Caught in the Act

The community of Bloomsbury, New Jersey, paid tribute to Monica Massaro with a vigil on September 7, 2007. It was their way of remembering her and what she’d meant to her family, friends and neighbors, some of whom had previously criticized the news media for their limited and shortsighted descriptions of Monica. They printed the information Monica had written on her MySpace page, where she listed among her passions driving fast, reading, and wearing high heels and pink lip gloss. She had been labeled a “rocker chick” who loved live music and worshipped the rock band Aerosmith. To everyone who knew her, however, she was of course so much more. Some of the newspapers later printed apologies along with personal letters from people who wanted to portray Monica more accurately and who provided detailed depictions of the woman they had known and loved. She was roundly characterized as a friendly, outgoing woman who always had a smile on her face.

Many strangers as well as cohorts left messages on her MySpace page expressing their grief over and fondness for the murder victim. Monica had been known as “NJRagdoll” in this cyber community, and on the site, she described herself as an only child who was devoted to her mother and father, and she admitted that she still wondered when she was going to “grow out of it,” referring to her carefree lifestyle and devotion to Aerosmith, whom she would follow around the country when the band went on tour.

She liked her Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, and the summer. She may have encapsulated her view of life when she wrote, “I don’t sit still. I have a lot of fun. I try to always remember to really live and to take every opportunity to have fun and make the most of it.”

On this special night, the streets of Bloomsbury were illuminated by candlelight and filled with song as about eighty people walked along Main Street to honor the life of Monica Massaro. A single candle in a vase filled with white roses glowed on the front porch of Monica’s duplex.

It was a lively event. Monica’s family and friends thought that everything was just the way she would have wanted it to be. There was music, and as people gathered to listen in a grassy area where Route 173 and Main Street bisected, they lit candles, hugged and cried.

Jim Bauer, a church member and borough resident, probably made the most poignant comment when he said, “The invisible barrier [between Bloomsbury and crime] has been breached. My kids used to ride these streets on their bicycles. To have that taken away is not fair.”

It was around this time that an unusual but related story made the news. A woman in Pelham, Massachusetts—only about sixty miles east of Chelmsford—admitted to making up a claim that she had fended off a sexual assault after a man entered her home in the middle of the night on July 29, 2007. Her confession to the hoax came after a ten-day investigation by police looking into the crime. It really came as no surprise to any of the detectives, who from the beginning had noted inconsistencies between the woman’s testimony and the evidence. It was an odd coincidence that she had filed her bogus report on the same night that Lane had arrived in Chelmsford, so she obviously didn’t know about the trucker’s killing spree, but following Lane’s capture, the case was taken very seriously in spite of the inconsistencies. She had even sustained undisclosed injuries, which turned out to be self-inflicted.

Copycat criminals are much more common than copycat victims, and early on there were criminologists who suspected Lane of mimicking the brutal killing of Dr. Petit’s family in Cheshire, Connecticut. Some of Lane’s crimes, however, turned out to predate the Petit family tragedy, and it became readily apparent that Lane’s primary motive in invading homes was not to burglarize them. His sadistic nature went much deeper than that.

What Monica Massaro’s family had to go through was something I could only imagine, yet despite their being consumed with grief, in the days leading up to Lane’s court appearance, we received an emotional and heartbreaking card from Fay and Frank Massaro, Monica’s parents. I was completely overwhelmed by their words, and I immediately ran out to get them a sympathy card, though picking out the perfect one for this situation proved impossible. I wanted to convey the right sentiment and expression of my empathy to a mother and father whose child had been so tragically and brutally taken away from them. There was no card that could do all this, and although the card I sent to the Massaros was imperfect, with a few of my own words added, I believed it captured my feelings of loss for them, coming from the perspective of a mother who had come close to experiencing the same devastation. This exchange managed to open the lines of communication between us, and ever since then, we have kept in touch, writing and speaking on the phone several times. I determined that I would be there for the Massaro family the day that this monster was transported to New Jersey to answer for what he did to them.

Shea’s birthday was also coming up, the day before Lane’s September 12 court date. This should have been a joyous time in her life, but Shea was not very enthusiastic about celebrating anything, not even her Sweet Sixteen. She had been born exactly ten years before the terrorist attacks in our country, on September 11, 1991. Her birthdays had been overshadowed to some degree ever since that dark day in 2001, but that year especially, it was a much smaller affair than it might otherwise have been. Kevin and I tried to make it a joyful and memorable event, but it was inevitable that the trauma of less than a month and a half earlier would overwhelm all of our efforts.

The Saturday before her birthday, we rented a limousine to take the whole family to Faneuil Hall in Boston for dinner at a popular restaurant. Shea invited Adam, her boyfriend, as well as his sister and her best friend. Shea’s grandfather, Kevin’s dad, also joined us. The evening promptly took a downturn, however, when Shea and Adam began to argue during the ride into the city. The rest of the night was filled with tension, which spread like a contagion between everyone. We were walking on eggshells for days afterward, wondering what the end result of this catastrophe of a night would be between Shea and Adam.

Our daughter and her boyfriend rarely disagreed, and for it to become so volatile was extremely unusual. In retrospect, I believe we were all still in shock. It almost seemed like the entire family was in a fog, just going through the motions of normalcy but all the while being acutely aware of how close we’d come to losing Shea. I know in the back of my mind I was thinking what a miracle it was that she was with us at all. Maybe that reality was finally catching up with us.

When Lane was brought out, handcuffed and shackled in an orange prison jumpsuit, his physical appearance was markedly different from the last time we’d seen him. He was now clean shaven, and he had not only lost the moustache and stubble, but had also dropped a significant amount of weight. He seemed exceptionally indolent, almost as if he had been drugged. His appearance was altogether much less intimidating.

“Look at him,” I said to Kevin, not with pity, but with even more loathing than I had before I saw him that day. I knew it could only have been a ploy to gain sympathy from the court. Though I wasn’t worried that the judge might fall for it, I was angry at the very notion that he might be trying to worm his way out of this. His cowardice and scheming ways became even clearer to us when we were later told that as he was driven to the courthouse for his bail hearing the previous month, he’d bragged to the other inmates riding with him that he was not going to jail because he was going to act crazy. Apparently, that same day he had also intentionally been overheard making threats to kill the judge. Lane’s court-appointed attorney, Daniel Callahan, had been allowed up to $5,000 in state funds to hire a psychologist or psychiatrist to evaluate his client. A source close to us also confirmed that Lane had boasted to a fellow inmate at Bridgewater State Hospital, where he was undergoing psychological evaluations, that he was going to be famous, and to just wait and see.

It’s standard legal procedure for defendants to plead not guilty to the charges against them at this stage, but it was still disturbing and incredible to hear those words spoken by a man who had been apprehended after he walked into the bedroom where our daughter was sleeping and held a knife to her throat.

Shea was sitting between us, and I saw her shudder when she heard Lane’s voice, the same southern drawl she had heard once before coming from behind a masked face in the darkness of her bedroom. I put an arm around her and held her close to me.

Lane’s defense lawyer once again argued for his client to be granted bail, despite the new allegations against him in three other states. He imparted the trucker’s work history and no prior criminal history as reasons for the grant of bail. He also rebuffed the allegations that Lane had ever behaved inappropriately with his stepdaughter.

Prosecutor Thomas O’Reilly, filling in for Kerry Ahern, stated emphatically that “the Commonwealth has no intention of relinquishing him to New Jersey until our case is over,” and he described Lane as a “complete danger to the community.”

Lowell Superior Court Judge Chernoff also listened to audiotapes and read documents related to the case before making his decision to order Lane held without bail at Bridgewater State Hospital pending a second dangerousness hearing, which took place the following week with the same result. Lane had waived his right to appear before the court that day, remaining at Bridgewater State Hospital instead. We did not attend that hearing either.

Three months seemed like an eternity of time to us. We had our lives to lead, and we tried the best we could to go on as unusual, but any semblance of a normal family life went right out the window. The legal system was not something any of us were very familiar with, aside from what we might see on television shows like Law & Order, where everything is wrapped up inside an hour. The prosecutors kept us abreast of what was going on along the way, and from the beginning it was explained to us that the case might not ever even go to trial, that Lane’s lawyers would likely negotiate a deal. We were informed that any offer brought to the table would be considered only if it was in the best interest of the state and the victims, and that before it was accepted we would be notified. I was still fully expecting the case to go to trial, and I fully intended to be there. We all did.

There were other matters that Adam Leroy Lane had to answer to first. On October 30, a Hunterdon County, New Jersey, grand jury indicted the trucker in absentia on eight separate counts, including first-degree murder, felony murder, burglary and weapons charges related to the July 2007 homicide of Monica Massaro. If convicted of first-degree murder, he was looking at up to sixty-three years in prison without the possibility of parole. This was the best news I had heard in a long time, and it made the waiting a lot easier.

On November 3, Officer Robert Murphy, Detective George Tyros and Sergeant Francis Goode were honored for their efforts in the capture and arrest of Adam Leroy Lane when they were named Police Officers of the Year by the New England Police Benevolent Association. It was the first awards ceremony of its kind, involving seventy-two departments in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

From the beginning, it seemed that our family had been getting a majority of the attention for bringing Adam Lane to justice, while the work done by the police seemed to be largely overlooked. Kevin and I may have been protecting our own, but they were doing their jobs. They didn’t have the same intimate and personal connection to what was at stake, yet they put themselves at risk and fought to ensure that the person who tried to harm our daughter was held responsible. That’s what makes their actions so special. I was happy they were getting the recognition they deserved.

A month later, the honor was returned to us when we were presented with Certificates of Appreciation for Heroism and Bravery by the town of Chelmsford. The event took place at the Town Hall and was attended by many local officials, including Chief Jim Murphy and his wife, Kris, two exceptional people whom we had actually known personally prior to this whole ordeal, as well as our friends the Smarts. The formality of this event was more than a little awkward for us, especially considering that we were so thankful to all of them.

“What they did that night is unbelievable,” Chief Murphy told the attendees of the ceremony. “Sometimes people freeze, but they reacted. With any hesitation, things would have turned out differently. They refused to be victimized in their own home. By their heroic and valiant efforts, our Chelmsford family not only saved themselves from harm’s way, but they also brought some closure and comfort to a family suffering in New Jersey.”

The chief credited Kevin’s assistance in subduing a deranged individual, who would likely still be at large if not for his intervention. This was something I could not have agreed with more, though Kevin has always downplayed his actions that night. In his response to Chief Murphy’s tribute, Kevin once again deflected any praise away from himself. “I feel she’s the real hero here,” he said of Shea. “She had the will to fight, making noise and kicking. A lot of people would have froze in that situation.”