Chapter 18
CUSTODY BATTLE
Christmas has always been a special time of the year for me and my family, but as the 2007 holiday season approached, some of the rituals that had typically defined the season lost their meaning. A lot of the superficial aspects of the holidays were stripped away, for the better. Long before December 25, we all felt that we had already received our presents, and just spending that time together was the only thing we could have asked for.
With most life-changing events, I believe that the ability to see the larger picture is relative to the healing process. Coming to grips with the enormity of the past events was challenging for us. Undeniably, the depth of the pain that we were exposed to—our own as well as that of the families and friends of Lane’s other victims—changed us.
Although we were all trying to look ahead, it was hard for me to just move on simply because so much was still unsettled with the other families, known and unknown. But it was right around the same time that we received several holiday cards that really opened my eyes to just how fortunate we were. One was from Darlene Ewalt’s best friends, who extended to us heartfelt expressions of appreciation and gratitude. Similar sentiments came from the Massaro family to ours, and the words from both of these families gave light to my spirit during a very dark time. I realized that we would all be forever bound by this tragedy and heartbreak, which none of us would ever be able to forget. I felt that the connection between our families had made us all stronger, and I could only hope that with time we would all find peace in our hearts once again and begin healing.
Just prior to the New Year, as we were getting ready to put 2007 behind us and welcome a brighter, more hopeful 2008, an article published in the Lowell Sun named our family among the “25 Most Fascinating People in the Greater Lowell Area.” Once again, our faces were splashed on the front page of the newspaper, dredging up all the associated feelings of anxiety and survivor guilt.
The article prompted Gerry Leone, the Middlesex district attorney in Massachusetts, to contact us. He took the time to send a letter congratulating us for the distinction that the Lowell Sun had bestowed upon us, and he further noted how pleased he was that our family did not meet with the kind of tragedy that he so often encountered. He also mentioned that if he could ever be of any help, we could simply give him a call. He promised to keep a close eye on Lane’s extradition and do everything he could on his end to try to expedite the process. I just thought he was trying to be supportive by keeping us involved. I admit I was naive, figuring Lane would be on his way to New Jersey soon since he apparently was not there yet.
Escaping Lane entirely proved to be a challenge for my family as well. Lane may have been confined to a prison cell, but in many ways he never seemed far enough away. On at least one occasion, he was way too close for comfort.
How terribly ironic it was that shortly after Shea got back to school after the holidays, she ended up visiting the very facility where her attacker was being housed by the state. Her junior sociology class at Chelmsford High School was taking its annual field trip to the Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Shirley (MCI-Shirley), one of the prisons within the Massachusetts Correctional System, just forty miles south of Chelmsford. It was something the class did every winter. All of the sociology students knew about the outing at the start of the school year, and most, if not all of them, were very excited about it. The academic grapevine at the school has consistently ranked it as the best field trip available. Shea, understandably, was not as anxious as her other classmates, but she went along, having little thought or concern about crossing paths with Adam Lane again. She just didn’t think about that possibility, and quite frankly neither did I. We didn’t know where Adam Lane was being held, but we didn’t think that the school would knowingly send her to the same place. The reality was that the school didn’t know for sure, either. There was a lot of secrecy as to Lane’s exact location, so the possibility did exist that he might be incarcerated in the very same institution that the class would be visiting. In fact, just as a precaution, Shea’s sociology teacher advised her beforehand that it would be best if she did not identify herself as Lane’s attack victim to anyone at the prison. There was an outside chance that an inmate would be acquainted with Lane, so even such an indirect connection was best to be avoided. MCI-Shirley was a medium- and minimum-level security facility, but Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, located on the same property, was a maximum-security prison.
Maybe we were all just in denial, disbelieving that any of us, particularly Shea, would have another surprise encounter with Adam Leroy Lane. The next time we anticipated seeing him was in court, with the trucker in shackles and under heavy guard.
The school program was designed to show teenagers what it was really like inside the walls of a state penitentiary while at the same time giving them the opportunity to speak with actual prisoners who participate in the program. The inmates were carefully screened, and the interviews all took place in a highly supervised and controlled environment. The participants were chosen because they best represented the lesson that school is trying to get across to the teens, namely, that otherwise good people can make life-changing, sometimes irreparable mistakes early in life, and that oftentimes these mistakes are made in an instant, without malice or forethought. The students were encouraged to ask questions to obtain a clearer understanding of how their own decisions and judgments can ultimately affect their entire lives.
During this particular trip to the prison facility in Shirley, one of the inmates was speaking to the class and made a reference to a home invasion that had occurred that past summer. The convict knew that the group was from Chelmsford, where the crime occurred, and he revealed that Lane was around the corner in the maximum-security wing. What he did not know was that Shea had been the victim of that attack. Shea never let on who she was, just as she had discussed with her teacher. Her classmates kept quiet as well.
When she told me about this later, I was stunned. I was also angry with the school for putting her in harm’s way, but I was more relieved that she was okay. What was even more amazing to me was that Shea seemed unfazed by it, at least outwardly. The extent of any internal or psychological harm this may have had on her was still unknown to us.
Still, although Shea’s strength and courage made me proud, at the same time I felt terrible that she had to go through a trauma of this magnitude at such a tender age. It made me want to cry every time I thought about it. It was a harsh realization that no matter how hard we tried, we could not protect her from everything all the time. But just knowing that she was strong enough to survive on her own if she had to was of great comfort.
Ultimately, it seemed that Shea’s experience at the prison benefited her immensely and proved to be a pivotal step in her healing process. For her to see the conditions under which Lane had been relegated to live revealed a human aspect of her attacker that provided an invaluable life lesson. In the months that followed, we were kept in the loop regarding Lane’s confinement status. We were provided with several interesting facts, and it was gratifying on some level to know that he was not having a good time of it in prison.
Privacy was one of the freedoms Lane no longer enjoyed. All of his incoming and outgoing mail was read. Prison officials would listen in on the conversations he had on the phone. When it was deemed necessary by the court, they would take his hair, blood, anything they wanted. The men Lane shared cell space with were just as apt to report anything they heard him say.
At some point, we were told that Lane had been beaten rather severely by fellow inmates and had to be moved to another facility for his own safety. Why he was attacked was not known for certain, but it was my understanding that the other convicts were annoyed by Lane’s general behavior and nasty attitude. A friend of ours, Kevin Whippen, head of intelligence at the prison where Lane was held, informed us that the other prisoners had likely attacked Lane because of his attempted assault on Shea. It didn’t matter to them whether Lane’s intent had been sexual assault, battery or murder, nor did it matter that he had not succeeded in harming her. The fact that he was accused of victimizing a fifteen-year-old girl was reason enough. Criminals have their own code of ethics, and this was how they policed themselves. Lane became a target even though he kept to himself and didn’t communicate with any of the inmates, usually a given with any new prisoner. He was not from anywhere near New England, so the other cons were even less likely to speak to him. And for what they had to say to him that day, they used their fists and feet to get their message across.
Whippen had not had much direct contact with Lane, but from this incident and what he had been told by the other guards, it seemed that the North Carolina truck driver did not fit the mold correctional officers were used to seeing when it came to violent criminal offenders. Given how respectful and quiet Lane acted overall, to look at him and listen to him speak, they would never have suspected the convicted murderer of such acts. Whippen confided to me that Lane seemed to be a typical, polite and mild-mannered southern truck driver, just as Detective-Sergeant Geoffrey Noble, of the New Jersey State Police, had observed when he interviewed Lane just before the suspect confessed to the murder of Monica Massaro. Whippen also told me that Lane did not display any of the telltale characteristics, such as outward aggressiveness, exhibited by the other sociopathic killers he had encountered through his years on the job.
We had been told at that time that Lane could be transferred to New Jersey to stand trial sometime in February, but that was still uncertain. Again, with my ignorance of the criminal justice system showing, I placed a call to the Massachusetts governor’s office, inquiring about the delay. Patrick Marinaro, a special assistant for Governor Deval Patrick’s legal counsel, told me that no paperwork had been received yet at their office to initiate the extradition. I immediately called District Attorney Gerry Leone, taking him up on his previous offer of assistance. He was kind enough to look into the matter, and he also asked Assistant District Attorney Kerry Ahern to do the same. After a little digging on their part, it was discovered that the normal extradition process was not being followed. Apparently, the extradition was being conducted through the Interstate Agreement on Detainers, which is handled directly through the Massachusetts Department of Correction and the New Jersey Department of Correctional Facilities. This was the reason there had been no paperwork sent to the governor’s office.
After hearing this, my concerns were somewhat minimized, and I felt more confident that things were at least moving along in the right direction, albeit laboriously. It seemed rather unfortunate now that we had agreed to drop the attempted rape charge against Lane, since it had been done, in part, with the understanding that it would result in a quicker extradition. I couldn’t imagine it being any slower.
The Massaros were waiting to see justice done on behalf of their daughter, and I felt awful that Lane’s incarceration in Massachusetts was holding this up for them. Some in law enforcement indicated to us that since Lane was behind bars and held no immediate threat to the public, the other cases against him were not high priority.
I had been wishing I could have done something to speed things up, so when Shea and I were asked to stop by the Chelmsford Police Department to provide DNA samples, I went enthusiastically. The purpose was to rule out our DNA from those of other possible victims who may have been assaulted with the same weapons used by Lane. Since both Shea and I had been cut during the attack, it was likely that the DNA from our blood would be found on one of the seized knives. Kevin accompanied us to the police station to meet Detective George Tyros and two New Jersey state police officers. The procedure only took a couple of minutes. The officers took swabs from the insides of both of our cheeks. The samples were placed in separate plastic bags, labeled and sealed.
While we were there, I couldn’t help asking them for an update as to when Lane would officially be transported to New Jersey to face the charges pending against him there. The out-of-state officers were very friendly and wanted to be helpful, but there was no new information available.