Читать книгу I'll Be Watching You - M. William Phelps - Страница 40

I

Most defendants who plead out their cases sign on the dotted line, face a judge for sentencing, keep their mouths shut, and fall into prison life best they can, hoping to one day sit in front of the parole board and argue for early release. Ned Snelgrove, the Bergen County court was about to learn, was quite a bit different than most defendants it had seen pass through its walnut-and-maple doors.

Ned had been told that it was a good idea for him to write to the judge before his sentencing and, in perhaps a compassionate way, apologize for his actions. He should relay a feeling that he was willing to accept punishment, whatever that may be, move on, and get some help while incarcerated. The thought was that Ned could begin his sentence on a powerful, positive note. Although the judge was unlikely to lower Ned’s sentence, the letter might prove that Ned knew what he did was wrong and understood that he had hurt many people.

As everyone was about to learn, however, Ned Snelgrove was not your average criminal.

II

On Thursday, April 14, 1988, Ned sat down in his cell and began drafting a letter to the judge. He opened by saying he was writing to “describe what happened” in both his crimes. Ned claimed both “incidents” were generated by chronic sexual urges he had developed in grade school for “unknown reasons,” which later grew into an uncontrollable penchant he had for perpetrating violence against women.

The letter, all at once, was shocking, disturbing, and chilling. Some later said, it was perhaps a plea on Ned’s part for help. He described his life leading up to both crimes as being tormented by these unmanageable feelings of attacking women and putting them into a state of not being able to defend themselves. He got off on it, he said in not so many words. He agonized over what was an “enormous”—he underlined the word—“sexual arousement” he would get when seeing women, the good-looking ones with large breasts, rendered unconscious and incapable of defense.

He wrote about being able to restrain himself, most of the time, although there have been a few very close calls.

He said he knew it was all wrong, but he couldn’t do anything to about it. He tried. He really did. But it was “difficult,” he added, just to “control” his own “hands,” as if they had a life of their own.

He expected that this sickness—which he hadn’t told anyone about—was one of the reasons why his friends and coworkers had such a tough time believing that he had committed these crimes. He had easily fooled them all. Same as Mary Ellen and his first victim.

Over the next several pages—in powerful, frightening detail—Ned described how he had killed the woman in Middlesex and attacked Mary Ellen years later. It was almost as if in writing it out, Ned got the same cathartic sense of fulfillment all over again that he had gotten while committing the actual crimes. I held [her] throat, he wrote of the woman in Middlesex, pressing down with my thumbs, for as long as I could….

When they had a chance to read the letter, the judge, along with Fred Schwanwede and even Ned’s attorney, John Bruno, couldn’t believe Ned had put such incredibly vile words on a page.

The passion.

The gall.

The elements of murder.

A confession?

Why? For what purpose?

Ned wanted everyone to believe that the letter was a new beginning for him: a point at which he could start to heal his perverse mind. The violent feelings he had, Ned explained, defied “logic.” He knew they did. He wasn’t naïve. He understood that not everyone thought this way. Still, he wrote, Fred Schwanwede was likely going to argue that he was a cold-blooded, heartless killer, but he wanted the court to know that he wasn’t. If he had been that type of murderer, Ned justified in the letter, why, then, would he have chosen the victims he had? He wasn’t some sort of “Green River Killer.” Some lunatic who prowled the streets for victims. His victims, Ned argued, were “unlucky.”

Wrong place, wrong time.

That’s all. If they hadn’t been near him, he insisted, they wouldn’t have been attacked.

III

Ned’s letter was nothing more than a narcissistic rant, unlike anything the court had ever seen. It was all about Ned and why he had acted on his violent thoughts. There was little remorse. No apology. But he did “hate” himself, and he was upset that he “had it made” at the time of his arrest.

Great job.

Great friends.

Good family.

He couldn’t understand why he had chosen this specific time to act out. It made no sense to him. He had let everyone down: I cry every time I think of my parents…, he wrote.

In all that he had said, Ned encouraged the court not to worry about him in the future. Why, as long as he wasn’t allowed, he wrote, to be alone with a female, well—lo and behold—he was not a threat to society.

Imagine that.

His friends, he ended the letter, would back [him] up on this point.

The words of an admitted killer. A man whom society didn’t have to worry about for at least a decade or more. In fact, the only way Ned would see freedom again inside a decade was if he complied with every single standard that the system had set in place for rehabilitation. If Ned met every single recommendation, he could be a free man by the year 1999—and not a day before.

IV

What about that woman Ned had murdered in Middlesex County—the one he had squeezed the life from, then stabbed repeatedly in the chest and face as she, he explained in his letter to the court, “sputtered” back to life after his efforts to choke her to death failed? After she expired, he had posed her so he could sexually gratify himself. That beautiful woman, whom he had met and dated at Rutgers, had a family and friends. There were people who loved her and adored the way she had dedicated her short life in many respects to the welfare of animals. Anyone who knew her could never forget her smile, or the way she had of making everyone around her feel comfortable and cared for.

Indeed, that woman Ned had killed, well, she had a name.