"Well, he's here to be in jail for the rest of his life ... He can't sit
there-it's incredible for him to sit there as some kind of robot."

"To tell you the truth," Farren said to Chaict, "I don't find him doing
that to impress the jury. I think it's a gut reaction to the testimony.
I'm going to ask Mr. Venturi to indicate to him that he's not to try to
impress the jury with his nodding or the shaking of his head and let it
go at that."

"Sure, no problem," Venturi said.

The local headline was: "Head injuries killed victim."

So what else was new? Venturi thought. It could have been a lot worse.

On the trial's second day, Chalet put Linda Jankowski, a state police
forensic chemist, on the stand to testify about the blood found in the
house and car trunk. There also was "human blood" on the dumbbell
without weights, none on the one with them. And again, before Jack
Venturi could do it, Chalet asked about the condition of the blood
sample taken from Teresa's body.

"It was putrid,"

"What would be the effect of that in doing the vanous tests?"

"That could have a great effect on many of the enzymes. It makes it very
much more likely to get no reaction or any conclusive results on some of
the enzymes."

(It screws up the results Linda. We concede the blood on the earring, on
the padding, etc. are Teresa's. BUT that putrid blood sample must have
given poor results for drug analysis.) In his turn, Venturi went right
to the alleged murder weapon.

"Now, the blood on the dumbbell was human blood but no further testing
was done-is that correct?"

I Yes."

"So there was no comparison of that blood with Cither Teresa Taylor's
blood or Doctor Taylor's blood?"

"Correct."

But in redirect, Chalet raised the possibility that, like the rest of
the house, the dumbbell had been wiped clean and that only a "trace" of
blood was left on it.

"And the only thing you could tell about that from the sample is that it
was-"

"Human blood.

"And that there was just no more to use?"

"Correct."

Angela Rozek testified about the visit she and her husband made to the
Manalapan house on the night of November 10.

"Now," Chalet asked, "were you with Teresa and the defendant at all
times during that night?"

"Well, Teresa and I were in the dining room and Ken and my husband were
sitting in the living room, but it's one big room. We were all in plain
view of each other."

"While you were there that night, were there any arguments?"

No"

"Did you have anything to drink?"

"No, just coffee."

"Did you observe whether or not Teresa Taylor had anything to drink?"

"She just had coffee."

"What about your husband? Did he drink anything?"

"He had a mixed drink."

"And did you note whether or not the defendant had anything to drink?"

"Yes, he did."

"Did you note the use of any controlled, dangerous substances?"

"No.

"You did not see Teresa Taylor use any drugs?"

"I did not."

"Okay. Could you tell us how Teresa Taylor was acting during that period
of time from seven-thirty to ten-thirt "Just her normal self."

Y?

"And what's normal?"

"Just like anybody else would. Just sitting around having coffee,
talking. Nothing unusual."

"Was the baby up while you were there?"

"Yes.

"Have you seen her care for that baby?"

"Yes, I have."

"And could You tell me how she cared for that baby?

"Very well."

(God rest her soul. Teresa I'm so sorry, this has all been so
unnecessary.) The jurors could see for themselves how physically
imposing Ken was. Chalet wanted them to hear how Teresa compared to him
in size, how absurd it was that he could have feared for his life that
night.

"Do you know how tall Teresa was?"

"She was about five three."

"And weight?"

"It's hard to say. Teresa was very deceiving in her appearance.

I would say she weighed between one-thirty-five and one-forty  ...
Teresa had a weight problem. She used to dress herself to hide it, you
know, to deceive everybody as to how she had big hips."

(Precisely why she wouldn't swim in our pool.

NOT once, NOT ONE TIME did Teresa use the pool. What a shame.

What a goddamn shame.) "Okay. What about, you know, up top, the arms-"

"She was small. She had a small bustline and chest, you know."

"And could you tell us anything from Your observations of her about her
physical strength?"

"Teresa was not-I don't think she was a strong person.

She might have been as strong as me. That's not very strong."

After a subdued, hesitant start, Angela was proving to be a surprisingly
potent witness.

So far, there was little Venturi could do about it. Then Chalet asked if
there had been any discussion about what Teresa had eaten for supper
that night. Venturi was immediately up, objecting.

It struck at the heart of Teresa's allegedly cocaine-crazed condition.

Cocaine was an anorectic drug.

Anyone high or! cocaine would not want food.

"Basis of your objection?" Judge Farren said.

"Calling for a hearsay statement."

The jury was excused.

Chalet said that he not only intended to question Angela about Teresa's
meal, but also about the conversation Teresa had with Angela when she
said that Ken did cocaine and she occasionally joined him.

Again, Venturi objected. Angela could say all she wanted to about Teresa
doing cocaine, but nothing about Ken's use of the drug.

Chalet argued that the autopsy already had revealed remnants of food in
Teresa's stomach.

"My other argument," he said, "is that in defense counsel's opening to
this jury, he said that Teresa Taylor was crazed with drugs, alcohol,
codeine, cocaine ... and how all of a sudden this problem manifests
itself on one particular night. I think that the defendant's drug use is
part of this case, just as Teresa Taylor's use of it is, and that's why
I think it's admissible."

Farren agreed with Chalet. The fact that Teresa had eaten something was
already in evidence. As for the use or nonuse of drugs, it was "part of
the mosaic of this particular offense, or alleged offense, in the light
of the opening statements of counsel." When Angela resumed the stand,
Chalet said, "I believe I asked you a question whether or not Teresa
Taylor told you what she had for dinner that night. Did she?"

"Yes.

"And what statement did she make to you?"

"That she had pork."

"Did she tell you what time they had dinner?"

An "No.

"Okay. You indicated to us that You observed no drug use in the house
that night. Is that correct?"

"That's correct."

 ... Now, did you ever have a conversation with Teresa Taylor concerning
cocaine?"

"Yes.

"All right. What did she tell you about the use of cocaine?"

"That they did use cocaine,"

"They, meaning?"

"Her, Ken."

"And did she indicate to you how often she used cocaine?"

"On Occasion, she said."

"On occasion?"

"Yes.

"But again, You saw no drug use that night?"

"That's right."

"Did you see any indication that anybody was under the influence of a
drug that night?"

"Not at all."

"During the course of your conversations with Teresa that night, did the
topic of sex come up?"

"Yes, it did."

Venturi objected.

Out of the jury's presence, Chalet said he intended to introduce Ken's
"whopping" remark.

Venturi argued that it would be prejudicial.

Farren ruled, "It's not hearsay. It was made the evening that allegedly
she died at the hands of the defendant. The position of the defendant is
that although he allegedly committed the act, he did it to protect
himself in self-defense.

I think it is relevant. I don't think it carries the degree Of prejudice
that it should be excluded."

Chalet continued. "I'm not interested in the details, but in a general
way what were you discussing? What was the sexual conversation?"

"We were discussing the difficulty of having sex while you were
pregnant."

"Did the defendant say anything or chime in?"

"Yes, he did ... He turned around and he said that Teresa wouldn't
refuse him after the whopping that he gave her the other night."

"What did she say to that?"

"Nothing. She just looked at him.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing."

Then Chalet showed Angela Rozek a photograph of the room where Teresa
sewed, where Ken's weight stand also was.

She testified that it was basically the same as it was when she went in
to view the maternity dresses the night Teresa died.

"As you see," Chalet said, "there is-in the photo there is a weight
there and a little barbell there. Do you recall the exact position of
those weights on Saturday night?"

"I remember this weight was right around there. I almost tripped on it
when I looked at the outfit that was hanging on the weight bench."

"You say this weight, the dumbbell that has-"

"Right."

"-that has some weights on it?"

"Right, right."

This was the dumbbell Teresa would have had to use, and Chalet said,
"You don't know if it was in that exact position?"

"I don't know if it was exactly there, but it was on the floor."

"It was in that area?"

"In that area, because I tripped over it."

"Do you recall whether or not that particular room had a doorstop or a
weight used as a doorstop?"

"No, I don't remember."

"You don't recall it?"

"I don't." Once more, before he concluded his questioning, Chalet 27Z
made sure to invoke an image of Teresa that was the antithesis to that
of someone supposedly high on cocaine.

"During the course of that evening, did Teresa indicate to you how she
was feeling that night?"

"She was tired."

"She said she was tired?"

"Yes.

"And did she tell you why she was tired?"

"She was up late the night before with company." not shake ,ng a's'
Venturi could el ingenuous manner despite the acerbic, accusatory tone
he adopted. She was Teresa's cousin, wasn't she? "Yes.

She had testified that she and her husband and Teresa and Ken were "in
plain view" of each other that evening. Were those her words or words
that the police might have suggested?

"You can see each other," she said. "The back of the love seat is
basically part of the dining room. It sectioned it off."

"I understand that you could see each other, but what I'm asking, the
phrase plain view,' was that your phrase?"

"It's my phrase."

Hadn't Teresa bathed the baby that night? She had no trouble lifting him
in and out of the tub, was that right?

"that's right." Teresa would also have to pick up the sewing machine and
move it around when she sewed, wouldn't she?

"I don't know. I don't sew."

That "whopping" remark that Ken allegedly made, was it serious or
light-hearted?

"I thought it was a joke." The way Angela said it though, it sounded as
if she didn't think it was so funn@ anymore. Venturi tried again.

"You took it as a joke. Is that right?"

"Uh-huh, right," she said, almost mockingly.

"And Mrs. Taylor didn't say anything to you at all that evening about
being beaten by her husband. Is that right?"

273r PEER MAAS "That's right."

Did Teresa say why she was tired that night?

"She said she was up late the night before with her brother and his
girlfriend."

"Did she say that she had done cocaine with them that night?"

"No, she did not."

"Did she say she was hung over?"

"She just said she was tired."

"Did she say she was up until about four A.M.?"

"Yes."

"And you were in the sewing room and you observed some weights on the
floor-is that correct?"

"That's correct."

"Do you remember if it was like it was in the picture, one with weights
on and one with weights off, or if it was both with weights off, or if
you only observed one set of weights?"

"I only saw the set of the weights that's on the weight bench and the
one that's right at the foot of the weight bench on the floor."

"With the weights on?"

"With-with the two little weights on, right."

"Did you pick them up and move them?"

."No.

"When you were there, you said you tripped over it."

"I tripped over it, but I didn't move it. I was pregnant.

I didn't lift anything."

"Did Teresa pick it up and move it out of your way?"

I No.

Then Venturi moved toward the jury box, turned back toward Angela and
said, "Have you ever used cocaine?"

"No.

"I have nothing further," he said, hands raised in exasperation, as if
this were the last straw in an endless series of falsehoods.

(Rieders is going to be dangerous, potentially damaging.

Another scientist, but this scienientist is a toxicologist.) The issue
would be central to self-defense-Teresa'spur-ported drug-crazed state.

Dr. Frederick Rieders was in his late fifties, bow-tied hair failing
over his forehead, shoes scuffed. He had the slightly bemused air of a
man you could expect to find at home in a lab filled with test tubes,
slides and microscopes, and had been certified as a chemical
toxicologist for fifteen years, the last five as a forensic toxicologist
as well.

He'd been chief toxicologist for the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's
office before becoming the laboratory directorfor National Medical
Services, a private group that serviced coroners and medical examiners
across the country, along with assisting physicians in diagnosing
illnesses of mysterious origin.

"Toxicology," he explained, "is the study of the harm that foreign
chemicals can do to animals or man or other systems. That is what the
laboratory works at in determining what analyses to do, performing those
analyses and interpreting their results."

At the outset, Chalet brought up the fact that there was practically no
whole blood in Teresa to be tested, Yes, Rieders said, the testing
requested for cocaine and- codeine had been conducted using bloody fluid
taken from her chest cavity and from "vitreous fluid"-fluid from the
eye. But it didn't matter. While there was a certain lag time in
transference from the bloodstream to other parts of thebody, "vitreous
fluid," lacking good blood samples, was "much less subject to
putrefaction change than other fluids in the body@except for urine, of
which none was found in this case.

Had the presence of codeine been detected?

It had.

"Now, in reference to your finding of codeine, can you tell us what type
of drug codeine is?"

" Codeine is used to relieve pain. It also has the ability to depress
the central nervous system and, as a matter of' fact, can put someone to
sleep and thus is classified as a narcotic analgesic, not narcotic in
the legal sense, but narcotic as a sleep-producing pain reliever."

"Could you tell us about the level of the drug that was found?"

"Well, what I can tell you is that this is a concentration which you
would expect to find in the circulating body fluids ... in an individual
that has taken a dose-a normal analgesic dose between half a grain and
one grain. So it is well within the therapeutic pain-relieving range for
codeine which also has some sedating properties."

"All right. When you say that, does it mean that if I had a particular
problem, this would be in line with the prescribed amount a doctor would
give for the pain?"

"Yes." I " Now, Doctor, in your opinion, again with probable certainty,
would this level of codeine by itself cause one to behave in a
drug-crazed manner?"

"No. Codeine is not a stimulant. It is a depressant drug, and
pharmacologically and physiologically I do not expect it to produce any
type of stimulation. Rather, sedation and drowsiness."

Chalet returned to the level of alcohol evident in Teresa's body.

What was his opinion of the .04 reading?

"My reasonable certain opinion is that this reading of alcohol in the
chest fluid, while no alcohol was found in the vitreous humor, is due to
a postmortem putrefaction change. A low concentration of alcohol, such
as this, is not uncommonly formed in the course of putrefaction from the
fermentation of sugar-type molecules in the body."

Chalet paused. He shuffled papers. He looked at the jury and then back
to Rieders.

"Now, did you also check for the presence of cocaine?"

"Yes."

"And did you find any cocaine?"

"No."

"What did you find when you checked for cocaine?"

"I did not find any cocaine. However, the request was specifically for
cocaine, and knowing that cocaine is changed by the body into another
substance quite commonly and normally, we also performed a, separate and
independent analysis for that substance, which is called
benzoylecgonine, a metabolite or breakdown produi cocaine, and we did
find that breakdown product, metabolite in the specimen-point four parts
per millio "Now, tell us about, uh, benzoylecgonine. I never could
pronounce it.

"Benzoylecgonine itself has no pharmacologic activity. It's not a
stimulant, not a depressant. In this particular case, the analysis shows
no presence of cocaine around the time this individual died, but only
that at the time the autopsy was done and specimens were taken, the
inactive microtransformation, or breakdown products of cocaine, was
present-showing that that individual at some time Prior, which could be
many hours prior, to her death, had used cocaine.

Therefore, benzoylecgonine was present. So that is the direct evidence
of the analysis and that is as far as it goesi"

"All right.

This is-what you're-aren't you saying at the time that she was killed,
the cocaine had already broken down into this by-product?"

Venturi objected, trying to undo the rapt attention that Rieders's
testimony was getting from the jurors about the metabolic workings of
the famous drug. The question was leading the witness.

"I'll permit it," Farren said, who seemed as intrigued as everyone else.
"Go ahead.

Overruled."

"No," Rieders answered. "I cannot say that.

The only thing I can say is that I cannot know whether at the time she
was killed there was any active cocaine present in her. At the time the
analysis was performed, the only thing present was the breakdown
product. Whether this breakdown occurred prior to death or after death,
I cannot tell per se. I have only evidence for presence of
benzoylecgonine, which is an inactive substance."

"In other words, you don't get high from that inactive substance?"

"You don't get high on anything from it. It has no effect."

"The effect of taking cocaine lasts how long?"

"In general, the ordinary one hundred milligram recre national-use dose
has a significant stimulatory effect for a period of approximately one
hour.

In some cases, somewhat longer."

"Okay," Chalet said. "Based upon benzoylecgonine that you found, can you
say anything about the amount of cocaine ingested?"

"Well, yes, I can, and that is, at the most, if cocaine had been used
shortly before this person was killed, and the cocaine had reached a
certain level in the blood by the time the person was killed, and the
cocaine subsequently broke down after death and all turned into
benzoylecgonine-which is an unlikely situation, as I will explain to you
shortly-then this might have been at and around the time of death what
you might call a recreational dose, for lack of a better term, that an
individual would use in order to feel good, to be stimulated by it and
to feel on top of the world ... a pleasant excitement, but not the
aggressive hallucinatory derangements that occur when heavy cocaine is
used."

Rieders went on to explain that cocaine started to break down
immediately upon being inhaled, swallowed, or injected. But even if it
had all been cocaine in Teresa's body at the moment she died, there
still wasn't enough to produce anything approaching "drug-crazed
behavior." Indeed, he said, the residue of cocaine was less than half
the usual recreational amount if she had ingested it just before she was
killed.

Like an illusionist, Venturi would attempt diversions in an effort to
undermine Rieders's testimony.

Was the toxicologist aware that "this young woman" had started her
menstrual cycle?

"I don't believe I was. I certainly didn't take it into consideration.

" So Rieders didn't know what effect this might have had on her
personality?

"No, I do not."

Well, had he ever heard of PMS-premenstrual syndrome?

"Yes, I've heard of it."

Wasn't it a condition "well-documented medically?"

"I suppose so," Rieders said with a dismissive air. "It's not a
toxicological problem, you know."

Venturi was pleased by that. Maybe the female jurors would not be so
amused by Rieders's condescension.

And how about postpartum depression? Was Rieders aware that Teresa
sometimes suffered from that?

"No. Again, you know, it had no bearing on my considerations."

But wasn't it a fact that when people were depressed "a lot of times
cocaine is the drug of choice, so to speak?"

Chalet objected, and Farren told Venturi, "He's a toxicologist. I don't
think that's within his field of expertise." Okay, Venturi said, but
cocaine was a stimulant, wasn't it?

"That's correct.

"And in your expertise, and in your study and in the literature that
you've read, you have studied why people use cocaine, what has led them
to use it, is that not correct, sir?"

"I've read some of that literature, but to a limited degree because what
makes people do things is a psychiatric question rather than
toxicological."

Venturi persisted. Wasn't there a correlation between "depression and
the use of cocaine?,"

"Objection, Judge," Chalet said.

"I'll overrule the objection,'?

"It's a recreational drug," Rieders said with obvious annoyance, "and
certain people will use it perhaps, particularly if they are depressed."

Venturi let that sink in before moving on to the vitreous fluid which
was used for most of the sampling. It was a poor sample, correct?

"I fully agree [but) it's still a sample," and, he reiterated, it was
"much less subject to putrefaction change than other fluids in the body,
except for urine."

Was Rieders aware that there wasn't enough blood in Teresa "to even get
a complete blood typing of all the blood factors?"

"I didn't see that. It didn't concern me, really."

Venturi pursued another angle. Cocaine was often mixed with other
ingredients to increase profits. Had the cocaine residue in Teresa's
body been screened for the presence of methamphetamine-speed-or another
hallucinatory drug, PCP, commonly called angel dust?

No, it hadn't, Rieders said. But methamphetamine was no more potent than
cocaine. As for PCP, he declared, "I have not encountered it in any of
the mixtures that we have analyzed for police departments, which are by
the thousands, a mixture of cocaine with PCP. It's theoretically
possible. In my experience, no."

Venturi kept trying. But it was theoretically within the realm of
possibility, and it hadn't been screened. Was that so?

"That's correct," Rieders conceded.

Then Venturi conjured up a new mix of aberrant drug use. Did codeine
depress the central nervous system and act as a sedative?

"Among other things, yes."

"Now, for example, heroin is also a strong depressant, isn't that a
fact?"

"Moderately strong. No stronger a depressant-it's no more potent than
codeine."

"No more potent?"

"Not as a depressant."

"Than codeine?"

I No.

"You've heard of heroin and cocaine being used together?"

"Uh-huh."

"It's been highly publicized about John Belushi. They call it a
speedball and-" Ch-aiet was on his feet, objecting.

Even Judge Farren was taken aback. "Mr. Venturi, we're not going to get
into John Betushi's death, are we?"

"No, sir."

"All right."

"Just by way of analogy," Venturi said.

When Rieders told Farren that he was aware of what Venturi was talking
about, the judge allowed the cross examination to continue.

"And the point of these two items together is to complement them and get
a greater high or a greater feeling?"

"Judge," a frustrated Chalet said, "I'm going to object as to
relevance."

"Sustained. Is there evidence," Farren said, "that this in fact was used
by the decedent?"

"Not as to heroin, Judge. We're getting the heroin in as an example, an
analogy to the codeine, about which he testified heroin is not as
strong."

"We're getting too speculative," Farren said.

"Unless you're going to represent to me that this was in fact ingested
by the decedent prior to death."

"No, no, no. Nothing like that."

"We're getting too esoteric," Farren said wearily. "He's a toxicologist
and pharmacologist. And unless you're going to tie it in, I'm going to
sustain the objection."

"Let's tie it in then," Venturi said.

"When you say tie it in, tie it into this decedent. We're not going to
have this jury speculate that this decedent ingested something esoteric
like a speedball or whatever it might be. Unless there's going to be
some proof from you that she did-" That was, Venturi hoped, exactly what
they were speculating about, along with premenstrual syndrome and
postpartum depression and the fact that there was evidence of cocaine
and codeine in Teresa's system. "Well," he said, you've heard of people
using codeine-"

"Mr. Venturi," Farren said, "you don't seem to understand.

"I'm moving to something else, Judge. I'm out of there."

"Okay, fine."

Addressing Rieders, Venturi continued, "You've heard of people in your
experience, in the literature, doing codeine because of the numbness it
can produce and cocaine because of the stimulating effect it gives them
as ape7"ER MAAS complement to each other and to get both aspects of a
high, is that correct?"

" The combination made them feel good, whatever that may mean.

That's very subjective, and that's precisely what they're referring to.

They felt good, trouble-free and at peace with the world."

"But one of the things that can occur when these two things are used
together, because they counteract each other, is they could tend to
cause confusion-is that correct?"

"They can cause confusion independently of each other and in their
interaction, that confusion may well remain confusing ... a
misrepresentation of what is going on around the person."

Then Venturi overreached. Couldn't this also have led to a "drug-crazed
state"-the one that "the prosecutor" was so bent on ridiculing?

"What I consider, and what generally one considers, a drug-crazed state
means that it's an aggressive state. And at these levels, with these
drugs from the drugs themselves, not a likely occurrence in my opinion
It depends very much on the individual. Cocaine would tend to excite.
Codeine would tend to reduce excitement. So you can't say what a little
bit of each would do."

Venturi decided that he had gotten as much mileage out of this as he
could. "I have nothing further," he said.

At the Monmouth County Jail, Jean and Zach Taylor arrived with a change
of clothing for Ken's next day in court, a white shirt, blue tie and a
navy blue suit with a light blue pinstripe-in line with the sober dress
that Ventuii had advised him to wear. Venturi had also suggested rimless
glasses to enhance further the image of a mildmannered dentist.

But Ken balked at this. He'd feel too uncomfortable with them.

Now he was beside himself. On the intercom, behind the glass that
separated him from his parents, he raged about the putrid blood.

Had they listened to that testimony? How could any tests have been made
with it? And did they hear that "weasel-eyed" Farren say that he wasn't
facing life in prison? What did Farren think thirty years without parole
was? Why hadn't Venturi found a toxicologist?

Why hadn't they pleaded temporary insanity?

Zach, his voice cracking, said, "We've just got to hang in there, son.

Jean's mind seemed to be elsewhere. This was the period of the week when
the baby was with Celeste and Jeff. It ying. simply wasn't right for
them to have him, she kept so Don't worry, Ken told his mother, he'd fix
their wagon .

Ken already had lashed out at Venturi as well for not pushing more on
the putrid blood sample. Venturi reminded him that the testing hadn't
been based on it, that it was futile to get into a medical dispute with
a medical expert. But, as usual, his client hadn't listened to what he
did not want to hear.

Everything considered, the day threatened a knockout punch, but that
hadn't happened.

Venturi figured that his commonsense approach-suggesting that too much
time had elapsed, an unknown amount of cocaine must have dissipated
before they did the toxicology-had had an impact. And certainly it had
come across that Teresa was less than angelic. She did cocaine, no
question about that. He wouldn't allow anyone to forget it in his
summation.

Venturi took particular heart that as he was heading for his car,
several jurors were in the courthouse parking lot, and they hadn't tried
to avert their eyes or otherwise avoid him. "Good night, Counselor,"
they'd all said quite pleasantly.

On the third day of testimony, Wednesday, June 5, Chalet guided
Lieutenant Bill Lucia through the litany of lies that Ken told in the
Manalapan police station to explain Tere-so's disappearance.

" Now, would you tell us what happened at threeoh-two P.M. when you
walked back into the room?"

(I remember that moment very clearly. I was finally surrendering.

I was at the end of the rope, no hope in sight.) "I looked at Doctor
Taylor," Lucia said. "He seemed somewhat in deep thought at this time
and somewhat upset, and he looked up at me and he said, Sit down, I want
to tell you something." I said, Okay,' and I sat down ... He said to me,
What would you do if you came downstairs one morning and found your wife
giving your five-monthold baby head?" With this, he broke down and
started crying.

"

"And following that, did you try and question him more?"

"Well, yes ... We gave him a little bit of time, and he went an to say
at that point she swung a dumbbell at him. He got it away from her and
gave it to her."

"

"And the words gave it to her,' " Chalet asked, raising his voice, "are
those your words or his?"

"No. Gave it to her' are his words."

(a BOLD-faced, detestable, state-prosecution-serving LIE.) "Continue."

"Okay ... I then asked Doctor Taylor some more specific questions as to
what had actually taken place. He indicated in response that he was
tired of her drug problem. That it happened on a Sunday morning, around
eight A.M. He was upstairs sleeping previously ... He saw her'doing that
to the baby." He screamed. She ran into the laundry room and grabbed a
dumbbell.

She swung it at him. He ducked and got it away from her."

"Did he say where he was when that happened?"

"At that point, he just indicated that he was in the doorway of what he
referred to as the laundry room. As I stated, he said he ducked and he
grabbed it from her and he hit her with it.

I then proceeded to try to establish how many times he had struck her.

His final response was that he had hit her several times with this
dumbbell bar."

"Several times?"

"Yes.

Venturi went tight at Lucia.

Wasn't it a fact that the defendant was very emotional, his lips
"quivering"?

"Yes, sir."

"So it took some minutes for him to compose himself before he could talk
again-after his initial statement to you?"

"I would say it was more intermittent."

"But when he was saying it, he was still in this emotional state of
crying and physically trembling ag and quivering, as you described?"

"Yes, sir."

"For instance, you stated that what he said to you was ung a dumbbell at
him, and he that she ran in the room, SW eris that corrects" got it away
and gave it to h "Yes."

Is it not possible," Venturi then asked, measuring his words carefully,
as if the truth was at last being revealed'. "that he said that she ran
in the room, swung at him, and it to her?" then he got away and gave
basically that's Lucia hesitated. "No, that,s a-I recall he said to me.
what he-those were his exact words, what I was paying very specific
attention atlhat time. Obviously he was going to tell me something I had
been waiting a long time to hear."

"Was a tape recording made Of Venturi stared at Lucia, this statement?"

"No, Sir." n re a stenographer in the room at the time whe ments pt of
the statement?" the room')" Om Lucia toward the jury, shakventuri walked
away fling his head in theatrical disbelief.

"No more questions, he said.

ice lie eit Chalet put Manalapan Poi Illenant Peter Vanderw te Lucia's
testimony. At the time on the stand to corrobora quoted Ken as sayingt
11I of the confession, Variderweil aking my Prescrip-just couldn't take
it anymore. She was t it tions and stealing MY money. I just -ouldil,
take anymore @ " Van,Jerweit also said he heard Ken admit that Teresa
was , that after seizing in effect defenseless when he struck her the
dumbbell bar from Teresa, ,I gave it to her."

-d his attack.

Then Venturi renewe aylor arrived that morning, he was ,kt the time
Doctor Tide.

Corrp-ct?"

already a prime suspect in this ho@ic "He was a suspect, Yes.

"Was the he was making these state @No, Sir."

"So there is no transc6

"No, Sir."

Was there a typist in "No, Sir."

"Was there any other suspect?"

"No, not at that point."

"And there were two law enforcement officers there to question him at
the same time that others went to his house?"

"Yes,' "There was a lot of activity by a lot of people that
morning-isn't that correct?"

"Yes. , "Yet no one got a tape recorder or got a court reporter there to
talk-when he came in to talk that morning, even though they knew he was
coming in."

"That's correct," "By that afternoon, by one-fifteen, there was
additional information [Teresa's earring on the garage floor] that had
been developed, right?"

I Yes." I "And the whole nature of Doctor Taylor's interrogation had
changed?"

"I don't know what took place prior to me getting there, but we
continued along the same lines as the interview in the morning."

"And nobody got a tape recorder to tape the statement, or a typewriter
to type it, or court reporter to record it?"

"That's correct."

"And by this point that afternoon, Doctor Taylor was no longer a
suspect-he was the key suspect, correct?"

"That's correct."

Paul Chalet-the smoldering animosity between him and Venturi clearly
felt in the courtroo@strode toward Vanderwe@.

"Lieutenant, could you tell me the practice in taking statements prior
to requesting that a written statement be put down or a statement
recorded? Could you tell me what your practice is in interviewing a
suspect in Manalapan Township?"

"Objection," Venturi said. "Could I be heard at the sidebar9"

"Overruled," Judge Farren said. "Go ahead, Mr. Chalet."

Chalet continued, "Could you answer that question, please?" Vanderweil
said, "With any suspect in any investigation, you conduct a verbal
interview.

You reach a point, hopefully, sometimes you don't, but you reach a point
where the suspect admits to whatever you're investigating.

YOU still gather information after that. You continue to gather it  ...
you let the suspect tell his story until you reach a point where you
feel you have enough information, that you have all the facts available.

Then you go back-have either a stenographer or recording device, and go
over the statement again."

,"So you know where you're going?"

" Exactly - "

"Now, other than your practice, would there have been anything that
prevented you from tape re cording this statement?"

"No."

Chalet called Cindy Diaz- instantly, with the jury absent, there was
another angry exchange between Chalet and Venturi. Chalet said he was
going to show the videotape that Cindy's husband had made of Teresa and
the baby on Saturday morning, Navem-her 10.

Venturi furiously objected. It was a cheap tactic. And it had no
relevance.

Not so, Chalet said. From the very beginning, the defense had made an
issue out of the decedent's care and concern as a mother. The jurors had
every right to view her relationship with the infant. They also had a
right to observe her physical stature.

Farren ruled for Chalet.

Venturi moved for a mistrial.

"You may proceed, Mr. Chalet," Farren said.

Chalet asked Diaz about Teresa's "care of the baby, her actions with the
baby?"

"The baby meant everything to her. Everything was the, AL baby.

That's all she spoke about was-she'd call me and said, Oh, the baby's
doing this now, he's moving head. She was telling me all the things she
bought for the baby's room even before the baby was born.

Then after that, she's telling me about a little scale she bought and
every day she'd weigh him to see how many pounds he gained, but she
was-that baby was everything!"

The videotape was played. It ran about ten minutes. Seated at the
Prosecutor's table, Guy Mccormick didn't look at it. He'd seen it
enough. He watched thepejuarreodrs, instead. From the moment Teresa's
smiling face ap n it was they kept their eyes glued to the screen.

And whe over, he saw how solemn their faces had become. A couple of the
jurors were even daubing at their eyes with t' issues. It was as if
Teresa had been resurrected. Right then and there, Mccormick thought
that Ken Taylor had had it. He'd bet the farm on it.

had Chalet also believed that any advantage Venturi aw gained from Ken's
confession not being recorded had n been wiped out. Chalet wasn't happy
that no transcript was available, but Lucia had told him that the time
for it. It was difficult enough re just hadn't been to break Taylor, am
when it happened, it was sudden. They were about to bring in a tape
recorder, he said, when Taylor abruptly cut off the interrogation and
demanded a lawyer. Chalet had decided not to pursue any of this. It
would only complicate matters..Better to be forthright. Standard
Procedures had been followed. Besides, Venturi could only suggest some
impropriety. For Lucia'svanderweil'@testimony to be directly contested,
Ken would have to take the stand in his own defense. And if he did,
Chalet had plenty to ask him.

The tension continued. During Jeff White's direct testimony, he
described the scene in the Newark Airport parking lot after he, Celeste,
and Ken had vainly awaited Irene Deblasio's return from Michigan.

"As we left," Jeff said, and were going to the cari don't know, he made
a face, like a smirk-this is my interpretation-Re he had just gotten
away with something."

Venturi jumped up, objectin8.

"I'll sustain," Farren said, and then to the jury, "I want you to
disregard it. When I say disregard it, I don't want you to forget it.

I want you to disregard it. I want you to remember that if someone
brings it up while you're deliberating, the judge told us to disregard
this alleged smirking, like he just got away with something."

Don't forget, remember not to use it. All right, go ahead, Mr. Chalet."

"Okay, just describe his facial expression."

Jeff replied, "I would say it was like smirking." (JESUS! He said it
again. I'll bet my last dollar Chalet orchestrated the whole thing.)
Then, in cross-examination, Venturi asked if it was not a fact that Jeff
and Celeste were in a custody battle over the baby "against Doctor
Taylor and his parents ... and in contesting that custody, did you not
say to a probation officer that Doctor Taylor's parents shouldn't have
custody because they've already raised one murderer?"

"No, sir. I never said that."- Well, Venturi shot back, displaying a
piece of paper, "Does this refresh your recollection?"

"What is it?" Judge Farren said.

"It's a Monmouth County Probation Department report." Jeff said that he
didn't need to refresh anything, that he had never made the statement,
period.

"All right, Mr. Venturi," Farren said. "He doesn't need any refreshed
recollection."

Livid, Chalet went to the bench. He had not been given the probation
report that Venturi had just been flourishing.

"You don't have to yell, Mr. Chalet," Fallen said. "I'm right next to
you. Mr. Venturi, why wasn't a copy of thatsupplied to Mr. Chalet?"

"Judge if that was not photocopied and sent out to him, then I
apologize."

"Apologies don't carry the hall at this juncture. We're in the middle of
a trial and he doesn't have this information. Mr. Chalet extended
himself with regard to discovery with you and I would certainly hope
that you're going to reciprocate."

Well, Venturi countered, what about the rap sheets on AL the prosecution
witnesses that he had requested to see if any of them had criminal
records?

Farren sighed. "Mr. Chalet at the commencement of trial indicated that
he didn't have any in his possession with regard to certain witnesses.
They were ordered and he'll supply them to you. As you know, discovery
is a two-way street, Mr. Venturi, and after that last witness with the
statement that was not supplied to Mr. Chalet, I'm not happy with that
at all. As I indicated before, I just don't want to see that happen
again" Then, after the jury was dismissed for the day, Fallen inquired
about Dr. Sadoff. Was Venturi going to hand over the sodium amytal tape
to Chalet and call the psychiatrist as a witness?

"You were to decide by four o'clock today I would think perhaps you have
made your decision. I know it's five minutes to four.

You don't need the extra five as to whether you're going to use him or
not." (Pompous, fucking asshole!) Still smarting, Venturi said, "You
would perhaps be correct. We have made a decision."

"And that is?"

"Not to."

"Not to? All right. Fine. Anything else, Mr. Chalet?" Nothing really,
Chalet said. He wasn't surprised by Venturi's decision about the tape.
From the moment Venturi started getting cute about its submission, he
sensed there must be quite a bit in it that Venturi didn't want known.

His first witness in the morning, Chalet said, would be Marilyn Hope@
Farren saved his big news for last. Time permitting, he would begin
evidentiary hearings the next day on the admissibility of Acapulco@ .:
In a brief meeting with Venturi, Ken did not argue about Sadoff again.

They'd hashed it over and over. As though reading his mind, Venturi had
said that if Ken were ever to raise charges of incompetent counsel,
letting Chalet have the tape would be a great place to start.

Not even the prospect of Sorayda Peraino on the stand bothered Ken the
way the news about Marilyn did. Supposedly Connecticut was out of the
case, but suppose somehow she mentioned it?

"Don't worry," Venturi said. "I've spoken to your exwife and her lawyer.
She's a little mixed up, but she doesn't intend you harm.

You should have stayed with her."

They did not speak when she entered the courtroom dressed in a charcoal
gray suit over a white blouse, but he was certain he had caught her eye
momentarily.

(Maybe I'll come out of this with a minimal sentence to serve.

Then what? You know I'm going to come back to see my girl, my sweet
Astrid.

What have you told her? Did you tell her I'm DEAD? Sick? In jail?

Ran away? WHAT?! What DID you tell her, Goddamn you, Marilyn.) Chalet
originally subpoenaed her for her testimony about Connecticut.

And he actually traveled to Pittsburgh to see her. It had not gone well.

She had come off flaky, very nervous and emotional, even fearful, as if
she were somehow on trial for having married Ken. By the time the
Pittsburgh session was over, Chalet could feel the waves of antipathy
from her for forcing her appearance.

Questioning her about Taylor's attempt to chloroform her, of course,
would not have presented much of a problem. He had all the investigative
reports, knew precisely what to ask and what she would have to answer.
When that was no longer in the cards, he briefly considered not calling
her at all. But at least, through her, he could establish firsthand that
Taylor had spent the night with her while Teresa's body lay stuffed in a
car trunk outside. Let the jury contemplate that.

Chalet objected to a Bible prominently displayed in front of Ken at the
defense table. He wanted it removed. Then it turned out that Marilyn had
given it to Venturi to give to Ken. Farren overruled the objection. The
jury was sophisticated" enough to handle it.

(Fuck you Chalet, you sniveling, pouting spoiledfuck.) She began weeping
almost with her first answer-that yes, she knew the defendant, Kenneth
Taylor, and, yes, she was his second wife.

In the end, treating her almost as a hostile witness, Chalet managed to
get her to admit, "Ken and I discussed the possibility of getting back
together from the very first day we separated."

Had he ever mentioned that Teresa was stealing money or checks from him?

"Yes, that she was writing out prescriptions for herself on his pads and
signing his name and falsifying some dental insurance forms to get back
more money than was right." (WHY DID YOU SAY THAT? JEEZ, HE DIDN'T EVEN
ASK!!!) ", Did he talk to you in regard to whether or not he should stay
with Teresa?"

"That's hard to answer."

(Excellent. Bust his butt. You're driving him up the wall.) "Could you
tell us as best you can recall what statements he gave you or said to
you about whether the marriage would work?"

"Well, there were some problems ... He said that she had been taking
drugs ... He said that it might not work with these problems."

"Okay. Did he mention anything to you about Teresa Taylor's ability to
care for the baby once it was born?"

"Well, again there was a reiteration of the drug problem. He felt she
had an inability to cope with caring for the baby."

"Did he give you any specifics in regard to that?"

"No."

"Did he ever discuss possibly getting custody of the@ baby?"

"Yes."

(OH SHIT, MARILYN. WHY DID YOU SAY YES? YOU WERE DOING SO GOOD, SO DAMN
GOOD.) " And did he indicate what he was doing to support the position
that he would be entitled to custody?"

"I'm trying to get this part straight in my mind."

Chalet turned toward the jurors with a shrug, inviting them to share his
frustration. He thrust a document at her. It was a copy of a letter she
wrote to her lawyer, Carl Gainor, when she first attempted to avoid
testifying. Gainor had forwarded it to Chalet in the hope that it would
convince the prosecutor to call off the dogs.

"Does that refresh your recollection? You wrote that, did you not?"

"Yes."

"And what did the defendant say to you, if anything, about the child and
about staying with Teresa?"

"He wanted to get custody of the child."

"Did he indicate whether or not he wanted to leave Teresa?"

"Exactly indicate?"

"What does it say there? What did you write?"

"You want me to read it?"

"No! I want you to tell me,"

"He wanted the baby well started in life and established.

"Before what?" Chalet demanded.

"Before he would leave," Marilyn said, her voice barely audible.

Chalet moved on to Ken's arrival at her home, Tuesday, November 13, two
days after Teresa's death, a day before he would dump the body in the
Hawk Mountain Bird Sanctuary.

"Could you describe his emotions while he was with you on Tuesday night
to Wednesday afternoon?"

"Nothing unusual."

"Was there anything different that you noted?"

"You mean just in normal activities, was he different?"

"Right.

"No, nothing that I noticed."

(? YOU JEST S UREL Y, MARILYN!) And how, Chalet continued, did the
defendant conduct himself when he returned to Pittsburgh the following
Saturday?

"I want to say normal, regular ... concerned, but regular."

"Concerned about Teresa?"

AL , "Yes, I guess-yes."

"He wasn't crying or emotionally upset?"' I No. @ Chalet wanted to
remind the jury about all the Vaseline found smeared on Teresa's body,
the culottes ripped down. the back. "Do you recall any discussion of his
sexual relations with Teresa?"

Venturi yelled, "Objection! To the form of the question and also its
substance ... First of all, the form is very leading. Second, a
discussion of sexual relations, whether he was or wasn't having sex, is
irrelevant and immaterial and very highly prejudicial. It has nothing to
do with motivation. It causes the jury to speculate."

Judge Farren hesitated. He started to sustain Venturi, then reversed
himself. Venturi had introduced the subject himself. "If I recall your
opening, Mr. Venturi, you told the jury that they engaged, ah, in some
sort-you were sort of vague, about some kind of different sex on the
evening, in question."

Chalet repeated, "Did he make any comments to you, concerning sexual
relations with Teresa Taylor?"

"Okay some remarks were made that he wasn't sexually interested,
something about the drugs."

"Now, during the early morning hours of Sunday [November 181, did you
receive telephone calls?"

"Yes."

"And what did you hear? What do you recall hearing?"

"Well, mostly what I recall was that they found Teresa's body.

She was dead."

Marilyn Hope dissolved in tears. A five-minute recess was ordered.

Afterward, Chalet didn't let up. "Were you in a position: to see the
defendant when he heard that news?"

"I was on the extension phone."@ (RIGHT NEXT TO ME IN BED IS MORE
ACCURATE, BUT THANKS JUST THE SAME.) "Now, did you eventually-and I'm
sure you th@onfront the defendant?"

"Yes."

295r pe,rer MAAS "And could you describe his emotions at that time?"

aid. "14aw he looked?"

"His emotions?" she, s "Yes."

,"Stoned. He wept some and then stopped and then Wept gure out how to
get back to New some more and tried to ri Jersey."

"And did you go with him?"

"Yes." New jersey, the Way Oldsmobile "And when you got to was in the
parking lot?" @-Gray-his car was there.

e plane and driving to Mana(apan, "And on the trip on th what happened
to did you have discussions with him of Teresa, or how she was killed?"

Well, I may have said a lot of things, but there wasn't too much
discussion because Ken would get very upset, be quiet because that would
upset And then I just tried to him more-" he got upset in the car, on
the "And when you said plane, would he show that?"

"He was crying," she said, crying.

Chalet said, "That's all I have, Judge.

Venturi smiled at at tr. "On cross-examination," he said, o ask what'@.

leading questions. Hopefully, "I get t That will make it I- @@, 1.

n't need any instruc-mr. Venturi,"said, "we do have to the witness.

tions. Pose wt"@'i q',est'ons you Ss, YOU @LAY DOWN I?EST YOUR BIASED A
poalpous ASSHOLE!) to you about Teresa, mrs. Hope, when Ken would talk
se you it was not unusual for him to confide in you becau <inship-is
that true?" bad a very close fe-loti o stay real friendly, Yes- I always
-,We always tried t considered us friends." id talk to You about her, he
would "And when he won a bad person. she, just has this Probtell you
that she's not lem. isn't that what he would say?"

oh, yes."

"And be was not trying to malign her. In fact, he was very protective of
her, wasn't he?"

"I'd say yes. You mean gossip-malicious gossip? I don't ever recall Ken
doing that about anybody."

(THANK YOU HANG IN THERE, NOT MUCH LONGER NOW.) "And in terms of bey
taking care of the baby, when he would say she had problems coping, that
was in reference to when she was using drug@is that correct?"

"I believe so."

"In fact, there were times that he couldn't make his visitations and you
would ask why, and he said it was because Teresa couldn't make it up in
the morning, and he bad to take the baby to the doctor, and so forth,
Things like that?"

"There were some mcasions, you know, he'd leave work."

"And he never said he was definitely going to divorce Teresa, definitely
going to leave her, definitely going to go back to you, or anything of
that nature, did he?"

"Definitely, Wcificary? I couldn't say definitely. No."

"And, in fact, the time that he was most upset and concerned and
indicated that he wanted to leave ... was when Teresa went into
premature labor."

"Yes, I do remember that."

"And she was on her back for about three months and there was a time
after that when she was also weak, and that's the period of time that he
bad no sexual relations with her.

Do you recall that?"

"I, uh, don't know when it was."

"And after the baby was born ... when he came out to see you, that's
when he indicated that things were getting better in the relationship,
that she was getting better with the baby? It was during that time that
these remarks were made to you, wasn't it?"

"Well, it was-yes, back and forth."

She looked as if she were going to fall apart again, and Venturi quickly
asked. "And at some point, did he discuss with you her not understanding
the money situation, that he had to pay alimony, he had to pay child
support, things Z97 r of this nature, and that she couldn't understand
why you had a house and she didn't have one?"

"Oh, yes. It was ... because they were married a short time and she
wanted to know why she didn't have a house." (NO LOVE LOST BETWEEN MY
WIVES FOR SURE. LET THERE BE NO MISTAKE ABOUT THAT.) "Thank you,"
Venturi said. "That's all I have."

(She didn't help me, but she didn't hurt me except a couple of times.

She could have hurt me. Maybe it's her way of saying, "I'm sorry" and
"goodbye." Will I ever see her again? Now there's this bitch Peraino.)
That same morning Detective Bob Fausak drove to Long Island to pick up
Sorayda Peraino.

Chalet had called her the night before. He regretted the short notice.

She still sounded tense, but she said that she would be ready.

"Good," Chalet replied. "I can't tell you how important this is for
justice. For Teresa."

She was dressed in black and framed by her black hair, Fausak couldn't
get over how stunning she was. And now she seemed much less nervous.

Perhaps it was the presence of her two sons, tall, dark-haired,
good-looking young fellows. One of them kept saying, "Mom, you're sure
you don't want us to come?" and she said, "No, it will be all right.

" The other son said to Fausak, "What do you think? Should we go?"

Fausak said, "It's really up to your mother.

I'll bring her back. That's no problem." But she said, "No, no, I'll be
fine," and he thought, That's a real good sign.

They were going down a winding road, a shortcut she directed him to,
when he spotted a car barreling up behind them, headlights flashing.

He stopped. Now what?

It was the two sons. "Mom, we're coming" the one who looked older said.
"That way, we can drive you home." Despite her protests, she seemed
pleased. Even better, Fausak said to himself, In the car, on the way to
Freehold, she told Fausak that she had never been in a courtroom before.
What would happen? "Well, you go in there, you know," he said, they'll
have you place a hand on the Bible, and you'll r, your right hand and
swear to tell the truth, and that's what you'll do."

She started talking about how she first met the Taylors, and what had
happened in the Las Brisas lobby, how shocked she'd been to hear what
Ken said to her. Three times she said, "That poor, poor girl.

Why did he do this to her?

Who could do such a thing?"

Fausak again thought how marvelous a witness she would be. She was so
consistent-her statement to him and Mccormick, what she said to Chalet
the second time, the phone call she had made to the Manalapan police
station. It was always the same.

He sat with her outside the courtroom. Then Chalet came by and spoke to
her briefly. He explained again that this was going to be a hearing
without the jury present to decide whether she would be allowed to
testify. It had nothing to do with her personally. It was a legal
question. He would ask her exactly what he'd asked her in her home.

All she had to do was to tell what she remembered.

Fausak was impressed at how calm and reassuring Chalet was with her.

Because he would be a witness, Fausak had not been at the trial.

Mccormick, though, had told him how Chalet was really seething-about
some of the tactics Venturi had used, but especially about Taylor, how
Taylor kept giving this hard stare to prosecution witnesses, and had
even tried it on Chalet himself.

Once, Mccormick said, Chalet had finally whirled on Taylor and said,
"Something bothering you?"

On the stand, she kept her eyes fastened on Chalet. Ken might as well
not have been in the courtroom. As she related her story in a firm,
well-modulated voice, every trace of her previous timidity disappeared.

After Ken had told her in the hotel lobby that there had been a fight
and that Teresa was in a hospital, she declared, "I said, What happened
to her?" and he said, You see, the fight was between us in our room .

. You know how it is. We had a few drinks and we got into a fight ...

I knocked her teeth out." And he said, They won't let me see her.

I want to fix her teeth. I'm a dentist."

Chalet concluded by discussing her anonymous phone call.

"Could you tell me, please, why you made that call?"

"I had bought a New York newspaper, and I saw the picture of him.

I read the story. I just felt very, very bad. It bothered me that I knew
he had been very violent to her in Acapulco.

"

"What was your purpose in calling?"

"He was saying he was never violent to her, and I knew that he had
been."

" And did you give the officer your full name?"

"No, I did not. Only my first name."

"Just your first name. Now, did you indicate to the officer whether or
not you would call him back?"

"I said I would think about it and call him in a week or SO.

"Did you?"

I "No.

"Why was that?"

"I was, in a way, afraid to come forward at first."

"Why were you afraid?"

"Because of the violent nature of this case.

What had happened to Teresa."

"So that's why you didn't call?"

"I wanted to. I knew it was my duty. It was justthat I had to think
about it."

Without the reaction of a jur,to worry about, Venturi challenged her
relentlessly in tones that went from sarcasm to incredulity.

Somehow he had to rattle her, bully her if he had to, get her confused,
catch her in contradictions, try to ferret out some hidden motivation.

But nothing worked.

"Mrs. Peraino, do you speak Spanish?"

"Yes, I do."

"And when you were on line there to check out, do you recall that being
July eighteenth?"

"Either the eighteenth or seventeenth, I believe." ik two people who
looked like policemen ... did you speak to them?"

"I just told them how nervous I was about what I was hearing."

"Did you tell them what you were hearing from Doctor Taylor?"

I No.

"You were talking to them, telling them how nervous you were about what
you were hearing?"

"I said, I'm very upset about what this man is saying."

"About what he was saying?"

"Yes.

"Were they talking to you and telling you what they were accusing him of
doing?"

"They just told me that he was in jail for four days."

Venturi leaned toward her. "But they didn't tell you that he was in jail
for four days because they said that he beat up his wife and that he
knocked her teeth out?"

"No, they didn't."

As loudly as he dared, Venturi demanded, "That wasn't the police that
told you that, was it? That was Doctor Taylor that told you?"

"Yes.

"And when Doctor Taylor told you that, you knew he had done something
very wrong? Isn't that correct?"

"I felt he did."

"You knew he had done something very harmful, correct?"

"Well, wouldn't you feel that it was harmful?"

"Judge!"

Farren tried, with some difficulty, to maintain a stern judicial visage.
"Mrs. Peraino, let mejust caution you here. You don't make statements,
you don't inquire of counsel.

If you don't understand the question, you indicate that to me and I'll
have him rephrase it. Okay?"

So, Venturi pressed on, "You knew he had done something very, very
harmful-correct, ma'am?"

She refused to be intimidated. "Yes, because he told me he did.

"He had done something that you thought he should be punished for?"

No, it wasn't my-I wasn't judging She flushed slightly.

him. I was just shocked."

"You thought it was very wrong and you were shocked and upset?"

"I was upset and shocked." o policemen there, is that right)"

"And there were tw "Yes." his man had just told "And you didn't tell
them what t you?"

"No.

"And this man, who just told you about all these wrong things he had
done, then asked you for money sg he could get out of jail?"

"No I he said that first. "He said that first?"

"Yes."

"First he asked you for money before telling you what he did?"

"He said something td the effect, if I don't have enough money, could
you help me out?"

Because he was going to his vault, whatever they call them , in the
hotel, to get money to bail himself out." oney, in order to per" And
then after asking you for m suade you to give him money, he told you he
had beaten up his wife?-"

"No, no. He wasn't trying to persuade me to do anything@"

"He was not? He asked you for money but he was not trying to persuade
you to give it to him. Is that what you're saying?"

ght." There was considerable defiance in her voice.

Venturi attempted a new approach'. art, you befriended "When you met
them at the airp hat correct?"

Teresa Taylor more than him-is t "No, that's not correct."

3OZ "Well, you said [in direct testimony] that you spoke mostly to her."

"No," Sorayda Peraino insisted, "I said she was more of a talkative
person."

"He did not talk to you?"

"He talked to me. Not very much."

"Well, your opinion of her was very high from the time you first met
them, wasn't it?"

"It was just an opinion about anyone I would meet who I thought was nice
and pleasant."

"I believe you described her as friendly and bubbly?"

"What stands out in my mind was a happy person. She seemed bubbly, yes,
in her manner of speech."

"And your opinion of Doctor Taylor was not as high?"

"I had no opinion. I just remember that he was very quiet and didn't
talk much."

"Didn't do anything to insult you?"

"No.

"But he was withdrawn and would not talk to you that much?"

"I already said that," she said, her irritation hard to miss.

Venturi hoped it would cause her to blurt out something he could use.

He returned to the scene in the lobby when she encountered Ken.

"Now, when you were standing on line there, you said that he was
unshaven, had dirty clothes, had lost weight? It was visible to you that
he had lost weight?"

"Yes.

"And these two men that were policemen, were they right next to him on
either side?"

"Yes, from what I remember."

"And you didn't talk to the policemen first?

You talked to him first?"

"Yes." I "The first thing he did was ask you for money, if he didn't
have enough, right? That was his first statement to YOU9" I" Well, he
explained what he was doing on line.

Yes."

in "And he said he'd been in jail four days?"' I Yes."

"Did he say he told the police that he had done this?"

"I don't remember talking about that."

"So, when you say he told you these things, for all you know, he never
admitted it to the police?"

"I don't even know why he was telling me-"

"But you didn't tell them what he had told you?"

"No, I was trying to get away."

"You did talk to them?"

"I don't remember what I talked to them about.

I was, just so stunned."

Venturi tried still another gambit, suggesting that her words were
perhaps not her own, that her testimony had been artfully manipulated by
the prosecution- Hadn't she refused to speak to one of his
investigators, "a man named Kurt?" one called and said "I don't recall
his name ... Some that they had something to do with Doctor Taylor's
lawyer."

"And did you refuse to talk to him?"

"No, I didn't. I just told him-first of all, he talked very fast, And it
was hard to understand what his conversation was in relation to."

Venturi couldn't resist. "Excuse me," he said "you have no difficulty
understanding English, do you?"

"Do you think I do?"

"Ah, Mrs. Peraino," Farren said, again, please don't ask questions.

He's asking whether or not you have any difficulty understanding
English."

"No I don't."

"So, "I Venturi continued, "did he ask to talk to you and did you
refuse?"

I just told him that I might talk to my attorney about it."

"Did you ever tell him that Investigator Mccormick told you not to talk
to anybody?"

"No, I did not."

"Did he ever ask you for your attorney's name and you refused to give it
to him?"

"I did say that, yes."

" And you did speak on May twenty-second with Investigator Mccormick,
didn't you? In addition to May seventh?"

"I believe so. Is that the date? I can't remember dates."

Right from the beginning, when he first learned of the mystery-woman
phone call in the discovery papers, Venturi had allowed himself to
believe that she would never be located. It seemed so unimportant at the
time, especially after Ken initially told him that he didn't even
remember her. And now here she was, in the witness chair in front of
him, more damaging, in person, than anything he had bargained for.

What made him so angry was not her testimony in this hearing, but that
it might be ruled admissible in the trial. To Venturi, as a defense
attorney, it offended his whole concept of the law.

It didn't matter whether or not Ken had beaten up Teresa in Acapulc@by
then, Venturi had little doubt that he had-it was that it would
completely usiobviate the possibility of a fair trial. It simply had no
b ness being introduced. It was blatantly unfair, so violently
prejudicial. That was the argument he would have to use with Farren.

He began to think how clever Farren had been.

Farren had thrown out Connecticut. And suddenly he was going to allow in
the Acapulco assault if "clear and convincing evidence" was presented
that the defendant had committed it.

But as far as Connecticut was concerned, you couldn't ask for anything
more clear and convincing. Venturi could just see this on appeal-how
favorably Farren would be viewed in his evenhanded administration of
justice. Talk about a Mexican standoff! The irony was that Acapulco
appeared infinitely more harmful than Connecticut.

He'd bet that Chalet hadn't counted on this either. All you had 305r to
do was track his discovery material. Until practically the last minute,
the emphasis had been all on Connecticut.

During a short break, Ken whispered that her testimony was colored by
what hotel employees had said to her. They'd had it in for him because
of his many charges of lousy service.

Venturi gave it a try. It was the only thing he had left.

"Now," he asked, "when Doctor and Mrs. Taylor met you in your room for
drinks, you were saying how wonderful it was in Mexico and at Las
Brisas-is that correct?"

" yes.

"Doctor Taylor didn't say how wonderful it was, did he?"@ "If I remember
correctly, he said it was nice there- "He didn't complain about the
hotel?"

"No."

"He didn't complain about the people who worked there?"

I No.

"He didn't complain that the service was poor?"

"No.

"I have nothing further," Venturi said.

When Sorayda Peraino came out of the courtroom, Fausak, waiting in the
hall, remembered her total transformation'blood boiling, the smoke just
coming out of her ears."

"Who does he think he is, that lawyer?" she sputtered. "Trying to make
me look like I don't know what I'm talking about and that I'm a liar.
And that Ken Taylor," she went on, the way he stared at her as she was
leaving. "Who does he think he is, looking at me with that look@" She
said, "You tell Mr. Chalet that if he needs me again, he doesn't have to
send anyone. I'll be here."' "I'll be sure he gets that message," Fausak
said. "And@ thank you."

Chalet's next witness was Al Benigna.

Chalet took him through the anguish of discovering what had happened to
his daughter and his flight with Celeste to Acapulco.

Speaking slowly and precisely, Al faithfully conveyed Ken's version of
what had occurred in the room that night, choking up briefly when he
described his first sight of Teresa in the Centro Medico Hospital and
later when he recounted Dr. Ortiz Pavon's initial fear that she had bled
to death. "When he discovered that she was alive, he told me he didn't
give her any chance of pulling through. He said it was strictly a
miracle of God that she did."

Then, before Venturi could do it, Chalet asked Al if he had continued to
question his daughter about her memory of the events at Las Brisas.

"Yes, I did, several times after that, especially since she was
beginning to have flashbacks of some things. I would say, Teresa,
anything come to mind? Do you remember anything?" And she said, No, she
did not remember."

"But she did tell you it wasn'tn't Ken?"

"Yes. She said it wasn't Ken," he replied, shaking his head in
bewilderment.

Al Benigna had supplied Chalet with four photographs of Teresa during
her recuperation at Staten Island Hospital. They were marked for
identification and Chalet showed them to him.

"Yes, this is of Teresa lying in bed. Her face is badly swollen and
bruised ... That one again shows Teresa with a bandage over her eye.

Her teeth are all badly damaged, broken, the way the other pictures
were."

"Now, do these four photographs accurately represent her facial
appearance?"

"No, they don't."

"They don't?"

"No-well, they accurately show her appearance at this time. She was much
worse in Mexico."

Chalet thought he saw Farren flinch a little as he examined the photos.

If Acapulco were allowed in, the jurors would also see them.

Chalet had wanted Dr. Ortiz Pavon to testify that he had mistaken the
death-scene pictures of Teresa for ones taken while she was still in his
care.

Now Chalet didn't need Ortiz. The jurors could make the comparison for
themselves.

The hearing was adjourned until Monday.

As he had been throughout the trial, Ken was returned to the relative
freedom of the medical wing in the Monmouth County Jail where he had
been since breaking his ankle playing basketball.

Although the cast was off, he insisted that the ankle was still
troubling him and the doctor let him stay put.

That weekend a guard he had been cultivating dropped by to chat.

The guard was a young guy, far friendlier than the usual run of guards,
and recently divorced. Their early talk was about women, what a pain
they were and how you couldn't do without them.

At first, the guard had been cheery about Ken's chances. "Hey, Doc, a
professional man like you, you'll beat this, no problem."

Lately, he'd become more pessimistic. "Boy, I'd hate to see you spend
the rest of your life in the can." That was an ominous sign, Ken
thought.

He wondered if that was what everyone was saying around the courthouse.

And now the guard said, "I hear that the hearing's not going so good,"
and "Boy, thirty years to life. I wouldn't want that for you."

"You think you could help me? Do anything to get me out of here?" Ken
said.

"Well, you know, let's talk. It'd take some money."

"I have some property."

"Yeah, what?"

"All the stuff in my house."

The guard reflected for a moment. He had a new girlfriend, he said, who
was after him to get rid of all the junk left over from his marriage.
She wanted a new sofa, things like that, but with his alimony payments,
it was tough. "What would you say the stuff was worth?"

"Twelve thousand, easy." Then Ken said, Why didn't he see for himself
He'd alert his parents about a visitor who might be interested in making
some purchases.

r n On Sunday, after going to Valley Road, the guard came by again and
said, "Okay. What would you want from me?" He wasn't sure yet, Ken said.
"Let's wait tdl the trial's over.

See what happens,"

"Right," the guard said, You never know."

On Monday, June 10, after identifying photographs and diagrams of the
casita and the area surrounding it, Bob Fausak described the hotel's
security set-up. In his professional opinion, Fausak said it was "highly
unlikely" that a breakin could have occurred like the one the defendant
claimed. A mountain goat might scale the cliff below the casita, but not
much else.

Chalet then put on Jose Romero, the assistant manager who received Ken's
call about the attack and who first entered the casita to find Teresa
crumpled in a corner.

When he flew in from Mexico, Romero had asked Guy Mccormick what he was
expected to say.

"Just answer the questions. What you saw.

What you remember."

"That is all?" Romero said. He seemed dumbfounded at what apparently
appeared to him to be a novel approach to justice.

After getting a graphic description of Teresa's condition from Romero,
Chalet asked about any visible injuries on Ken.

There were scratches on his arm, Romero said, and he recalled a cut on
one finger'.

"Did he have any bruises or cuts on his face?"

"Not on the face, absolutely."

"What about his head?"

Romero pointed to the right side of his own head at the hairline.

"Here. A little bump."

"Was it cut?"

"No, just a bump. A little bump."4

"No blood?"

"No blood."

Romero was followed by Derek Gore, a Las Brisas executive.

Tall, white-haired and very British, he also doubled as the British
counsel in Acapulco. He had volunteered to come, primarily to protect
the hotel's reputation.

From the start, Gore was a problem, complaining that he had to share a
room with Romero. There was nothing to be done, Guy Mccormick told him.
The prosecutor's office budget was severely limited.

On the stand, Gore characterized himself as a "troubleshooter" for the
hotel. He said that 193 thefts were reported in 1983 when the Taylors
were there, but none involved a physical assault-in fact, in the fifteen
years he'd been associated with Las Brisas, there had never been an
assault remotely comparable to the one Teresa suffered.

Then Gore overplayed his hand. He brought up the release Ken and Teresa
had signed, one that he had prepared and personally witnessed, which
absolved management of any responsibility for Teresa's injuries.

Finally, Venturi had an opening. Clearly, Gore had not at any time been
to the hospital after Teresa was taken there, and Teresa never went back
to the hotel before being taken home. Twice he got Gore to repeat that
he had witnessed the signatures.

Chalet did not get into it. Obviously, Gore had "witnessed" the release
when it was returned to him. It wasn't right, but in real life it
happened all the time. Chalet saw where Venturi was going. If Gore was
lying about this, why not everything else? And by implication, why not
all of Chalet's other witnesses? But that would require quite an
imaginative leap. Actually, Chalet was comforted by Venturi's attack on
Gore.

It showed what bad shape the defense was in.

Gore, after all, was only window dressing.

What he said or didn't say had nothing to do with the testimony of the
one witness who counted-Sorayda Peraino.

That afternoon, Venturi called five witnesses for the defense: Sister
Donna Campbell, a nun who had tended to Teresa during her premature
labor at St. Peter's Hospital, Nicholas Guidice, a Valley Road neighbor,
Dr. John Babinski, a young dentist Ken had hired for his practice, and
two women, a receptionist and an assistant, who worked in the office.
All essentially testified that either Teresa never implicated Ken in the
Acapulco assault or that Ken and Teresa, separately or in tandem, said
the assault was committed by unknown intruders bent on murderous mayhem,
On Tuesday morning, Venturi called Ken to the stand.

All through the trial, Ken had been saying that if he only had a chance
to tell his story, everything would change. In this hearing, without the
jury present, it was as good a time as any to find out how he would
stand up under Chalet.

Venturi got his answer. And it wasn't the one he wanted. Within minutes,
Ken was bursting with rage. You could feel it pulsing through the
courtroom. The kind of incoherent rage, Venturi thought, that could
cause a man to bludgeon his wife to death in a matter of seconds.

Without preamble, Chalet said, "I want you to tell me exactly what you
said to Mrs. Peraino when you were there getting your clothing, baggage
or whatever?"

"I told Mrs. Peraino, after she asked me what was wrong, she said to
me-no! I told her I needed five hundred dollars to get out of jail."

"Did you ever say there was a fight, we had a fight'?"

"No, sir."

"The only conversation you had with her was about money ?"

"Yes."

"Did she ask you about Your condition, what's the matter with you?"

"Yes. I told her that I had been in jail for three or four days."

"She didn't ask you why you were in jail?"

"I told her that the police had held me and said that I had beaten my
wife. And that they wanted five hundred dollars to release me."

"Now, you told her that they were holding you because you had beaten
Your wife?"

"She said they said that I had."

"And when she said that, what did she do?"

"it was at that point that she asked the officers what happened." Chalet
said, "Now, when did YOU first meet her?"

"Monday, July eleventh.."

"Where?"

"At the airport' "Did you have a conversation with her?"

"There was a group conversation on the way to the hotel,"

"Did You talk to her?"

"Yes, I did."

"What do you recall saying?"

"I believe I mentioned there were problems.

It seemed that we were all being herded around like a bunch of cattle at
the airport.

The luggage was not on our bus. That we were on our honeymoon.

Just general conversation."

"Did Teresa talk to her?" 1, Yes.""Who was Mrs. Peraino talking to more,
you or Teresa?"

"Teresa."

"And then you met for a drink?"

"On Tuesday evening we went to their room for a drink before we were
supposedly to go out to dinner We stayed only a short time. I would say
thirty minutes."

Do you recall Mrs. Peraino asking you where Teresa was?"

"When?"

"When you were in the line with the Mexican authorities."

"No. I told her that Teresa was at the hospital. That they would not let
me go see her unless I paid the money - "

"She didn't ask where Teresa was? That was coming from you?"

Ken glared at Chalet. "Yes."

Chalet moved closer to him. "Did you tell her that you had knocked her
teeth out?"

"No, sir, I did not."

"Did you say anything about drinking? That there was a fight?"

"No, I did not."

"Now, you told Mr. Romero that you were asleep in the room?"

"That's correct."

"From that point on, when you were asleep, you tell me what happened.

"I heard a sound and I got up to walk to the balcony to see if I could
see anything."

"Were the lights on or Off'9"

"Off."

"The room was entirely dark?"

I Yes.

"The patio light was not on?"

"The patio light, to my recollection, was on."

"Then what happened?"

"I was walking back to the bed when I was struck."

"You were walking back to bed when you were struck?"

"I was getting into bed. As I recall, I had almost gotten onto my
stomach."

"Almost on your stomach?"

"Right."

"Were you lying down?"

"Nearly," Ken said. Venturi could see his body tensing.

"Nearly?"

"Yes.

"And where were you struck?"

"On the right side of my head in the back.

"The right side of your head in the back?

Point where. Show me."

Ken looked as if he would spring out of the witness chair at Chalet.

To break the flow, Venturi objected to Chalet's constant repetition" of
his client's answers.

Judge Farren said, "I won't tell Mr. Chalet how to ask his questions.

I will ask him to slow down a little. All right, show him where you were
struck."

"Right here," Ken said, glowering.

"Right there?"

"Yes.

"Were you cut?"

I No.

"You were not cut? Okay, did You see what you were hit with?"

"Something heavy."

"Something heavy? What was it? What do you recall?"

"I recall that I saw stars."

"You saw stars?"

"Right."

"What's the next thing You remember?

"I was dragged by my feet from the bed onto the floor."

"That's the next thing You remember?"

"Yes."

"Who was dragging you?"

"I couldn't see. I had just been struck on the head. All I could see was
stars.

"Could You tell whether it was one person, two people, three people in
that room?"

"I believe two people."

"Two people? What do you base that belief on?"

"Because, as I was dragged on the floor and tried to get up, I got a
glimpse of the person across the room on the other side of the bed.

"

"Describe that person to me, " Chalet said.

He was as close to Ken as he could get.

"All I could see of that person was basically from the mid-chest area
down. I saw a person that had on what appeared to be jeans. All I could
see was his shirt."

"What was on the feet?"

"I couldn't see the feet. He was on the other side of the bed."

"You could see that as you were being dragged?"

"No. As I was trying to get up after I had been dragged."

"Then what happened?"

"I was either kicked or struck. I believe I was kicked because I felt
something on my head different. It felt like possibly a sole of a shoe
or a sandal or a sneaker. Something like that."

"And where were you kicked?"

"Lower neck ... right here."

"What's the next thing you remember?"

"I woke up and found my wife in a pool of blood."

"What did you do?"

Ken hesitated. "Other than my first reaction of horror and shock?"

"I didn't ask you what your reaction was. I asked you what you did."

"I took her pulse to see if she was alive."

"And then?"

"I phoned for help-"

"Then?"

"At that point I believe I sat by the phone for a moment or two and then
I tried to get to the balcony to see if I could see the intruders."

"What happened when you got on the balcony?"

." I was very woozy and I fell down again.

Apparently fainted."

"You apparently fainted? What's the next thing you remember?"

.Getting up, going back into the room, going to the shower to wash
myself off@"

"When you say wash yourself off, why?"

"Because there was glass and blood on my legs."

"So you attempted to wash yourself off in the shower?"

IN A Clilld's NAF4E "I tried to arouse myself, revive myself,"

"Then what happened?"

"I heard another knock at the door and I fainted again."

"You fainted again?"

"Yes, I was very woozy."

"YOU Were woozy?"

"Yes, from being struck."

"Do you have any scars or cuts back there from being struck?"

"I never said I was cut ... there was a lump on my head."

"A lump?" Chalet said. "A little lump?"

"Little? Let's describe the lump. I would say it was about the size of a
golf ball."

 ... Were YOU treated at Staten Island Hospital for the cuts on your
legs?"

"No, they were minor cuts. There was no treatment for them.

Judge Farren asked Ken, "How tall are you?"

"I'm six feet one."

"And what's your weight?"

"Approximately two hundred pounds."

Oh, boy, Venturi thought.

Then he addressed Farren. "In discussing the burden of proof that has to
be applied here, I would respectfully suggest that the standard of clear
and convincing evidence almost approaches that of beyond a reasonable
doubt ... Proof Must be obvious, Positive, plain and certain ...
evidence must be such as to leave no room for speculation."

The testimony of Al Benigna and Jose Romero, he said, was "all
consistent with what the defendant said.

But Derek Gore "was proven to have made false statements to this court
about the circumstances surrounding the signing of the release ...

Doctor Taylor did not sign the release in the presence of Gore  ...
Teresa Taylor never spoke to, never met, never saw Gore ... Mr. Gore's
job-to put it bluntly-is to cover the hotel's rear end."

As for Sorayda Peraino, she was "confused." Everything she said that was
allegedly said to her by "Doctor Taylor wasn't said to her by him, but
by the police."

Venturi did not wish to linger on Peraino.

"Judge, it is inconceivable, it is totally inconceivable that Teresa
Taylor would want to remain alone with him, with this man, in a hospital
room by herself, in the condition that she was in, if for one second she
believed-thought-that he had anything to do with what happened to her.

There is no way she would embrace him."

Once again, everything hung on New Jersey's Rules of Evidence.

The hearing was being held under Rule 8, which, covered questions of
admissibility-in this instance whether the exception in Rule 55

could be invoked which would allow the introduction of a previous crime
involving the same husband and wife. The presiding judge was allowed
wide latitude.

"All right, gentlemen," Farren said. "We have concluded testimony, as
required by Rule Eight, with regard to the proposed introduction of
evidence of a prior act, alleged prior act I should say, of the
defendant upon the victim in Acapulco in July of nineteen eighty-three."

He noted that Rule 8 case law put the burden of proof on the
prosecution, that the state "fnust establish that this particular
incident occurred by clear and convincing..

evidence." With an eye on the appeals process, he delivered an
exhaustive review of the testimony of all the witnesses, paying special
heed to Derek Gore's disputed testimony. "Mr. Gore indicated that he
prepared the letter of release that was executed by Mr. and Mrs. Taylor.
And the letter of release, as indicated by Mr. Venturi, obviously was
prepared for purposes of protecting the hotel [but] there has been no
testimony to refute the fact that it was signed voiuntafily by Mr. and
Mrs. Taylor."

And in the end, Farren declared, "I found Sorayda Peraino to be a very
credible witness.

I find that she had no interest in the outcome of the case. She had no
axe to grind with this defendant.

And, actually, I gleaned that she really iw didn't want to participate
in this particular proceeding ... So it wasn't as if Sorayda Peraino
read about this incident in the newspaper and then decided to jump into
the fray and help to establish the guilt of the defendant. That is not
the case. She was very reluctant to get involved in this particular
situation and testified that the only reason she did get involved is
because she felt it was her obligation."

Farren lauded Al Benigna. "I find the testimony of Mr. Benigna to be
absolutely credible, despite the fact that he is the father of the
decedent victim. He presented himself as a very credible witness with a
good recollection, well aware of what was going on. No doubt he was
concerned about his daughter, but he didn't embellish on statements made
to him by the defendant. It could have been very easy for him to say
that Teresa told me' that Ken did it. Certainly no one could contest
that statement by Mr. Benigna, because Teresa is now dead.

But he didn't say that. He said that Teresa said, I don't know what
happened."

Then, looking straight at Venturi, Fallen said, "With regard to Mr.
Taylor's testimony, I don't find it to be credible. The one area of
testimony that jumps out at me is the conduct of this defendant
following the alleged attack. We have an individual who is on his
honeymoon, allegedly deeply in love witwith his wife. We also have an
individual who is a dentist, who is trained in medicine. That's his
specialty, medicine, taking care of the sick and those in pain.

His version is that he got up off the floor, crawled over, he said, to
his wife. Took her pulse, bearing in mind that she is in a fetal
Position with her head on the floor and her knees on the floor.

According to Mr. Romero, she was covered with blood. She was in a very
bad condition."

Shifting his gaze to Ken, Farren said, "According to the hospital
records, she was in a real bad condition. She is absolutely devastated
around the head, pulverized, apparently by a broken bottle or with a
bottle that eventually broke.

There was glass in her eye, in one of the medical reports."

Farren's tone grew more scathing. "And what does he do? He takes her
pulse, then gets up and looks on the balcony. He claims he fainted, then
went inside to take a shower to wash himself off, while his wife is
lying by the side of the bed dying.

And he never assists her. He never puts her on the bed. He doesn't try
to put cold compresses on her head. He doesn't try to stop the bleeding.
He doesn't do anything. He goes in and takes a shower."

(YOU BASTARD. I DID NOT TAKE A SHOWER, I PUT WATER ON MY-FUCK IT, IT'S
IN.) "I also do not find and do not accept his testimony that he was
struck in the head and knocked unconscious. We have an individual six
foot one, two hundred pounds, who has a negligible, if that, bump on the
head. If there were intruders breaking into that casita, those
intruders, I find, would be far more interested in physically
incapacitating Mr. Taylor than Mrs. Taylor@" Citing multiple precedents
that would support his decision, Farren said, "The standard of clear and
convincing evidence falls somewhere between the ordinary civil standard
of the preponderance of the evidence' and the criminal standard of
beyond a reasonable doubt."

"I find the proposition of the defense that this incident was caused by
intruders is a possibility. However, I do not find that it was a
probability. As a result, I have a firm belief and conviction as to the
truth of the allegation and the testimony of this particular incident as
represented bythe state." He looked at Chaict for the first time. "I
will therefore permit the testimony of this incident in Acapulco to be
presented to the jury."

Ken, white-faced, instinctively looked back at Jean and Zach.

Jack Venturi moved for a mistrial. "It would seem," he said acidly,
"that this court had its mind made up after the testimony of Sorayda
Peraino and that was that."

"That is absolutely not true," Farren told him.

The hearing lasted two days. When the trial resumed on June 12, all the
witnesses at the hearing repeated their testimony in open court.

Farren cautioned the jurors that if they believed the defendant had
assaulted his wife in Acapulco, it not mean that "if he did it in
Mexico, he must have done it in Manalapan." They were to weigh it solely
in their deliberations as to Ken's "state of mind" when Teresa was
killed. The issues here were his "intent" at the time and his claim of
"self-defense for himself and his son."

Venturi listened in helpless fury. There was no way the jury would not
be persuaded by the admission of this new evidence.

He moved again for a mistrial based on Farren's instructions.

Self-defense was not an issue in the Acapulco assault. But if the jury
decided that Ken had committed that assault, it would inevitably
conclude that he had "a violent character, a violent personality."

In effect, he could kiss self-defense good-bye.

Throughout the hearing, Venturi charged, Farren had displayed a
"proprosecution, antidefense bias." Now it was Farren's turn to do some
glaring.

"There has been no bias, passion or prejudice toward anyone in this
case," he said. Then he denied the motion, although he further
instructed the jury, "You are going to have to determine in your
deliberations whether or not the state has proven the defendant guilty
beyond a reasonable doubt of purposely and knowingly causing the
decedent's death. Purposely and knowingly goes to a person's intent.

Mr. Taylor says I didn't intend to kill her. I was acting in
self-defense and the defense of my son. So you see the issue of Acapulco
goes only to the question of intent, self-defense, not to establish that
he is a bad person. If you find that this event did occur and he did it,
it has nothing to do with trying to indicate to you that he's bad, that
he's disposed to commit crimes. You cannot use it for that purpose."

(SO, HOW DOES ACAPULCO, EVEN IF I DID IT, RELATE TO111184,16

MONTHS LATER?) All that remained was whether Ken would be sworn in.

And on Thursday afternoon, June 13, Farren asked Ventuti, "Is Mr. Taylor
going to testify?"

Ever since the Acapulco hearing, lawyer and client had. been arguing
about it without any resolution. Venturi decided to stall. He would need
a continuance till Monday so that he could confer with Ken about some
records that were late in arriving from Chalet.

Annoyed, Fallen sent the jury out. "What records?"

Telephone records, pharmacy prescription records, Venturi said.

Farren said, "The records are not of such a magnitude as to war-rant a
continuance-" Chalet joined in, "I submit that there is not a lot of
critical information here."

That, Venturi retorted, was in the "eye of the beholder." (In fact,
Venturi had plenty to worry about. Ken had claimed that many of the
codeine prescriptions rounded up by Mccormick and Fausak were forgeries
of his name. He accused Phil Benigna of these forgeries.

But the New Jetsey State Police forensic lab concluded that despite some
variations in style and form, the signatures were genuine.) Farren said,
"I find it difficult, if not impossible, to believe that you have not
decided by the seventh or eighth day of this trial whether you're going
to put Doctor Taylor on the stand."' "Well, without being able to review
this material with Doctor Taylor, without being given any time, we can't
make an intelligent decision about his testifying."

"It is two-thirty," Farren said. "We're going to take a five-minute
break. When I come out at twenty-five to three, you give me your
decision."

(JACK IS ELATED! FERRAN [sic] HAS SET HIMSELF UP FOR A MISTRIAL.)
Exactly five minutes later, from the bench, Farren said, "Mr. Venturi?"

"Your honor, at this time, with all due respect, I once again renew my
motion for a mistrial based on the prejudice of this court against the
defendant, Doctor Taylor it's in effect putting a gun to our heads in
terms of making the most critical decision in the case.

Whether or not to testify.@"

"As I've already said," Farren snapped, "we started this, case on May
twenty-eighth and it now comes down for the defendant to testify or not
to testify. I'm denying your application for a mistrial. I'm also
denying your motion to continue the matter until Monday."

"Judge, I've discussed this matter with Doctor Taylor and, while he
indicated that it was and has been his wish to testify, he would abide
by my advice and not testify."

"You've discussed that with Doctor Taylor?"

"During the five-minute break that we had, yes."@ The flush slowly crept
up Farren's cheeks.

"Mr. Venturi, since you're attempting to make a record, let me also put
on the record that I've been inquiring of you for some time whether
Doctor Taylor was going to testify ... So when you put on the record
you've had five minutes to discuss this with him, it's not fair to this
court. You're not being fair at all with this court!'@ Venturi wondered
if he'd gone too far. The whole thing, was a gamble. But this could look
awfully good on appeal.

"Doctor Taylor," Farren said, "is it your position that you're not going
to testify in this matter?"

Ken answered the way Venturi told him to.

"Yes, Your Honor. I originally had wanted to testify in my behalf, but
on my attorney's advice, I've decided not to."

Farren glanced at Chalet. "Do we have any rebuttal?"

But Chalet wanted no part of this. "I would assume that the defense
would rest," was all he said.

Almost without warning, it had gotten out of hand. Somewhere inside
Farren, ego and caution were locked in mortal combat. Farren settled a
baleful gaze on Venturi. Finally, jaw muscles twitching, he said, "I
don't want to put Doctor Taylor in a position where he cannot tell his
side of the story ... So what I'm going to do, I'm going to reverse,
what I have indicated. I will give Mr. Venturi a continuance until
Monday morning at nine o'clock."

He ordered the jury back in. "Ladies and gentlemen, that is going to
conclude the testimony for today. As I've indicated to you, Friday is a
separate schedule for me. So. we will continue until Monday, at which
time we may have, additional testimony. You're coming up to a three-day
weekend. Please don't discuss the case. Don't read any newspapers about
the case. You're discharged.

With that, Farren stalked off the bench.

It was a conspiracy, Ken told his parents. Had they watched how Farren
and Chalet were ganging up on him, framing him?

If only he hadn't talked to the police without a lawyer that Sunday in
Manalapan, Jean said. Why did he do that?

"I don't know, Mom. I can't answer."

That Peraino woman should never have been allowed to testify, Zach said.
It was incomprehensible to think Ken would say anything to her like what
she said he'd said.

Why in the world would he do it?

None of them appeared to see any link between the twin puzzlements.

They took comfort that everything would be reversed on appeal.

The hearing on Acapulco should have been decided before the trial, not
during it, The judge had told the jury not to read anything about the
hearing. "That was a bunch of baloney," Zach snorted. And the autopsy
photos, for certain, were "doctored." Even the court reporter had told
him, Zach said, that in seventeen years of trial work, he'd never seen
photos "so bright."

The videotape of Teresa with the baby should never have been admitted.

It was "inflammatory," Zach said. "No one had suggested that Teresa
wasn't a good mother."

His face flushed in sudden memory. Why hadn't Venturi followed through
on his promise to dig up dirt on her?

Yes, Jean said. "She wasn't like she appeared." And Venturi should have
done more to show that what took place wasn't "premeditated."

She'd told Venturi, "It was just that something always happens to you to
trigger you Off."

"Jack doesn't want me to testify," Ken said.

He had a mind to, though. He wanted the jury to see him as a .

man," not the "defendant," not the "ultimate creator," as he put it, of
the "body." AL For sure, Jean said, if he was claiming self-defense, he
won ave to e n se e entire t apti st Church of Marion was praying for
them.

The pastor himself had telephoned. For Ken, too, of course.

On Saturday Venturi met with him.

Ken had an idea. Chalet would be badgering him on the stand, demanding
to know what the truth really was, and Ken would "innocently" blurt out
that if Chalet wanted to, know the truth so much, why weren't the jurors
beint allowed to see the tape of the "truth-serum" interview he'd
voluntarily undergone? Okay, so the judge would cite him for contempt or
whatever, but the jurors would hear this. It would "pique" their
curiosity, make them wonder what was going on, what was being kept from
them.

Aghast, Venturi found himself saying that this was a real trial, not a
television show.

No magical intervention was' going to save the day. There was still a
chance to avoid a murder conviction if Ken didn't testify. If he did, he
could forget it@ In the hearing, Venturi said, Ken at best had come off
cold and calculating in his responses. At worst, his body language
conveyed "kind of a dark, ruthless and violent demeanor."

Chalet had gotten to him. Afterward, the judge had characterized Ken as
totally unbelievable. If it comedown to it, what did he think Farren
would say to the jury when Chalet finished cross-examining him?

Ken's statement to the cops, as damaging as it was, still couldn't be
cross-examined.

Chalet would cut him up, and- it would go on and on. Ken could not make
the statement any better-his knowledge, intent and awareness of what he
had done after Teresa died, why he gave different stories about what was
going on between them, why he put the body in the trunk, why he went to
Indiana with it, how hecould have stopped over to see his ex-wife, why
he left the body in Pennsylvania. None of it would wash.

And there were all those sex phone calls.

Was Ken going to switch his story from innocent sleeper 325PEER MAAS
through that night to his new version on the sodium amytal tape of
orgiastic oral and anal sex?

"They were made on her credit card," Ken said. "I didn't have any credit
cards."

Venturi could just see Chalet circling in on that-that by then Teresa
was already dead.

 ... Venturi was right. Chalet was itching to get at Ken, especially
about the phone calls. That weekend, in preparing a possible
cross-examination, Chalet was pretty sure that in the last, lengthy
batch of telephone records he'd dispatched to Venturi, neither Venturi
nor Ken noticed that one of the numbers called the night of Teresa's
death also had been dialed from the Manalapan house when she was still
in the hospital after baby Philip was born.

In the Monmouth County Jail, Ken abruptly told Venturi, "Okay, Jack,
whatever you say. I don't give a shit."

Coming away, Venturi decided that his client really hadn't wanted to
testify. It was all shadow boxing. Some six months ago, when they first
met, it was all about acquittal. Now all Ken wanted was to beat a murder
rap any way he could.

Chapter SEV&PJ'LEN4TEEN In his summation, with acquittal seemingly out
of the question, Venturi needed every edge he could think of to avoid a
murder conviction.

Concentrate, he wrote in his notes, on what the state's case really
amounted to: "suspicion, speculation, innuendo."

And "apologize.

The last couple of days he hadn't been getting any positive feedback
from the jury.

No more pleasant greetings from jurors in the parking lot after his
incessant bickering with Chalet and Farren, all the times the jury had
been removed from the courtroom, mostly because of defense motions and
arguments.

And while the charge was murder, and the defense was self-defense, he
had to nudge the jury off that and into considering manslaughter.

He flashed the jury his boyish smile.

He wanted to thank them for their attention.

"It was hard because you were in and out of here a lot. A lot of legal
argument went on when you weren't here ... And I'm sure you can
understand that during a trial things happen, things come up, voices get
raised ... Some things happen that you might regret and wish didn't
happen. But I'm sure you can understand that it was done in defense of
my client, Doctor Taylor. Don't hold that against him."

His client, on his counsel, had not testified because the state had not
met the burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt on its indictment of
murder. "We considered each juror very carefully and among the things
you undertook to do when you took your oath is to decide the case solely
upon the evidence and nothing else."

Do not let "suspicion, speculation or innuendo enter your
deliberations"@specially innuendo, "because innuendo is an implication
based on a negative image of this man that the state has tried to
maintain in connection with its proofs."

Venturi paused.

There were other "lesser" offenses involving manslaughter that the jury
would also have to consider, such as aggravated manslaughter" or
manslaughter committed "in the heat of passion."

The judge would instruct the jury about them.

But there, too, the burden of proof was on the prosecution.

He reminded the jury that he had never said Teresa was in a
"drug-crazed" condition. "I said she was in a crazed' state."

Many elements came together to affect her behavior the "terrible night"
of her death. Codeine for her pain.

Cocaine to counter the numbness from codeine.

Her diet pills and "other drugs not screened for" in the autopsy.

"No sleep." Her menstrual period that was just beginning.

Her "bouts of depression."

The toxicologist brought in by the state testified that Teresa Taylor's
body showed a "normal recreational dose" of cocaine. "What is a normal,
recreational dose? A quarter of a gram? A gram every so often? Two grams
over a weekend night? The point is there's no such thing. It depends
upon the person. He said these levels were so low, so low. How can it be
said they were so low after five a days' postmortem analysis? Does that
jibe with common sense? You know, when experts come in and testify, they
are witnesses for a party.

Doctor Taylor is not a Klaus von Billow. He doesn't have unlimited funds
to go all around the world to get experts. But you, ladies and
gentlemen, don't leave Your common sense, fortunately, outside the
doorway of this courtroom."

Venturi evoked the "shocking and unbelievable sight" that confronted
Ken. "Can you imagine the rage of the father?" he asked.

". - I'm sure the prosecutor will point out to you that my client is a
fully developed, strong man. That Mrs. Taylor was five foot three.

You have to use your common sense and look at the situation through the
eyes of the person who was there. Ask yourself whether detached
reflection can be expected in view of a raised dumbbell. Whether
detached reflection can be expected if that person in her state got past
You to your baby.

You have to ask yourselves that question through the eyes of a father in
fear for his baby." Afterward, it was "horrible," he said. "It's obvious
the body was wrapped up, taken away, put in a trunk. Things were cleaned
up.

It's not denied. It doesn't make you like this man.

It doesn't make me like him. It doesn't make anybody like him.

But it doesn't make it murder  ... "His concern was to buy time, to
deliver his son safely to his parents.

What's the first thing he said when he handed his son over? He said,
Son, you're in safe hands now. You're safe now."

That was his concern as a father.

He gestured toward Ken, who was weeping. And when the body was found and
Ken Taylor turned himself in to the police, Venturi said, "What did they
do to preserve what was going to be his statement?

Nothing!

No court stenographer to take little notes, no tape recording  ... How
different it would be if it was he got away' rather than he got it
away." He may have said that, but we'll never know beyond a reasonable
doubt, will we?

They heard what they wanted to hear, not what was said." Even if Ken had
said it, "I submit to you that while there is no self-defense and no
Self-pr-protection of another under those circumstances, the state has
still proven nothing more than either reckless manslaughter or
manslaughter under reasonable provocation in the heat of passion."

Venturi became indignant. "I told you in my opening that the state would
introduce evidence only designed to paint this man as some kind of evil
person, some kind of monster. And they tried that with respect to the
Las Brisas frame-up that occurred on the honeymoon in Acapulco ... the
quote minimal injury unquote to Doctor Taylor."

Anyone familiar with martial arts knows that a kick to a vital area like
the back of the neck cuts off the "circulation of blood to the brain."

Chalet had had enough. "There is no testimony about that," he shouted.

Farren said, "Mr. Venturi, there is no testimony with regard to the
inner workings of the brain, knockouts, martial arts, et cetera.

Just confine your remarks, please, to the testimony."

Where were the Mexican policemen, Venturi demanded, who would say that
"Doctor Taylor ever admitted laying one finger on his wife?

You all heard Mrs. Peraino testify. None of the things that she says he
said are corroborated anywhere. Where did it come from? Why in God's
name would he tell her he beat up his wife if he wants money from her to
go see his wife?

Does this make any sense at all?"

This, he cried, was the "kitchen sink" prosecution the state had
resorted to. "As I stated in the beginning, this is not a case of
murder, ladies and gentlemen. It's the case of a family tragedy.

Doctor Taylor, whether he ever spends a day more in jail or the rest of
his life in jail, cannot win. He will always be haunted for the rest of
his days by what has happened. I place Doctor Taylor's fate in your
hands." Paul Chalet's voice boomed through the courtroom.

"Teresa is dead. She can't talk to us. And Taylor is a liar. So when you
go into that jury room, there will be some unanswered questions.

But there should be no mystery, no mystery at all, that this was a
murder and this defen, is the murderer." Chalet said, "We've heard about
an incident in Acapu co and an incident in Manalapan. In both cases,
Teresa was the victim. In both cases, the defendant's explanations
strain our common sense and understanding to the utmost."

In Manalapan, "We heard that he got up at eight o'clock, came
downstairs, and observed Teresa having fellatio with the baby.

When he saw that, he screamed and she ran to the sewing room, the weight
room.

He went after her and she attacked him. Perhaps," Chalet said, pointing
at Ken, she was upset that he intruded into her sex play with a
five-month-old baby. But be says she attacked him. And when she attacked
him, this five-foot-three woman, he took that barbell from her and he
gave it to her.

In Acapulco, "We heard about a confrontation with intruders. And if
there was a confrontation, it was Teresa who put up the battle, not this
six-foot, two-hundred-pound defendant. When you use common sense and
reason, you don't even have to consider the testimony of Sorayda Peraino
... But what possible motivation could she have to come in this
courtroom and lie to us?

How can you be mistaken when you've had a conversation with a man who
you've met on his honeymoon and he tells you that he's knocked his
wife's teeth out?"

Chalet retraced Ken's actions after the murder. In Pittsburgh, his
ex-wife described him as appearing "normal" before he "dumps" Teresa
along a Pennsylvania road. "is this the family tragedy' we've heard
about?" lie walked around the defense table and stood behind Ken.

"Can you imagine the man who would take the sister and brother of his
murdered wife to Newark Airport with photos of her, show them around,
take them into bars, and wait for a flight he knew she would never be
on? And then go to the Benigna house and say I'm hungry' to Mrs.
Benigna, and she would feed him and he would say, Thanks, Mom."

" Chalet's voice dropped. "A cold, calculating, devious liar."
Admittedly, he said, Teresa was using drugs.

"We know from what was in the autopsy and the toxicological test that
there was a small quantity of codeine and a breakdown product of cocaine
found in the body. But in all those stories we've heard, where is the
bizarre activity? All of her friends testified that she had no
difficulty taking care of the baby. You've seen the videotape.

She was working. She told Cindy Diaz, Yes, I've got a hangover."

That night Angela Rozek was over to the house. Teresa seemed tired, but
fine. A normal night. Where is the bizarre activity?"

Nothing had angered Chalet more than Jack Venturi's references to a
"kitchen sink" prosecution. Chalet was sure that the jury was with him
now, and now he let Venturi have it.

"We have seen Taylor shed tears in this courtroom, at one time consoled
by the defense counsel.

I submit to you that the only tears this man has shed are because he's
in this courtroom facing what he's facing. And he can turn those
emotions on or off like the faucet on that kitchen sink we're supposedly
using to convict him."

Chalet said, "There was no fellatio. There was no selfdefense.

Why did it happen? What triggered it? I don' t know. Why the Vaseline?

I don't know. What time? He says eight A.M. I say I don't know because
doesn't it seem strange that Teresa was found in the same clothes she
had on at ten-thirty at night, with a watch, a bracelet, with earrings,
with her necklaces?

"But what do we know? We know that there is no reason in the world for
this twenty-fiveyear-old woman to be dead. For the baby to have no
mother. For her parents to have lost a daughter. And if there is no
reason for her death, then there is no reason why this defendant should
not be held accountable for her murder ... I ask you to find this
defendant guilty of murder, because that's what he did to Teresa
Taylor."

As Chalet finished, Celeste, sobbing out of control, had to be helped
from the courtroom by her father.

(HA! CELESTE'S BIG MOMENT!) In his instructions to the jury, Judge
Farren defined the five possible verdicts it could reach under New
Jersey law. All, he said, fell under the umbrella of "intent"-the
"design, resolve or determination with which a person acts." All had to
be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

The indictment was for murder-"The unlawful killing of one person by
another purposely or knowingly." Purposely meant that the accused had
the " conscious object to cause death or serious bodily injury resulting
in death." Knowingly meant that he was "aware" of what he was doing.

"-Such things as the place where the act occurred, the weapon used, the
location, number, nature of wounds, and all that was done or said by the
defendant preceding, connected with, and immediately succeeding the
event leading to the death of the decedent are among the circumstances
to be considered."

While the state was not required "to prove a motive," farren said, the
absence of motive could be considered.

The jury also was required to dwell on three types of manslaughter even
though they were not in the indictment.

First, and most serious, was aggravated manslaughter, when a person
"recklessly causes the death of another person under circumstances
manifesting extreme indifference to human life." Extreme indifference,
he said, "does not focus on the defendant's state of mind, but rather on
the circumstances under which you find he acted."

The second was reckless manslaughter, when "a person consciously
disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that will result from
his conduct."

Third was manslaughter committed in the heat of passion from a
reasonable provocation.

"Provocation in law," Farten said, "must be such as, in the opinion of
the jury, would probably throw the mind of an average person of ordinary
self-control into a state of uncontrolled rage or anger.

The provocation must be of such character and so close to the act of
killing that for the moment the defendant could not be considered the
master of his own understanding." Finally there was a verdict of not
guilty on the grounds of self-defense. "The defendant states that he
acted in selfdefense and also in what we call the defense of others, in
this particular case, the defense of his young child Yott must decide
the following issues: A, did the defendant, Kenneth Taylor, reasonably
believe that he was in such imdiediate danger of actual or pending
bodily harm as to believe such a present danger could only be repelled
by use of defensive or protective force? B, did the defendant use a.

level of force in his self-defense which he reasonably believed was
necessaq? C, did the defendant reasonably believe that the force used or
about to be used by the other person, Teresa Taylor, was unlawful?"

The jury retired at three-thirty that afternoon to commence its
deliberations. in the courthouse baseken was taken to a holding cell
ment. Chain-smoking, cursing Chalet and Farren and Chalet's "pigs," he
paced back and forth, seven paces from one end of the cell to the other.
A dreaded future closed in on him.

Would he be pacing like this for the remainder of his life? e in and It
was close to six o'clock when a guard cam told Ken to put on his jacket
and tie.

"What is it? They've decided already?"

"No, the jury's confused about something," the guard said. "They want to
ask the judge some questions. Hey, Doc, maybe you'll get lucky."

set faces Reporters packed the courtroom. Ken saw the of the Henignos,
the drawn faces of Jean and Zach- After the jurors filed in, Farren told
them he had received their request for "redefinition and clarification"
of four possible verdicts-murder and the three degrees of manslaughter.
Because the hour was late, he was dismissing them for the night. He'd do
it in the morning.

"You think they're thinking manslaughter?"

Ken whispered to Venturi.

"Yes," Venturi said. Who knows? he thought.

Chaict didn't know either. His mind went back to another time, to that
other murder case, when he sat hunched over a tape recording that
indisputably proved cold-blooded murder, wondering what the jury was
doing, why it was taking so long.

Only Guy Mccormick remained supremely confident. "It has to be murder,"
he told Bob Fausak.."They just want to be sure they've got everything
buttoned down." Back in his holding cell, Ken stopped pacing.

The jury wasn't just thinking about murder.

They were confused! He remembered the chagrin on Farren's face.

Thank God, he thought.

Hallelujah!

At eight A.M the jurors resumed deliberating. At ten o'clock, they
requested more instructions from Farren. In addition to redefinition and
clarification, they wanted specific examples from previous trials.

He wasn't going to give them that, he said. It would divert them from
the case at hand.

Then he went through the possible verdicts again. He spent most of his
time trying to delineate the difference between aggravated and reckless
manslaughter. Elated, Ken concluded that Farren believed the jury was
focusing on manslaughter.

It got down to a difference "in degree," Farren said. "Reckless
manslaughter is the same as aggravated manslaughter without the phrase
under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life."

So you can see it's a degree lower." The operative wording was
"disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk" in causing death.

Good, Ken thought. It still sounded confusing .

This time, though, Ken was in the holding cell little more than an hour
before his guard said, "They've got a verdict." Venturi saw it right
away. When the jurors came in, none of them looked at him-or Ken.

"We find the defendant guilty as charged," the foreman said.

Later, Venturi learned that the first vote was nine-tothree for murder.

The three holdouts had wanted some form of manslaughter.

In view of the mandatory thirty-year sentence Ken was looking at, Chalet
asked that his bail-"with no percent'be doubled to a million dollars.

Farren said he would raise it to $750,000.

Sentencing was set for September 27, 1985, at nine A.M. Venturi said in
a press interview that undoubtedly an appeal would be filed based on the
"cumulative effect" of the admission of three pieces of evidence: the
Las Brisas assault, blown-up color photographs of the decedent enhanced
with a "red haze," and the videotape of Teresa playing with the baby.

Chalet said he wasn't surprised that there would be an appeal.

"If you were facing thirty years without parole, you'd probably appeal
too," he said..

Zach Taylor remained in the courtroom, tears streaming down his face.

Jean exhibited no emotion, When they left, they refused comment.

Reporters crowded around the Benignos.

Louise Benigna was quoted as saying that Ken deserved the death penalty.

Al Benigna said, "There's nothing to celebrate. There are no winners
here."

The next day, Jack Venturi received a note from Ken: JACK, Thank you for
what you could do. I am so shocked by this verdict. I was there, I no
[sic] what happened and why it happened. Does my panic and depression
over my wife'9 death mean I am a murderer? Jack, I was not guilty in
Mexico. Chalet and Ferron [sic] were totally wrong to introduce this
flaccid "evidence." It's over. It's too late now and nothing can be
changed, at least for now in the very near future.

I will be in touch. Please do your very best to assure my son goes where
Teresa and I wanted him to be in the event of such a tragedy as
this-with my parents. That is the only tradeoff that will make any sense
to me now.

God bless you in your endeavor. It means the entire world to me.

Thanks again-I know you did your best and had my best interests at
heart.

Sincerely, Ken Two pieces of mail pertaining to the case also arrived
that day. One, accompanied by a bill for services, was a formal report
from the Philadelphia toxicologist, S. K. Niyogi, unequivocably
confirming that "Teresa Taylor was not under the influence of the
stimulant effect of cocaine ('crazed with drugs') during the time of her
death."

The other was from the State Department.

While all of Chalet's official efforts to get a report from Washington
regarding the Acapulco assault were fruitless, Venturi's Freedom of
Information request-along with a check-now produced results, however
unwelcome. Enclosed was a signed report by the consular agent, Urbanek.

It was dated July 16, 1984, two days after Ken's arrest, and completely
corroborated Sorayda Peraino's testimony, Re TAYLOR, KENNETH ZACHARY.

Went to see Kenneth-got irtfo for telegraphic report. He did not wish to
sign privacy act or have anyone informed. He said his wife was taking
drug pills, they were drinking, got in argument, he beat her.

Later went to see Theresa [sic] at Centro Medico. Theresa was badly
beaten, for a time her condition was serious, but she was talking and
recovering. She said she didn't know what happened to her.

Then, fresh from a jailhouse visit with Ken, Jean and Zach came to see
Venturi. Jean always made him feel uneasy. The reasons were hard to
pinpoint. When he met with the Taylors, Zach did almost all the talking.
But he could never get over the feeling that Jean was really in charge,
that the two of them had first discussed everything very carefully and
Zach was simply mouthing what she wanted.

And Venturi still felt that there were deep psychological wounds of a
sexual origin in Ken's past that he would never uncover. Just like he
would never really know what happened that night in Manalapan.

If you held his hand to the fire, Venturi would say that Ken, all jazzed
up, probably wanted anal sex and nothing was working for him, not even
the phone calls, and it went finally from a rape situation to an
assault, "an outright assault."

Zach, fuming, wanted to know why they hadn't had their own toxicologist
testifying. Venturi handed him the Niyogi. report. He wondered what Ken
was telling his parents. Maybe it was fortunate that he had something in
writing, after all Zach quickly moved to another subject.

"What can we do about Acapulco?"

Venturi showed him Urbanek's report. Zach looked as if he'd been kicked
in the stomach.

Jean, though, remained as impassive as ever.

To all intents, it was over. But the dark shadow of Dr. Kenneth Z.

Taylor would not go away.

Part IV THE It lay there festering even before the trial began.

Who ultimately would have custody of the ultimate victim in all of this,
baby Philip?

And right from the start, Ken Taylor drew the lines.

Philip, he informed an investigator from the Monmouth County Probation
Department, had been "baptized" Protestant. Jean and Zach, beyond being
Philip's grandparents, were his "God parents." The boy had to be "raised
in the Protestant faith"-and the Benignos were "devoted Catholics."

Also, Philip must grow up in the "healthy, Christian, moral" environment
of Indiana, away from decadent New York.

Anticipating that the age of his parents might be a negative factor, Ken
said that his younger brother Tom would gladly look after the child
should either Jean or Zach be unable to carry on.

Nobody then knew@except, presumably, Ken and his parents-that Tom,
thirty, his once bright athletic future over with, still single, still
living sporadically at home with Jean and Zach in Marion, picking up a
few dollars officiating at sporting events, had drifted into a world of
drugs-cocaine, hash and pot. Later, Jean would insist that he had become
addicted to cocaine only after he came east to be with her in
Manalapan-and had gotten a temporary job as a security guard@uring the
long months between Ken's arrest and his trial.

And there was Ken's sister. Although it would be news to her-she was at
that time living in the South with two sons and a husband now out of the
army and recovering from a serious illnessken claimed that she was
prepared at a moment's notice to return to Marion with her own family to
care for Philip.

Zach Taylor also spoke glowingly of the advantages of Philip being
"raised in the Midwest rather than in New York City"-in a "good,
Christian home," in an ambiance of "old-fashioned values."

So did Jean. indiana's "low-keyed" life-style, she said, was infinitely
superior for rearing a child to "the fast lane of New York," a lane, she
suggested, that was largely responsible for the grief which had befallen
Ken.

A Taylor family background report from the Grant County Probation
Department in Marion was received on April 30, 1985. It described Ken as
a "widower." The Taylor home was located in a "rather quiet neighborhood
northwest of town." It stated that Zach's salary was approximately
thirty-nine thousand dollars, and that outside of a
seventeen-thousand-dollar balance on his mortage, he was free of debt.

The report quoted Ernest J. Dalton, Chief Probation Officer for or Grant
County, as saying "he had known Mr. and Mrs. Taylor and their family for
25 to 30 years and that they have been outstanding citizens of the City
of Marion, Indiana. Mr. Dalton stated that the family has contributed
greatly to all aspects of community life."

This report, with Dalton's signed approval, concluded that "the child
would be most adequately provided for by Mr. and Mrs. Taylor."

Ernest Dalton also happened to be a pillar of the First Baptist Church
of Marion to which Jean, especially, gave so much of her time doing
volunteer work.

In Marion, word was quietly circulated that the Benignos had Mafia
links. It wasn't a hard sell.

Ken further declared his confidence that he would be found innocent of
the charge against him. In that event, he would immediately return to
Indiana with his parents. If he were sentenced to prison, however, he
was not averse to his parents "adopting" Philip pending his release.

"They treat him the best," he said.

According to Ken, Jeff and Celeste White had "very Poor morals."

Jeff not only smoked marijuana on a daily basis, but " sells it, "
Celeste, he said, was a " scatterbrain." Her sole motivation was
"revenge."

The Whites already had one infant to care for and "having a second will
be too much for them to handle." His great fear, though, was that they
"Will turn Philip against him and make him believe he is a horrible man,
who murdered his mother, when that was not what really happened."

Jeff White was reported as earning twenty-five thousand dollars as a
marine oiler for the Staten Island Ferry Service. The "neat and clean"
two-bedroom condominium that he and Celeste occupied was deemed
"adequate" for the time being to meet the needs Of two small children,
although more spacious quarters would eventually be required.

For their part, Jeff and Celeste pointed to the age of the Taylors.

While Jean and Zach were "lovely, well-meaning grandparents," they would
be nearing the age of seventy when Philip was ten and "with all their
good intentions, they will not be able to keep up with -him."

Jeff and Celeste did not object to the Taylors visiting Philip, but were
adamantly against continued contact with Ken. They would allow "Philip
to make his own decision when he gets older," Celeste said that she
desperately loved Philip. She wished nothing more than to take her
sister's place as his mother. "She has a newborn daughter, Christina,
and feels Philip and she will grow as brother and sister."

Although Jeff had no blood ties to Philip, he was reported as feeling
"as close to him as any father could." It was also noted that Jells own
father abandoned his family when Jeff was four years old, and he knew
what a fatherless life could be like.

"He agonizes for the child being bounced back and forth and wishes for
it to end, one way or another.

Despite Jean's accusations that Philip had returned "ravished and
irritated" after each custody period with the Whites, the Monmouth
County Probation Department found him to be in "fine health." It
recommended that the child be placed in the custody of the Whites.

George Warren, a state-appointed guardian to oversee the child's interim
interests, foresaw little likelihood of the Whites and Taylors ever
resolving their differences. His position on the issue of permanent
custody was,"to favor the award of custody to Celeste and Jefferson
White."

Still, Judge Julia L. Ashbey, who had ordered the temporary split
custody through Ken's trial, reserved final judgment. She wanted
additional psychological evaluations.

For these hearings, the Taylors retained Barry Shapiro, the lawyer whom
Zach had first contacted on Ken's behalf. As Shapiro would later
concede, he became emotionally involved in the case. Although he was a
Valley Road neighbor of Ken's, he'd never met him. But during the
pretrial months, he had gotten to know Jean and Zach, and in his view,
they were "decent, honest, churchgoing people." Shapiro put a reverse
spin on a biblical injunction. In this instance, he said, "The sins of
the son shouldn't be visited on the parents."

To counter the findings of a psychologist the Whites had hired, Shapiro
brought in another one to support the Taytors. Then when neither side
could agree on a third, neutral expert, Judge Ashbey herself picked a
specialist in child psychology named Michele Rabinowitz, who came with
an impressive, single-spaced, three-page r6sum6 of educational and
professional accomplishments.

And she made the difference.

After extensive testing and interviewing of the Whites and the Taylors,
in and out of the presence of Philip, Dr. Rabinowitz came down on the
side of Celeste and Jeff. At the child's current age, she wrote,
"bonding" was critical: "Thus it is Of utmost importance that the
decision concerning custody of Philip be completed immediately so that
be be allowed to bond psychologically to one set of parents ... In a
situation such as this, where there are no bad guys,' the decision about
what is in the best interests of Philip is difficult.

However, it is the opinion of this Psychologist that Philip Taylor is
best served by being placed in the care of Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson White
... Philip will need the psychological security of real parents and real
commitment. This security may be best identified if Philip were adopted
by Mr. and Mrs. White. Whether custody or adoption, Mr. and Mrs. Everett
Taylor should be allowed whatever visitation rights they would be given
as natural grandparents." A consent agreement was then worked out
between Shapiro and a lawyer retained by the Whites.

And on August 27, in an order that really didn't satisfy either side,
Judge Ashbey ruled that from September I to June 30 each year, custody
of the child would be with Jeff and Celeste.

From July I to August 31, the Taylors would have him, along With an
extra week beginning the day after Christmas.

Ken would be permitted one telephone call a week to Philip, the cost to
be borne by him.

Celeste and Jeff would either take the child, or have the child taken,
for a monthly visit to Ken in prison.

The Taylors were also "entitled to liberal visitation, including
off-premises visitation, upon reasonable notice."

To ensure compliance, each party was to post a two-thousand-dollar bond.

The Parties were directed to "confer with each other and discuss all
issues concerning the health, education, and welfare" of the child, "At
an appropriate time," they were also to "obtain professional counseling
and guidance concerning the manner and wording to explain the situation
involving his natural parents.

How dare she! Mom and Dad had much more experience raising children!

In the Monmouth County Jail, Ken cursed Ashbey-and Rabinowitz-as he had
Chalet and Farren. Awaiting his sentencing, which had been delayed to
October 4, he remained in the medical wing. He could no longer claim a
bum ankle, but with two empty cells in the wing, it just seemed simpler
to keep him where he was. Now, following Ashbey's order, the time had
come to break out.

Inmates in the wing were allowed to roam freely within its confines
until the eleven P.M. lock-up. Ken had discovered that the bottom pane
was missing in the louvered window of one of the empty cells.

Better yet, it was the one cell that had a solid door with a peephole
instead of bars. Still, it wouldn't be easy to escape. The window also
had a heavy mesh screen with recessed bolts connected to the frame and a
steel roll bar over the missing pane.

Ken told the guard he'd been cultivating for an escape wrench to reach
the attempt that he would need an alien screen bolts and a pair of
hacksaws for the bar. He said his parents were departing the Manalapan .
house for Marion on Sunday, September 1. They would leave the key under
the front doormat, so all the furniture and appliances could be removed
that night. Two days later, when Celeste and Jeff drove to Valley Road
to pick up Philip's belongings with a key supplied by the court, they
found the house ransacked. They called the police, who contacted the
Taylors.

Zach accused the Whites of the theft.

The following Friday, September 13, the guard brought Ken the wrench and
hacksaws. They were hidden in the spine of a novel by Stephen King,
Different Seasons, that had been taken from the jail library.

The next night Ken slipped into the cell, partially closing the door
behind him. The other prisoners knew what was going on, but caught up in
the excitement, said nothing.

Then one of them joined Ken. He needed all the help he could get.

The wrench wasn't the right size and excruciating time passed working
the bolts loose. The screen crashed suddenly to the floor, but the noise
was muffled by sounds from the wing's television set. Then the roll bar
kept spinning as the two men tried to saw through it.

Finally, Ken wedged pencils in the space at each end of the bar to keep
it stationary. But time ran out. They had a quarter of an inch to go
when the eleven P.m. lock-up commenced.

The inevitable happened. By morning, one of the inmates had snitched.

Ken denied any knowledge of the escape try. The original informant and
another prisoner in the wing singled out the guard who was Ken's likely
confederate.

He, too, denied everything. An effort was made to see who took the novel
from the library, but only law books had to be signed out.

The guard was forced to resign. That was okay with him, he said.

He was planning to move to Florida anyway with his girlfriend, Ken was
placed in an isolation cell in the jail's basement.

On October 4, he was brought out for sentencing.

Paul Chalet told Judge Farren that while the life sentence the defendant
faced called for thirty years without parole, he didn't see anything in
the statute that prevented the imposition of a minimum of fifty years.
"There is," Chalet said, "a genuine risk that if this defendant is ever
released from prison, he could commit further offenses."

Farren agreed that "this was a heinous, savage, brutal destruction of
the defendant's wife." Kenneth Taylor had "literally slaughtered his
wife with a barbell, wrapped her body in a rug, and drove halfway across
the country to visit with his ex-wife for a few days with the decedent
still in the trunk of his car."

He said that he'd like nothing more than to grant Chalet's request.

But his reading of the statute didn't permit it. He'd go by the book.

It would be thirty years. The earliest the defendant could be released,
at age sixty-six, was 2015.

That same afternoon Ken was bused in chains to a state penal receiving
center. Three weeks later he was shipped to a maximum security block at
New Jersey's main penitentiary, the 150-year-old Trenton State
Prison-"Old Dusty," it was called, after its vast recreational yard in
which not a blade of grass was visible.

A public defender was appointed to handle his appeal.

Celeste answered the phone. The operator said, "A collect call for
Philip from Doctor Ken Taylor." She felt her stomach turn over.

She slammed down the receiver and ran to the bathroom where, gagging,
she threw up.

Thirty minutes later, the phone rang again.

This time Jeff answered. He listened. Ken's voice cut in over the
operator's. "I want to speak to him."

"I'm sorry," Jeff said. "He's asleep," and hung up.

Suddenly, the compose@, Cool' facade of Jean Taylor cracked.

The letter, dated November 12, was addressed to Judge Ashbey.

Ostensibly, it was to complain that Ashbey's orders about accepting
phone calls from Ken were being ignored by the Whites.

Nor had they brought the infant to see his "Daddy- Further, a
Thanksgiving visitation she and Zach requested remained unanswered.

But her letter was truly an explosion of pent-up, disjointed rage.

There was, for instance, the matter of Ken's alleged escape attempt: A
few weeks before Ken left Monmouth County jail an inmate tried to escape
by sawing the bars in his cell with a hacksaw blade.

Ken heard the inmate's Uncle is a guard at the jail & supposedly got the
saw to the inmate- The officer who questioned the inmates was a Mexican
detective [Reyes Quinones] who was at Ken's trial & works for the
prosecutor's dept.

& he knew Ken & we feel the information was used to hold Ken in a
holding cell until he was transferred@ The inmate who was the one trying
to escape was quicky transferred to anotherjail. Now, Ken has been
indicted of trying to escape. This is so unfair ... Now, they are trying
to use this untruth to discontinue the visits which have never started.
Circumstances continue to be unfair!

Then there were the furnishings missing from the Manala. pan house: The
court order was that the Whites were to have Philip's furniture.

Jeff and Celeste & her parents wanted to come Aug. 31 to Ken's home &
take Philip. We were very upset over the decision, because we know the
background of the White-Benigna family & the life that would be ahead
for Philip. They wanted to come while we were there, but we couldn't
bear them coming & taking Philip's furniture & him, also. We told them
to get the furniture & belongings after we left ... Someone or some
group removed the belongings & furniture & did some damage to Ken's home
& we supposedly are responsible.

This is really insulting & only continues to show their characters.

We have proof of being home (in Indiana) the day after the Whites were
to get Philip's furniture & Everett has been at work every day since.

This is just another excuse to use against us. Celeste & Jeff had a
sirniliar [sic] fake robbery of their own appliances & hid them in the
Benigna basement & collected insurance money, but we cannot prove it.

Philip Benigna & Jeff White burn cars & collect insurance.

Our investigatorfound out the insurance company & the date & claim but
the case was closed & the insurance company didn't investigate due to
costs & etc. Memories of "Ken's house" appeared to reinforce her fury: I
cleaned & waxed the floors, cleaned windows, polished cabinets, vacuumed
the carpets, cleaned bathrooms & dusted. Our son, Tom, cut the grass
while he was there, helping to support us, & when he returned home, I
couldn't cut the grass & we payed $180.00 to keep it cut.

We had plumbing work done at $125.00, electrical work for $20.00.

We kept up the mortgage payments, water, sewers, electric, gas, phone, &
the expenses for Philip's doctors, medicine for diaper rash, clothes,
diapers, formula, & food. From November ]8th until we left, Aug.

3]st, we spent $12,000 of our money to live in Ken's home & care for
Philip. Now Mr. George Warren is claiming we didn't take care of the
home & property & is considering making us pay for the loss & damage.

I wonder who he thought was keeping up the mortgage & etc. We hired
North American Movers to ship all of Ken's clothes, books, bookcase &
his stereo (he had it before marriage), & his golf clubs & Philip's car
seat. Jeff White didn't want us to take the car seat, but since the
court order states we [have to) provide transportation at our expense,
we thought it onlyfair to take the car seat.

She resurrected the diaper rash issue: In Jan. after Celeste had her
baby, Philip was treated with diaper rash & it was very bad  ... This
happened over & over & over & I had to take him to Dr. & got
prescriptions 3 times & used the treatment recommended by Dr. (Baking
soda baths 3 times per day for about 15 mins and when diapered to use
the special ointment). Sometimes he was so raw the warm water would make
him cry We took pictures & I kept records and [it] was verified on
several occasions that Philip had diaper rash  ... In Aug.

Celeste asked me, "How do you keep Philip from getting diaper rash?"

Finally, the condition improved. Now, that she has both babies, I don't
know what the condition is. I am very concerned.

Not only was Celeste so unfit a mother that she had to be instructed on
how to boil an egg, but Teresa was fully aware of her shortcomings:
Teresa didn't care for her sister, Celeste, & they didn't get along well
at all. Teresa asked my husband & myself to come & take care of her &
Philip when she came home from the hospital.

She just didn't want her sister & mom taking care of her. We were happy
to do whatever we could & enjoyed them. Ken & Teresa were very happy
with their son & each other. Teresa wanted Philip baptized in our
church, in Indiana, & we were his God-parents.

Teresa really liked it in Indiana & she told us, "If anything happens to
one of us, the remaining one should take the child or children to
Indiana to live." Dr. Rabinowitz several times in her report referred to
Mr. & Mrs. Taylor's lowkeyed life style in Indiana.

Judge Ashbey, it is a much better place to live & raise a child than in
the fast lane of N. Y. A sinister conspiracy was afoot against her and
her husband: When the custody trial was settled, the judgement was
unfair. The report of the N.J.

Probation officer was incomplete. George Warren's report was very
biased. Dr. Rabinowitz's report we couldn't believe! It is our belief
that someone or something [influenced] Dr. Rabinowitz  ... The Whites
can get away with anything!

And in a final bitter outburst, Jean Taylor made it abundantly plain how
she, as opposed to Celeste and Jeff, would deal with informing Philip
about Teresa's death: They won't tell him the whole truth, what his
Mommy was doing to him, that her body contained at least 3

different drugs, codeine, cocaine, & alcohol. That she was attempting to
kill his Daddy ... was abusing him & would have continued if not caught.
What would have become of Philip when Teresa continued sexual abuse of
him? When he got old enough to understand what she was doing, what then?

Jeff and Celeste clung to a portion of Dr. Rabinowitz's report which
said that although the Taylors as grandparents should be granted
visiting tights, "these visitations should not interfere with the
natural and normal bonding process" with the child.

A new, elderly judge, Walter H. Gehricke, had replaced Julia Ashbey in
family court. And in October, after an evaluation by a Staten Island
psychologist, the Whites petitioned Gehricke to limit the Taylors to
"day" visits. The psychologist, Lewis Hill, noting that the Taylors were
"resistant to any other figure taking on the mother and/or father
label," also recommended "halting all contact with the biological father
at least until such time as Philip is ready to face him."

Drily, Lewis observed, "An additional complication is presented by the
fact that the reason for the father's incarceration is the murder of
Philip's biological mother."

In November, Barry Shapiro brought an action before Judge Gehricke which
said that the Whites had consistently refused to obey Judge Ashbey's
ruling, most specifically in not responding to a request for a
Thanksgiving visitation by the Taylors, Gehricke ordered three day-long
visits right after the he holiday. Then Celeste learned that on two of
the days, Jean and Zach had brought the child to the Trenton State
Prison.

On impulse, she'd asked Jean, "You didn't take Philip to see him, did
you?"

"Yes," Jean said, as if daring her to do something about it.

The thought of eighteen-month-old Philip in Ken's arms was too much for
her to bear. And in December, she and Jeff, after being advised they
were on solid legal ground, asked New York State to assume control of
Philip's destiny.

This effectively put on hold his upcoming week-afterchristmas stay with
the Taylors in Indiana that was part of the original custody
arrangement. But before the Taylors were even notified of this, Zach
phoned Jeff to say that he and Jean were postponing the visit.

They didn't want to interfere with Philip's enjoyment of all the toys
they were sure he'd be getting.

They'd work out something for later, maybe sometime in January.

Celeste would always remember that. It was so uncharacteristically
considerate of them. Kind of scary.

The New York proceedings dragged on through the end of March.

Then, under provisions of the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act,
designed to avoid conflict, states, the ruling went against Celeste and
Jeff. sion was fairly narrow.

Philip had not been living in New York long enough.

Besides, his biological father was still a New Jersey "resident."

Nevertheless, it was an outright, unexpected loss, the first one the
Whites had suffered.

They were crushed. How could they have been let down by their own state?

July and August loomed ahead when Philip would be in Indiana.

They could not allow that to happen. Celeste had recurrent nightmares
about the interruption to the crucial bonding that all the psychologists
talked about, She was now Philip's mother. Philip and Christina were
growing up marvelously together, just as she hoped. She had read the
letter that Jean Taylor wrote to Judge Ashbey. What evil things would
the Taylors be saying about Teresa? They would surely see to it that
Philip was in constant communication with Ken. For sure, he'd be taken
to visit her sister's murderer. Most of all, Celeste was certain that if
Philip were taken away for two months, neither she nor Jeff would ever
see him again.

Fear of losing Philip consumed them. After the New York decision, they
were overwhelmed by apprehension. Every little factor seemed to magnify
menacingly against them.

White-haired Judge Gehzicke, to whom they would now have to return, was
even older than the Taylors. Gehricke would view them as kids unable to
cope. Physically, the Taylors looked as solid and appealing as figures
in a Norman Rockwell painting.

Celeste and Jeff dreaded going back to court.

Every time they did, it brought back wrenching memories of Teresa.

And what chance would they have? They loved their small condominium
apartment, but how could it stack up to the description of the Taylor
home in Marion with its three bedrooms, its big yard, its pool?

The Taylors were established in their community. Zach Taylor made a lot
more money than Jeff. Somehow, Celeste said, they had to get a house of
their own with a yard. Somehow, they had to Prevent that twomonth
visitation. She and Jeff flirted with the idea of fleeing to Canada with
Philip and Christina. Jeff would find another job. They were young
enough to start a new life, and they'd be safe.

But they remained paralyzed. The prospect of appearing before Judge
Gehficke was so unnerving. Even though the petition to move everything
to New York had been perfectly legal and aboveboard, Gehricke certainly
wasn't going to be amused by it.

Then Barry Shapiro forced their hand. On May 29 he filed a contempt of
court motion before Gehricke against Jeff and Celeste for failing to
obey orders not only issued by Judge Ashbey but by Gehricke himself.

There was a laundry list of complaints. The Whites had failed to post a
two-thousand-dollar performance bond ordered by Ashbey, they had failed
to effect visitations between Philip and Kenneth Taylor, they had failed
to permit telephone calls to Philip from both Taylor and his parents,
they had failed to pay court-awarded legal fees to Shapiro after he was
forced to go to Gehricke the previous fall to compel the Thanksgiving
visits, and now they were trying to evade compliance of the two-month
visitation with the Taylors in Indiana.

Shapiro demanded that the visitation be enforced. His motion was
answerable on June 16.

After their initial shock, Celeste remembered how Jeff suddenly said to
her, "Listen, we've been fools. We're not children, for Christ's sake,
we're adults, We can't sit here crying.

It's our responsibility for Philip to have a normal, happy life.

So it's going to be a long fight. Hey, we're the good guys. And the good
guys win! I believe that. Let's stop moaning and groaning."

Frantic, Celeste telephoned the Monmouth County Bar Association.

She asked to be referred to a lawyer knowledgeable about custody
situations. It was urgent. She was given the names of two attorneys,
both men. No, Celeste found herself saying, she didn't want men.

She wanted a woman lawyer. Preferably one who was a mother-someone who
would understand the agony of what she was going through. She got two
more suggestions. Then the woman on the phone said that she shouldn't be
saying this, but Celeste ought to try a lawyer named Janice Miller
first. "She's real dedicated," the woman said.

Celeste telephoned Miller on June 10. The words came spilling out.

She had to see her right away. She was the sister of Teresa Taylor, who
had been brutally murdered by her husband.

Miller remembered that, didn't she?

Janice tried to think. Yes, she did remember.

The dentist who bludgeoned his wife to death in Manalapan about a year
ago.

Celeste explained about Philip and the court-ordered custody
arrangement. Subsequent psychological evaluations showed that the
visitation rights accorded the paternal grandparents should be
drastically modified. Time was short. A hearing was scheduled in a week.

In a week? That made it nearly impossible.

Hadn't Mrs. White retained other lawyers in the past? Yes, Celeste said,
two of them in fact at different times. But they hadn't been forceful
enough. She needed someone who would really fight.

Well, Janice Miller had heard that one before.

Then Celeste got more bad news. Besides not having proper preparation
time, Miller said that her fee was $125 an hour and she'd require $2,000

"up front."

Oh, God, Celeste thought. There was still eight thousand dollars
outstanding from previous court appearances in New Jersey and New York
which, with the help of Al and Louise, they were paying off at two
hundred dollars a week. And on top of everything else, she and Jeff had
just closed on a house, so no social worker could say the condo was too
cramped for Philip. The house was nothing grand, but it did have three
bedrooms and a tiny yard, only a few blocks from the Benignos.

She would simply have to borrow more money from her parents.

"Please, please," Celeste begged. "I don't know where to turn.

All I know is that I want a woman representing us."

Janice lived with her lawyer husband, Frank Gaudio, in a rambling house
they were still renovating in Monmouth County, one that combined their
living and professional quarters, overlooking the Neversink River by the
Jersey shore. And that evening during dinner, she recounted Celeste's
call.

"What did you decide?" Frank asked.

"I told her that I'd at least see her," she said. "There was just
something in her voice I couldn't ignore."

The next afternoon when Celeste arrived, she had the retainer check.

She spoke for almost three hours, pouring out her story with the same
rapid-fire intensity that she used on the phone, her luminous gray eyes
brimming with tears.

Janice couldn't help being impressed with her obvious commitment, her
anguish and love for Philip.

In a way, she was even more impressed with Jeff. Although Celeste did
almost all the talking, his solid honesty, his support for his wife, was
unmistakable. When you got down to it, Janice thought, he could have
easily said that he didn't need this. It wasn't part of the bargain when
he'd married Celeste. Teresa Taylor wasn't his sister.

And yet, clearly, he was as committed to Philip as Celeste was.

There was something more.

Janice did not ask the question that practically everyone else had asked
sooner or later. How could Teresa have stayed with such a man?

Even if she couldn't recall what happened in Acapulco, wouldn't common
sense make her realize what he was like?

Janice didn't ask, because she already had the answer.

Then forty-four, with fine-boned features and short, curly blond hair,
she knew the secret shame and humiliation of a battered wife.

For nine years she'd been one herself. She came from a New Jersey farm
family.

She married at sixteen, two months pregnant, without finishing high
school. By the time she was twenty-one, she had borne four children.

Throughout those nine years, she told no one of the beatings she was
receiving at home, hiding out for days at a time so friends and
neighbors would not see her black eyes and split lips. Finally, in 1967,
after an especially brutal attack that left her with a serious head
injury-her husband told the doctor she had fallen down some stairs, and
she did not contradict him-she came to a chilling realization. If he
touched her one more time, she was certain that she would kill him. So
she fled.

And after that, she never gave up. She earned a high school equivalency
diploma. During the next fifteen years, while raising two sons and two
daughters, she supported her family in assorted jobs-waitress, house
cleaner, newspaper distributor. She took typing and shorthand courses
and first became interested in the law after being hired as a legal
secretary. She graduated from Douglass College, part of Rutgers
University. In a stroke of poetic justice, the money to enter Temple
University's law school in Philadelphia came from a successful sex
discrimination suit that she brought against a law firm where she'd been
employed as a paralegal.

At Temple, she met Frank Gaudio, another law student, fifteen years her
junior. He also had led an eventful life. The son of a construction
laborer from Calabria, in Italy, he arrived in the United States when he
was six. He could not speak a word of English when he went to the first
grade at a public grammar school in Brooklyn. In high school, he was the
class valedictorian.

He got involved with Janice in research projects concerning the legal
plight of abused women. In their third year of law school, they received
a foundation grant to study the status of women in Europe.

Despite their age difference, they fell in love.

They had been married for two years when Celeste and Jeff came into
their lives. Their practice-primarily civil litigation-was just
beginning to show signs of success. Janice devoted every spare moment to
counseling at a shelter for battered women. The last thing they needed
was a lengthy custody case with clients strapped for money.

Janice told Frank that she didn't think it would be that drawn out.

But in any event she couldn't walk away. It was, she said, a classic
example of how violence in a family ends up affecting everyone.

What appalled her more than anything was the ruling requiring Celeste to
accept phone calls from her sister's killer and to bring Philip to see
him in prison once a month. It was such a callous disregard of basic
human emotions.

And she kept remembering Celeste's terror that if Philip was taken to
Indiana for two months, it was the last she'd ever see of him.

She decided to go on the attack, filing a cross-motion instead of
answering Shapiro, pressing for changes in the operative court order.

Following a brief appearance with Shapiro before Gehricke on June the
matter was adjourned until July 1. Now she had some breathing room.

In reviewing the documents Jeff and Celeste supplied, she saw that Dr.
Rabinowitz was obviously the key. Rabinowitz was the only objective
party, picked by the state in the first place, held in high regard by
New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services, the only expert who
had personally evaluated the Whites, the Taylors and Philip.

Miller was even more convinced when she phoned the psychologist and
asked her to testify on behalf of the Whites. "I'm not testifying on
behalf of anyone except the child," Michele Rabinowitz said. "He's the
only one I'm interested in." On that basis, she'd be available.

It was exactly the kind of forthrightness Janice wanted. Judge Gehricke
wouldn't miss it. She would lead off with her, and that might be all
she'd have to do.

Then the day before the court date, Rabinowitz's secretary called.

The psychologist, an avid horsewoman, had been thrown while riding.

She was bedridden with damaged knee ligaments and in great pain.

It would be impossible for her to appear as scheduled.

On July 1, Janice Miller asked Gehficke for an adjournment pending her
recovery. Gehficke refused. There weren't going to be any more
adjournments. And suddenly all the concerns about Gehricke bubbled up.

He announced that there was no reason why this shouldn't be settled in
short order. He was getting sick and tired of the whole business.

There didn't have to be further evaluations. It was a simple case.

The Whites had not abided by a court order. The child's grandparents had
traveled a great distance to be here. If they weren't interested in the
child, they would not have come. He himself was a grandfather.

Pointedly, he said that he knew what it was like to be separated from
his grandchildren. He declared a brief recess, and then they'd get on
with it. He had a full calendar.

To buy time, Miller got "lost" in the courthouse. It meant retreating to
some corner where you couldn't hear the paging system or couldn't be
located. It happened all the time.

To fill the courtroom void, there were always other matters for judges
to consider, other lawyers waiting to be heard. She wandered back at
about twelve-thirty, explaining that because of the Rabinowitz problem,
she had to consult with her clients.

Without comment, Gehricke recessed for lunch.

Well, Janice thought, she'd gotten the morning. If she could stretch
things out through July 3, there'd be the regular July 4

holiday break, and with any luck Rabinowitz would be able to hobble in
after that.

Celeste, her first witness, said she would welcome visitations between
Philip and the Taylors-so long as they weren't ovemights. She and Jeff
would even take him to Indiana under those circumstances. But then, as
Shapiro pounded her in cross-examination, she became rattled and
defensive as she tried to explain-he didn't want explanations, Shapiro
kept saying, he wanted answers-her failure to comply with earlier court
orders, including Gehricke's.

Then suddenly, on the second day, near the end of testimony by Dr. Lewis
Hill, the Staten Island psychologist hired by the Whites, Janice thought
she discerned a subtle shift in Gehricke's attitude.

She introduced portions of Jean Taylor's angry letter to Judge Ashbey in
which Jean wrote that the Whites would never tell Philip the truth
surrounding Teresa's death and that Ken was innocent. Although Ashbey
had placed the letter in the record, it appeared that Gehricke was
unfamiliar with it.

And he listened intently when Hill said it showed that Jean, at least,
harbored extreme hostility toward the Whites and, further, that she
intended to convey destructive information to Philip about his birth
mother.

What would the effect of that be?

It would, Hill said, go a long way in wrecking the child's self-image.

It could "only hurt the kid."

While Shapiro was representing Jean and Zach, Ken had been allowed out
of prison to represent himself in court. And now Ken got a long,
appraising look from Gehricke when he crossexamined Hill.

Hill was against any visitations in prison, right?

Yes.

Well, his conviction was on appeal. "Isn't it going to be easier for him
to be reintroduced to me when I am free to be his father?" Nonplussed
for a moment, Hill said, "It might make that somewhat easier. On the
other hand, if you lose, it might be very hard on him."

Jeff White turned out to be a surprisingly effective witness. It was,
Janice thought, a result of that same innate honesty she recognized in
him when they first met.

He spoke of his feelings for the child and of how, abandoned by his own
father when he was four, he knew a special pain.

"What is your relationship with Philip9"

"I consider myself his father," Jeff said. "I love him very much. When
we first got custody of Philip, I guess I loved him because I felt sorry
for him. But since the time has passed and he's been in my custody, I
love him because he's"-he groped for the words-"like I love my
daughter-He's my son."

The next day, July 3, Janice got an unexpected delay bonus. Ken was
being brought in each morning from Trenton State Prison, and this time
it was nearly eleven before he arrived.

Jeff was still on the stand. And the Taylors had yet to testify.

Gehricke sighed. He had a heavy schedule after the holiday period.

They'd reconvene on July 29.

Ken rose. He pointed out that his parents were supposed to have custody
as of July 1. He assumed that in the interim, Philip would go with Zach
and Jean.

Gehricke shot back, "You have not assumed correctly. This hearing is
going to be completed and everything is going to be held in abeyance
until it is."

Then Judge Gehricke summoned Miller and Shapi his chambers. He wanted
this settled. What he had in was three weeks in Indiana instead of the
two month another two weeks around Christmas. He made it sound that if
the two sides didn't get together, he would go ahead and hand down his
own ruling along those lines. Janice, he added, could appeal all she
liked.

No way, Celeste said.

And on July 29, Michele Rabinowitz, on crutches, was finally sworn in.

Developmentally, she said, children of Philip's age were in a crucial
period of adjustment. There was a normal developmental fear called
"separation anxiety." It began at around twelve months, peaked at
eighteen months, and started to subside at two to two and a half years.

Children would suffer psychic trauma if they were separated from mother
and father figures during these significant times.

In her reevaluation, she said that the original shared custody ruling
"was not in Philip's best interests." She said an immediate, definitive
decision must be made about him, so that he may be allowed to bond
psychologically with one set of parents.

She described Celeste and Jeff as "very pospositive, loving, and
nurturing" parents for Philip. The terms "mother" and "father" for them
were "quite appropriate."

She recommended "very limited visitation" with his natural grandparents
"over the next few years." At the moment, any overnight visits would be
"extremely risky and potentially severely traumatizing."

While grandparental visitation this year could be of "two weeks
duration," there should be none that were "overnights." Philip should be
picked up for the day and returned home at bedtime.

By the age of three, possibly, Philip might be ready for a single
overnight visit. He would not be ready for a one or two month stay until
he was around ten years old. In any case, Rabinowitz said, "Visits with
grandparents of a one or two month duration are highly unusual and
interfere with the normal family process."

The court "should consider the strong possibility of psychological
trauma that Philip will experience if he is separated from his nuclear
family' at this most vulnerable time." She said, "This child has
suffered enough trauma in his life."

Questioning her, Janice Miller noted that Ken's conviction was on
appeal. What about that?

"I believe what's in Philip's best interest is that he have no contact
until the appeal is decided."

"And if the appeal is decided where Kenneth Taylor remains in prison for
a period of time, would you recommend that Philip see him at that
point?"

"Not unless Philip wants to."

That afternoon, Barry Shapiro, all at once quite friendly, approached
Janice in the hallway outside the courtroom. You know, he said, they
really ought to settle this. It's what the judge wants.

Miller talked it over with Celeste and Jeff.

She was sure Gehricke was leaning their way, but she was equally certain
that he would wind up giving the Taylors something.

Suppose she offered Shapiro a week's visitation in Indiana? That would
at least show Gehricke that they weren't being intransigent.

Okay, Celeste said at last. What could the Taylors do in a week?

To Janice's astonishment, Shapiro did not dismiss the offer out of hand.
He said he'd have to talk it over with his clients. Gee, she remembered
thinking, Barry must really think he's in bad shape.

In the morning, Shapiro came back with a surprisingly mild counter
proposal. How about two weeks?

Now Celeste wasn't so sure.

Look, Janice told her, they weren't going to do any better.

Gehricke was already talking about three weeks. If he got irritated, who
knew what he might tack on?

On Friday, August 1, everyone returned to the courtroom. At the last
second, as Gehricke was about to spell out the agreement, Celeste said
she wanted to call Dr. Rabinowitz to find out what she thought about the
two weeks.

Wearily, Gehricke said that Celeste could have done the by now, but all
right, he'd allow it.

Michele Rabinowitz told Celeste that the only way she would support the
settlement was if, during the first week, Celeste spoke by telephone to
Philip twice a day and, during the second week, Celeste and Jeff would
go to Motion and spend at least an hour a day with him.

When Celeste reported this, Gehricke sighed again and said well,
Rabinowitz was the expert. If that's what she wanted, that was what
she'd get.

From August I until August 16, Gehricke said, the Taylors would have the
"infant child" in Indiana.

On Saturday, August 91

Celeste would visit Philip in the Taylor residence for two hours, and
for an hour every day after that for the remainder of the second week.

During the week after Christmas, the Taylors would travel to Staten
Island for a week's overnight visitation with Philip, Anything after
that would be decided "in the best interests of Philip."

In conversation with Philip, the Taylors "will always refer to the
Whites as "Mother" and "father." The Taylors will be referred to as
"grandmother" and "grandfather."

"Under no circumstances," Gehricke said, "will Everett and Jean Taylor
allow any contact between Philip Taylor and Kenneth Taylor.

There will be no visits to the Trenton State Prison where he is
incarcerated.

There will be no telephone communication between Kenneth Taylor and
Philip Taylor and no letters read to Philip from Kenneth by Everett and
Jean Taylor." Gehricke asked Ken if he had anything to say.

"Not at this time," he replied.

Then, as he was being led out, Celeste saw him wink at his parents.

She ran after Janice and clutched her arm. Had Janice seen the wink?

What did it mean?

Miller said no, she hadn't. And she didn't know what it meant.

All she knew was that, considering everything, they'd gotten the best
deal possible.

That same evening, Jean and Zach drove to Staten Island in their Toyota
Minicruiser to pick UP Philip. He appeared confused and started crying.
Celeste, heartsick, tried to console him. He was going off on a
wonderful trip with his grandparents.

She gave him his pillow and his fluffy yellow Big Bird from the "Sesame
Street" show that he clutched every night in bed. She also gave him a
calendar with squares in which she drew pictures of Christina and the
Staten Island house, and then in the square for Saturday, August 9, she
drew figures of herself and Jeff and labeled them Mommy and Daddy.

She pointed to it and told him that was the day she would be seeing him
again. She'd be talking to him every day on the phone. And in only a few
days, she would be coming out to see him, and she counted out the
squares to show him when that day would be.

Relieved, Janice Miller turned to other cases that had been piling up.

Around eleven P.m. on Wednesday, August 6, she and Frank went to bed.

Unaccountably, she couldn't sleep. She tossed and turned for almost two
hours. It was no use. She was having a full-blown anxiety attack for no
apparent reason. What was wrong with her? She glanced at Frank,
peacefully asleep, envying him.

Finally, she got up and went downstairs to her office and started doing
paperwork. She had rarely worked more feverishly, she would recall, so
oblivious to the passage of time that she was actually startled when
Frank appeared, ready for breakfast.

He had no idea she'd been up all night. They had their usual orange
juice and coffee, and then Frank left for the Freehold courthouse.

He was trying a big medical malpractice suit, and Janice wished him
luck.

Oddly, she still didn't feel the least bit tired.

In Staten Island, around the same time, Thursday morning, Celeste was
dialing the Taylors to discuss her arrival in Marion on Saturday.

Next door, a neighbor, Jack Pierro, was getting ready to go to work.

Earlier, he had seen Jeff drive off to the ferry slip. Suddenly, Pierro
heard a piercing scream. It was Celeste.

Pietro dashed outside to the front door of the Whites. It was locked.

He ran up the narrow walk between their houses and got in the back way.

He saw Celeste bent over the kitchen table, her fist hammering on it.

She was sobbing.

"Celeste, what's wrong?"

She shrieked through her sobs, "Those sons of bitches. They did it!

They did it!"

"What? Did what? Who?"

She looked at Pietro despairingly and then shook her head as if to
gather herself together. She went to the wall phone. The receiver was
dangling off its hook.

She retrieved it and called Janice Miller.

She didn't care what Janice was doing, she told the secretary.

She had to speak to her, now.

Then Janice was on the line. What was the matter?

The Taylors, Celeste cited. She'd phoned them about travel arrangements.
Jean had answered.

First, Celeste asked how Philip was doing, and, very sweetly, Jean said
there was something Zach wanted to tell her.

And when she heard Zach on the line, she asked again if something was
the matter, and he said he wanted to tell her that there was no point in
her coming to Marion. They'd just adopted Philip. She'd never see him
again.

365 itchapter NINETEEN From start to finish, the conspiracy was directed
by Ken Taylor. It began to take final form six months after his
conviction, around the time Zach postponed Philip's 1985

Christmas visitation in Indiana, a time when, significantly, the Grant
County courts in Marion would have shut down for all practical purposes
during the holiday season.

Ken had told his parents to find out from Barry Shapiro what action New
Jersey might take if Philip was adopted in Marion. They reported that
Shapiro said he couldn't see anything New Jersey could do once the child
was physically there. They quoted Shapiro as saying, "You can take that
boy to Indiana and adopt him. It'll take years before anything is
settled. But don't tell anybody I said so."* *While Shapiro would later
say that he did not specifically recall such a discussion, he conceded
that it was no secret the Taylors wanted Philip. And after all, Jeff and
Celeste had displayed more than a little ,.underhandedness" in trying to
move court jurisdiction over the child to New York. In any event,
Shapiro said, if a discussion about an adoption in Indiana did occur, it
certainly did not embrace anything illegal.

Next, the fight attorney in Marion had to be found. And Jean and Zach
did not have to look beyond their own First Baptist Church.

Patrick N. Ryan not only was a staunch church member, but enjoyed local
renown as a fiercely litigious, anti-establishment practitioner. It
didn't matter what the established authority was, courthouse buffs liked
to say. You could count on "old Pat" being against it.

Ryan had Ken formally consent to the adoption of Philip by "his parents,
Everett and Jean Taylor," and filed it in the Grant County Circuit
Court.

On January 17, 1986, while custody proceedings in New York were still
going on, Ryan filed a "Petition for Adoption" on behalf of the Taylors.
It was artfully crafted After identifying them as paternal grandparents
of I the said child" and residents of Marion, it stated that "the
child's mother is deceased" without any reference to the circumstances
of her death.

There was no mention of maternal grandparents, or even if they existed.

It said that the "child's father, Kenneth Zachary Taylor, " had agreed
to the adoption.

It did not mention what prompted Ken's consent, or what his current
residence was-namely, the Trenton State Priso@r why he happened to be
there.

The child, it declared, "has lived with the petitioners from November
12, 1984-the day Ken brought Philip to Marion-until September 1, It did
not say that during this period, there had been in fact split custody
with Celeste and Jeff, or that after September 1, the Whites had been
awarded dominant custody, or that all during this timeexcept for the six
days after Teresa's murder-Philip had lived in another state.

It further declared that "the child does not have any property,"
neglecting to list, among other things, the insurance Ken had taken out
for Teresa to which Philip was now the beneficiary.

Later, Zach Taylor would explain that he didn't consider "insurance" as
"property."

Finally, the petition stated that the adoption "will serve the best
interests of the child" without noting, to put it mildly, that this was
in grave dispute.

The Taylors then authorized Barry Shapiro to file the contempt of court
citation against Celeste and Jeff to enforce the original shared custody
order-to make sure that Philip got to Marion.

As Shapiro was dickering with Janice over a one or two week visitation,
Ken asked his parents if two weeks would give them enough time.

They checked with Pat Ryan. Everything was set, they said.

On Friday, August 1, before picking up Philip, Zach telephoned Ryan.

They were on their way. Driving in their motor home," they'd be in
Marion Saturday night, Sunday morning at the latest.

Ryan contacted the Grant County Welfare Department to arrange for an
appraisal of the Taylors that was required in any adoption petition.

These on-premises investigations basically addressed the home
environment: how many rooms and beds, its physical condition, the
financial resources of the petitioners, and observation of their
interaction with the child.

Ryan requested speedy action. The adoption had been hanging fire for
nearly seven months and it was time to get going. All the other
necessary papers had been filed.

On Tuesday morning, a caseworker arrived at the Taylor residence.

She spent about an hour and a half there. A front-page summary of her
four-page report confirmed that the child's mother was "deceased."

On Wednesday, once the report was filed, Ryan called Thomas R. Hunt.

Hunt was the Grant County circuit judge, who handled adoptions.

He had one, Ryan said. Could he come in before court started in the
morning? It was all in place. Boy's mother passed away. Father unable to
care for him. Wonderful Marion grandparents ready, willing and able to
step in. A glowing welfare report on them. It was Indiana-America-at its
finest. Almost made you want to weep.

As is customary, Ryan prepared the adoption decree for Hunt's signature.
He was careful to touch all bases. It said: "The Court, having heard the
evidence and being duly advised in the premises, finds that the natural
father has consented to this adoption ... that the child's mother is
deceased, that a custody proceeding is pending in Monmouth County, New
Jersey, that petitioners are the paternal grandparents of Philip Andrew
Taylor, that they wish to adopt said child as their own, and that such
adoption will serve in the best interests of the child."

Early Thursday, August 7, in the chambers of Judge Hunt, Ryan again
cited the incredible love and generosity of the child's grandparents.

You just didn't find people like them very often these days.

Hunt glanced at the file Ryan handed him just long enough to ascertain
that it included a welfare report. What did catch his eye, though, was
the "pending" New Jersey custody proceeding mentioned in the decree that
Ryan had prepared. What was that all about?

Oh, Hunt recalled Ryan saying, don't worry about it. Some aunt and uncle
of the child were trying "to establish a guardianship in order to gain
control over insurance money payable on account of the death of the
mother."

The whole proceeding lasted about five minutes, ten at the most.

Jean, Zach and Philip were brought in, and Hunt signed the decree.

According to Jean, Judge Hunt smiled at them and said, "I'm aware of
your situation. I hope this will help." Ryan lingered in Hunt's
chambers.

He said that there might be a little flak over the weekend from the New
Jersey end because of the insurance business and the guardianship.

You could never tell about those money-grubbers back east. If that did
occur, he wanted Hunt's assurance that nothing would be decided till
Monday and that he would have a chance to respond to any challenges.

After all, an adoption always superseded custody. Sure thing, Hunt said.

"I'll call you and we'll set a hearing."

Within an hour, when Jean and Zach returned home, Celeste had telephoned
and Zach told her not to bother coming to Marion. He then called Barry
Shapiro with the good news.

(Shapiro would insist that he was not privy to any of this before it
happened. As soon as he heard about it from the Taylors, he said, he
promptly advised Zach to "get another lawyer. ") Meanwhile, at the
Trenton State Prison that August as Ken was being kept abreast of these
events, he entered into a cabal with five other prisoners to begin
plotting an audacious escape.

Right after she received Celeste's hysterical call on August 7, Janice
Miller phoned the Indiana Bar Association for an attorney in Marion. She
was given the name of the local association president, Jules Walker. She
called Walker. A few minutes later, Walker confirmed that Judge Hunt had
signed the adoption decree.

She called Hunt. She identified herself and informed him of Gehricke's
custody order. She wanted the adoption decree vacated.

According to Miller, Hunt said that he would require a copy of
Gehricke's order and also needed a directive signed by Gehricke to serve
the Taylors in order to retrieve the child.

Janice then raced to Gehricke's chambers in Freehold. Shaken, the judge
listened to her.

e put in a call to Hunt. Gehricke told him that he had been
"bamboozled." He said, "There was a long, drawn-out affair here and
those people have stolen that child in violation of my order." Hunt
said, "I knew nothing of this." The weekend was upon them.

If he got the appropriate documents the next day-Friday-Janice quoted
Hunt as saying, he would "take care of everything."

(Hunt had a somewhat different memory of these conversations.

This "gal attorney" called him, then a "judge." He had no idea if they
were who they said they were, or even if what they were claiming was
true.

He said he said, "If everything you folks are telling me is correct,
file a petition to set it aside and I'll give you a hearing.") Later
that afternoon, according to Hunt, Jules Walker, now retained by Janice
on behalf of the Whites, "wandered into" his chambers.

"Miz Miller" would be in Marion the next day.

She better be here by noon, Hunt said. He was due over in Wabash, to sit
as a special judge in a divorce case.

After gathering her documents together, Janice met Celeste and Jeff at
Newark Airport to fly that evening to Indianapolis. But the Midwest was
being trashed by colossal thunderstorms.

Their departure was delayed and then canceled.

Finally, around ten P.m they boarded another flight for Chicago.

The ride was nightmarish.

Celeste was bent over in her seat, moaning, "Why did I let him go?"

White-knuckled, Jeff held her as the plane bucked through violent air
pockets, it was his first flight ever.

They stayed in a hotel at O'Hare Airport. In the morning, Janice called
Walker. They'd be taking the first available flight out-to Fort Wayne, a
hundred miles northeast of Marion.

Walker relayed this to Hunt.

"Noon," Hunt said.

Janice and the Whites arrived at Walker's office around one P.m August
8. The instant she saw him, she reaulzed she'd made a mistake.

Everyone in Grant County agreed that Jules Walker, getting on a bit in
years, was as sweet a person as you could want, which was why he'd been
elected bar association president. There was also widespread
acknowledgment that nobody in the county could string a tennis racquet
better than Jules. But he was no litigator.

His main practice was acting as a trustee in bankruptcy cases.

Confrontation was not his middle name.

Walker phoned Hunt and learned that the judge, indeed, had departed for
Wabash. Nobody seemed to know when he would be back.

Walker said he'd go over to the courthouse. Being on the scene, you
could sometimes pick up an interesting tidbit.

Janice waited, fidgeting. Celeste we was getting jumpier by the second.

Even Jeff was showing signs of unraveling.

When Walker finally returned, he said that an attempt to reach Hunt in
Wabash had failed.

Hunt's in-laws had a lakeside cottage somewhere. The word now was that
the judge had gone fishing for the weekend.

Fishing? With all this going on? Every alarm bell in Janice went off.

If the Taylors were capable of this sneak adoption-which, she realized
by now, had been carefully planned-what else were they prepared to do?

If they found out she and the Whites were in Marion, they could take
Off.

Well, Walker said, he'd dropped by to see Tom Wright. He was one of two
Grant County Superior Court judges, additional major judgeships created
by the Indiana legislature when the original circuit court judges, one
in each county, like Hunt, were overwhelmed with work.

Wright handled all the juvenile cases in the county. Walker said he'd
talked over the situation with him, and Wright had suggested they go see
Warren Haas, the attorney for the Welfare Department.

It was then about 3:30 P.m. Warren Haas was getting ready to pack it in.
It was his thirty-eighth birthday and to celebrate, he and his wife were
going to spend the weekend in Chicago. On the agenda the next day was a
ballgame at Wrigley Field to watch his favorite team, the Cubs.

Haas was from Crawfordsville, about fifty miles southwest of
Indianapolis. His mild manner concealed an inner toughness. At Indiana
University, he had m*red in languages, specializing in German.

He ended up teaching it at Marion High, when he decided to pursue a law
degree.

Along with his private practice, he was appointed the Welfare
Department's lawyer, and was nononsense about it. Sometimes a case would
get especially nasty and, because of his German background, he'd be
called a "storm trooper."

He could not have cared less. Sometimes, too, in one of these cases,
he'd think that the party clearly in the right should just take the
child and run, but then Warren Haas would remind himself that this was
not what he stood for as either a lawyer or a man.

Without warning, Jules Walker, Janice, and the Whites showed up in his
office. Walker tried to explain why they were there. Then Janice cut in.
Haas was impressed by her. She ticked off the problem-bing, bing, bing.
He listened and then examined the papers she had brought with her.

Curious, Haas checked the caseworker's report that had gone to Hunt.

It gave the Taylor home high marks for its physical set-up and said
Philip appeared to be "a normal, happy child."

But it also stated that Ken was serving a thirty-year-prison sentence
"for the death of his wife," which had occurred "during some sort of
domestic fight with her husband, Kenneth Taylor."

According to the Taylors, the report went on, the mother "before her
death had been a drug user and consumed combinations of Cocaine, alcohol
and codeine." Near the end of the single-spaced report, it said: "The
child is presently in the custody of another family who lives in New
York State. He is here on a two-week visitation with his grandparents,
the Taylors. We hope the information in this case will be helpful to the
court in deciding this issue."

Granted, Haas thought, the report could have been stronger, but still it
was all there. The caseworker, given her mission, had done an excellent
job. How could Hunt have signed the decree without a more thorough
investigation?

Clearly, he hadn't read any of this.

Walker then explained to Haas that before talking to Judge Wright, he'd
talked to Hunt, and Hunt had said he might be available on Friday and
then again he might not.

"Jules," Haas said, "YOU can't go around buttonholing judges on
something like this. It isn't the way it's done. If you want to attack
this, you have to go in and attack it in adoption court before Judge
Hunt. If you can't get to him now, you have to decide if you want to
wait until Monday." He told Janice there was one other option.

He could file a CHINS-A Child In Need of Services-petition.

Ail he had to do was file it, he didn't have to have a judge's
authorization.

But it had to be an emergency. What did Janice think about that?

She said she couldn't claim that Philip was in physical danger.

But what about his emotional well-being? Look, she said, even in the
welfare report, the Taylors had accused Teresa of being a druggie and
stated that they intended to maintain a close relationship between
Philip and Ken. She told Haas what Jean Taylor wrote to Judge
Ashbey-that if the child remained with Celeste and Jeff, he would never
know the "truth" about his mother. At this stage, she said, she was
ready to believe anything. Suppose the Taylors fled with Philip?

Okay, Haas said, he agreed.

To cover himself, he phoned Judge Wright. Had the judge sent the Whites
over to him to see if a CHINS petition was in order?

Well, Wright replied cautiously, it was at least to explore that
possibility, Haas was more knowledgeable in this area than he was.

Personally, he hadn't made a determination.

Haas said he was going to file. There wasn't time to draw up a petition.
He'd enter the New Jersey custody order. Under the Uniform Child Custody
and Jurisdiction Act, it was as good as one from an Indiana court.

For the first time, Janice Miller began to have some hope. Haas
obviously knew what he was doing.

Haas summoned a social worker. They drove to the sheriff's department to
round up a deputy.

You never knew, Haas said.

The caravan headed for the Taylor home about five miles away, on the
northwest edge of Marion in a subdivision called Avondale.

Haas instructed Celeste and Jeff to remain well back. He knocked on the
door. Zach answered. Haas identified himself, explained why he was
there, and requested entry. Zach refused.

If there was a warrant, slip it under the door. Haas said he didn't need
a warrant and to open up. Zach said he wouldn't.

The deputy sheriff also identified himself.

Zach wouldn't budge. The deputy said he was coming in. Zach said give
him a minute. He had to put the dog in the backyard. Then he scurried to
the phone and called Pat Ryan.

"Don't let them in," Ryan said.

"Pat, they'll break the door down."

"I'm telling you, Zach, don't let them in.

I'll be right over.

The deputy sheriff kept pounding. Finally, Zach gave up. Haas entered,
accompanied by the deputy, and took Philip in his arms.

Haas had just handed him to the social worker when Ryan roared up.

He ran straight at Haas, yelling, "You can't do this. I've cleared all
this with Judge Hunt."

Haas stepped between Ryan and the social worker. He did his best to calm
Ryan. "Pat, you may be right, but we're not going to argue about it
here. The place we're going to do it in is a courtroom."

Zach was yelling at Haas, "You goddamned, no-good Nazi baby snatcher!"

Ryan ducked around Haas and headed for the social worker, but she was
already in her car, starting the engine. All Ryan could do was to hammer
on the window before she drove away.

Haas told the deputy to radio for backup.

Zach called Janice Miller "a no-good, rotten, little prick."

Ryan, fist raised, charged her.

She flinched, sure that he was going to hit her. But at the last moment,
he didn't. Thank God for the deputy, she thought.

Somewhere behind him, Haas heard Celeste crying, "You sons of bitches."

He spied Jean Taylor at the front door. It was eerie, he remembered.

In all the furor, she remained standing there absolutely motionless,
just watching, "sort of plastic-like."

Suddenly, it was over. Cursing, Ryan and Zach retreated into the house.
Haas told the deputy to cancel the backup. Relieved that it hadn't been
worse, Haas returned with the deputy to the sheriffs department and
filled out a report while Janice, Celeste, Jeff and Jules Walker waited
outside.

As it happened, Tom Hunt had not gone fishing. He was in his Marion
backyard tending to a family barbecue when Jean Taylor had called him
and described the "horrible events" that were, at that moment, taking
place at her home. Hunt listened and said, "I can't be talking to you,
Mrs. Taylor. Have your attorney call me."

Minutes later, Ryan was snarling, "You gave me your word you wouldn't do
anything without a hearing."

Hunt caught up with Haas on the phone at the sheriff's department.

Hunt shouted, "What the hell are you doing? Your goddamned welfare
report says these people are perfect to adopt the child, so I act on it,
and all at once it's an mffi environment.

Get that kid back where you said he belongs.

"Judge," Haas said, "I'm sorry. I've mw that report. What you're saying
about it is not correct. Everything you needed to know was right there.
It's my determination that an emergency exists. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
But I'm not returning the child. We can discuss this in court Monday
morning. , "You can bet on it," Hunt said, slamming down the phone.

That evening there was a new crisis. Haas had arranged for a young
Marion couple with two children of their own to care for Philip.

He had them come to the welfare center so Jeff and Celeste could be
reassured. But in the day's confusion, Celeste had misunderstood.

She thought she would get Philip immediately. She was allowed to hold
him for a few minutes.

When he was taken away, crying and reaching for her, she collapsed to
the ground, sobbing. And Jeff, trying to console her, at last lost
control. Staring up at Janice, he yelled, "Why aren't you doing
something? What is this, Russia?"

Haas brought them to the Marion Sheraton to check in for the night.

They had sandwiches before returning to his office where Haas helped
Miller and Walker prepare further court submissions.

Past two A.M Warren Haas finally arrived home. He and his wife left for
his birthday weekend in Chicago. He made it for the game at Wrigley
Field, but in the middle of the second running he fell sound asleep.

Under the illusion that it was only a question of setting the record
straight, Janice, Celeste and Jeff boarded a flight to Newark that
Saturday. The plan was for the Whites to drive back to Marion.

Al Benigna would come with them. Just to be on the safe side, in case of
an unexpected delay, Jeff hooked up a small camper he'd bought for
vacation outings with Celeste and the children. They'd find a campsite
near town while everything was resolved.

By Sunday evening, Judge Hunt had begun to amass the bad news.

For one thing, he learned that during the first days of Philip's sojourn
in Marion, his mother also had been the@ead, in a car trunk.

Hunt was mad. He was mad at Pat Ryan for duping him. He was especially
mad at Warren Haas for making the whole thing public.

And he was mad in the abstract. At thirty-nine, a rangy six-footer with
a determined svw, he looked forward to being elevated to Indiana's
apo-emw court level. Hunt could just imagine Marion's legal
establishment chewing on this one at his expense-at the Marion Cafeteria
for morning coffee and at The Nobby Grill, a block from the courthouse,
over lunch.

First thing Monday morning, he took out his anger on Judge Wright for
interfering in a case that was none of Wright's business.

Wright promptly withdrew. Then Hunt stunned everyone by also withdrawing
from the case. His excuse was that he had talked to too many people ex
part utside the confines of the courtroom. The consensus at The Nobby
Grill, however, was that Hunt had removed himself to avoid further
embarrassment. Celeste and Jeff were distraught. What did this mean?

They were told that it meant the Welfare Department's intervention was
voided. Philip would be returned to the Taylors. It also meant that
under Indiana's rural legal system, a panel of three judges from other
counties would be drawn up. Each side could object to one of the judges.
The remaining judge would be assigned the case. And all this would take
time.

Everyone's nerves were shot. Raging, Al Benigna said that obviously
people had been bought off. Who did he have to buy? Even for Haas, that
was too much. "Mr. Benigna, you're out of line," he said.

In New Jersey, Janice Miller realized that however likable Jules Walker
was, he wasn't what she needed now. She started casting around for
another Marion lawyer.

On Thursday morning, Richard A. Green was having his usual coffee at the
Marion Cafeteria. A man who filled a lot of space, he'd been varsity
center on the Marion High School basketball team, class of 1960. A
graduate of Butler University with a degree in business administration,
he went to work in the trust department of a local bank. He decided to
study law, got a job in a bank in Indianapolis, and went to law school
there five nights a week. He built a thriving practice in Marion with
the reputation of being a tough, knowledgeable, all-around attorney. He
and his wife, Sandra, also from Marion, loved to fly to New York for
theater-going and now and then to work in some sightseeing trips to
Europe. Right then, though, the Greens weren't traveling much. He had
opened up a second office in the bustling resort town of Syracuse,
seventy miles north on Indiana's largest natural lake, Wawasm. He was
building a lakeside house, and when it was finished, he was bent on
living and practicing full-time there.

That morning, in the Marion Cafeteria, a fellow lawyer tapped Green on
the shoulder.

"You're going to get a call in about forty-five minutes from a female
attorney from New Jersey," he said. "She called me, but it's not my kind
of thing. I recommended you. She's got a fact situation that'll knock
your fucking dick stiff."

"What is it?"

"Hunt's boo-boo on that adoption."

Of course, he'd heard the gossip. Janice filled him in on the details.

Her clients, she said, were still in Marion, at some campsite.

They would be calling her. Could she give them Green's number?

Yes, he said. If he took the case, he'd need them to sign some papers.

She warned him that they didn't have the money for a retainer, but she
gave him her personal guarantee that he would be covered. At the time,
that did not bother him. it looked like a simple matter to get set
aside, an adoption that was clearly fraudulent. After talking to Warren
Haas and looking over the documents on file, Green was even more
convinced of this.

That afternoon Al Benigna, Celeste and Jeff arrived at Green's office
dispirited, bedraggled, paranoid. To top off everything, the shower
facilities where they we had broken down. "Please, Mr. Green," Cela just
want my baby back."

As soon as they got a new judge, he told her, he wa sure it would be
over with. Green didn't unde PK Ryan's wiliness for second. Ryan was a
hard-bitten old tdd lawyer. He'd try to turn the whole thing into a
circus about "issues"-about the best interests of the child, beating the
drum about loyalty to Indiana, sympathy for these lent suffering
grandparents, and about how adoption su custody. One sentence into a
discourse on the United States Constitution, Dick Green thought, and
Ryan would turn it into a speech about why the Taylors should halft the
child.

Still, this wasn't about issues. The issues had already been decided in
New Jersey. This was about the law, and he wasn't going to let Ryan get
away from it.

Two weeks later, Green was further heartened when a judge, Bruce Embrey,
was selected to preside over the case. Embrey sat on the bench in Peru,
in adjoining Miami County, and was first-class. Green drew up a new @ to
vacate the adoption. He also prepared a motion for a speedy trial date.
Time was of the essence.

In the months ahead, Dick Green often brooded about how hollow those
words would sound.

The block party to raise money-on Cannon Boulevard in Staten Island,
where Al and Louise Benigna rived--was the idea of the mother of
Ceteste's good friend Linda Volente.

Instantly, the reaction of the entire neighborhood was, "What took you
so long?"

Jeff remembered how people would come up to him and Celeste and say,
"You know, we wanted to suggest it, but we didn't want to seem pushy.

" By now the events in Marion had made the papers in New Jersey and
Staten Island. The Staten Island Advance reported, "Murder Victim's Son,
2, Center of Custody Battle."

This and other headlines were incorporated in a flyer that the husband
of another friend of Celeste's where he worked at Xerox. The flyer said,
RAISER BLOCK SALE. HELP BRING BABY PHILIP HOME!!" A sign painter down
the street prepared banners that said the same thing.

Celeste and other girlfriends distributed the flyer in shopping malls,
on car windshields, in front-door mail slots. A friend of a friend
supplied a rolling hot dog stand with an umbrella. The House O' Weenies
contributed the hot dogs.

Another friend provided a pony for kids to ride. Still a third friend,
dressed as a clown, would do face paintings. A specialty store gave silk
flower arrangements for a raffle. A pizza parlor donated pies to be sold
by the slice. A Chinese restaurant sent spring rolls, dumplings and
spare fibs. A Jewish delicatessen made up a huge platter of cold cuts. A
supermarket provided paper napkins, plates and cups.

A novelties store offered ceramic Christmas trees for another raffle.

A big plastic jug was placed in the middle of the block for cash gifts.

The son of one of Louise's friends, who played in local clubs, set up a
sound system and brought his band. Up and down Cannon Boulevard and on
nearby streets, kitchens worked overtime-eggplant parmigiana, baked
ziti, meatballs, Italian sausages.

Neighbors cleaned out their attics for items to sell-and purchased them
back at three or four times their worth. Nuns from St. Charles, where
Teresa had gone to parochial school, pitched in.

The block party ran Saturday and Sunday, September 20 and 21.

There was a last-second hitch. They had forgotten a permit. The cops
came by, but when Jeff explained what was going on, a sergeant said,
"Hey, no problem." Then the cops returned to put up street barricades so
a car wouldn't inadvertently plow into the crowd.

In all, more than six thousand dollars for legal fees in Indiana was
raised. The following night, though, was a downer. When Jeff returned
home from his shift on the ferry, he found Celeste in tears.

Some friends had been by. She said they had said, "What's wrong with
you?

Why don't you and Jeff just go out there and grab Philip?"

"Listen," Jeff said. "We can't. If we do that, what's the difference
between them and us?"

A couple of days later, she was jubilant.

She'd learned she was pregnant again. Now when Philip returned, he'd
have another sister-or a brother. It was a good omen, blessed signal,
she said. She was certain of it.

By the end of September, Ken's plans to break out of the Trenton State
Prison were completeete.

His five confederates were convicts serving lengthy sentences for crimes
that included murder, kidnapping and armed robbery. They worked in
various areas of the prison's main repairs building. One of them, a
lifer in for murder, was in the second floor upholstery and furniture
shop.

In an empty attic area directly above it, he discovered a window without
bars that was level with the top of the prison wall thirty feet away.
The problem was that there was a watch tower nearby.

"It was very, very bold, very ingenious," a prison official would say
about the plan.

They built a makeshift, sectional wood bridge to reach the wall.

It was rigged with connecting bolts and steel plates. To take care of
the tower guard, a crossbow was fashioned to shoot steel arrows launched
with heavy elastic furniture fabric. Other guards within the building
would be met with a half of sixteen-penny nails from a pipe blowgun,
built like a bazooka and powered by an air compressor. A half-dozen
Molotov cocktails were also made ready. The equipment was assembled
piece-by-piece and hidden in the attic. One of the convicts had arranged
for an accomplice to be waiting in a van with guns on the other side of
the wall. The escape was scheduled for October 4.

But there was a snitch, and this time the snitch was Ken. He later
explained to authorities that he simply couldn't be a party to the
killings that would inevitably occur.

In retrospect, more cynical observers now believe that he was setting
himself up for another, more discreet escape in less restrictive
surroundings. If that was his intent, it worked. However it happened,
word soon leaked that he was the snitch. He was immediately put into
protective custody. Then, in a prisoner tradeoff between states to
handle situations like this, he was transferred out of New Jersey to the
Virginia penal system.

He was received at the main prison, Powhatan, near Richmond, and after
about four months was shipped to the Augusta Correctional Center, a new
facility in a remote, fog-shrouded valley in the Appalachian chain in
western Virginia. He became a model inmate. Because of his educachapter
tional and professional background, he was assigned to tutor other
convicts seeking high school equivalency diplomas.

Except for his instructional duties and the morning, afternoon and
evening countdowns, he was pretty much on his own. NTY At once, Ken
started looking for a way out.

After the block party, Celeste kept calling Dick Green in Marion.

So did Janice Miller.

What was wrong? Why wasn't anything being done? Even Janice started
suspecft the worst.

Green was truly embarrassed. Admittedly, just about everyone in Marion
who touched the case had fumbled badly. But he tried to explain that the
delay wasn't @ result of a conspiracy.

It was Indiana's judicial system. Judge Embrey, over in Miami County,
had been selected to rule on the case, but Embrey had yet to come to M@
to sign in officially. Green was in a quandary.

He kftw that Embrey was inundated by a heavy trial load. He could
pressure him, but he decided not to. Embrey war, precisdy the kind of
judge he desired. There was no point in an@ nizing him unnecessarily.

Then in late September Janice had an idea to the system. She had Celeste
file a Monmouth County Superior Court. Defying j@ icke's custody order
was a felony. And it was an ditable offense. An indictment was returned,
an arrest warrant was issued, and the Grant County sheriff's office was
notified by teletype that the Taylors were fugitives.

That triggered press attention. Al Benigna was quoted as saying, "It's
crazy. If they can get away with this, anybody can kidnap a child and
take him to another state and adopt him." But in Marion, no action was
taken. A deputy sheriff named Mark Florence said that while the teletype
had been received, "It did not provide enough details about why the
Taylors were wanted." In Freehold, prosecutor Paul Chalet said a
complete set of documents was being dispatched by express mail to Grant
County law enforcement officers.

Deputy Florence acknowledged receipt of the documents, but said that an
arrest warrant could not be served on the Taylors because no Grant
County judge was available to sign the order.

All three judges were attending a judicial conference. He referred
further inquiries to the Grant County district attorney, Stephen
Johnson. But he also was said to be out of town on business.

Pat Ryan sneered that the indictment of the Taylors was a "trumped-up
charge." He announced that they would of course fight any extradition if
it came down to that. "The issue is moot," he said and provided his own
version of the federal child custody jurisdiction act: "It only applies
in cases of child abuse or divorce where one spouse kidnaps the child
from the spouse with custody.

Adoption hearings here in Indiana take precedence and the boy was
adopted in August.

There is no need for further litigation. The court orders in New Jersey
were temporary.

Adoption is final.

" In light of this, Chalet, on behalf of Monmouth County, sent a formal
extradition request to New Jersey governor Thomas Kean to pass on to
Indiana governor Robert D. Orr.

Orr authorized service. Now there was no choice in Marion. Jean and Zach
Taylor were brought before the third of the county's judges, Gary 0.
Thompson. They were re leased on a five-hundred-dollar bond.

Thompson sc a hearing for October 20.

"It was just horrible being treated like a conunc nal," Jean told rapt
members of her Bible-study class. But still, she said, "There was this
nice deputy, Mark Florence, he was the manager of the basketball team
when my son Tom was on it, and he said he sure hated to be doing this,
and Zach said, We understand, it's your job," and Mark said, Well, I'm
not going to fingerprint you and have -rou mugged. I should, but I'm
not.

"

"Praise the Lord," one of her listeners said.

A reporter sought out Dr. Michele Rabinowitz in her New Jersey office
for her comments.

"The separation from established psychological parents is highly
traumatic beyond one or two weeks," she said. "The real victim in this
is going to be the child.

On October 2, though, it appeared that the extradition tactic was
superfluous. Judge Embrey finally signed up in Marion. He let it be
known that he would get to the case promptly. All the media attention
had really helped, Dick Green thought.

Then, suddenly, disaster struck. The Indianapolis Star, the state's
biggest newspaper, published a major feature story on the case.

Judge Hunt was quoted at length. "To tell you the truth," he said, "I
was blindsided. I was never completely informed of the New Jersey case.
I disqualffied myself because I didn't think I could be fair."

Judge Bruce Embrey was also questioned by reportecaught off guard, he
said that while he could only speak hypothetically, if the facts were as
they purported to be, "It's conceivable that [the adoption] could be
invalidated."

Green groaned when he read that. Talk about being b@ sided. He knew at
once what Pat Ryan would do. Ryan wasn't happy having a judge of
Embrey's caliber. And Ryan wanted to keep buying as much time as he
could. The longer this could be put off, the more he could ww how
wrenching it would be to tear Philip from his loving grandparents.

Instantly, Ryan demanded that Embrey disqualify himself because of his
prejudicial remarks. Stung, Embrey resisted. But word filtered down from
court circles in Indianapolis that, all things considered, it might be
wise for him to step down, and he did.

The whole process would begin again. First, there was the presentation
of a new slate of three judges from other counties, and then the
inevitable wait after one of them was selected.

Now the extradition was crucial.

The hearing was on the docket for late afternoon on October 20 after
Judge Thompson finished trial work for the day.

Theoretically, once the basics were established-that a crime had been
committed and that the wanted persons were, indeed, correctly
identified-the process was pretty much automatic. The only exception
Green could recall was when a fugitive was able to demonstrate that he
could not possibly get a fair trial in whatever jurisdiction was after
him. Clearly, that wasn't the situation here.

But Janice, edgy after the Embrey affair, feared that the Taylors might
skip Marion before the hearing.

"How far could they get in that camper?"

Green argued.

Well, she said, they could leave, and then come back, and there would be
another delay and more hassling, more time lost. So Green arranged for
private surveillance. Pat Ryan, however, had quite a different strategy.

That day at lunch in The Nobby Grill, most of the conversation was about
the upcoming elections, two weeks off. Everyone agreed that Steve
Johnson, running for reelection as D.A was a certain winner.

Hardly anyone mentioned the extradition, it seemed so open-and-shut.

Out of idle curiosity more than anything else, Dick Green dropped by to
observe the hearing, which would be handled by the D.A."s office.

Ryan would appear for the Taylors.

Judge Thompson had already defined the parameters.

The issues were authenticity, identity, fugitivity and substance of
charges. He was going by the book.

Green stood in the rear of the courtroom. To his amazement, around five
P. m it began to fill up, people streaming in, middle-aged mostly, many
of them couples.

What was this? Then he spotted the pastor of the First Baptist Church,
Darrel Panis.

Several people clustered around him, talking and nodding.

Suddenly, the word "flock" crossed Green's mind. It was exactly the
right word, he realized. What he was witnessing was a church flock, here
with its shepherd. @n no longer was the only one standing.

The courtroom was jammed.

There was applause when Jean and Zach were ushered in. Judge Thompson
hammered his gavel.

Green heard someone whisper, "Those poor people. They've been in jail
all afternoon." A late arrival pushed past him, saying, "I just got the
call. What did I miss?"

There were angry murmurs as an assistant D.A. briefly presented the
facts and asked that the extradition w t be enforced against the
Taylors. "That's not right," a voice shouted.

"They haven't done anything wrong." Other voices were raised.

Again, Thompson gaveled for silence.

Cheers greeted Ryan when he said that the proceeding was a farce.

His clients were law-abiding citizens of Marion, Grant County and
Indiana.

There was nothing illegal here.

"These loving grandparents are the only people eligible in the whole
country to adopt the child because the father has given his consent."

Someone cried, "Amen!"

Flabbergasted, Dick Green began to wonder if he were at a judicial
hearing or a revival meeting.

The warrant, Ryan said, had been issued solely to "satisfy the wounded
feelings of some judge in New Jersey."

IME assistant D.A. objected on grounds of relevancy. When Thompson
sustained the objection, there were angry new shouts.

"The best interests of the child are at stake here," Ryan said, falling
back on his favorite theme. "An adoption takes precedence over previous
custody orders."

There was another objection. It was sustained. A chorus of boos erupted.
Vainly, Thompson pounded his gavel.

There was a hush after Ryan put Jean on the stand. Some women in the
audience began to weep as she testified that all she wanted was to care
for her little grandson, to see that he was raised in good Christian
surroundings.

Then Zach launched into a rambling discourse about all their
tribulations back east, how even there, court order after court order
had been disregarded, how a behind-theback attempt was made to move
jurisdiction of the case to New York. The mention of New York appeared
to inflame everyone. He might as well have said Sodom and Gomorrah,
Green thought.

"We love that little boy," Zach said. "He belongs with us here in
Marion." Judge Thompson had no choice except to sustain the objection.

"Let the man speak!" somebody yelled.

Thompson tried to redefine the issues, but the hubbub continued.

It was getting ugly.

Green had a vision of everyone in the courtroom collectively rushing the
bench.

That thought also might have occurred to Thompson. Abruptly, he halted
the hearing.

Both sides would have three days to submit briefs. Jean and Zach would
remain under "house arrest." Pointedly, the judge said there would be no
official monitoring of their movements. Then Thompson retreated to his
chambers.

Slowly, people started to shuffle past Green.

Among them, he recognized Ernest J. Dalton, the county's chief probation
officer, who had so vigorously endorsed the Taylors as adoptive parents
in their original petition. "If you ask me," Dick Green heard Dalton
say, "this is man's law interfering with God's law."

One of the first communiquds to the "Public Letterbox" in the Marion
Chronicle-Tribune was from Reverend Parris himself. It zeroed right in
on electoral retribution: If this extradition is allowed to be carried
out by our local judicial system, then it seems to me that at the next
election we need to make some changes in those who supposedly are to
know the difference between the good and bad guys.

One of the trusts we place in the hands of our local IN A CMUYS NAF4E
legal system of prosecutors and judges is the look at the people, look
at the facts of the crime and then strive towards justice. In this
justice can be served by extradition.

Let's put the real criminals behind bars, those YM hurt and maim.

If the persons in charge of our ho system cannot tell the difference in
cases Men *M then it's time to replace them with those who cal Another
letter echoed Parris's threat: How can the governor or the Grant County
approve of extradition for an action (adopting a son) when Grant
County/Indiana judges have granted adoption papers?

No crime has been committed here by the T@ who have been law-abiding
citizens in our for over 20 years. It's time for the people of to be
heard by insisting that justice be done.

Let's be apathetic citizens! Speak up and be beard!

If our elected officials do not listen, we stil M4 that privilege of
removing them from office by our vote on election day. Come on, Grant Cc
zens! Accept your responsibility! You do hal in this matter!

Still a third said: Why should law-abiding citizens sucl Mrs. Everett
Taylor be arrested for iq their grandson?

 ...  Mr. and Mrs. Taylor are providi tian home for their grandson.

This fact in weigh heavily on the court's decision.

As citizens, we all need to reflect term which would peffnit the arrest
Oi these circumstances.

The Taylors are not criminals. They an what they think is best for the
child.

The Marion courts should have jurisdiction over this case and do what is
best for the child, and at the same time treat the Taylors as
law-abiding citizens instead of criminals.

A fourth declared: Apparently the maternal grandparents did not or could
not seek custody of the child. The paternal grandparents did.

Jean Taylor is the closest relative this child has outside of his
natural father who, under the circumstances, cannot care for him.

How can any court in our land deny custody of this child to his natural
paternal grandparents who want him?

The Taylors need all the legal help and spiritual support they can get
from the people of Marion and the State of Indiana.

Among all the letters, there was one dissident note. It said: 1, too, am
appalled at the injustice of the Everett and Jean Taylor custody
dispute. In fact, I wrote a letter to the letterbox last week saying so,
but because my opinion is opposed to that of those who jump on the
hometown's favorite bandwagon (including the Chronicle-Tribune,
evidently), my letter was not published.

I find it easy to believe that the Taylors are good, upstanding people
and love their grandson very much, and I would truly hate to see them
extradited to New Jersey because I fear they would be treated there the
way people on the other side of this dispute are being treated in Grant
County.

Imagine if you will what they have gone through. First, their sister and
daughter was murdered by the Taylors' son. They obtain legal custody of
their slain loved one's child.

After having this little boy for a year as their own child, they are
informed that, while he is on a two week visit with his other
grandparents, he has been "legally" adopted by them and to just forget
about him.

Yes, I pray for the Taylors. But I also pray for the Benigna-Whites.

And in a much larger view, I must pray for Grant County and its judicial
system. Had the facts been checked by Judge Thomas Hunt, perhaps this
would not be happening now.

But then again, maybe we need something to stand us out from the rest of
the state or the nation. We could put up a sign at the city limits:
Marion-Megal Adoption Center of the World.

Unknown to everyone at the time, except Jean and Zach, Pastor Parris
journeyed to Indianapolis to chat with Linley E. Pearson, Indiana's
Attorney General. Prior to coming to Marion, Parris had a Baptist
ministry in the western part of the state, in Frankfort, and Pearson was
a member of that congregation.

What the Taylors were being subjected to was unconscionable, Parris
said. They were good people without a blemish on their record.

As a matter of fact, if something like this could happen, the
extradition law should be changed.

"What do you want me to do?" Parris would quote Pearson as saying.

"Don't extradite them."

"I'll look into it," Pearson said.

Two days later, Steve Johnson took time off from his reelection
campaigning for Grant County D.A. and also went to Indianapolis.

On his return he announced big news. Pending a further investigation,
Governor Orr was rescinding the extradition warrant he'd signed.

Orr was doing this not only on the recommendation of Attorney General
Pearson but of Johnson himself-all three of whom happened to be
Republicans. "I think just the interest of justice demands and dictates
that this be done," Johnson said.

He added that he could not go into specifics since the matter was still
under review.

In Indianapolis, a spokesman for the governor said, "We wanted to give
every opportunity to protect Indiana citizens if they have the right to
be protected." He said that the investigation into the facts would be
conducted by Deputy Attorney General David Arthur.

Back in Monmouth County, Paul Chalet urged the assistant counsel to New
Jersey governor Kean to press Orr for an early resolution of the
investigation.

& Janice Miller and Dick Green had neither the time nor the energy to
waste grousing about a fix.

A new special judge, R. Alan Brubaker from Kokomo, was selected to rule
on the adoptiption.

But before any hearing could be held to vacate it, a Motion to Intervene
had to be entered and granted by Brubaker. At first blush, Jeff and
Celeste looked like the aggrieved party in the affair.

But, as it now stood, they had no legal standing at all in an Indiana
court.

They had played no part in the adoption. Their common interest-their
connection to Phi4ip-had to be established, and this interest would then
justify their intervention in the proceedings.

If it were not allowed, they would suffer irreparable harm.

It was basically legalities, briefs followed by oral arguments invoking
Indiana case law.

Still, it was tricky, given the tenor of local opinion. Pat Ryan could
be counted on to throw up every smoke screen he could think of or
inventsympathy for the Taylors, loyalty to Indiana. And success was
crucial. Without intervention, the adoption itself could not be
contested.

Most crucial of all, it would turn out, was Janice Miller's insistence
back in Freehold the previous July, when an agreement on the two-week
visitation was reached, that Celeste and Jeff be given sole, permanent
custody of Philip.

Nothing temporary about it, nothing shared.

The visitation to the Taylors, in Judge Gehricke's order, was just that
and nothing more.

That was the cornerstone of Dick Green's argument, that and the fact
that the Whites had received no no of the adoption proceedings, as
required by Indiana VW and the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act.

The hearing before Judge Brubaker was held on her 2.

Ryan went all-out.

In a sworn deposition, he declared that New Jersey bw no jurisdiction to
enter any orders because "Philip bw no lived there since his mother
died." New Jersey was not I"

"home state," even under uniform child custody laws.

He picked out state case law and trial stipu@ as if they existed in a
vacuum. Only the consent of living was required for the adoption of a
"legitimate chfld."

Celeste and Jeff had no statutory right to intervene. "IU Whites," he
insisted, "could neither oppose the adoption or consent to it.

If the law does not require a person's consent, he need not be
notified."

He invoked Indiana precedent in another adoption where the court said,
"If the child has parents living, they alone can interpose objections of
the order of adoption in a proper case."

"An adoption," he maintained, "creates new pmgchild relationships and
terminates any prior, inconsistent custody orders." He claimed Judge
Hunt had recognized in the adoption decree he signed that them was a
pending custody proceeding in New Jersey.

Hunt had thoroughly reviewed all the pertinent documentsand he had
signed the decree without hesitation.

In court, Ryan cried, "Why are we here?

Mere's an Indiana adoption decree that supersedes every other court
order there is!"

But in the end he could not escape the finality in Judge Gehricke's
order. There was nothing "pending" about il It had been handed down in
accordance with U.S. cu@ laws which New Jersey and Indiana subscribed to
y word for word.

Judge Brubaker ruled that Jeff and Celeste q n "Intervenors.
"Andhescheduleddecemberigastbedea for an evidentiary hearing to decide
whether or not the adoption would be vacated.

This, it would seem, was the last go-around.

Jeff and Celeste joined Janice in Marion.

There was every likelihood that the adoption would be set aside on the
spot, and they could return to Staten Island with Philip.

The strategy Janice and Dick Green devised was designed to keep the
hearing focused on the legal issues-that the law had been broken-to keep
Ryan from turning it into a best-interest-of-thechild circus, to keep
him from retrying what already had been tried.

They would base their case on court documents which couldn't be
cross-examined-primarily the New Jersey custody order-and other
documents showing, for instance, that although the adoption petition
prepared by Ryan claimed Philip had no assets, he had in fact assets
totaling more than $ 10,000.

They intended to call only one witness, Judge Hunt. They wanted to
demonstrate that fraud and deception also had played a role in the
adoption. In his brief in support of the adoption, Ryan said, "Had Judge
Hunt been deft-auded, he would have set the adoption aside and chided
counsel for same." Ryan further claimed that Hunt had read the entire
Welfare Department report before he signed the decree.

However painful it might be for Hunt, Green needed his testimony to
refute this assertion.

Over the last two months he had mentioned to Hunt that he'd probably be
a witness. Okay, sure, no problem, Hunt said. It was such a forgone
conclusion that Hunt would testify that Green discarded the idea of a
subpoena.

Indeed, on the morning of December 18, Green told Hunt that he would be
calling him that afternoon, and Hunt said fine, he'd be around.

The hearing was scheduled for one P.m. Dick Green got to the courthouse
a little early. That was when he got a sinking sensation that this
wasn't going to be resolved so fast. He wandered into the waiting area
for judges and saw Judge R. Alan Brubaker, just in from Kokomo,
beginning to leaf through the pleadings. Clearly, he was looking at them
for the first time, and except for Hunt's testimony, they represented
Green and Mfller's whole case.

Green went out to the courthouse steps to wait for Celeste, Jeff and
Janice. Hunt passed by him. He was on his way to lunch. It was a little
late for lunch, Green thought, but maybe a trial he was conducting had
run over.

"See you later," Green said. "Yeah," Hunt said.

Pat Ryan and the Taylors, accompanied by Reverend Parris, entered the
courtroom. A handful of church members s@ed in. But there was no
repetition of the scene at the extradition hearing.

It was as if everyone's emotions were exhausted. "Pray for our brother
and sister, Jean and Everett," Parris had said the previous Sunday.

Green began submitting papers to Brubaker, asking the court to take
"judicial notice" of Gehricke's final custody order which had full legal
force in Indiana pursuant to the uniform child custody act, and then
introduced a certified copy of Philip's assets.

Ryan had deposed that Philip lived with Jean and Zach from the time of
Teresa's death, as if it had all been in Indiana. Green handed Brubaker
the first order Judge Ashbey had issued, dated barely two weeks after
the murder, which showed that not only had there been temporary joint
custody with the Whites, but that it was in New Jersey.

He also submitted her second order in August, 1985, that gave Celeste
and Jeff custody ten months a year.

Green asked for judicial notice that in his consent to adoption, Ken's
residence-the Trenton State Prison-was not included as required by
Indiana law. Furthermore, the consent had not been executed before a @,
a notary public, or any other authorized person.

No notice of the adoption had been sent to Philip's lawfid s, Celeste
and Jeff, or to the New Jersey court that exercised custodial control,
or to Philip's state-appointed financial guardia@l of which Indiana
statutes demanded.

Additional documents were offered to show that the adoption was "in
direct contravention of the intent and terms of child custody laws in
New Jersey and Indiana."

Finally, fraud was alleged.

Green's submissions took about twenty minutes.

The paperwork in front of Judge Brubaker was close to three inches high.
He appeared baffled. Wasn't Green going to call any witnesses?

"Yes, Your Honor, Judge Hunt."

The consternation on Brubaker's face was instant. "Are you sure you want
to do that?"

"Yes."

Brubaker peered at Green. "You better think about it."

Green realized that Brubaker had not signaled the bailiff to fetch Hunt.

"What's going on?" Janice whispered.

"I don't know," Green said. He asked for a recess. As he and Janice
headed for the entry/exit door for attorneys, they crossed Brubaker's
path. Green said to him, "What's the problem?" Brubaker said, "Have you
talked to Judge Hunt?"

"Yes, I talked to him this morning."

"Well, you better talk to him again."

Green went to Hunt's chambers. He was not there. With Celeste and Jeff
hovering nearby, Green huddled with Janice. Obviously, a message was
being sent. Hunt wasn't going to testify the way they expected, or
Brubaker wasn't going to expose a fellow judge to any embarrassment.

Either way, the implicit threat was that if they insisted on calling
Hunt, they were going to regret it.

In court, Green told Brubaker that they would not call Hunt to the
stand. Relieved, Brubaker asked who their next witness was.

Green said nobody. He and co-counsel Miller were resting their case.

Everything was right there in the documentation in front of him.

Brubaker stared at him in apparent disbelief.

Pat Ryan seemed equally stunned.

"No more witnesses?" Brubaker said.

"No, Your Honor." Now Ryan asked for a recess.

Green was exultant. He hadn't given Ryan a single opening to retry the
case by cross-examinft witnesses. The documentary evidence to invalidate
the adoption was overwhelming. All Brubaker had to do was review the
material.

But then, standing in the hallway outside the , it Wag Green's turn to
be stunned. A friend of Green's, & member of Marion's legal fraternity,
h@ up to him. Hunt had miraculously reappeared in his chambers
followitlg his extended lunch.

Green's friend had just come from there. "I think you may have a
problem," he said.

"What are you talking about?"

Brubaker had stormed in to see Hunt, he said, complaining about Green's
tactics. Hunt asked, "What do you mean9" and Brubaker said, "He hasn't
introduced any evidence Yet, no witnesses, just a bunch of papers."

For the first time Dick Green's confidence in the eventual outcome of
the case faltered. He began to fear that either Brubaker was too lazy to
go through the documents before him or too dumb to realize that the
decision about who had custody of Philip had already been mad@ New
Jersey Reverend Parris was Ryan's first witness. He began testi@g that
Teresa had approached him about dedicating her son in the church.

Green objected. This didn't have anything to do with anything.

Brubaker called the three attorneys to the bench. Where was this
questioning headed?

Well, Ryan said, a lot of scurrilous remarks had been directed toward
his clients. It was only fitting that the court be informed that no
finer folks could be found, that they were merely following the wishes
of the child's "deceased" mother and his father. Brubaker, looking
uncomfortable, ruled that this was "off the twk."

Finally, Ryan gave up on Parris. He called Zach.

Had his grandson lived continuously with him and his wife since his
adoptions Had there been any interruptions?

Yes, one, Zach said. "That was on, uh, Friday e the eighth of August,
one day after we adopted the child. We were having dinner about six
o'clock, my wife and I and Philip, and I heard a loud knock on the door.
I went to the door and there4t-it looked like an army in my front yard.

There were two attorneys, uh, Mr. Jules Walker and Mr. Warren Haas.

There were two or three, uh, deputy sheriffs. There was a lady from the
Welfare Department. There was present, uh, Jeff White and Celeste White
and Miz Janice Miller."

Green objected. "Your Honor, he's gotten far enough to indicate that
this has nothing to do with the issue before the court." Ryan said that
his clients had been accused of fraud. He just wanted to show that
others in this case had used the court to "perpetrate a fraud and this
is one of the examples we're going into."

Brubaker suggested that Ryan move on.

"Okay," Ryan said, "now where did Philip stay after the date you learned
of-uh-his mother's death? Who did he live with?"

"Philip actually lived with my wife and I from November the twelfth,
nineteen eighty-four, until September first, nineteen eighty-five.

Part of that time was here in Indiana and rest of the time was in his
home in New Jersey."

"What happened after September first?"

Green objected. "Your Honor, this again has nothing to do with the
issue. This is not a best-interest hearing."

Brubaker overruled him.

Zach testified, "We were to be allowed to have him in our home in
Indiana for seven days on December twenty-sixth ... Christmas of
eighty-five."

"Your Honor," Green said, "we're not here to relitigate those
things-where the child lived, who he's with and so forth." Once more,
Brubaker overruled him.

"Did you get Philip on December twenty-sixth?"

"We did not."

"Is there a reason for that?"

Now Janice objected. "We are not here to relitigate what was litigated
this past summer. I would respectfully ask the court to sustain this
objection, that Mr. Taylor not be allowed to go into every little detail
of what occurred.

How, in fact, he had problems, my clients had problems, whatever.

This is getting off the track of what we're here to decide today."

Maybe so, Brubaker said. But the life of a child was involved.

As he put it, "I've got to have some meat to the bare bones."

Zach testified that he and Jean voluntarily postponed the visitation so
Philip could enjoy his Christmas toys. Then Ryan moved quickly to the
attempt by Celeste and Jeff to "drag" the Taylors into New York.

Brubaker overruled Janice's objection that this was a jurisdictional
dispute that had nothing to do with New Jersey and Indiana or the
hearing.

Dick Green objected to the use of the word "drag." It, too, was
overruled.

Ryan asked, "When did you next get the child?"

"We never actually had him in our possession until August first,
nineteen eighty-six  ... That's when we were permitted to bring him back
here."

"And then," Ryan continued, "did there come a timeuh, you didn't know
whether Judge Hunt would grant an adoption, did you?"

"We didn't know what was going to happen. We certainly hoped that he
would."

"And Philip was happy to go with you?"

"Yes."

"Okay, that is all."

"He was happy," Zach repeated.

- * It had not gone well, Green thought. Brubaker had let Ryan wander
all over the place. He had to get the judge focused back on the New
Jersey custody order.

In cross-examination, he said, "Mr. Taylor, you were in court in
Monmouth County, New Jersey, before Judge Gehricke, on August first?"

"Yes.

"And you were a party to the agreement which was read into the record by
Mr. Shapiro, your attorney, and Mrs. Miller, were you not?"

"I was party to a tentative agreement."

" Would you explain to me what's tentative about something that's read
into the record and you immediately received benefit or accepted benefit
of it?"

"The, uh, tentative part was that it was to be written into document
form by Mrs. Miller.

That was the tentative part. There was no agreement under oath that
day."

"Mr. Shapiro did represent you in that proceeding, did he not?"

"Yes.

"And you heard the agreement read to the judge?"

"I heard it, Yes."

"Did the agreement provide that you would take the child on August the
first and receive visitation for a sixteenday period?"

"Yes.

"Did you receive the child?"

"Yes."

So you got benefit out of that hearing?"

"We, we were able to have Philip, yes."

"Did you intend to bring him back on August sixteenth?"

"No." Then Zach, after a moment's hesitation, as if realizing that he'd
said the wrong thing, interjected, "I'm sorry. Can I answer that?"

"I wish you would."

"Uh, the agreement that was read in court, the tentative agreement was
that Celeste and Jeff were to take him back on August sixteenth.

We were not obligated to take Philip back."

"Are you telling me that Mr. and Mrs. White didn't show up on the
sixteenth to ask for Philip?"

"Something happened in between."

"What happened?"

"He was adopted on August the seventh."

"You knew when you left New Jersey and New York that you were going to
attempt to fin@ this adoption, didn't you?"

"We knew that we were going to try. Yes."

"Why did you state flatly that he [Philip] doesn't have any property?"

"When 1-when I read that in the-is that-is that in the petition?"

I Yes."

"When I read in the petition, uh, what came to my'mind as property was,
uh, real property in terms of@f-real estate.

,f&. Taylor," Green said, "when the Whites fried the New York custody
proceedings, you received notice, didn't YOU9" .1, Yes, we did."

"When you filed the Indiana adoption, they didn't receive notice, did
they?"

"No.

"That's all we have," Green said.

In his closing argument, Ryan said, "Mr. Green hasn't brought out
anything new. We expected more evidence, more witnesses."

The Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act, he went on, did not apply to
adoptions. The "incarceration" of Kenneth Taylor in no way affected the
validity of his consent. And Judge Hunt was cognizant of other custody
proceedings.

Any inadvertent omissions in the adoption petition were fully covered in
the Welfare Department report, which Hunt had read.

Dick Green said that all his evidence was contained in the papers in
front of Brubaker.

He moved to have his pleadings amended to conform to evidence of fraud
in the adoption petition.

Flustered, Brubaker denied the motion on fraud. That, of course, would
have dragged Judge Hunt back into the proceedings.

He also denied Ryan's motion to throw out the case because of lack of
evidence.

Then he ended any thought that he might make an immediate ruling.

He would take the case under advisement. He wanted briefs from both
sides. Glancing at Green, he gestured toward the stack of documents that
had been submitted and said he was not a "history professor."

He wanted the briefs limited to three issues: the notice of adoption as
required by Indiana law, the consent required for an adoption, and the
validity of the New Jersey custody order.

The briefs were due February 13. After that, Judge Brubaker had sixty
days to come to a decision. If he didn't, Green and Miller could move to
have him taken off the case. That meant starting the whole process over
again, beginning with the selection of another special judge.

Green could only hope that someone-possibly Huntwould tell Brubaker that
documents were as much evidence as witnesses were.

Crestfallen, Jeff and Cel,ste: who was now four months pregnant,
returned empty-handed to Staten Island. Before Celeste left, Warren Haas
did his best to cheer her up. "It isn't over until the fat lady sings,"
he said.

It was a Christmas of anguish. Philip as a person had disappeared into a
legal thicket of motions, briefs and hearings. Celeste was inconsolable.
She shoulduld have listened to her friends.

They should have grabbed Philip.

In Marion, Pat Ryan told the Taylors that he thought they had a "real
good shot" at winning. And even if they lost, he'd keep it going through
the courts on appeal.

For years.

Chapter NTY-ON'E Early in March, 1987, was writing my novel, ironically
called Father and Son, when I first heard about the events then taking
place in Indiana.

One morning my wife read me portions of a letter she. had received from
a woman friend in Sar Francisco. The friend had once worked as a
paralegal with Janice Miller. My wife said that she remembered meeting
Janice once or twice. The letter described some of the travail that
Janice was encountering in a cruel custody case. My impression at the
time was that it centered on a dispute between maternal and paternal
grandparents. The letter went on to say that Janice was in desperate
need of some leverage outside of the legal system, something
journalistic, that might help break the logjam.

Would I be at all interested?

I said I'd think about it. Then, preoccupied with that day's work on the
novel, I promptly forgot about it. In the evening, I met some friends of
my own for drinks. One of them happened to bring up a recent segment
he'd seen on the television program, "60 Minutes." It was really
something, he said. It involved custody fights. If you were in one, and
were Norwegian-born, and you could spirit the child to Norway, the
Norwegian government, regardless of the merits, would see to it that the
child was never returned. I immediately recalled the letter. Norway was
one thing. Indiana was quite something else.

I spoke to Janice on the phone. Then, in New York, I had dinner with her
and her husband, Frank Gaudio. Janice reviewed everything that had
occurred to date, beginning with the call Celeste had made to her in
June 1986. Now time was running out. She believed that the chances were
odds-on that no decision would be made, and she and the Whites would
have to start all over again.

In listening to her, it was obvious to me that she would never be
compensated for her time. Why had she put such devotion into the case?

It was then that I learned of her own history as a battered wife, and
how she continued to involve herself in aiding women who had suffered
the way she had. The murder of Teresa Taylor, and its aftermath, she
said, was a perfect example of what she was combating.

I told her that it was hard for me to believe, in this day and age in
this country, that what, in effect, amounted to a state-sanctioned
kidnapping could actually be possible. I said that if I found that she
was exaggerating any of this, she would be sorry she ever met me.

Janice had especially singled out the failed extradition of the Taylors
as evidence of Indiana's hostile environment.

I drove to New Jersey to see Paul Chalet in his office in Freehold.

Chalet recalled the prosecution of Ken Taylor, although he did not dwell
on the difficulties he had faced in obtaining a murder conviction. As
for the extradition, just a couple of weeks before, he had written
another letter to John Hoyden, the assistant counsel to Governor Kean.
Chalet's letter referred to previous requests for action. He noted that
the Taylors had been indicted and that the "Monmouth County Prosecutor's
Officd has indicated that we will prosecute to the fullest extent of the
law." He had not been given "any written explanation as to why this
usually routine procedure has dragged on for an inordinate period of
time." The letter asked, "Will somebody in an official capacity please
get back to me in writing and explain the delay?"

There had been no response. Kean's name was being mentioned then as a
possible vice-presidential candidate on the Republican ticket. I asked
Chalet if he thought politics had played a part in this, considering
that Indiana's Orr also was a Republican governor.

He said he couldn't comment. I'd have to draw my own conclusions.

Afterward, along with documents Janice Miller provided me, I picked up
more papers on record in the Monmouth County Courthouse, including Jean
Taylor's letter to Judge Ashbey about what Philip would or wouldn't know
about Teresa's death.

When I read them, I found little that did not support what Janice had
told me. I talked to the Benignos and Jeff and Celeste, and came away
convinced of the horrors they'd experienced.

I did not attempt to reach Ken Taylor, still in prison in Virginia.

His name as a direct participant in the court fight was not in any of
the papers, and I had no inkling at the time of what his true role was
in this drama.

Since the clock was ticking-a decision one way or the other, or no
decision, was apparently due in mid-Aprit-I approached the editor of the
Sunday magazine of The New York Times, the only publication I could
think of that uniquely met both the demands of time and impact. At first
there was some resistance that this sounded like "just another custody
fight." I said I thought that it involved a lot more, that in a very
real sense it concerned what we as a nation were supposed to be all
about. A day later, I got the go-ahead.

I went to Marion.

My first morning there, going around to get a visceral feel of the city,
I walked under the great elms bordering the courthouse, including the
one from which those two black teenagers had dangled decades before. I
discovered that the big talk in town was the expected spring onslaught
of the starlings, any day now, settling in the elms-tens of thousands of
starlings, perhaps hundreds of thousands, even millions of them. Nobody
knew.

They'd been arriving for about three years and roosting through October.
When I went to Marion's tallest building, the Summit, where so many
local lawyers had their offices, the windows on all eight stories that
faced the courthouse were strung with trinkets (tiny bells were a
favorite) and balloons to ward starlings off the sills.

Inflated fake owls had been positioned in the trees. In the past, bird
shot had been fired through the branches. Trucks circling the courthouse
had blared loud music. Other noises designed to frighten away the
starlings had been recorded.

Everything short of a howitzer had been tried.

But nothing worked. The squealing starlings, along with their deposits,
kept coming, and the courthouse square was readying itself for another
grim siege.

I met Warren Haas. He confirmed the events of the evening when he had
gone to the Taylor residence with Janice, Celeste, Jeff and the deputy
sheriff. He made no effort to hide where he stood on the issue.

Ever since, he said, when there was the slightest impropriety expressed
in a Welfare Department report, he ordered it flagged for a judge's
attention. By then, he knew of Judge Brubaker's comment that there had
been no evidence, just documents. He shook his head. He couldn't begin
to predict how this would wind up. Usually, he said, time was the
ultimate victor. People simply wore down and surrendered.

It was truly remarkable how Celeste and Jeff had "hung in."

At The Nobby Grill, I heard a rehash of how Judge Hunt had "blown it."

There was general amazement that the case was still going on.

Dick Green retraced all the steps he had taken once Janice contacted
him. Nothing incensed him more than the declaration by the Taylors that
their son Tom was available to care for Philip should something befall
them. Green said that he had picked up reliable street talk that Tom was
addicted to cocaine. And if he could pin it down, he wouldn't hesitate
to introduce it.

He dismissed the idea that Tom's blighted athletic career was the cause
of his drug habit. He'd been a varsity player himself, he said, and knew
many athletes whose rs had been cut short by injuries. That had not
prevented them from leading productive lives. In his opinion, Tom's
problem was rooted right where he had grown up, at home.

(Three months later, two cops on night patrol in South Marion spotted a
suspicious individual, who turned out to be Tom. They chased him to his
car and discovered that he had two syringes, one of which had been
recently used and contained blood. The arrest report said: "Upon
searching the car a spoon, matches and a small plastic bag containing a
white crystal substance was found under the driver's seat.

The substance was taken to the Marion Police Department ... and found to
be positive cocaine." He was sentenced to probation and ordered to enter
a drug rehabilitation program.) When I saw him, Green still remained
confident that things would work out. There had been, however, one
disturbing note. He'd recently been in Kokomo. He had planned to invent
some reason to drop in on Judge Brubaker. But it was pointless.

Brubaker had gone off to a judicial conference in California.

Nobody was sure for exactly how long. At least two weeks.

Christ, just great, Green thought.

Since the case was still in court, none of the judges who had been
involved were available. I attempted to reach the Taylors through their
attorney, Pat Ryan. They declined to speak to me.

Ryan, however, agreed to an interview.

He behaved as advertised. Over breakfast, he told me that the only issue
that counted was the adoption. Every other aspect of the case, including
the New Jersey custody order, was "garbage."

Although Dr. Michele Rabinowitz originally was appointed by the state,
Ryan described the child psychologist as a "hired gun" for the Whites
and went on to characterize her as a "real screwball."

In Jean Taylor's letter to Judge Ashbey, she had indicated that she
fully subscribed to Ken's version of the murder. I asked him if she were
passing this on to her grandson. He couldn't answer that, he said. He
had recommended to his clients that they see me, but they were steadfast
in their refusal.

Yes, he said, their son Tom was ready to step in should it prove
necessary. As far as he was concerned, Tom seemed "fine." And there also
was Ken's sister. Ryan was a little vague about her. The best he could
tell me was that she lived down south and was married to "rome kind of a
military man." I asked him about the various omissions in the adoption
petition he had prepared for the Taylors. He squinted at me. No one, he
said, had accused him of "fraud." The implication was clear. I had
better not either. As we parted, he said he was confident that Judge
Brubaker would hand dqwn a favorable ruling.

If not, the fight was far from over.

I saw Steve Johnson, the Grant County district attorney, who had been
returned handily to office the previous November. I asked him why he had
moved to thwart extradition proceedings against the Taylors.

There was, he said, more there than met the eye. Could he be more
specific? Well, he answered, it might well have been that the attorney
for the Taylors had led them "down the garden path." I said that while I
was not a lawyer, wasn't this something for the courts in New Jersey to
decide? Johnson compressed his lips. He stood up behind his desk. It was
nice meeting me, he said. He had to excuse himself. He had to be in
court himself.

In New Jersey, I already had contacted John Hoyden in Governor Kean's
office to find out what he was doing to pursue the extradition.

He told me that he'd been in constant touch with the Indiana attorney
general's office about it. I asked if there were any written records
that would show this. He said he'd have to check his files. I never
heard from him.

And in Indiana, I called David Arthur, the deputy attorney general in
charge of the investigation to determine whether extradition was
warranted. I asked him what was going on.

He replied that they were waiting to see what happened on the adoption.

I said I didn't see how, legally, one had much to do with the other.

"Look," Arthur said, "it's really all very complicated, if you know what
I mean."

My article, titled "The Legacy of a Mother's Murder," was published in
the Times on Sunday, April 12. The magazine, as usual, was printed ahead
of the news sections and advance copies were distributed to selected
recipients. I got two copies on Wednesday and gave one to Janice Miller.

Although I did not then know this, Janice telephoned Judge Brubaker's
office on Thursday around one-thirty in the afternoon. A woman who
answered-with whom Janice had previously spoken-said there wasn't
anything to report on the Taylor case. "There's been no final decision.

" The judge, she said, was occupied in court.

Infuriated, Janice said that she wanted the judge to know that a major
article about the case would appear in the Sunday New York Times.

It reported, she said, accurately enough, the inexcusable judicial
machinations that were adversely affecting the fate of a child not yet
three years old, that he was being passed around like a basketball in
the game the state was so famous for. She read some paragraphs from the
article. "The judge may want to take a look at it," she said.

"I'll tell him," the woman said in icy tones.

Janice remembered hanging up, despondent.

Then late Friday afternoon, her husband heard his normally composed wife
shrieking in her adjoining office. He rushed in to find out what the
matter was.

"We won! We won!" she shouted at him.

After her phone call to Kokomo on Thursday, she had called again on
Friday and now she was told that a ruling had finally been made.

And then she spoke to Dick Green. The adoption had been vacated.

The papers, moments before, had been delivered to the Marion courthouse
for Ming. After all this time, she thought, it must have been the
article.

She called Celeste. "We won!" Janice exclaimed again. "We won!"

Celeste burst into tears, unable to speak.

Jeff said, "Is it really over?"

Suddenly sobered, Janice said, "I hope so."

Janice flew to Indiana Sunday evening. Jeff would follow once more
details were known. He would come by himself. Celeste, on the verge of
giving birth, had been forbidden by her doctor to travel.

The headline across the top of the front page of the Marion
Chronicle-Tribune said: Judge rules Taylors lose custody of grandson
today Over an accompanying article, also on the front page, there was
another headline: "New York Times Magazine' features Taylor custody
battle The lead paragraph said: "An Fasterner's view of Marion is being
read around the country in a story written about the Midwest-to-East
custody fight between a 2-year-old boy's Marion grandparents and his New
York City aunt and uncle."

Judge Brubaker's ruling appeared to be hastily written. While it
acknowledged the existence of a New Jersey order giving Celeste and Jeff
permanent custody of Philip, it was not cited as a decisive factor. He
based his decision on the nwmwest of grounds.

Technically, under Indiana law, the Whites did not have to be notified
about the adoption. However, "the spirit of the Indiana adoption
statutes would require notice to guardians, courts or agencies having
custody or other direct contact with the child."

Well, Janice thought, she'd take it any Way she could get it.

Pat Ryan asked for a stay pending an appeal.

it wasn't fair to move the child back and forth from one jurisdiction to
another.

Ryan put Zach on the stand. It was the men reftn. He declared that his
grandson was happy in Indiana. Indiana was a better place to raise a
child than New York, where the houses "were too close together."

If Philip remained in Indiana, he would be spared the sordid details of
his mother's death. Without mentioning that he had a large pool himself,
he added that the Whites had a small aboveground children's pool in
their backyard that would be dangerous for a two-year-old who couldn't
swim.

In his response, Dick Green asserted that if a,stay were granted in the
absence of an "emergency"-4m@nent physical or psychological abuse of the
chfld-A precedent would be set whereby any time a court order was
issued, a stay would be granted. So what was the point of an order in
the first place?

Brubaker denied the stay. The child would be delivered to the Grant
County Department of Public Welfare, and then to his guardians, "on or
before noon" on Tuesday, April 14.

Green warned Miller that it still might not be over. He had spotted an
Indianapolis attorney named Frank Spencer in the Marion courthouse with
Ryan. Spencer specialized in appellate work.

He'd bet anything, Green told her, that Ryan would try for a stay in the
Indiana Court of Appeals.

That evening, Monday, April 13, Jeff arrived in Marion.

Throughout the next morning, there were hourly reports from
Indianapolis. No motion had been filed.

Noon came and went. No Philip.

Green prepared a contempt of court citation.

He telephoned Brubaker in Kokomo and got his secretary. The judge was on
the bench presiding over a drug VW. Green said he would drive to Kokomo
to get Brubaker's signature on the contempt order.

In Green's office, Jeff stared at Janice.

Where was Philip? She berated herself for not arranging another
survefflance of the Taylors.

He was, in fact, with Jean. Following Pat Ryan's in tions, she was
driving around Marion with him, periodically calling in until an
application for a stay was granted by the appeals court. At last, around
twelve-thirty, she was told that it was. She could go home.

Minutes later, Green heard the news. Tears began rolling down Jeff
White's face. He would not be picking up Philip that day after all It
was the first time that Janice had seen him cry.

Ryan's maneuverings may have saved Green's life.

In the drug trial in Judge Brubaker's courtroom, the defendant's
attorney was a close friend of Green's. Dick would have arrived at the
Kokomo court a little before two P.m. when a recess had been called.

During the recess, he would surety have stopped to chat with his friend
while waiting for Brubaker to receive him. At two o'clock that
afternoon, the defendant set off a bomb that killed him and severely
wounded his attorney and the local sheriff.

Right then, though, Green knew none of this.

He, Janice and Jeff were mcing to Indianapolis.

A new headline in the Chronicle-Tribune said: Emergency order halts
transfer of custody In Indianapolis, they worked through the rest of the
day with the lawyer who would represent them in the appeals court, Peter
Tamulonis, marshaling their arguments with care, recapitulating the
case's tortured legal history, beginning with the New Jersey custody
order.

Vicious thunderstorms lashed the city. But at sunset, the min and
lightning had stopped and the sky started to clear. As they headed
toward a hotel for a break, Green suddenly said to Janice, "Do you
believe in omens?"

"What do you mean?"

"Look, there," Dick said, pointing at a rainbow arching overhead.

"See where it comes down on that building?"

"Yes.

"That's where we'll be tomorrow. Thathat's our pot of gold." The next
morning they appeared before a three-judge panel of the appeals court.

p On behalf of the Taylors, attorney Frank Spencer argued that Jeff and
Celeste had waited too long to intervene in the adoption.

The alloted sixty days had elapsed. Further, he said that they were not
parties to the adoption to begin with because matters of custody in New
Jersey and adoption in Indiana were separate, entirety different forms
of physical possession.

"Your position on that point I can only characterize as ridiculous,"
Judge Paul H. Buchanan, Jr said.

Peter Tamulonis noted that the delay in the intervention petition had
occurred because no judge was available to hear it. And, after citing
the ruling for permanent custody that had been awarded the Whites, he
said that there was a bottom line to all of this. "The proceedings in
Indiana have been shown to be a flagrant attempt to circumvent the
orders of the New Jersey court."

Another appeals judge, V. Sue Shields, wondered out loud if fraud wasn't
an issue here.

Huffy, Spencer said that the trial court had found no evidence of fraud.

The appeals panel retired for ten minutes.

The emergency stay was denied without comment. Dick, Janice and Jeff
hurried back to Marion.

Warren Haas and a caseworker went to the Taylor home. There was no
repeat of his last visit. Zach and Jean were struggling to maintain
their composure. Haas told Jean that he appreciated her feelings.

"It probably didn't mean anything to her," he said, "but it did to me."

Tom was there, hovering in the background, "like a shadow."

The caseworker took Philip. Haas carried a small suitcase with the boy's
clothes. Philip seemed alert, but didn't say anything. It was impossible
to know what had been going on in his head all this time.

To avoid the reporters waiting at the welfare office, Haas drove to a
friend's house where there were two children around Philip's age.

He played tentatively with them. Around five P.m Jeff and Janice pulled
up. Jeff, Haas recalled, was splendid. He swung Philip into his arms and
said, "Hi, big guy. You don't remember me, do you?"

But Philip nodded and clung to him.

Then they got into their rented car and drove toward Ohio. "Let's get
over the state line before something else happens," Jeff said.

Janice remembered how Philip wasn't saying a word. Jeff had brought
along some toys. He took them out and said, "Just show me the one you
want."

After an hour or so, Jeff said, "Who's daddy?" and Philip pointed at
him.

"I'll tell you what. If you call me daddy, I'll give you a kiss," and
Philip spoke at last. "Daddy! Daddy!" he shouted, and Jeff kept kissing
him.

They spent the night in an airport motel in Dayton. Philip slept in the
same bed with Jeff. In the morning, when Jeff opened Phdip's suitcase,
he found that none of the clothes fit. They were the same ones he'd gone
to Marion with ten months ago.

When they landed at Newark Airport, a number of reporters and television
crews were on hand. I also was there. I watched as Jeff placed Philip in
front of Celeste. I saw her fall to her knees, despite her swollen
belly, and clutch her dead sister's son, sobbing, "My baby, oh, my
baby!"

All the local news shows and newspapers in New York and New Jersey
covered Philip's return. It was on the wire services and national news
broadcasts as well.

Interviewed in Marion, the Taylors said that they were deeply saddened
by the loss of their grandson. It was wrong, Zach said, to mix up the
killing of Teresa with the adoption. Asked if her son Ken had conveyed
any comments about the outcome, Jean replied that he had lost all faith
in justice and the law.

At home, Jeff told Celeste that Warren Haas sent his best.

"Oh, my God, I've got to call him," and then on the phone to him in
Marion, she said, "Mr. Haas, the fat lady just sang."

That same day, in remote Craigsville, Virginia, Ken Taylor finally found
a way to escape from the Augusta Correctional Center.

He'd been alone in the classroom building where he tutored other
inmates. Pacing up and down, in a fury after having heard the news from
Zach and Jean, he shoved the bar-like a fire-door bar-on the door at the
end of a corridor. Ken had always presumed it was locked.

To his amazement, it wasn't. He waited, thinking an alarm might go off.

It didn't.

He looked outside. A few feet away was a heavy steelmesh fence twenty
feet high, topped with razor wire. In effect, it was a second wall.

The cell blocks themselves really formed the first wall. Beyond the
fence was forest and in the distance mountains.

To his left, Ken saw that the fence ran right against the administration
building. The fence's terminal post rose about two feet over the coils
of wire. He was in as good shape as he'd ever been, running every day,
working out daily in the weight room. He could shinny up the post, get
above the razor wire, leap over it, and come down rolling, like a
paratrooper.

Ken confided his discovery to his cellmate, also a tutor. He wasn't
interested.

But would he help?

"Sure thing, Doc, whatever you want."

The single-story classroom building had a dropped ceiling. In a small
room, where cleaning gear was stored, Ken used a broomstick to pop a
couple of the ceiling squares. The cellmate boosted him up so Ken could
look around. Ducts for heating and air conditioning snaked around the
space. One duct went behind an interior concrete wall hanging from the
roof. There were only a couple of inches between the top of the duct and
the bottom of the wall, which didn't appear to serve any purpose.
Perhaps, Ken thought, it had been part of the original design which for
some reason was abandoned. At any rate, he could bide behind it on the
duct.

His plan was to remain up there for three nights while the search for
him went on. By then, he figured, the hunt would be concentrated far
beyond the immediate area of the prison. He had been told that a mile
and a half to the west there was a country store with an outside
telephone booth.

He'd get to it and call his parents to come for him.

Equipped with candy bars, some cans of soda, and a little cash from
poker winnings, he went up through the ceiling after morning classes.

He warned his cellmate to be sure to wipe off the sneaker print he left
on the wall. He crawled along the duct. When he finished one of the
sodas, he would use the can to urinate in.

He heard the commotion below him after the noon count. It sounded as if
there were four or five guards in the search party. He saw the beam from
a flashlight dancing around. A voice said, "There's nothing up here."

The voices went away. He'd made it. Then that afternoon there were more
voices, a lot more. This time Ken knew it was serious. His cellmate must
have snitched.

A minute later, the same ceiling squares Ken had come through were
popped. A voice said, "Doesn't this look like part of a footprint?"

Again, a flashlight crisscrossed the space.

But then he heard another voice, which said, "I'm telling you, he isn't
here."

"Keep looking. He's got to be."

He saw the shaft of light picking its way along the top of the duct,
just below the concrete wall he was sitting behind. He arched his back
to keep from being seen as the light went under him. It came back.

"Wait. I see something. A Coke can. Yeah, he's here, all right.

" Ken had forgotten about it-the can for urinating. He called out, "Take
it easy. I'm coming down."

He was sentenced to an additional four years.

Three days after his return to Staten Island, Philip had a new sister,
Jacqueline.

On his third birthday, June I 1, Celeste said there were still some
problems. Not yet toilet-trained, he tensed up instantly at th e
Prospect of going to the bathroom resisted getting into the tub so
ferociously that shand he e had to "It'd all work out," Jeff said.

"We're just as calm and collected as any household with a three-Year-Wd,
a twoyear-old, and a two-month old." Celeste said she wouldn't mind
having another baby.

The Problems had disappeared by the time of a party in July to celebrate
Jacqueline's christening. The day was sweltering. Some of Jefrs pais
jumped into the backyard wading pool to cool off.

Philip ran to get his water wings to join them. I watched as they tossed
him in the air and to one another.

"More, more!" he kept yelling.

sponge-bathe him.

417Chapter Twilpalmity-Two In the spring of 1989, I met with Ken Taylor
in Virginia's old main prison, the Powhatan Correctional Center, twenty
miles west of Richmond.

By then a reversal of his murder conviction the grounds of prejudicial
pretrial publicity, the "enhanced" photos of Teresa's battered face and
head, and the introduction of the Acapulco evidence-had been denied by
the New Jersey Court of Appeals. The New Jersey Supreme Court had upheld
the verdict, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to entertain further
pleadings.

Jean and Zach had voluntarily returned to New Jersey to face the charges
against them. They were sentenced to community service.

In Indiana, their motion to reinstate Judge Hunt's adoption order was
turned down by both the state's Court of Appeals and Supreme Court.

In New Jersey, Ken was stripped of all parental rights to Philip, who
was then formally adopted by Celeste and Jeff.

The Taylors contested the adoption. In one memorable moment, Jean was
asked how she as a mother had dealt with her son Tom's drug habit.

"We do not talk about drugs in our home," she said.

After his escape attempt in Craigsville, Ken had been Umferred to the
harsher confines of the Mecklenburg Cormr.tional Center along the North
Carolina border. There, it was believed that he had joined a conspiracy
with two other inmates to murder a Mecklenburg guard.

He was "locked up" for some ten months before being transferred back to
Powhatan, where he had been initially received in Virginia.

I had written to him requesting an interview, actually a series of them,
for this book.

He replied negatively at first. He had found my article in the Times
extremely biased. He had, moreover, practically finished a long first
draft narrating his side of the story which he hoped to publish.

Indeed, toward this end, he had forwarded a great deal of material to a
New York literary agent, who was casting about for the right writer to
put it in publishable form.

I answered that although I remained anxious to see hiat, I was going
ahead with my own project in any event and wished him well.

Suddenly, he wrote, "I look forward to our visit."

Ken had been at Powhatan for only a few days when I saw him. He was
still in segregation in the prison's maximum security wing. While I
didn't expect any dramatic revelations from him, I did want a firsthand
sense of what he was like-and especially what made him apparently so
beguiling to many women.

From my perspective, at least, that was easy to see.

Even though he was manacled hand and foot, in an orange prison jumpsuit,
his blond hair now receding and thinning, he was physically imposing. He
spoke softly. He had an ingratiating smile. He projected the earnest,
shy manner of a man buffeted by fate, who nonetheless was bearing up. He
came off as, well, charming. If there were any visible signs of tension,
it was the way he c@ smoked cigarettes, expertly lighting them despite
his handcuffs, accepting a light from me, with profuse thanks, only when
he was running low on matches.

Then I saw another side to him, an unexpected toughness that also
exerted powerful appeal.

Powhatan was not designed for an interview like the one I was
conducting. And while the arrangements were being made for us to talk in
a glassed-in visitor's cubicle in a cavernous, central corridor just
outside the maximum security wing, we spoke in a room in the laundry
area inside the wing.

A black convict, about the same size as Ken, also manacled, had spied us
through the open door. As we got up to be let out of maximum security,
they came face-to-face.

"Who you?" the black convict challenged him, as if no one else were
present.

Ken's face instantly hardened. He bent slightly forward, so that they
were nose-to-nose no more than six inches apart.

"Who you?" he said.

For what seemed like an eternity, they glared at one another, eyes their
only weapons. Then the black convict looked away.

Afterward, casually, shuffling alongside of me in his leg irons, Ken
said, "It's eighty percent black in here. You can't let anybody push you
around."

He immediately told me that he was planning a new appeal. It would be
based on incompetent counsel. Jack Venturi, his defense attorney, had
really let him down.

I suggested that this might be difficult.

Most of the prisons in America would be emptied if inmates could have
their way on that.

Yeah, he knew this, but Jack should have gone for temporary insanity.

That was the truth, when you thought about it. Worst of all was Jack not
getting a toxicologist to speak up for him.

It was inconceivable that a "putrid" blood sample could be used to give
an accurate reading of how much cocaine Teresa had in her system that
night.

I said I had documented evidence that Venturi had approached other
toxicologists and, right or wrong, they all reported that their
testimony would be the same as the toxicologist for the prosecution.

It was just as inconceivable to me, in view of what was at stake, that
Venturi hadn't told him that.

He didn't know this, he insisted. After all, he could only tell me what
he remembered. It would be a rationale I would hear more than once from
him. Afterward, Ken would write me, "Maybe at this late date, Venturi
has found prudence to be his best course and has in fact a report or two
handy to cover his ass." His boyhood was idyllic, he said in Powhatan.

He could not have been blessed with better, more God-fearing parents.

What had happened to him as an adult-"how I fucked up"-was his own
fault.

He loved Teresa. And Philip. He loved Marilyn. And Astrid.

Listening to him, it was difficult for me to differentiate between them.
He smiled disarmingly. What could he say? That was how it was.

He recalled first meeting Marilyn. "She was so sophisticated and so
goddamned good-looking and sexy. There was just something about her.

She was-I think she was five seven, about a hundred and twenty pounds,
solid body, kind of thin-real long legs, long red hair, a knockout.

She was a knockout. Plus she picked me up. Sexually, she made the first
moves."

Finally, though, in the love he expressed for both women, Teresa edged
ahead. "I loved her so deeply. I miss her so much. What happened was a
tragedy. I lost my best lover and my best friend." In grand sociopathic
tradition, he saw himself as the true victim now.

"Why," he asked, "doesn't anybody understand what I've been going
through?"

Then his memories of Marilyn grew darker. "I was fed up with her
arguing. With her self-righteousness. Her way was the proper, moral way.
To do things when she wanted to do them.

To have sex when she wanted to have sex, go to a movie when she wanted
to go to a movie, go out to dinner when she wanted to have dinner.

It's very difficult for me to Pinpoint _xact things. I ran only give you
things in general." -He said that the "Pain" he felt at not being a'olc
to be He insisted that the diughwith his children was enormous s. Why
then had he not ter by his first wife was not hi y hr second husband? It
owed the child to be adopted b He said that he unnec, all ssarity cruet
act.

se, ,M-_d such an to be-en forced Ontribute support Pay would still have
ply wasn't so, we reached ments. When I said that this sim Only tell YOU
another dead end. "Look," he said, I can what they told me."

joroform Marilyn was not Even though his attempt to ch wildly disparate
part of his murder trial, he had t)rovided planations for doing itwhic@
was right?

There was " t helpless smile. ,You tell me," he said.

hesitant, ainlos rape or'kill her ri-Tnlin@ "- ,Whether I )m trying to
scare, I was a zombie that night Paul Chalet's investigators number of
one of the calls whorcholls@ Manhattan hospital after a was in the
pleased at the _ker smile, as if qui, "I m f flashed a he said, made the
chance to be forthf-igt "Obviously," e " girls', that anted to tell tn
call." He told me that he w . have to thittk The,d just become a proud
father. He would about how Teresa got hold of the number.

ad reached any asked him by letter if he h Later, when plied that she
must have fond conclusions about that, he re it in his walletshould have
been permitted ill Acapulco, he said, never da Peraino remained an
"enigma" to hiln, his trial. SORAY on, he said, why would he have
confessed to her? Come it didn,t toake any sense.

,S. consular agent in Acaputcd After I teamed toot the U 8, jail and had
received es ntiany reported visiting Ken in him how this could have bea
the same Sessions I asked must have gotten to so. He said that Chalet's
investigators - n,t it been why had the agent. My next quest'on-the-n of
the prosecution case?-was really pointless.

I knew what his answer would be. He wasn't the prosecu Chalet was.

Ask him.

Prior to meeting Ken in Powhatan, I had informed that while I would make
my own judgments, I would tainly weigh his side of the story.

His sodium amytal i view, he said, proved his innocence-that at the
worst was only guilty of "involuntary manslaughter."

I reminded him that in that interview, he also said knew of another
instance of a mother sodomizing her so 1, a sleazy couple in Ohio."

Could he elaborate) "Oh," he said, shrugging, "it must have been in s
movie I saw."

I later had another query for him about the sodium tai interview.

Why had he lumped together the be Teresa in Acapulco, her murder in
Manalapan, and attempt to murder Marilyn in Connecticut as example
possible psychosexual problems he might have.?

Anger colored his reply, "I do not und I understand the n of this
question," he wrote, "and quite frankly, it se rude and inappropriate.

I am trying to be fair and this d not fit my criteria of being fair."

In Powhatan, I told Ken that after his failed escape the Craigsville
prison, I had heard that a search of belongings turned up a list of
names-which could be strued as a "hit" list-and among the names were Ch
Judge Farren and Celeste.

He said that if there had been such a list, it was no lo relevant.

He had forsaken ideas of vengeance. He about New lersey's death row, its
lethal injection ch That wasn't for him.

He wanted to live. If he ever man to break out, he'd "head for the
hills."

Still, he couldn't disguise his hatred for Celeste and J Especially
Celeste. Jeff was "a nothing." ." I came away the impression that it was
the thought of Celeste t pawed so at him, that in the battle over
Philip, it was Philip that drove him into such fury, but Celeste-this
"dimwit," his intellectual inferior-had taken him on and beaten him.

That was what was so insupportable.

I returned to Marion.

There had been a dramatic change there since my last visit. In the
noonday sun, the courthouse looked like an aging courtesan, stripped of
her fin@. All the great shade elms surrounding it were no more,
chain-sawed down in one fell swoop by the county commissioners in a
final, desperate effort to drive off the starlings. The next day, too
late, an environmentalist from Purdue University arrived to announce it
wouldn't work. And he was right. The starlings simply swarmed to trees
in nearby residential areas. Hordes of them still perched, despite the
balloons and trinkets, on the window sills of the Summit building. Plans
to plant new trees and shrubbery were announced.

Anyway, the local joke went, there wouldn't be any more lynchings for a
while.

In his chambers, Judge Tom Hunt put all the blame on the Welfare
Department. "Attorney Pat Ryan came in," he said, "and indicated that he
had this adoption on. He handed me the file and said the welfare report
was in it. I read the report. The report was relatively glowing in terms
of these people. So I naturally relied on the report, which indicated to
me that they felt that it was a good environment in which to place the
kid." He said, ,It,s impossible for me to conduct an independent
investigation on every single case I get. That's why I rely on the
Welfare Department in adoptions. They conduct that for the court.

So they were well aware of the background in the case, or should have
been."

According to Hunt, he did not know that Ken had murdered Teresa, or that
he was in prison.

"My recollection is that I was told the mother was deceased, the father
had signed a consent-I was shown the consent-to have his parents become
the adoptive parents - .. Mn Ryan did say there was an aunt and uncle in
New Jersey or New York.

They were attempting to obtain guardianship over this child because, in
his opinion, the child was going to get some insurance money as a result
of the death of his mother. But the kid had been with the grandparents
for a length of time ..

. So I went ahead and approved the adoption.

It was routine." Hunt remembered the calls afterward from Janice Miller
and Judge Gehricke. If everyone had listened to him, Hunt said, none of
what then happened would have occurred. He would have held a hearing on
Monday morning, and if the facts were as they eventually turned out to
be, he would have vacated the adoption immediately, Instead, he was
livid once he discovered that Warren Haas had taken Philip from the
Taylors.

Hunt said, "I asked him what the situation was, and he said, since I was
unavailable, they [the Whites] had come to him. He then went to Judge
Wright and got Judge Wright to intervene. I came unglued at that point.
Probably shouldn't have, but it made me mad that the Welfare
Department-who two days earlier told me these people were absolutely
perfect to adopt this childwi of a sudden changed their mind and was
saying this was an unfit environment for the child.

It made me mad that they had gone and got another judge."

Everyone seemed to have a different slant on what was in the welfare
report.

I asked Haas for it. He'd like to oblige, be said, but he couldn't.

The report was under court seal. I managed, however, to obtain a copy.

A few days later I saw Hunt again. In fairness to him, I said, I had to
tell him that I had read the report and that it contained everything he
said it did not-including Ken's murder conviction, the fact that Jeff
and Celeste had sole custody, and that Philip was only on a two-week
visitation.

He expressed astonishment. "Is that all in there?" he @. "I don't
remember that." He stared at me. "Uh, I will not dispute the fact that
there is a possibility that I read it too hastily. That's a possibility.
I have a pretty busy court and a number of, an enormous amount of
reading to do on a daily basis. I don't consider myself to be without
failure. I don't consider myself as never having made a mistake."
Unburdening himself, he went on, "I've been told by the appellate courts
in Indiana on occasion that I've made mistakes.

And I accept that. I will say that it's possible I didn't read that as
carefully as I possibly could."

Did he think Pat Ryan had duped him?

Hunt replied that he'd prefer not to comment.

At the First Baptist Church of Marion, Reverend Darrel Parris confirmed
without hesitation his discussions with Indiana's attorney general-and
the local district attorneyabout whether Jean and Zach should have been
extradited.

He told me that he was upset about allegations that "the child was being
mistreated" by the Taylors.

When I asked, "What allegations?" he referred to the weekend Warren Haas
and the Welfare Department had taken Philip. He suggested that Celeste
and Jeff had spread "ties.""Someone," he said, "had to come forward and
say what good people Jean and Zach were."

His principle in all of this, as far as Ken was concerned, was "love the
sinner, hate the sin."

Parris was also a flying parson, and during the long court fight over
the adoption, he had flown to Virginia-in his Piper Cherokee-4o buck up
Ken's spirits.

And he said that he'd made it clear how he felt about "the event" of
Teresa's death.

"Kenny," he said he had said, "what you did was not the right way.

What you did was wrong. That was not the right way to settle disputes
and arguments," and Ken had acknowledged, in Pus's words, that it had
been "inappropriate behavior."

As for Jean and Zach, he said, "My job was to help with the grieving
process. This had been a tremendous shock to them. I had to support this
mom and dad as they walked through the valley, to help them through that
journey."

He told me that he had no doubt that Teresa did not want the child
brought up in "the same religion" she had been. When he recommended to
her and Ken that they find a church closer to home, she was adamant.

She wanted him "dedicated tight here, in Marion." Parris said that he
did not believe the Taylors were "treated fairly in New Jersey."

Even so, if the Whites had fulfilled obligations set forth in the
original court orders, possibly "all of this" could have been avoided.

Their "immoral behavior was no better than Kenny's," But what would have
prevented Ken from having the adoption done during the old two-month
visitation when the Taylors still had split-custody rights?

In all likelihood, under those circumstances, they would have prevailed.

"We'll never know," Parris conceded.

This time the Taylors agreed to see me.

If, indeed, his parents had made him jump through hoops as a child, Ken
was certainly repaying them in kind.

Saddled with legal costs, they were forced to refinanr-e a home mortgage
that bad almost been paid off. Bankruptcy was a distinct prospect.

All thoughts of Zach's retirement, the rounds of golf he had looked
forward to, had vanished.

And the French company that had taken over the picturetube Plant had
instituted extensive employment restructuring. Zach no longer had a desk
job as a production engineer. He was back on the assembly line as a
supervisor, pounding the concrete on the night shift. "It's hard on a
man my age," he said.

Their ranch-style house was modest. There was a fomw Parlor on the left.
Behind it was the kitchen which opened to a dining area that also
doubled as a family room with a television set and a sofa.

"That's about all we do," Zach said.

"Watch TV. Can't afford anything else." Then he tried to look on the
bright side. "Jeannie never liked to go out much anyway."

On the right were three adjoining bedrooms.

Tom occupied one of them, Jean's mother a second. That was another Cross
to bear.

According to Jean, her mother, With whom she'd feuded for so long, was
now senile and bedridden. Her mother, Jean said, would sit up on
occasion and about, "You're not my daughter."

On glass shelves in a corner of the foyer was a sort of shrine given
over to memorabilia of Ken, primarily trophies for his athletic
accomplishments in grade and high school for football, basketball and
baseball. "This one," she said, pointing, "was for peewee football.

He was in the fifth grade, which is two years before he could play in
regular school. It was in a league sponsored by the Elks."

Other plaques were for softball play in medical school and the Indiana
softball association. "Now this one here," Jean said, "was for most
valuable player in the sub base softball league.

See, Kenny's batting average was seveneighty-seven! He had fifty-two
hits and sixteen home runs." She did not mention that it was also the
same year he tried to chloroform Marilyn.

They appeared barely able to comprehend what had come crashing down on
them, much less the reasons for it.

Zach, ill at ease on the straight-backed parlor sofa, a big, paunchy man
in a sports shirt, bald save for a fringe of gray, finally said that it
was because of Teresa's cocaine habit. "That's the whole thing in a
nutshell," he said.

Jean was baffled by the attitude of Ken's first two wives. She showed me
a letter that Emily Latrelle wrote, curtly denying them any further
contact with the daughter Ken had disowned.

And she produced a letter from Marilyn written after she and Ken
divorced, emphasizing that she'd walked "the last mile" trying to keep
faith with her marital vows. I found a sentence in it that also
expressed sorrow for the Taylors having raised two failed sons-one in
his education, the other in his marriag@ue to drugs.

Hadn't that alerted Jean? No, she really didn't pay attention to it.

After all, it was before "all this" had happenedthe "incident" in
Manalapan and "Tommy's arrest."

Looking back, I said, how did they feel about Ken's explanation of what
occurred in Acapulco? Zach's face mottled in anger, "It was intruders,"
he said. "It never should have been allowed."

To my surprise, Jean said after a moment's hesitation that she couldn't
say for sure what happened. Kenny had a terrible temper sometimes.

Perhaps he did sional help.

But wasn't his story about Teresa the baby pretty bizarre?

Not at all, Jean said, gazing at me intently, careftlay made up and
coiffed, looking years younger than her ap, immaculate in a freshly
pressed cotton dress, @ aw, hands folded primly in her lap. As a matter
of fact, she'd once seen a television talk show-she couldn't recall who
show-in which a pediatrician had said that mothers often "did that" to
keep their teething babies from crying .

While writing his version of Teresa's death, Ken had also taken up
fiction. He sent me several efforts for my comment.

One story was about a man, a doctor of all @, convicted of murder.

He escapes, flees to Brazil, meets a beautiful woman, they marry, have
children and live b ever after.

A second story, though, was more instructive.

In d& one, it is a brutally hot New York summer day. Be describes a
young woman with D-cup bmms, perspiration, in her apartment.

She is thinking of her band in his air-conditioned office. Why should
she put yjpwith this? She goes to a nudist beach, stretches out ndw and
falls half asleep. She hears a clicking sound. She @ :@ up and sees a
man with a camera, who, as luck would have it, has been going out with
her best girlfriend. She he's been taking pictures of her.

He plops down beside her. She asks where her girlfriend is. He says
she's out of low Why not come by his apartment that night? The is clear.
If she doesn't, he'll send the photographs to my husband.

She has no choice, Despite the fact that she is forced into this, Ken
lingers over how she and selects her most provocative outfit complete
with inch spiked heels. Her blackmailer greets her at the door, He leads
her to the stereo, tells her to pick any music gin wants and to do a
striptease. As she dances in front Ken writes, she feels her growing
excitement.

Then they have hours of orgiastic sex.

Exhausted and gratified, she leaves, already planning her next visit.

She can hardly wait.

In Staten Island, at the Benignos and the Whites, life gradually settled
down. All three kids-Philip, Christina and Jacqueline-were thriving.
With their expanding family, Celeste and Jeff sold their house and
cleared enough for the down payment on a much larger one.

Jeff and some of his friends fashioned a basement apartment which was
rented to a young couple to help carry the mortgage. And Celeste was
hoping to have another child.

In Powhatan, at the end of 1989, Ken Taylor was suspected of smuggling
seven metal blades out of the print shop where he'd been assigned.

The blades were found in a cell in the her above the one he was in. A
window bar had been partially cut through. A pair of wire cutters from
the shop school was also found in the cell. According to an informant,
Ken was the ringleader of the escape attempt-hit fourth since his
conviction-that involved three inmates. He was again locked up, although
there was not enough evidence to try him. Later, however, he would write
to me, "It was a damn shame. We were that close."

And he delivered another ominous message, I do not intend to stay in
prison." the end.