Caught in the Act

Shea had been dropped off at home at about a quarter to twelve. The first thing she did was come into our bedroom to let us know she was home. Kevin was out cold by then. Usually one of us would wait up until the kids were all in, and as the Red Sox game had only recently ended, I was still wide awake. Besides, the overhead fan had done little to diminish the room’s oppressive heat, which was not at all conducive to sleep. Shea told me she was going to sleep next door in the guest bedroom, and I couldn’t blame her. She said good night, and as she was turning to leave she started to close the door behind her.

Shea wasn’t quite ready for bed, however, so she went into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator. As she walked into the family room and turned on the television, she realized that her brother was not home. Assuming that he would be coming in shortly—he was older, so he had a later curfew—she innocently unlocked the back door for him in case he forgot his key, as he was prone to do. She did not know that Ryan was spending the night at Ricky’s house. Sitting in front of the TV, she flipped through the stations for a while but quickly began to tire. She fought sleep, dozing on the sectional until about 2:00 a.m., when she got up and dragged herself to bed in the guest bedroom. Even with two twin beds in there, the room is quite small, and with the AC unit running full blast, it got very cold in there very quickly. Shea had the blankets piled all the way up to her chin to shield herself from the chilly air as she slept.

Despite having to flee the farmhouse, his fantasy unfulfilled, the trucker felt more charged up than ever. He continued north up Pine Hill, moving through the backyards of the residences on the northern side of the road. When he reached a neighboring property, located diagonally to our home, the neighbor’s dogs went wild, barking like crazy, incensed by the trucker’s movement and most certainly the pungent smell he emitted from his activities over the past twenty-four hours. One of the neighbors was awakened and stumbled out of bed, but he saw nothing in the dark expanse outside his back door. He figured that a passing coyote had riled up the dogs, which in turn had scared the wild animal off.

It was around this time that I woke up. Maybe it was the barking of the dogs, I can’t say for certain. And it was still sweltering. My skin was damp with sweat and my mouth was dry. I was thirsty, so I got out of bed and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I had a few sips and then took the glass back with me to the bedroom in case I got thirsty again later on. I went right back to bed, but it wasn’t easy to fall back to sleep. I must have wakened Kevin, because I heard him tossing and turning. I eventually dropped off, but it was far from a deep sleep.

Outside, the masked trucker reached Misty Meadows, a narrow dirt road that provided access from Pine Hill for the three homes at the end of the way. Now he was headed directly toward our house.

It was around 3:40 a.m. when he walked up the driveway along the left side of the house. He passed the doghouse, where our dog, Bosco, was on a leash tethered to a line that ran between two trees. The setup increased his freedom of movement to about twenty feet in either direction. He was a friendly, loving dog, but he had always been very territorial. Whenever someone he didn’t know came on or near the property, he barked incessantly. But if he barked at all that night, with no air conditioner running and the windows open, we would have heard him. However, for whatever reason, Bosco did not seem to stir as the reeking, dark figure entered the backyard through the side gate and up onto the small back porch to the door, which had been unlocked earlier by Shea.

The trucker entered our house and found himself at the back of the family room facing the kitchen. Shea’s purse was on the counter closest to the back door, and mine was on the counter in the kitchen by the phone. He grabbed them both and took them back outside, where he rifled through them, using the concentrated beam of his tiny flashlight to view the contents. He pulled out my driver’s license and the cash I had inside. In Shea’s bag, he came across a small can of pepper spray, which he tossed into the woods outside the fenced-in backyard. He then checked her wallet and found her high school identification card, which had a small color photo of Shea on it. It was all he needed to see.

He took the small amount of cash from her purse and left everything on the porch table. He was anticipating taking the items with him when he left the house later, confident that he was going to emerge successful. Stepping back inside, he slowly made his way through the dark kitchen, turning left and moving down the narrow hallway. He crept past our partially open bedroom door to his left, ignoring me and Kevin and the wad of cash in plain view on our bureau. Instead, he single-mindedly approached the closed door directly in front of him.

When the masked trucker opened the guest room door and saw Shea asleep, he quickly entered the room and closed the door behind him. The drone of the air conditioner softened any sound he made, and the chill air blowing behind Shea toward the intruder diminished the intensity of his odor. He approached the bed more deliberately, almost a shadow in the cool darkness. The time displayed on Shea’s cell phone glowing in the darkness was 3:51. Unsheathing a knife, he clutched it in his gloved right hand and leaned forward over our daughter, who was sleeping soundly on her back, her head turned slightly to the right. He watched her for a moment as she slept, listening to the sound of her shallow breathing. He pulled the covers down to her knees, then reached over and placed his gloved left hand firmly over her nose and mouth.

Shea instantly awakened, but was disoriented at first. Feeling something over her mouth, her first thought was that it was her brother joking around with her, but even in the darkness she could tell that the hulking body leaning over her was not Ryan’s. She felt something cold and sharp pressed against her neck, and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see that the man was wearing a dark mask.

Shea wanted to scream but couldn’t. The man’s hand was so big that it covered almost her entire face, and it was pressed so tightly against her mouth and her nose that she could not breathe. Her big brown eyes were wide with horror as she peered up at the intruder’s own eyes leering back at her from the narrow slits cut out of the mask. To Shea, it was a living nightmare, and she began to panic.

I’ve always been a heavy sleeper, but this woke me up. I could hear soft whimpering and a strange sound of movement coming from the guest room where Shea was sleeping. In my mind, the combined noises could only have been our fifteen-year-old daughter in the throes of a nightmare, but something told me to go check on her anyway, having no idea what real nightmare was awaiting.

It was unusual enough for one of us to get up in the middle of the night like this, but both of us going in to check on the kids was not something I ever remember our doing together, even when they were babies. Had either of us gone alone, however, the events that followed would have almost certainly been drastically different. Even more disconcerting, had our air-conditioning unit been operational that night, we might never have heard the sounds of Shea’s struggle with the intruder, or her muffled cries.

I didn’t even bother to put on my robe; both of us were in our underwear, not expecting to find anything more traumatic than our daughter half asleep in the midst of a bad dream. When Kevin opened the guest room door, however, we walked in on a surreal scene that neither of us could ever have imagined.

There was a large figure in dark clothes leaning over Shea and holding a hand to her face. My first thought was that it was her brother, Ryan, trying to scare her, or worst case, a boy from school bothering her.

Kevin’s voice seemed to startle the intruder, who was not aware that we had been standing in the doorway until that moment. In turning to face us, the intruder grazed Shea’s shoulder with the blade, and it was then that I got my first glimpse of him. When I saw that he was wearing a mask and holding a large knife, I knew instantly this was not our son, and it was no prank.

There are few words, if any, to accurately describe the abject horror that I experienced at that moment, recognizing instantly that our daughter was in mortal danger. It was an intensely visceral response, but it provoked a physical reaction to do something. I felt that I needed to protect my daughter, and I instinctively started to move toward the bed at the same time that Kevin yelled, “Knife!” and charged the stranger. He reacted so quickly that it seemed to catch the intruder off guard. Kevin grabbed both of the man’s wrists and began grappling with him.

My husband is not a large man by any means, though he is very strong, with a lot of lean, wiry muscle. However, he easily conceded eighty pounds to the burly intruder, who packed about two hundred and forty pounds onto a six-foot frame. But this did not deter my husband. Despite the size disadvantage, Kevin spun the intruder away from Shea and threw him onto the bed directly opposite her. The intruder was lying prone, partially atop the other twin bed, his head and shoulders pushed against the wall, with Kevin on his back. My husband maintained a grip on the intruder’s wrist, trying to prevent him from using the weapon on him.

Without hesitation, I reached out to try to take the knife away from the intruder. His arm was flailing around slightly and his hand was so big it covered nearly the entire handle. I had no choice but to try to grab ahold of the blade, but he was too strong, and all I managed to do was cut the palms of my hands. I didn’t realize how badly I had been cut until later.

Shea up until this point had been thinking that all this had to be a terrible dream until she saw the blood that was now streaming from my hands onto the floor. She took action herself then, alertly grabbing her cell phone and dialing 911. She sounded almost hysterical at first, talking over the emergency operator, who asked her specific questions to try to get her to calm down enough to provide the information he needed to get help to her. Shea quickly regained her composure and told the dispatcher who she was and described what was happening.

The information was recorded, but as the call was being transferred to the Chelmsford Police Department, Shea thought the silence on the other end indicated that the call had ended. Thinking she had been disconnected, she hung up the phone.

Because she had dialed 911 using a cell phone, the call was dispatched through to the Massachusetts State Police first, which is how the system is set up. Had she made the call from a house phone, it would have gone directly to the local police department. But the information had already been passed on to Chelmsford. At 3:58 a.m., Officer Robert Murphy was told to start heading in the direction of our address.

Shea was about to call back, when suddenly the intruder began breathing heavily and grunting loudly. I turned to see him struggling to get to his feet. In a burst of energy, he stood up fully, with my husband clinging to his back.

Despite everything else that had just gone on, this was the most terrifying moment of my life. I thought for sure that this imposing figure was going to shrug my husband off his back and kill all three of us. However, Kevin not only managed to hold on, but he was able to wrap one arm around the intruder’s neck, bulldogging him as they both tumbled backward. They crashed against the wall between the foot of Shea’s bed and the closet. They landed in a sitting position underneath the air-conditioner unit in the window, the intruder in Kevin’s lap. It worked to Kevin’s advantage, as the intruder could not move to either side, essentially wedged between the footboard and the closet door. Kevin kept his forearm clenched tightly around the intruder’s windpipe, yanking on it as hard as he could, sufficiently immobilizing the larger opponent. His other arm secured the intruder’s hand that held the knife.

“Okay, Dad!” she responded and walked quickly out of the room, never letting on that we did not keep a gun in the house and going along with the ruse to try to force the masked intruder to submit. As soon as she left, her cell phone rang. It was the Chelmsford police, letting her know that help was on the way. They kept her on the line, asking her questions to keep the officers who were en route updated so they would know what they were walking into. They particularly wanted to know what the intruder was doing.

The dispatcher instructed her to go outside so she could flag down the police cruiser, but as she was stepping outside onto the front porch she saw the lights of a squad car race past the house. Shea was still on the phone with the dispatcher, who asked her to stand in the middle of the road by the driveway and wait for him to turn back around, which she did.

Although Kevin continued to hold the intruder at bay in a choke hold, the man would not let go of the knife. As I tried again to take the weapon from him, I remained under the impression that this had to be some high school kid, albeit a large one, who was obsessed with our daughter. With this belief in mind, I asked him, “What were you thinking?” I was trying to shame him, like a mother, disappointed that he had taken his obsession to such an extreme and totally ruined his life.

As I took it from him, my fear instantly dissolved and was replaced by an overwhelming sense of rage, incensed that this person had invaded our home, had just walked right in off the street to terrorize our teenage daughter. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before, and I didn’t know how to react. Getting into a dialogue with this person was not something I had planned to do, but I thought engaging him in conversation could create a diversion, and the questions just kept coming out of my mouth. I wanted to understand, even then, how such a thing could have happened, how it was that this person had ended up at our house.

It was a dangerous time, I thought. Even though the intruder was all but incapacitated and the police were on their way, if he managed to free himself he could easily inflict serious harm on Kevin and me.

I wasn’t about to leave Kevin alone in the room with the intruder, believing it to be just a ploy. Shea was outside the house, and with me gone, he would increase his chances of escape significantly. What I didn’t realize was that the man was actually trying to free his hands in order to remove the mask from his face. Unlike us, who had no idea, he was well aware that there were much stricter sentencing guidelines for masked home invasions. Kevin held firm, however, and said, “Don’t move a fucking muscle, you fat fuck!”

Outside, Shea was waving her arms as the police car came toward the house at a high rate of speed. The police cruiser had missed the house on the first try. Little did we know that having gold numbers on a yellow house made it virtually impossible to read the house numbers at night. This time the driver spotted her and slowed down quickly. Shea got out of the way so the officer could turn into the yard. Officer Robert Murphy drove straight across our circular driveway, over a small landscaped bed of mulch and plantings, stopping just short of the stone wall in front of the house. Jumping out of the vehicle, he unholstered his service revolver as Shea approached.

Officer Murphy was alone at that moment, but with a report of a gun involved and a potential homicide situation unfolding, he wasn’t about to wait for backup or waste time calling for a SWAT team to be assembled.

He momentarily startled me, but I was beyond relieved to hear those words and see his uniform. Murphy told me to drop the knife, which I did. The heavy blade and sturdy handle clattered loudly on the floor, reaffirming to me just how dangerous a weapon it was. It had felt like an eternity as we’d waited for the police to arrive, but it had actually only been about four minutes since Shea had called 911. Now, our ordeal was almost over.

It was hard to believe a scene like this was playing out in our little home. It was as if I was watching a movie. I was standing there in nothing more than panties and a tank top, covered with my own blood from the cuts on my hands. My husband, wearing only a pair of boxers, was still down on the floor with a masked man who he had locked in a choke hold.

The first thing Officer Murphy did was look for the gun. He didn’t see the weapon, so instead he kicked the knife I had been holding across the floor to be sure it was well out of reach of the intruder. A moment later, another officer, Sergeant Frank Goode, arrived on the scene. When he entered the bedroom with his gun drawn and ready, it was all over. Kevin and I both felt it.

Sergeant Goode noticed the hunting knife on the floor and went over to pick it up, placing it on the nightstand, even farther away from the suspect. Then he holstered his weapon and removed his handcuffs. As the sergeant pulled the suspect off Kevin and to his feet, the masked man resisted, straining to keep from being cuffed. Even so, it didn’t take much effort for the officer to subdue the suspect and place him in custody. By that time, a third police officer, Officer Bruce Darwin, had also arrived to assist.

“Do you have any other weapons on you?” Sergeant Goode asked as he pulled the mask off the intruder’s face. He didn’t wait for a response as he searched the suspect. The two patrol officers, their weapons in hand at their sides in case deadly forced was warranted, were amazed at the assortment of bladed weapons that were removed from the suspect.

There were two fifteen-inch hunting knives, one of which was still in its sheath when it was removed from around the man’s upper left leg. In the fanny pack around his waist, police found more weapons—including a small knife with a retractable blade, a three-foot length of choke wire and a Chinese throwing star—and a small yellow flashlight as well as a leather mask with cutouts around the eyes and mouth and Velcro fasteners in the back. This was in addition to the pullover cloth face mask that the intruder had been wearing at the time he was apprehended.

As all this was going on, I retreated to our bedroom to put some clothes on. Shea had to help me get dressed because my hands were cut so deeply that I couldn’t get my pants on and zippered. I saw the intruder as he was escorted down the hall and out of the house. His mask had been removed, but I caught only a brief glimpse of his shadowy profile.

As Officers Murphy and Goode were loading the intruder into the squad car, I felt an enormous sense of gratitude toward these officers, an appreciation beyond what they had just done for my family but for what they were called upon to do every day in the line of duty. Honestly, the moment they charged into our house, I would have applauded if I had been able.

Paramedics arrived, and I went outside, where they began attending to me, cleaning and wrapping the wounds on my hands. From his seat in the back of the squad car, the intruder shouted from an open window, “She did that to herself!” Nobody reacted to his comment, but we all heard it. He said it again before Officer Murphy raised the back window and drove the suspect away.

The EMTs told me that some of the lacerations would require stitches to close, and they suggested I ride to the hospital with them in the ambulance. They also wanted Shea to come along, so she could be evaluated as well. They were worried that she might be in shock. It seemed like the right thing to do, so I went back inside to get my insurance card. Shea accompanied me, but when we walked into the kitchen to get our purses, we discovered that they weren’t where we had left them. Shea quickly spotted them sitting outside on the back-porch table, and she went out to retrieve them. She noticed right away that her wallet was open and her ID partially removed. An officer had followed her, and he advised her to check to see if any items had been removed. The only things she noted missing were her pepper spray and a small amount of cash.

With this evidence, investigators could conclude that if the intruder’s intent truly had been to rob us, as he would later claim, then he would not have gone back inside the house after going through our purses. The intent to commit a sexual assault or kidnapping had been firmly established.

It suddenly occurred to Kevin that our dog wasn’t barking. With everything that was going on at the house, it was highly unusual that he would be so calm. “Where’s Bosco?” Kevin said, looking at Shea and me. A chill ran through me; I feared he had been killed by this man. I could see from the look on Shea’s face that she was thinking the same thing. Kevin went around to the side of the house, expecting the worst. He was relieved when he saw our family pet, quite alive, though utterly engrossed with something down the embankment. Kevin couldn’t see what it was that had drawn his full attention, but Bosco seemed okay, and that was all we needed to hear. Although the dog didn’t seem quite himself then, and would remain out of sorts for several days afterward, we were never able to determine one way or the other if the dog had been drugged or otherwise incapacitated. He was fine, and that was all that mattered.

When we were ready to be driven to the hospital in the ambulance, the EMTs wanted to separate us, having Shea ride up in the front and me in the back. I pleaded with them to let us sit together. I just didn’t want to be far from my daughter, for her sake as well as mine. They relented, even though it was technically against the rules. While we went off to the hospital, the weapons were removed from the guest bedroom and spread out across our front porch so they could be photographed on the scene as evidence. Kevin was asked to stay behind to go over the details of the attack with the police.

The Criminal Bureau was contacted to process the crime scene. Detective George Tyros was the on-call detective that night, and by the time his phone rang at home, it was well after 4:00 a.m. His sergeant briefly went over the details of the crime, and Detective Tyros reported directly to the scene. As soon as he arrived, he realized how narrowly disaster had been averted.

Feeling concern for his own safety and following protocol had gone out the window for Officer Murphy when teenage Shea had came running out of the house to tell him that her parents were fighting for their lives with a stranger inside their home. But when Tyros looked down at the arsenal of weapons that the intruder had been carrying, and that were now spread out on our front porch, he was immediately certain that if Officer Murphy had hesitated in any way, or had taken a different approach to deal with what appeared to be a serious hostage situation, it would have resulted in the coroner being called first instead of him.

Detective Tyros understood intuitively that in a situation like that, an officer goes on a gut feeling and worries about the consequences later. Lawsuits take a backseat to doing what has to be done. He had nothing but praise for how his fellow officer had handled himself under the circumstances. Tyros had seen how the fundamental approach to any violent standoff had changed since Columbine. Before that tragedy, police were more apt to wait for backup before going into a potentially deadly situation. These days the protocol was to go right in, weapon drawn, ready to defend yourself and to protect the lives of others with preemptive action. The increasing level of indiscriminate lethal violence in society has altered the dynamic of the police response.

As Detective Tyros photographed and processed the evidence, even at that moment, Kevin, Shea and I were not yet fully aware just how fortunate we had been—or how our lives would be changed forever.