The Ivy League Killer (5 page)

Chapter 14: The Trouble with Women

Ross parked his car in an inconspicuous place and offered to help this woman with her bag. He knew she’d think he was harmless—just a skinny kid being nice. Once they neared her home, Ross pushed her into the backyard and used his own belt to drag her toward a field. He threatened to kill her baby if she didn’t obey him. As he choked her with the belt, he hit her in the face. She begged him to stop, but he was not about to stop until he gained sexual relief. He placed his hands around her neck, tightened his grip, and ejaculated.

The woman was still alive. He ripped off her clothes as the baby screamed in its stroller, and continued to beat the woman before choking her into unconsciousness. She represented everything he hated in that moment and he wanted to make her feel the pain his mother and former fiancée had caused him. When he believed she was dead, he walked away.

Strolling to his car as if he were just out for fresh air, Ross drove away. He knew that no one would ever link him to this murder. Even though the woman survived and reported the incident to police, nothing ever came of it. Ross was a stranger from out of town.

A month later, just after his parents’ divorce was final, Ross went on a business trip to Illinois. He was still simmering. Because he was out of town, he knew it was the perfect opportunity to hurt someone. He rented a car and drove to La Salle. On a country road, late at night, he spotted a teenage girl walking alone. He looked around but saw no one else. It couldn’t have been more perfect, aside from a few houses not far away. He slowed down, passing her. He knew she’d seen him, which thrilled him. She was probably anxious.

Ross turned around and passed her again. He saw a good location for getting her into a copse of trees. Then he parked and came up on her from behind, quietly grabbing her and stuffing a handkerchief into her mouth. He used his belt to subdue her and force her toward the trees. When he asked her for money, she handed over a couple of coins—about 20 cents. Ross loosened the belt and the girl screamed. Ross fled.

A woman in a house nearby heard the scream and called the police. A patrol officer already in the area apprehended Ross. His victim identified him and his car, so he was arrested for unlawful restraint. Ross pretended to be remorseful. He played the role of a confused guy who barely understood why he’d done such a thing. Officials believed him and fined him $500. Ross knew he’d gotten away with it again, but just barely.

After losing his job, Ross returned to Connecticut. He attempted to rekindle his relationship with Connie, and she seemed amenable. He was delighted, but things went sour fast. On January 15, 1982, Tammy Williams paid the price.

Contrary to Ross’ professed inability to control himself, a timeline of his assaults closely matches peak moments of anger and frustration with specific women. He said himself that he was unable to harm the actual target of his rage, so he had deflected it to others. This statement indicates that he could control and even direct his violence.

Ross admitted that he felt no remorse for what he’d done to his victims. In fact, he’d revisited the dump sites for several of them in order to relive the excitement and feeling of power. He compared his unrelenting urges with an obnoxious roommate or a monster living inside him.

“I’m not a big serial killer, by the way,” Ross said to Christopher Berry-Dee. “I’ve only killed eight. That’s nothing.” Compared to killers of dozens, he considered himself a relatively nice guy. Yet in his own writings, Ross called himself “the worst of the worst.” Depending on what benefitted him, he would play up—or play down—his evil intent.

www.crimescape.com

Chapter 15: Keep Him Alive!

During the penalty phase of Ross’ 1987 murder trial, the state’s psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Miller, was not allowed to testify, because he’d agreed with the defense psychiatrist about Ross’ compulsive psychopathology. He’d even tried to withdraw by writing a letter to the judge. Ross believed that if the jury had heard from Miller, they’d have spared him the death penalty. He petitioned for a new trial. Although the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld the convictions in April 1994, it overturned the death sentences and ordered a new penalty hearing. The justices accepted Ross’ argument that Miller’s testimony could have been influential.

During this time, Ross had received another hormone medication, Depo-Lupron, which he said helped to clear his mind. For the first time, he claimed, he became aware of the horrific nature of what he had done to his victims. By this time, he’d also become more religious, which influenced him to view his sexual obsessions as entirely separate from who he really was. In 1998, he tried unsuccessfully to kill himself.

Then Ross decided to give closure to the families by volunteering to be executed. It was a controversial decision, because the state had not executed anyone since 1960. Some people believed that Ross was trying to make the state complete his suicide for him. In fact, his uncle had committed suicide, his mother had admitted to several suicide attempts, and Ross had reportedly tried to kill himself at different junctures during his life. He said that at Cornell, he’d even gone to the bridge over the gorge to contemplate jumping, but he’d been too much of a coward to do it.

Already in the habit of writing articles for various publications, Ross published a lengthy statement in
The Journal of Psychiatry and Law
. The editor ran a brief introduction: “The author, a convicted serial killer, writes of his experiences on Connecticut’s Death Row as the first man sentenced to death in that state in some 20-plus years and who may possibly be the first man executed in Connecticut since 1960. The author describes the paraphiliac mental disorder that led to the crimes, his treatment for that disorder, the decision that led to his failed attempt to accept the death penalty, and his hopes that something might be learned from his experiences that would prevent future victimizations.” Ross claimed to anyone who’d listen, “It’s time for me to die.”

Allowed to take over his own case, Ross signed a 10-page “death pact” with Satti that laid out stipulations for being resentenced to death. Although, in principle, Ross opposed a death penalty, he believed that he alone should be able to decide whether to accept it for himself. However, a Superior Court judge quickly invalidated this pact as unconstitutional. Another penalty phase hearing was scheduled.

Ross had hoped to avoid this scenario, purportedly to spare the victims’ families from having to go through an extended legal process that would subject them again to what he had done to their loved ones. “I do not believe that the comparative advantage of a life sentence,” Ross stated, “is worth the emotional distress that the families of my victims would be subjected to during the aggravating portion of full-blown penalty hearing.”

Nevertheless, the hearing remained on the schedule. Then just as it was set to begin, Ross had another about-face: He decided he did not wish to be executed. His defense attorneys, brought back on his case, prepared to focus on his mental illness as a mitigating factor.

The penalty hearing was set for April 1999, but it was delayed until the following year. Dr. Stanley Kauchinski testified on Ross’ behalf, showing with records of his treatments that a hormonal imbalance had likely caused his criminal behavior. Thus, he could not control himself. Ross’ father urged the jury to see the value of his son as a specimen for scientists; keeping him alive would allow them to learn more about the psychopathology of a sexually sadistic serial killer. Dr. Robert Miller was also allowed to speak, and he, too, detailed Ross’ mental illness as a mitigating factor. Perhaps one of the most unexpected witnesses in Ross’ defense was Sam Reese Sheppard, the son of Dr. Sam Sheppard, who’d been convicted (and acquitted) of killing his wife in 1954. Sheppard opposed the death penalty.

The jury disagreed with these witnesses, as they again gave Ross four death sentences. Ross also went to New York to plead guilty in the murder of Paula Perrera, two full decades after he had killed her. DNA affirmed his confession and he received a sentence, but New York allowed Connecticut to keep Ross in custody. He tried a second time to commit suicide, and was again unsuccessful.

In October 2004, Ross replaced his public defenders with T. R. Paulding, whom he believed would better serve his purposes. Paulding had helped him with his earlier death pact with Satti.

TR Paulding
Avvo website

“I owe these people,” Ross stated. “I killed their daughters.”

Ross’ original defenders ignored his wishes and continued to file motions about his suicidal frame of mind. They claimed he was not competent to make such a decision. Although the judge set an execution date for January 26, 2005, Ross’ request necessitated a competency evaluation. It took place on December 28.

Doctrines of competency derive from English common law, in the interest of fairness to an accused person and concern for the integrity of the justice system. To ensure that defendants are competent to make decisions at the most significant stages of the legal process, interviewers quiz them on their understanding of the rights they’re waiving and the consequences of doing so. To be judged mentally incompetent by federal statutes, there must be a preponderance of evidence indicating a mental defect or condition that prevents the defendant from understanding the full situation.

At his competency hearing, Ross repeated that he had a right to make his own decision about whether his sentence should be carried out. A psychiatrist confirmed his present state of mental clarity. Judge Patrick Clifford agreed that Ross was competent. He affirmed the January execution date, 2005, less than a month later.

This declaration provoked a flurry of lawsuits on Ross’ behalf, all of which he denounced. He wanted no one to intervene. It enraged him that people he did not even know were trying to control his life. However, an advocate for Amnesty International claimed that Ross was trying to become a martyr for the death penalty, in part to rehabilitate his image as a serial killer. This man believed that Ross’ stated purpose of sparing the families was bogus. It was all about him.

During this time, Ross had no shortage of correspondents. Among them was a woman to whom he became strongly attached.

www.crimescape.com

Chapter 16: Last-chance Romance

Susan Powers met Ross through correspondence, and in 2001 they got engaged. A mathematician from Oklahoma, Powers was involved in the effort to rescue abused animals. It was but a short step to view Ross as an abused person in need of rescue. Powers cared about Ross and he came to view her as the most important person in his life, but in 2003, she broke off the engagement—yet one more failed relationship for Ross.

She continued to visit him, and when Ross decided to stop his appeals, Powers begged him to reconsider. She promised to marry him if he would elect to live. By some reports, she also threatened to kill herself if he went through with the execution. “I will see you in heaven,” she wrote in one letter. Their romance provided fodder for media outlets.

“The woman in my life,” said Ross, “who I love, who abandoned me, has come back into my life. But now I must abandon her.” In truth, he was probably pleased to recover his power over her. Ross thanked Powers for her offer, but he opted for death.

Ross was nearly executed on January 26, but an attorney requested a delay on behalf of Dan Ross for another competency hearing. Ross received a brief stay, until January 29. Just an hour before he was to receive the lethal drugs, the execution was once again postponed. This time, however, the person who intervened was his own attorney, T. R. Paulding. A federal judge had warned Paulding that if he had not dug deeply enough into Ross’ competency, the judge would see that Paulding was disbarred. To stay the execution, Paulding raised the issue that Ross might be suffering from long-standing despair, also known as Death Row Syndrome.

In February, a state judge set the execution for May 11, but recognized that debate over the death penalty would continue.

As the Connecticut House of Representatives debated the state’s death penalty law that March, Vivian Dobson, who’d survived Ross’ attack 22 years earlier, spoke out against it. She made a public appeal before addressing the lawmakers. Dobson stated how sorry she was that others had died, but that she couldn’t bring herself to be part of a process that killed someone, no matter how much he had brutalized her. (Ross never confessed to this rape.) Dobson did not accept that Ross actually felt remorse and she believed he was manipulating the media. To her mind, forcing him to stay in prison for the rest of his life instead of putting him easily to sleep would be a more fitting way to punish him.

“We’re not killers,” she said. “He is, but we’re not.” She wanted Ross to live and be faced every day with the fear he had “embedded” in the souls of the girls he’d raped and strangled. He’d sent her into hiding for 18 years. “He should know what a prison really feels like.”

However, the Connecticut House vote was 89 to 60 against abolishing the death penalty.

CT State Capital
by Linda DeConti, CT.gov

www.crimescape.com