Peirce Island
Sergeant Joseph Ebert looked at Seth Mazzaglia’s crude drawing of a map, which he understood depicted a location in Portsmouth, although Seth hadn’t wanted to say it.
“Where did she go?”
Seth tapped a spot on the map three times.
“She went in the water there? Okay. How did she get there?”
Seth stared at the paper and said nothing.
“Seth, you just told me that a young girl is in the water right here.”
“I know,” Seth said softly.
“What’s done is done,” Ebert said. “There’s no more stress now.”
Seth didn’t reply.
“Look at me, Seth,” Ebert said. “You’ve come so far. You’re telling me you put her in the Piscataqua River. There should be no more barriers. No more barriers . . . I’ll tell you what, I’ll trade you for exactly where.”
Ebert pointed at the map. “Do you know where the salt piles are?”
He was referring to a prominent commercial landmark along the river—a mineral holding yard where mountains of rock salt is stockpiled for use on New England’s winter roads.
“So you know what’s on my mind,” Seth said.
“Absolutely.”
“My holding back is that part of me that does look out for my friends is still fighting,” Seth said cryptically. “I do plead the Fifth on saying who or what . . . but I can’t let her family go without the chance of finding her.”
Seth then admitted that Lizzi Marriott’s body was in the Piscataqua River. Ebert asked him point-blank how she got there, and Seth hesitated.
“Okay, how about this?” Ebert offered. “Where did her car go? I mean, you told me the hard part, man . . .”
“Yeah,” Seth said.
“Don’t hold me back on the car . . . There is absolutely no reason—there is no detriment to you from this car. The detriment to you could be that you told me where her body is.”
Mazzaglia then told Ebert that Lizzi’s car was parked in one of UNH’s more obscure lots, the one tucked behind the agricultural program’s greenhouses and horse stables at the far end of campus. Detective Scott Pettingill left the room once again, this time to call the university police.
Ebert walked Seth backward from the car, asking him again what happened to Lizzi before her body was put into the Piscataqua.
“When I pull her body out of that water—and I will—what am I going to see?”
Seth paused before answering. “Whatever happened in that time block, I can’t remember.”
“How about this? When you put her in the water, was she bleeding?” If she had been, Ebert knew, it would indicate her heart was still beating when she went in.
“No, not that I remember,” Seth said.
“So I can assume that she died through asphyxia, strangulation?”
“I guess,” Seth said. “I—I don’t—I don’t remember.”
Ebert let a beat pass.
“Are you hungry, Seth?”
“Yeah, a little,” Seth said. “I’m having dinner with my parents.”
“I don’t know if I can assure you of dinner with your parents, but I can assure you dinner. How’s that?”
“I’ve lost a lot of people in my life,” Seth said suddenly, raising his voice. “That’s why I want you to be able to at least tell the family that we’re searching for the body . . . I want you to be able to tell them that, because I know the pain.”
Ebert pointed at the crudely drawn map.
“Do you know one hundred percent for certain that that’s where her body went in the water?”
“Initially,” Seth said. “Tides could have come in and out since then.”
Ebert left the room to let the others know they were going on a field trip. It was 7:20 P.M.
—
Twenty minutes later, Sergeants Ebert and Strong, along with Dover PD Detective Pettingill, were getting ready to leave the Newington police station so that Seth could show them the places he’d drawn on his map. Seth requested his cell phone back, but when Ebert asked if he could hang on to it for a while longer, Seth agreed that he could.
Ebert asked if Seth needed to use the bathroom before getting in the car, and Seth said he did. Ebert asked him for a favor before he walked into the restroom.
“You need to look at what’s in my pockets?” Seth asked.
“You got it, brother.”
When Seth emerged from the bathroom, the four men climbed into the same unmarked car they’d driven from Best Buy to the police station, Seth up front in the passenger seat.
Ebert picked up the receiver on his car radio and signaled the dispatcher: “Ten-eight, one noncustodial.” He hoped Seth would understand the code. They were transporting a subject, someone who was not in police custody.
They drove at a regular speed with no lights or sirens. Ebert told Seth he should “relax” during the drive. He made some casual conversation and then asked Seth who had gone with him that night to the location he’d drawn on the map. Seth refused to answer the question, adding he was “taking the Fifth.”
The foursome’s first stop was Sawyer Mill. The men saw a few police cars parked outside the building but no other sign of law enforcement activity. After a brief stop, Ebert asked Seth to direct him to the Portsmouth location he’d drawn. Before they pulled out of the complex parking lot, Seth pointed to an area in the back of the building, saying he had a flash of memory in which his friends were standing together before entering the building on the night Lizzi disappeared.
Ebert said he found it hard to believe Seth couldn’t remember what happened in the apartment. As a road trooper, he said, he’d once seen someone die in a car accident.
“Seeing somebody die, unless you’re a sociopath, you remember those details.”
Seth didn’t respond. The detective let it sink in for a moment.
“What do you suppose your mom would think,” Ebert asked, “if I told her you’d tell me where [Lizzi’s] body was, but you wouldn’t tell me what the last moments of her life were like?”
In the passenger seat, Seth began to cry softly as Ebert pointed the car toward Portsmouth and pushed down on the accelerator.
—
In Durham, an officer from the UNH campus police picked up his radio. Lizzi Marriott’s Mazda Tribute had been found in the parking lot behind the university’s horse barn, exactly where Seth had said it would be.
—
Detective Timothy Burt of the Dover Police Department arrived at Sawyer Mill with investigators from the crime-scene unit around 8:20, the same time Seth was directing Ebert to Peirce Island. Having heard that Officer James Yerardi’s cursory scan of the inside of the apartment the day before hadn’t yielded any evidence, Burt circled the exterior of the building.
He saw several Dumpsters in the complex parking lot, including one in the rear of Sawyer Mill that looked like it hadn’t been emptied in a few days. After contacting the building’s owner, he secured the container, instructing his team that no one was to approach it or disturb its contents.
—
By the time they reached the access road to Peirce Island at about eight thirty, several Portsmouth patrol cars had blocked off the entrance. As the cops let them pass, Ebert said, “Seth, you see the law enforcement down here? You get the idea there’s no changing things up now.”
After they parked, Ebert asked Seth to show him what he’d done with Lizzi’s body. Seth began to lose his composure again.
“I can’t. I just want to see Skar.”
Ebert let him cool off for a few minutes, and then Seth agreed to take the officers on a walk.
It was dark on Peirce Island. The temperature had fallen, and Ebert lent Seth a jacket from the trunk of the car, a forest green state trooper’s jacket with a badge on the breast. If Seth wanted to fit in with the police, to show him he was their equal in the investigation, he now looked the part. The question was, would he play the part?
Seth showed the detectives where he’d parked that night, saying he’d driven Lizzi’s car from Dover to Portsmouth, but again refusing to talk about who had been with him. He led them down the path to the island’s overlook, where he said Lizzi’s body went into the water.
After a few minutes of searching the area, the investigators weren’t seeing any obvious evidence of foul play.
At around nine P.M., Ebert and Pettingill walked Seth back to the car, where they continued to interview him. Seth wavered between claims of memory loss, hallucinations, and something he called “theoretical reconstructions” of the events of October 9. Finally, he landed on a new version of events.
Although he didn’t know what actually happened that night, Seth now said, he did remember being inside his apartment and realizing that something was “not right.”
He said he remembered seeing Lizzi, and that it looked to him like she’d been choked.
—
Ebert started the car and drove out of the Peirce Island parking area.
“I’d like to take a ride and go to the local police department so we can sit down, have a bite to eat, and continue our conversation,” the sergeant said.
“I want to see my parents and Kat,” Seth replied.
Ebert assured Seth he would make arrangements to call his parents when they arrived at the Portsmouth Police Department, and he asked Seth what he wanted them to know. Seth said he didn’t want them to hear anything about rough sex or Lizzi’s dying as the result of something bad, just that he was trying to do the right thing by helping the police.
Seth asked again about seeing Kat. “Even with you watching,” he said. “I just want to see her, hear her voice . . . I want to see if the love is still there . . . I just . . . I risk my life for her . . .”
“I can work on that,” Ebert told him before turning the conversation back to Lizzi.
“The last thing in the world I want to do is put words in your mouth,” Ebert said, “but I think from what you said to me and feel comfortable saying is that’s how she died. That she died from strangulation.”
Seth replied, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
When they arrived at the Portsmouth police station, Seth was led to a small interrogation room equipped with both audio and video recorders. Seth sat in the middle of the room with Sergeant Ebert sitting on one side of him and Strong and Pettingill on the other side, between Seth and the door.
“We’re at a difficult point,” Ebert confided. “And what you’ve told me is that Lizzi died in your apartment and that you disposed of the body. I don’t know that there’s much difference between being the one who physically caused her death or being just part of the act because those are the parts you’re leaving out.”
“Even if I say it was an accident,” Seth said, “whoever out of that group who might have done that, you’re not going to help them out that much.”
Ebert responded sharply, telling him he believed Seth was lying.
Seth then claimed to have another recollection, telling Ebert that “the five of them” had all been in the apartment together, and that “everyone was excited before everything went wrong.”
Ebert reminded Seth that investigators would be searching his apartment for evidence. Seth replied that his only concern was the cops letting his cat out.
“We didn’t do anything,” Seth insisted. “We panicked.”
“You know what the sense I get from that is?” Ebert asked. “More and more I believe that—unfortunately—it was you who took this girl’s life.”
“We were all having fun and then an accident happened!” Seth cried. “I’m just trying to protect my friends.”
—
During a break, the investigators escorted Seth to the bathroom, but this time they accompanied him inside. After asking what he wanted to eat, an officer went to get him a meal from McDonald’s while the rest of the investigators ordered pizza.
When his interview at the Portsmouth Police Department resumed at around eleven P.M., Seth was edgy. He asked to see Kat again. This time Ebert didn’t respond to the request and continued to ask him questions about Lizzi.
“Can I have a few minutes to breathe?”
Ebert offered Seth some “air,” but instead of taking him outside, the officers walked him around inside the station. Seth continued to evade Ebert’s questions. He looked hard at the door leading to the lobby and said he thought he might like to leave so he could go and see Kat.
“Please, Seth,” Ebert begged. “I’m meeting with [Lizzi’s] parents in a few hours. I have to give them an answer. They know something’s going on. There’s fucking police everywhere, on the news, on the Internet.”
They were frozen in place. It was the make-or-break moment.
“Please, Seth,” he said. “Don’t force me to go to them and tell them I don’t know what happened.”
Seth slumped. He wanted to see Kat, he said again. Ebert promised Seth that if he told him everything, he’d bring him to Kat. The detective then asked what he would say when he saw her.
“That I love her.”
“What else?”
“I love her and it’s all going to be okay somehow.”
“Then let’s do it. Let’s do it,” Ebert said. “You keep your end of the bargain, and I’ll keep mine.”
—
The story took shape slowly, with continued claims of memory lapses and blackouts, and then began to evolve and shift into a series of contradictory admissions, new iterations being spun each time Ebert asked Seth to go over it again.
Seth finally arrived at a version of events in which he admitted having been in the apartment when Lizzi died. First, he told Ebert that it was the other guy who’d killed her. They were having consensual sex, Seth claimed, and the guy choked her.
At around one A.M., Seth broke again. Lizzi had come over to the apartment to hang out, he admitted, and Kat had suggested they play a game of strip poker.
“One thing led to another,” he said, and BDSM came into the conversation.
It turned Lizzi on, Seth claimed, and then he had intercourse with her while using a soft rope meant for sex play. When he climaxed, Seth said, “I pulled a little tighter and she began to seize.”
Then Lizzi stopped breathing. Once they realized their mistake, Seth said he and Kat took Lizzi’s things and got rid of them in different Dumpsters after dumping her body in the river.
At 1:40 A.M., Sergeant Ebert advised Seth of his Miranda rights, nearly ten hours after picking him up at the Newington Best Buy.
Ebert walked Seth back to the unmarked car for one more ride around the Seacoast. Seth pointed out the Dumpsters in which he remembered disposing of evidence. Seth told the troopers he was sorry and wanted Lizzi’s family to know he was sorry.
Ebert told Seth that he was going to drive him to the Dover Police Department.
“I’d like to speak to an attorney if you’re going to question me further,” Seth said.
It was 3:21 A.M.
—
As the sun came up, search warrants were secured for a number of locations. Dover investigators combed Seth’s apartment and the Dumpster behind the complex. In some trash bags they recovered household garbage and men’s and women’s clothes and shoes. They also found a single used condom.
In the meantime, the NHSP Major Crime Unit began scouring Peirce Island. They did a cursory search of the water but would need boats to do more. They did find something above the waterline of the rushing Piscataqua: Tangled on the weather-beaten rocks were several strands of sandy-blond hair.