Chapter 4

MURDER ON MAIN STREET

Sunday, July 29, 2007

 

State police began receiving reports of a prowler from residents of Bloomsbury, New Jersey, around 2:00 a.m. Frightened home owners called in numerous complaints of someone jiggling their door handles and trying to get inside. The picturesque borough in Hunterdon County is home to about one thousand people. Although it is surrounded by farmland, it is situated just ten miles east of the Pennsylvania line and fifty miles north of Philadelphia. Interstate 78 runs directly through it. The massive truck stop at the eastern end of town has always been another world unto itself, part of the community yet separated by an invisible boundary. Truck stops like the one in Bloomsbury provide a safe haven for weary truckers, and unlike more generic rest areas that offer bathroom facilities and food for all motorists, truck stops are generally for truckers only and are all but off-limits to other highway motorists.

There are more motorist-friendly stops all along today’s interstate highways, roadside plazas that feature an assortment of fast-food marts, information centers and tourist attractions. It is here where commercial truck drivers and pedestrian travelers often converge. One group pulls over because it is convenient, another because it is required. Although travel for private motorists has gotten easier and more anonymous, the regulations with which interstate truckers must comply have gotten more restrictive, and because a trucker’s stops are mandated, they are also documented. So when a dark-blue tractor pulling a semi with Virginia registration tags pulled into the rest area at exit 7 off I-78 in New Jersey earlier that night, it came with a traceable history. There were gas receipts, logbook entries, bills of lading and other shipping documents that identified the truck’s origin, its destination, and everything in between. This particular truck, carrying a variety of nursery and garden supplies, had left Virginia on July 27, making deliveries around York, Pennsylvania, before stopping at the rest area in New Jersey. There was another scheduled stop, in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, on the way to Nashua, New Hampshire, where the driver would refill his truck with goods for the return trip south.

But first, there was at least one undocumented stop that the driver of this nursery truck was going to make. He removed a black fanny pack from under the cab’s seat and strapped it around his waist. He didn’t have to check the contents because he had packed it himself earlier and no one else had touched it. He secured a knife leg strap to his right thigh and slid a fifteen-inch hunting knife into the KYDEX pocket sheath. Then he grabbed the hooded mask and the pair of gloves from the passenger seat beside him and stepped out of the truck. The mask was brown camouflage in the front and black in the back, and the black nylon gloves had leather palms. Wearing a black T-shirt, dark denim jeans and black sneakers, the trucker slipped unseen into the narrow band of trees behind his rig. When he emerged a moment later in front of Route 173, his hands were covered, his face was concealed and he was ready to kill. He prowled through the backyards of the sleepy neighborhood as if they were his own private hunting grounds. Upon finding a locked door, he moved on, also bypassing any house with lights on.

When he came across a two-story residence with a wide front porch at 79 Main Street, the windows were dark, and there was a car parked outside. He peered into the passenger window of the car parked in the driveway on the side of the house. Spotting a purse in plain view on the passenger seat, he tried the car door but found it locked. He had a feeling that this was the one, and he was so confident about it that he didn’t even attempt to access the residence from a rear door. He walked straight up the stairs onto the porch and wasn’t the least bit shocked when the front door swung open freely.

He quickly entered the ground-floor duplex apartment and paused in the darkness, listening for the sound of a television, voices, footsteps, anything at all. There was only silence. On a low coffee table in the middle of the living room was a set of car keys. He grabbed them and walked back outside. After unlocking the passenger door of the car, he snatched the pocketbook and closed the door swiftly to extinguish the interior light. Right there, he removed the small yellow flashlight he was carrying and started to go through the contents of the purse. He dug out the wallet, which contained several credit cards and some cash, but he looked past these at that moment and pulled out the operator’s license, focusing on the picture and the date of birth of the driver. Her name was Monica Massaro. She was blond. Pretty. A beautiful smile to go with it all. She was thirty-eight years old. He could have left at that point, but he felt compelled to stay. And hunt. There was only one car in the driveway, and he figured the woman was unmarried and was alone. He wasn’t done yet. He then went back up onto the front porch and stepped inside the house, taking the purse with him and placing it on the floor just inside the door.

Before proceeding any further, he removed the knife from his waist belt. He slowly began to make his way through the ground-floor apartment. He walked down a narrow hallway, passed a bathroom on one side and a closed door directly across, which he opened carefully before discovering it was a closet. He rummaged through it briefly, looking for anything of value among the bath towels and sundry items. Around the corner was a bedroom. He could see the large dresser just inside the doorway. He entered the room cautiously, expecting to find a helpless, sleeping victim. Instead, what he encountered was a terrified woman sitting up in bed, having been woken by the sounds of someone prowling around in her apartment. They were both surprised when he walked through the doorway into the darkened bedroom.

Monica never locked her doors, a habit that concerned her parents as well as some of her friends who were not as free-spirited or trusting. If she had been holding out any hope that this was her upstairs tenant coming in to talk to her about something, or perhaps stumbling home drunk and wandering into the wrong apartment, that thought was short-lived. She had been clutching the remote control for the overhead light and fan, and when she clicked it on, it revealed a hulking figure clad in black, his face concealed behind a mask.

Monica began to scream and jumped out of bed. The intruder raised the knife and charged her at once. He pressed one gloved hand against her mouth to stifle her screams, but she bit his hand and he pulled it away quickly. Angered, he threw her onto the bed and pounced on top of her as she continued to scream. Then he brought the blade of the knife in his right hand across her throat in a smooth, practiced motion. He opened a deep, fatal wound. Her screams were instantly silenced as blood pulsed from the severed vessels in her neck. Monica died quickly, her killer watching, breathless himself with excitement as she bled to death. Then he proceeded to mutilate her body, stabbing and slashing her head, chest, stomach and between her legs.

Before he left, the killer went through her personal belongings in search of a trophy to take with him. Finding a necklace on the dresser, the masked man pocketed it as a souvenir. As he left the apartment, he grabbed Monica’s purse, but then went around to the side door at the back of the house to make his escape. After what he had just done, he did not want to risk being seen now.

Stepping outside, he walked behind the victim’s house until he reached the railroad tracks. He knew the truck stop was bordered on one side by the tracks, so he headed in that direction. Along the way, he started dumping out the contents of the victim’s purse. He tossed out all of the personal effects except her driver’s license, credit cards and cash. The bills and loose change he stuffed into the front pocket of his jeans. Before he got into his cab, he tossed the cards and license into a trash can at the Exxon station and flung the pocketbook up onto the roof of an adjacent building.

The trucker did not seem to be in any hurry to get away, as he did not leave right away. He went into the Pilot Travel Center, which was part of the Route 78 truck stop, and bought a radar detector. He even had something to eat and slept a little while before he drove off, continuing on toward New England and his next stop.