Lethal Guardian (5 page)

Poissant made a note. While writing, he asked, “Okay…what about Rob Ferguson?”

“Rob and Buzz got along fine. There were a few problems here and there, but nothing bad.”

“What about women? Did Buzz screw around?”

Myers said he knew for a fact that Buzz had been cheating on Kim with someone. “…I’m not sure of her name.”

Poissant finally wanted to know more about one of their main suspects, Charlie Snyder.

“Do you know him?”

“Yeah, I know Charlie,” Myers said, looking away.

“Tell me about him.”

“Well, Charlie was always accusing people of owing him money. He liked to threaten people, too.”

After a few more questions, Poissant said thanks and told Myers that someone would be in touch with him soon.

From the look of things, it was time to put some pressure on Charlie Snyder.

Before ED-MCS detectives could focus on Charlie Snyder, they had some groundwork to cover first. It had only been twenty-four hours since the discovery of Buzz’s body, and there was no sense in hurrying the investigative process along. Information was coming in at a pretty good clip. There was no need to push it. Follow the evidence. Follow the leads. Let them dictate what to do next.

Detectives John Szamocki and Marty Graham were assigned to interview Buzz’s present father-in-law, Richard “Dick” Carpenter, on March 11, at about 10:30
A.M
.—the one man who, according to some, had good reason to kill Buzz.

Ledyard, Connecticut, where the Carpenters lived, was quite a ride from East Lyme, but only a few miles away the ED-MCS headquarters, in Norwich.

Dick and Cynthia Carpenter grew up in Ledyard, which is a mere pinpoint on the map of New England. About sixty miles northeast of Hartford, Ledyard is sandwiched between two major industrial cities: Norwich and Groton. Settled in 1863, Ledyard encompasses some forty square miles, and before the state of Connecticut allowed it to become the home of the Mashantucket Pequot Indian Casino—or Foxwoods, a full-fledged casino with thousands of gaming tables and slot machines—it housed about fifteen thousand residents. It was suburban heaven. Quiet. Laid-back. Countrified. Corn stands were common in the summer and pumpkin stands in the fall. Clapboarded ranch-style homes and refurbished colonials date back to the seventeenth century. Farmland, winding roads and hidden trails to break horses and ride motorbikes were scattered all about.

Dick Carpenter, a twenty-two-year U.S. Navy man, retired in the early 1980s and started a landscaping business, which had done well throughout the years. People in Ledyard knew Dick. They liked him. Trusted his work. Cynthia Carpenter, ever so prudish, a smart woman by many standards, became an Advanced Practice Board–certified practical nurse, consulting in nursing homes and psychiatric nursing. She was even certified to write prescriptions. Her educational credentials ran the gamut: a nursing degree, a bachelor’s, two masters.

Dick Carpenter had a full shock of concrete-gray-and-black hair, a bulging Santa Claus stomach—the same as any beer-guzzling construction worker—large, beefy hands and stubby arms and legs. He wore shirts too small and pants too tight. He wasn’t all that tall, at about five feet nine inches, but at approximately 250 pounds, he wasn’t someone who had any trouble taking care of himself, either.

Stone-faced and shell-shocked when he answered the door on March 11, Dick resembled an old-time farmer from out West, right down to his blue jeans, glaring belt buckle and plaid shirt.

By the looks of the Carpenters’ yard on Indiantown Road, located in Ledyard’s south end, it wasn’t too difficult to tell that Dick was a blue-collar man all the way. There were skeletons of rusty cars and trucks, old machines, tractors, rusty truck plows, rusty tools and, oddly enough, several different types of lawn ornaments spread throughout the yard, sort of just dumped there as if the place were a cemetery for old and unwanted machinery and crafts. Ironically, waist-high grass grew wild in certain sections of the landscaper’s yard and leaves were piled everywhere. The paint on the house, a dull puke green, flaked to the touch and, in some areas, had fallen like confetti around the base of the home. Doors, windows and shutters needed to be replaced. Set back a bit from the road, the modest home couldn’t compare to anything out of
House & Garden,
but it had a kitchen, one-and-a-half baths and enough bedrooms to raise a family.

Just down the road, the Mashantucket Pequot Indian tribe—owners and operators of the world’s largest casino, a massive structure with a hotel that rose out of the trees like a skyscraper just across the street from the Carpenters’ home—had its main reservation office, where the rather tall tepeelike structure that welcomed arrivals to the reservation stood erect.

So far, detectives had several people suggesting that Dick was the point man in the death of his son-in-law. As bold as it was, there was even one cop who had told the Roys on the night of the murder that Dick had had something to do with it. But it was all talk. Detectives had no proof. If they had, they wouldn’t be showing up in Ledyard without an arrest warrant.

What was well documented, however, was that Dick and Buzz had hated each other with a fevered passion that had sometimes manifested into pushing and shoving. They argued just about every time they were in the same room together, and they were heard on many occasions threatening each other. A burly man, nearly twice the size of Buzz, Dick could have possibly broken Buzz in two with one arm if he’d wanted to.

But murder?

A seven-year veteran of the Connecticut State Police, Detective Szamocki was himself no slouch of a man. A bit lanky at six feet three inches, Szamocki was solid and strong. He carried himself with confidence and spoke like a well-trained cop. He knew which questions to ask Dick and which to leave back at the station for watercooler talk. He couldn’t step into the Carpenters’ home and begin accusing Dick of murder without any solid evidence.

Szamocki and Graham were on the hunt for information. The theorizing would come later, when all the interviews had been conducted and the detectives could sift through the facts.

“Come on in,” Dick said as he opened the door. “This is my wife, Cynthia.”

They retreated to the living room, which was just up at the top of the stairs. Cynthia, with her curly red hair and slim figure, looked academic and bookish, but she managed to hold on to an air of intrigue and secrecy. She was a thinker—it was easy to tell right away—not a talker.

“We’re here,” Szamocki said, “to investigate the apparent homicide of Buzz Clinton, your son-in-law. We need any information you may have that might help us investigate the case.”

As Dick and Cynthia became acquainted with the detectives, discussing routine matters, Richard Carpenter, Cynthia and Dick’s son, showed up. Rather skinny, with a long, detailed, pudgy face, Richard mostly resembled his mother. The only hint that Dick was Richard’s father was the receding hairline.

About thirty minutes into the interview, Beth Ann, the couple’s eldest daughter, thirty years old, came strolling in. She was with her boss, a local big-shot real estate attorney, Haiman Long Clein, who had, three weeks prior, turned fifty-three. Beth Ann had been working for Clein for about the past year and a half. It was her first real job as a lawyer. Clein was a big man, standing six feet two inches, weighing two hundred pounds. He had a full beard and mustache, and was dressed as one might expect a lawyer to be: snazzy pants, dress shirt, jacket.

Still, Szamocki and Graham noticed that Clein looked tired and beaten down, his shirt halfway sticking out of his pants, his face a bit jaundiced and sweaty.

When Beth Ann stood next to her mother, it wasn’t hard to tell that if they were the same age, they could easily pass for sisters. Beth Ann’s shoulder-length red hair was radiant and silky, like satin. Besides her apple red lipstick, she wore little makeup to accentuate her pale-white skin. She appeared stoic and serious, as if the weight of the situation had just hit her. She hadn’t told anyone, but she was pregnant with Haiman Clein’s child, and she was determined to have it—whatever the cost to Clein, who was married with four children, plus an adult child from a previous marriage.

Clein and Beth Ann walked in and sat down in the living room.

“I’m Detective Szamocki. This is my partner, Detective Graham,” Szamocki said, extending his hand to Clein. “Have a seat.”

As the two detectives questioned Cynthia and Dick, they occasionally asked Beth Ann and Clein if they had anything to add. Most of the discussion was geared toward Dick’s rocky relationship with Buzz and his family.

Beth Ann and Clein watched and listened carefully to what was going on. Being lawyers, they knew the boundary lines. If any accusations had been made, the interview would be terminated immediately.

Dick said at one point that Rebecca had made comments such as, “Daddy beats my butt,” referring to Buzz. He said they were concerned that Buzz had been abusing her. And an investigation for sexual assault had even been opened back in December 1993.

“Do you own any firearms?” Szamocki asked at that point.

“An old rifle and shotgun.”

“What about a handgun?”

“Nope.”

“Can we have a look at the guns?”

“Sure,” Dick said, and left to go get them.

After a few more questions, Dick provided an alibi for March 10. Szamocki and Graham, however, were quick to note that the only person who could verify Dick’s alibi was Cynthia. Being his wife, she was immune from testifying if it ever came down to it.

“If you think of anything else, please call us.”

If there was one person with a motive to murder Buzz, detectives realized, it was
Scott Farmer,
Natalie Farmer’s husband. When interviewed at his home in Old Lyme, just west of East Lyme, late in the day on March 11, Scott said that Buzz had been calling his house between three and four times a day looking for Natalie.

“I told her to stop talking to him…. I told her….” Farmer said. “Buzz was becoming a pain in the ass!”

“Were you aware of an affair between them?”

“No. I don’t think she was having an affair. But one can never be sure.”

“Where were you Thursday night?”

“Home, here, watching my baby by myself.”

“All night?”

Farmer hesitated, then ran his hand through his hair.

“Well, I left here about seven-thirty to go over to the firehouse in town. My mother came over to baby-sit.”

“How long were you there?”

“Until eleven o’clock.”

A second detective interviewed Natalie Farmer in another room while Scott was being questioned.

Natalie admitted that she’d had a “brief sexual affair with Buzz.” They’d had sex twice, she said, but recently ended the affair to save her marriage. She remained friends with Buzz, though, she claimed, and she had spoken to him often on the phone.

“What would he tell you?”

“He was having problems with Rob Ferguson,” Natalie said.

“Do you know anything about Mr. Ferguson?”

“He has a bad temper…and, in my opinion, is capable of shooting someone.”

Christopher George, a twenty-four-year-old local man who worked at Foxwoods casino, was the person who had told Rob Ferguson there was a dead guy on the Rocky Neck connector on the night Buzz had been murdered. Chris had stopped at the Lyme Tavern for a beer and had run into Rob. As soon as Rob heard about the shooting, he drove over to Kim’s apartment and told her.

There were a few things, however, Rob had said to Chris that led detectives to begin focusing not on Rob, but more on Charlie Snyder.

For example, Rob had told Chris that Buzz was in debt for “a lot of money” to Charlie—which, of course, was one of the oldest motives in the world for murder.

When Marty Graham and John Szamocki arrived at Blonders on Saturday, March 12, the front-desk clerk, Kevin Albrecht, told them that Charlie had left town.

Szamocki and Graham were puzzled. “Where did he go?”

“Skiing. He’s in New York. He left this morning. I don’t know exactly where.”

“When will he be back?”

“Monday maybe? I’m not too sure.”

Kevin eventually, after a bit of prodding, told them that Buzz had owed Charlie a lot of money, in the neighborhood of $500 to $600. Then, “What I know of Buzz is that he’s a bullshitter!”

“You have Charlie call us when he gets back,” Graham said, handing Kevin his business card.

Reggie Wardell was a crack investigator. He had worked for the Organized Crime Unit of the state police for many years before joining the ED-MCS. With the help of his colleagues, Wardell had busted two of Connecticut’s most reputed mobsters after a long and tedious investigation. But the murder of Buzz Clinton, Wardell explained later, even in its early stage, was turning into a textbook whodunit case.

“People can be temporarily eliminated as suspects,” Wardell recalled, “until they are brought back into the picture by some piece of evidence or witness.”

Charlie Snyder was one of those people.

Canvassing the neighborhood near Blonders on March 14, Wardell walked into Flanders’s Shell, in East Lyme, only miles down the road from Blonders. The manager, Mike Magliano, worked the day shift and had known Snyder as someone who came in every morning to get his daily dose of caffeine. The last time Mike had seen Charlie, he explained to Wardell, they had a conversation that he thought he ought to relay to the cops after reading about Buzz’s murder in the newspaper.

According to Magliano, on March 10, Charlie had walked into the Shell station at about 9:00
A.M
., and Mike noticed almost immediately that he “looked a bit pissed” at something.

“What’s wrong?” Mike said he asked Charlie when he saw how upset he looked.

“Ah…someone called the DEP on me for dumping chemicals on the ground at Blonders.” Charlie was frowning. His teeth clenched. Not paying attention to what was going on around him.

“Really,” Mike said.

“Yeah. But I know who the motherfucker is! I caught him stealing once. Instead of calling the cops, I beat the shit out of him and fired him.”

Charlie then collected his change and began walking toward the door.

“What are you going to do?” Mike asked.

“Now that fucker is dead!” Charlie said as he walked out.

Laurence Myers was an employee at Blonders who had heard about Buzz’s murder and phoned the state police with information he thought might be useful. Myers, who had worked for Charlie since 1993, told a trooper he thought Buzz owed Charlie about $800 or $900. On Wednesday, March 9, Myers said he was standing next to Charlie when Charlie phoned Buzz and told him that “if he didn’t get his money, he was going to get taken out.”

On Thursday morning, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) called Blonders at 8:30
A.M
. and said that they would be showing up later that day.

“Charlie was very upset,” Myers recalled to police. “He said he was tired of people playing with him.” When Myers asked Charlie who he thought had made the complaint to the DEP, Charlie muttered, “Buzz made the complaint.”

After speaking to Mike Magliano and Laurence Myers, John Turner and Reggie Wardell drove over to Blonders early in the morning on Monday, March 14, and informed Susan Nance, one of Charlie’s employees, that they needed to speak to Charlie right away.

Forty-year-old Nance, a loyal friend to Charlie for years, who had also known Buzz pretty well, said, “He’s not here.”

“We need to talk to him,” Turner said. He didn’t actually say that Charlie was a suspect, but Susan clearly got the impression that Turner and Wardell weren’t there to buy a refurbished alternator for one of their cruisers.

“I’ll tell him when he gets back.”

Susan was Charlie’s eyes and ears when he wasn’t around. Not only did she wait on customers, but she answered phones and kept things honest when Charlie took time off.

Charlie hadn’t left for his skiing trip on Saturday, as many had originally thought. He left early on Friday morning. He and his wife had spent the day driving to Lake Placid, New York.

After Turner and Wardell left Blonders, Susan Nance phoned Charlie at the condo he’d rented and told him what was going on.

“Buzz is dead, you know?” Nance said.

There was a brief pause.

“Get the fuck out of town,” Charlie said. “No fucking way.”

When Charlie hung up, he turned to his wife and stared at her in quiet disbelief.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Buzz Clinton is dead.”

“What?”

“Can you believe it?”

For perhaps the first time in his life, Charlie Snyder was fully satisfied with the person he had become. He lived simply now: New England Patriot games on Sundays and shooting darts with his pals at the local pub after work during the week. With his boyhood red hair grown out into a hue of blond, halfway down his back, Snyder kept it pulled back in a ponytail these days. He wore reading glasses and crunched numbers for his business and waited on customers most of the time. His voice was scratchy and a bit hoarse. When his employees spoke to him, they addressed him with the respect and authority he had earned throughout the years. What had once been a place where every derelict and drug addict in town came to loiter and get high, Charlie said later, Blonders had become a sort of a safe haven in recent years. Ever since Charlie had entered into recovery himself sometime ago, he’d turned Blonders into a place where people could hang out and feel safe.

“We always had a pot of coffee on,” he recalled. “People could come in and just sit and talk about what was going on in their life.”

Before he was murdered, Buzz was one of those people.

Charlie had not only hired Buzz to work for him, but he’d gotten to know Kim and the kids. He felt bad for Buzz when things didn’t go his way and was friendly with Buzz’s mother, Dee Clinton. Over the years, Charlie noticed how Dee had always gone out of her way for Buzz, helping him wherever she could. But when Buzz failed to follow her rules, she’d cut him off. Tough love. Being in recovery, Charlie understood that it was the only way to reach someone sometimes—especially a family member.

“She wanted to see Buzz do the right thing, and it hurt her when he didn’t. I was, in a way, her eyes and ears when she wasn’t around. I, too, wanted Buzz to make something of himself.” Furthermore, Charlie said, Buzz wasn’t someone who had to watch his back. “If someone would have asked me to make a list of twenty people to possibly be murdered, Buzz’s name would
not
have been on that list. Not even close. He was a hustler, sure. But he didn’t rip people off. He had people who cared about him, and he cared about people. The kid tried to put food on his table, and he didn’t have a full-time job. His mother and father helped out where they could. But he did what he had to do.”

Driving back from Lake Placid with his wife, Charlie contemplated the next few days ahead. It was odd to him that he was now a prime suspect in Buzz’s murder. He had an alibi for the night in question, but he still wondered how far the cops were going to pressure him.

Charlie Snyder was the first to admit that he, at least for the past year or so, had been supporting Buzz and had been angry with him at times. Charlie gave Buzz work and advice. He loaned him money. Fronted him parts for his tow truck. But there were times, Charlie later confessed, when it seemed that Buzz was ungrateful.

“I shared in a lot of Buzz’s life those last few months. He told me about his desire to become a nurse. It was his ticket out of Connecticut. I encouraged him to go for it. He wanted so bad to do better for himself and his kids. He talked all the time about getting help for his drinking. He wanted to stop. Buzz knew that he could come to Blonders and talk to someone about his problems. People—good people—were always around. That wrecker he owned, it was his life. He relied on it to earn a living. He loved that truck. He paid off most of his debts to me by towing cars. I called him all the time. I would say, ‘Hey, asshole, you owe me money, get your ass down here and tow some cars. Don’t give me any bullshit. This isn’t anybody else you’re talking to.’

“He’d show up and work for a couple of days, and then I wouldn’t see him again for a while.”

Now all of those conversations and seemingly baseless remarks of “You better pay me, or else” would be looked at under a microscope. Anything Charlie had ever said to or about Buzz, especially over the past week or so, would come into question now that Buzz had been murdered.

When Charlie returned to work on Tuesday, March 15, he called the Westbrook state police barracks and informed them that two detectives had been looking for him in connection with Buzz’s murder.

Dispatch informed him that someone would be out to see him soon.

An hour later, at 9:55
A.M
., Reggie Wardell and John Turner showed up. When they walked in, Charlie was behind the counter, flipping through an auto parts manual looking for an item.

“Hold on,” Charlie said when he looked up and saw who it was. “Let’s go outside. I’ve got customers here. This is private.”

As the three men walked outside, Charlie’s employees looked on with curiosity. They knew what was going on and recognized that Charlie had been acting a bit strange the past few days: nervous, fidgety, not himself.

Leaning against a fence out in the yard, Wardell began the interview.

“Can you tell us about Buzz Clinton?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Start with how you heard about his murder.”

“Well, Ray Myers, an older customer of mine, told one of my employees last Saturday that I was considered a suspect in the murder. I should add that Kevin Myers, Ray Myers’s son, used to work here, but he’s been
excused
for using cocaine and stealing.”

Charlie then explained that when he returned from New York, he called the Westbrook barracks first thing in the morning. He then spoke of his relationship with Kim and the kids; how they used to come into Blonders with Buzz and sometimes hang out in the office while Buzz was out on the road working. Charlie said he liked Kim. “She was quiet, friendly. Buzz loved her.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“I gave him a transmission for his tow truck about a month ago. He never paid me. He said he was going to open up a shop called Finishing Touch, cleaning cars, bodywork. Whatever work he could get.”

“Did you ever go down there?”

“Nope.”

As Wardell and Turner continued their questioning, Charlie noticed a change in their approach and demeanor. It had gone from a relaxed cadence, just talking back and forth, to more of a hostile, Joe Friday–like interrogation. Charlie didn’t want any part of the good cop/bad cop routine. As he saw it, he had nothing to hide.

It became apparent to Wardell and Turner that on some days Buzz would treat Charlie like the long-lost big brother he’d never had, and on others he would avoid Charlie like the plague.

“How did you meet him?”

“Buzz just walked in off the street and asked for some work. So I gave it to him.”

It was about a year and a half ago, Charlie explained.

“What about money—he owed you money?”

“Buzz’s parents had thrown him and Kim out of their house, and Buzz needed money,” Charlie said. “He also needed some parts for his tow truck. I gave them to him. I told him to pay me back when he got it.”

Wardell explained that it was possible that Buzz had been trying to sell his tow truck on the night he was killed. Charlie said the tow truck had broken down last summer. Since then, he really hadn’t seen Buzz much. When Charlie became worried about the money, he said he called Big Jim’s Junk Yard in Essex. He’d heard that Buzz was doing some work for Big Jim.

Then the subject moved to Charlie himself. Wardell and Turner wanted to know if he hung around area bars.

“I’m a reformed substance abuser—I don’t hang around bars!”

“What about Buzz?”

“Buzz, as far as I know, was involved with dope through association.”

“Let’s talk about last Thursday night, Charlie.”

Customers had been coming and going as the three men stood and talked outside. Curious and snoopy, every once in a while, one of Charlie’s employees would look out through the blinds in the window to try to get a handle on what was being said. Charlie was beginning to feel like a lab rat, he later recalled. The questions were getting uncomfortable.

“I drove by Exit 72 at about…I was traveling, I believe, east bound, at about eight-thirty, maybe eight forty-five. The entrance ramp was closed.”

“Where were you coming from?”

“My therapist’s office in Southington.” Southington, north of New Haven, was about an hour’s drive from Blonders.

“What time did you leave for Southington?”

“I worked all day Thursday. I went home after work, maybe five. Changed my shirt. And left. I stopped at Shell in town to get gas and—”

“What is your therapist’s name?”

“As I was saying, I bought a bag of peanuts at the Shell station.”

“The name, Charlie?”

“Henry Schliser. My appointment was at six. I left his office about seven.”

If Charlie was telling the truth, he really didn’t have time to kill Buzz. Christine and Steven Roy had found Buzz’s body at about 7:30
P.M
. No one knew the exact time of death as of yet, but by all accounts, it was between 6:30 and 7:30
P.M
.