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Vermont
May 23, 2004 2:26:46 GMT -5
Post by LadyBlue on May 23, 2004 2:26:46 GMT -5
~~~ Paulette Crickmore~~~ On the morning of September 10, 1986, the 15-year-old Crickmore left her Richmond home and was on her way to school walking east on the Jericho Road when she vanished. Searches of the area turned up no trace of the girl, or the book bag or flute case she carried. On November 19, under slate-gray skies and the winter’s first snow flurries, a deer hunter in the Duxbury woods found Paulette Crickmore’s decomposed body. She had been shot three times in the head with a small-caliber weapon. Statewide reaction to the homicide was immediate and intense. Parents supervised school bus stops or drove their children to school. The case quickly became an obsession for Vermont State Police investigator Leo Blais. He worried over his daughter’s safety, and he wanted a killer off the street. Within days of taking over the case, Blais had a suspect, but he had no evidence. He developed background on his suspect, watched him, and waited. Edwin Towne’s rap sheet reads like a bad dream. In September 1972, Towne abducted and raped at gunpoint a thirteen-year-old girl. He considered killing her, then changed his mind and released her near her home in Stowe, Vermont. He was arrested, charged, posted bail, and ran. In 1973 he was charged with simple assault in Rhode Island and ran to Florida. In June 1973, he picked up a couple hitchhiking and sexually assaulted the woman. In Tennessee in May 1974, Towne was charged with carrying a sawed-off shotgun. Because of outstanding charges, Towne avoided Vermont and migrated to New Hampshire. He was arrested there in 1975 for carrying a concealed weapon. He said he felt safe only when he had a pistol with him. In July 1976 while driving to work, Towne abducted and sexually assaulted a woman at gunpoint. Towne approached the woman three times asking her if she wanted a ride. She declined. On his fourth pass, Towne produced the gun and ordered her into his car. He drove to an isolated location, forced the woman into the woods, and assaulted her. He drove to a second location, dragged the victim into the woods and told her he was going to kill her. Instead, he sexually assaulted her again. Following a two-and-a-half hour ordeal, the woman escaped when Towne stopped his car to get gas. Sentenced to five to ten years in the New Hampshire State Prison, Towne’s minimum release date was summer 1979. In April, his case was reviewed for transfer to a minimum security facility. The chief of the mental health unit recommended the transfer noting, "He is seen as being of low average intelligence who responds to common basic human needs. The described sexual episode appears to be more the response to one of these basic needs rather than the act of any criminal. It is believed that he is the type of individual who learns by experience and profits by the consequences of his behavior." Towne was paroled on August 5, 1979 and settled in Manchester, New Hampshire. Ten days later, police there questioned him about the sexual assault of a nine-year-old girl. Towne quit his job and ran. On February 20, 1980 a young woman picked up Towne hitchhiking on a toll bridge leading to Vermont. He leaned close to her and pressed a knife against her abdomen. "Keep on driving," he said. "I’m just going to make you a little late for work." Two more stops; two more sexual assaults. Late that afternoon, Towne broke into a vacant camp and left the victim there while he went to get groceries. For six hours she had feared for her life. As soon as he drove away, she fled. A jury convicted Towne in August 1980 and sentenced him to concurrent terms of ten to fifteen years. According to the sentence, Towne would not be eligible for parole until 1987. The Vermont Supreme Court overturned the conviction, and a subsequent plea agreement resulted in a sentence of from six to eight years imposed in 1983. Towne was recommended for participation in the state’s sex offender treatment program. Opened in 1982, the program did not accept all sex offenders. Their literature states: "Only those offenders who sincerely accept responsibility for their act and acknowledge the harm inflicted by it should be considered appropriate." At the time of his arrest in 1980, Towne wanted to talk to his victim, to set things straight so he would not have to go to jail. Offenders with histories of crimes other than sexual offenses were considered ineligible. Towne’s weapons and assault charges should have excluded him. On September 7, 1984 Edwin Towne was back on the street. He had shown improvement in treatment, officials said. He had opened up, admitted a lot. So they recommended his release. Towne continued in outpatient "relapse-prevention therapy" until November 13, two months after he had kidnapped and murdered Paulette Crickmore. Detective Leo Blais had a list of twenty suspects, but one name jumped out at him. Edwin Towne lived in Richmond. Blais began following his suspect, and in late October pulled him over on Interstate-89 in South Burlington. The .32 caliber weapon under Towne’s car seat was not the murder weapon, but it was enough to involve BATF officers who later confiscated two rifles from the convicted felon. There was also the matter of an open warrant from Manchester, New Hampshire in the 1979 sexual assault of the nine-year-old girl. Blais was sure he had his man, but how could he prove it? For this type of crime, the assailant’s weapon choice was unusual. Knives or blunt instruments are more common. Towne had used a handgun in an earlier abduction and sexual assault. Would the assailant simply dispose of the weapon? Towne felt safe only when he had a gun. He would want to know where the murder weapon was. Towne had told the cop that on the day in question he drove a load of concrete blocks from Richmond to Eden Mills where he was building a house. Towne placed himself on the Jericho Road where Paulette Crickmore emerged from a convenience store carrying her book bag and flute case and headed for school. Call it a hunch, or the instincts of a seasoned detective. Leo Blais obtained a search warrant for Towne’s Eden Mills property. Using a metal detector, investigators found a .32 caliber handgun and three spent shell casings concealed in one of the foundation’s concrete blocks. Blais had the murder weapon. Edwin Towne is serving a sentence of seventy years. He was the New Hampshire inmate who allegedly learned from experience and profited from the consequences of his behavior. He was the twice-convicted sex offender who impressed Vermont treatment professionals with his openness and sincerity. Towne apparently learned only one lesson: never leave a living victim. www.karisable.com/crickmore.htm
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Vermont
May 23, 2004 21:38:09 GMT -5
Post by LadyBlue on May 23, 2004 21:38:09 GMT -5
MONTPELIER Eight months before Christal Jones of Burlington was slain in the Bronx, the state agency responsible for her supervision knew the 16-year-old was in New York City and suspected she was engaged in prostitution, according to an investigative report released Tuesday. Employees of the Social & Rehabilitation Services were among a group of state workers and local police who had information about the whereabouts of Jones, and about a drug and prostitution ring in which she might have been involved. Yet, they often didn't share the information among themselves, the report indicates. The report was produced by two investigators, James Cronan and Stephen Hoke, appointed by Gov. Howard Dean in February. Jones, who was a ward of the state, was killed in January. Authorities still are hunting for her killer. The report makes no judgment about what state officials and local police should have known, or should have done, in Jones' case. It outlines what the various parties did know, gleaned from 200 hours of interviews with girls allegedly involved in the prostitution ring, SRS caseworkers, police and others. Much of the information has been disclosed through earlier official reports or media accounts. Several disclosures help fill in gaps in the tragedy, but offer little help understanding how it could have been prevented. Susan Allen, a spokeswoman for Dean, said she did not know whether the governor had finished reviewing the report. Jane Kitchel, secretary of the Agency of Human Services, said the report confirmed that a caseworker and other employees of the SRS share no blame in Jones' death. The report, however, underscores the need for significant changes in the way Vermont supervises troubled teens, Kitchel said, including improved sharing of information among various state and local agencies. Kitchel said the most immediate need is for a small, secure facility where teens like Jones who have a history of running away, and might have drug problems, can be detained and given treatment. The Legislature is considering how to pay for such a facility. Kitchel said an explosion in youth drug use has strained the state's ability to supervise teen-agers, especially those with little or no family support. "The existing social services infrastructure is ill-prepared to deal with the stunning increase in drug use and the crime associated with it,'' she wrote in a five-page reaction to the report. ''Heroin use among eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds, which was virtually nonexistent just several years ago, has tripled in the last two years.'' The Cronan report notes that the SRS received a tip in May that Jones was in New York. Acting on that tip, an SRS supervisor, Barbara Zelman, questioned in a memo to her staff whether Jones and other girls might be involved in prostitution because they were making a lot of money. Yet Jones' SRS social worker, Shawn May, told investigators he did not talk to Zelman about the suspicions. In fact, there was no discussion about girls in SRS custody being involved in prostitution in New York, ''although he felt there certainly should have been,'' the report said. William Young, commissioner of the SRS, said Tuesday that May was on vacation when the tip came in. May and the supervisor later discussed Jones' whereabouts, but tracking down a missing runaway is principally the work of police, and May told Burlington police everything he knew, Young said. The report concludes that Burlington police also had information about the prostitution ring involving underage Vermont girls in the Bronx at least three months before Jones died. Police had been investigating the possibility of organized pornography in Burlington since July, and expanded that probe in October to include prostitution in New York.
That's when two girls were arrested in New York. One Burlington police investigator, Kim Edwards, spoke with one of the girls in New York in early November. The girl was supposed to be under SRS supervision, and Edwards told an SRS supervisor, Anne Marie Miles, of her findings, the report said. Edwards said she did not know Jones was involved in the prostitution ring until her death in January. The report also probed what state officials and local police knew about Jose Rodriguez, a man recently indicted by a federal grand jury for soliciting Vermont girls to prostitute in New York. Rodriguez had been paroled by the Vermont Department of Corrections and granted 11 travel permits by the agency that allowed him to live for 171 days in the Bronx while he still was officially under Vermont supervision, the report also found. Rodriguez was allowed to remain on parole despite repeated run-ins with the law, the report noted.
"Convicted on multiple drug charges, Mr. Rodriguez is permitted to remain on parole, and in fact, a violation of parole initiated on 11/07/00, is subsequently withdrawn,'' the report reads. Rodriguez's parole officer, David Kopacz, told the investigators Rodriguez was ''friendly and out-going, a sharing individual.'' He said he was aware Rodriguez had been arrested in Burlington while on parole for possessing two hallucinogenic pills. Kopacz recommended to a judge that Rodriguez's parole not be revoked. Kopacz told investigators neither Burlington police or SRS officials had notified him of any suspicions involving Rodriguez. Kitchel said the report clearly shows the Department of Corrections must monitor its parolees more carefully. Corrections officials did not respond to a request for comment. Kathleen Wright, Jones' mother, said she would wait to read the report before pointing any fingers. www.burlingtonfreepress.com/specialnews/heroin/0418.htm
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Vermont
May 23, 2004 21:44:55 GMT -5
Post by LadyBlue on May 23, 2004 21:44:55 GMT -5
‘‘I wish I could come home. ... I’m doing bad because all of the kids are spoiled because they are her real children and she lets them do whatever they want all of the time. ... I love you. Please love me back.’’ Christal Jones, in a letter to her mother from a foster home in 1996
‘‘I know I made some really bad decisions. ... I swear I’m sorry for everything. I will try this time and I mean it too. I won’t think about hanging out and I’ll concentrate on school, work, and most importantly you and the rest of the family.’’ Christal Jones, in a letter to her mother from Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center in 1999
It is Jan. 3 in Burlington. The city, still basking in the afterglow of the holidays, is mounded with the remnants of a New Year’s snowstorm. There are still scads of skiers in town, and well-coifed tourists stroll Church Street.
It’s the first real day of business of the new year.
A few hundred miles away in the Bronx, it’s time to resume the routine. Snow has fallen; the holidays have passed; and New York City is opening shop.
Lydia Maldonado tries for the third time to reach a friend on the phone and again receives no answer. She’s worried enough now to call police.
A patrol officer enters a first-floor apartment of the two-story brick building at 1346 Zerega Ave. Inside, he finds a young woman not Maldonado’s friend reclined face up on a bed. She seems to be asleep.
Jane Doe, as she’ll be known for the next eight hours, is dead. She is Christal Jean Jones, 16, of Burlington.
There’s blood coming from Christal’s nose and foam in her mouth.
Police suspect a drug overdose. The truth will prove to be more disturbing, another tear in the cloth that is supposed to insulate Vermont from the coarse realities of the rest of the world.
A chilling explanation
Christal Jones’ death is painfully more than a fluke, not quite as simple as an isolated collision between disparate worlds.
A clutch of frightened girls tells Vermont’s governor at a service for Jones that she is not the only casualty of an organized network of prostitution and drugs fed by a supply of teen-age Vermont girls recruited for the task.
The network preceded Christal, the girls have said, and will survive her. Still in New York City are Vermont girls who have gone willingly, naively. They stay because they’re too addled by addiction to flee or they’re held in place by violent captors.
Integral to the story’s plot: Bronx native Jose A. “Esco” Rodriguez, 25, an on-again, off-again Burlington resident and jail inmate. His name peppers the girls’ tales. Burlington police know him. New York police jailed him in December, and prosecutors believe Rodriguez might know something about Christal Jones’ death.
Rodriguez and Christal offer a glimpse into a Burlington world never visible in Vermont’s well-groomed self-image. Theirs is not a world of evergreens dusted with snow, of cheddar cheese, of fresh maple syrup or grazing Holsteins.
Theirs is a world that is not as so many Vermonters long to believe so distant from the perils of the seamiest street corners in the Bronx.
Their world lives in shabby rental apartments or nowhere at all. Booted men kicking uncooperative women. Junkies poking syringes of heroin into whichever uncollapsed veins they can find. Girls too young to legally buy cigarettes offering sex in exchange for drugs and, eventually, performing sex acts because they’re ordered to or afraid not to.
Some of it happens on Burlington’s tony Church Street Marketplace. The ugly sore on Vermont’s underbelly extends to North Street in the Old North End, to King and Maple Streets on the city’s south side, into South Burlington and Hinesburg, Colchester and Shelburne, Underhill, South Hero and Montpelier. It’s as widespread as dairy barns, though much less obvious.
Most of the players are tangled over and again in the state’s legal, penal and social services systems. Sometimes the net protects them, even rights them. Just as often, though, it fails.
Many interested now
That system could protect Christal Jones only so long, from so far. New York investigators concluded last week she did not die of an overdose. She was smothered one of 12 Bronx homicides in the first three weeks of the year.
In life, Christal ran from and frustrated her mother, her sister, her brothers, aunts, uncles, caseworkers, foster parents and friends. She fled homes, camps, schools, detention centers and hotels.
In death, Christal is attracting a far broader audience.
Federal, New York and Vermont law enforcement authorities want to know who killed her, and why. Two Burlington police officers are working full-time to try to unravel the tortured tapestry of crime. A federal grand jury in Burlington is considering charges.
Gov. Howard Dean has directed the state’s lead social services agency to ivestigate how Christal ended up in the Bronx. Wednesday he appointed two men to study how the state Social and Rehabilitation Services Department and police interacted, if at all, in Christal’s case.
The dead girl was in state custody at the time of her death, listed as a runaway.
Always running away
Christal Jones ran away from home often, in every direction. When she wasn’t home, she ran away from the place she was calling home that day, or hour.
I loved her to death, but I couldn’t keep her in one place,’’ said Deneen Jean, Christal’s aunt.
Christal’s wanderlust stumped her mother, Kathleen Wright. So exasperated was she at one point, she locked all of Christal’s shoes in the trunk of her car, thinking that would stop her daughter from running. It didn’t work.
She often would not find out where Christal had been until other mothers, in passing, would mention that the girl had stayed at their homes this night or that.
She’d scream, Let me go!’ when I’d catch her,’’ Wright said, but, she added, ‘‘we did not hate each other. She was still my little girl.’’
Born in New Orleans
The fourth of Mark and Kathleen Jones’ five children, Christal her family called her ‘‘Chrissy’’ was born May 24, 1984, in New Orleans.
Two, including Christal, were girls.
The children’s father was a heavy drinker, Kathleen Wright said.
He’d give me his paycheck when he worked, at least when he wasn’t drinking,’’ she said. ‘‘But I finally had had enough of calling his boss on Monday mornings and saying Mark was sick and wouldn’t be in today. He was lovable but he drank. It was like raising an extra kid.’’
They separated when Christal was 3 and divorced a year later, in 1988. By then, she had met a man who seemed to offer a better life.
He owned his own home in a good part of town,’’ she said ‘‘He asked me to move in with him and the first year was OK. But he was not used to five kids. In the second year, he hit me and I had a black eye.’’
The SRS reports he was abusive to the entire family.
By 1992, Wright steeled for a big change: She would pack up the brood and leave New Orleans.
Rodriguez heads north
Jose Rodriguez, too, reached for renewal that year.
Born in the Bronx, he was the only child of Jose and Rosie Rodriguez. His parents divorced when he was a baby. His father was last known to live in Puerto Rico.
Rosie’s drug habit carried her to jail twice, for years. She died of leukemia in 1991.
Rodriguez was raised by his grandmother, Lydia Bauza, who worked in the radiology department of Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center.
Bauza, 73, has lived there for 40 years, she says. Surrounded by industrial parks and a vast public housing project, her home is in a tidy neighborhood of tree-lined streets and single-family homes.
Rodriguez quit school after eighth grade.
He worked for brief stints at the hospital in the Bronx, but he later told case workers he began selling drugs at age 12 or 13 and started drinking and smoking marijuana at 15, when his mother died.
On his grandmother’s advice, Rodriguez enlisted in the Job Corps in 1992 and went to Vermont. She wanted him to make something of himself.
It didn’t work. After Rodriguez tested positive for marijuana five times, from June through August 1993, he was expelled from the Northlands Job Corps Center in Vergennes.
Not yet 18, he drifted into Burlington. He lived on money his grandmother sent Because his mother died when he was a minor, he was eligible for Social Security insurance benefits until he was 18. He made friends, and they helped shelter and feed him.
He was happy, he later told authorities, to lead ‘‘the perfect hoodlum life.’’
The family moves
Kathleen Wright in 1992 pulled up stakes in New Orleans and re-acquainted herself with her father, Donald Wright, who’d moved to Vermont and fallen out of touch.
Mike, Dan, Rachel, Christal and Jessie Jones went with their mother to their new home. Christal was 8. Kathleen Wright planned to train to be come a masseuse at her father’s business, the Vermont Institute of Massage. They rented a home on Marble Avenue, a quiet one-way street a few blocks south of City Hall Park.
Everybody was safe and accounted for,’’ Wright reminisced. ‘‘The kids went to school, I went to massage class, got some welfare, and I was always home by 3 when the kids got out of school.’’
The children grew. Two years later, Wright moved the family to a subsidized home on Archibald Street in the Old North End. The house was bigger and had a back yard.
It had its drawbacks, too.
Everything started to happen when we moved to Archibald. There were guys in the garage in the back, revving up the cars and motorcycles they were working on, making noise,’’ she said. ‘‘Out front, people on the street were always yelling and fighting.’’
It was as though they were surrounded, Wright said. Christal, now almost 11, began sneaking out of the house without permission to hang out with older kids.
Chrissy met some girls and they rode off to Price Chopper and stole cigarettes,’’ she said. ‘‘She was not picky about people.’’
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Vermont
May 23, 2004 21:46:24 GMT -5
Post by LadyBlue on May 23, 2004 21:46:24 GMT -5
A brutal attack
By late summer 1993, Rodriguez was roaming Burlington.
On the eve of his 18th birthday that October, he told investigators, he drank beer, smoked marijuana and took mescaline. Out of money, he and two friends lured a man they did not know, Michael Rooney, out of a Burlington bar and into City Hall Park.
There, two of them kicked and punched Rooney, beat him with a wooden stake and, at least twice, struck his head with a cinder block. Rooney survived, but he suffered a fractured skull and a broken jaw. He underwent reconstructive facial surgery.
Rodriguez and an accomplice made off with a wrisch, a ring and $30. Rodriguez told police he was alarmed when, as he twisted the ring off Rooney’s finger, the victim’s hand twitched. Rodriguez thought he was dead.
Tina Houle, who participated by coaxing Rooney from the bar, told police Rodriguez was menacing after the crime: ‘‘He said if I ever selled out on him that him and ... (a friend) would kill me and my family.’’
Originally charged with attempted murder, Rodriguez agreed to plead guilty to aggravated assault and in October 1995 was sentenced to five to 12 years in prison. He served four years and five months in South Burlington, St. Albans and Newport.
Out of control
Christal Jones’ habitual running accelerated out of control in 1995.
The child, just 11, skipped school. She spent nights away from home without telling her mother. Wright sought help from police and, ultimately, the state Social and Rehabilitation Services Department.
The department, charged with protecting Vermont youths, placed Christal in foster homes. She was in Middlebury, then in Burlington, South Burlington and Cambridge.
She was headstrong,’’ remembers Philip Kinerson, whose family took Christal in for two months when she was 14. ‘‘She was kind of an independent-type person. ... A couple of times, we had to tighten the reins up on her.’’ But she wasn’t a hopeless case, he said, and she never ran away. ‘‘She just needed some direction.’’
She bounced through SRS care. In 1998 the agency sent Christal to the private Bennington School, which contracts with the department to house, educate and treat problem youths.
Wright later found a letter from Christal to a former boyfriend in which the teen revealed emotions about her pregnancy and miscarriage while at the school.
She was expelled from the school. The reason: She ran away too often.
Twelve times between 1996 and 2000 she slipped SRS custody, according to an agency self-review released Friday.
Rodriguez freed
Rodriguez was furloughed from prison in July 1998 and paroled a year later.
He frequently visited his grandmother, Lydia Bauza, in the South Bronx. She helped him buy the red, 1998 Ford Expedition sport-utility vehicle that became one of his Burlington trademarks. Big enough for nine passengers and costing about $40,000, the truck sported a television and a stereo system powerful enough to rattle windows in its wake.
Bauza said she helped him with his payments when he fell behind.
Rodriguez lived on Ethan Allen Parkway in Burlington’s new North End, just a hundred feet or so from the C.P. Smith Elementary School. Bauza said he had a girlfriend Lynette Shortsleeve and he grew to adore her infant daughter. Rodriguez was not the child’s father, Bauza said.
Shortsleeve declined to com ment about her relationship with Rodriguez.
I don’t want the trouble,’’ she said.
From job to job
Rodriguez didn’t work anywhere for long. His longest stint was driving a cab for six months for the Winooski Taxi Service, according to a man who hires for the company.
I got along with him,’’ the man, who identified himself only as Jason, said. ‘‘He was clean-cut. ... He wasn’t a bum or anything.’’
Rodriguez never really quit his taxi driving job, Jason said. He just quit coming.
He told Burlington police last year he worked for a Williston cleaning service. Another Burlington job lasted two days.
Bauza said Rodriguez was using his Expedition, trying to establish a cab service in the Bronx as recently as a few months ago.
Christal moves
Christal found work, she told friends, once she moved to New Jersey to live with an uncle in the summer of 1999. In the fall she enrolled at a high school in Haworth, N.J., where she made the school newspaper: She was interviewed about her plans to try out for the boys football team. She didn’t, though; she hadn’t told school officials in time.
She wrote in a September letter, ‘‘I have 2- jobs, I’m on the cheerleading squad, and I’m in a honor class.’’
The cheery news didn’t last, and the last shards of the girlish Christal disappeared forever. There were no more spunky notes or teen poetry or references to second thoughts about whether or not chorus was a smart choice for an elective in the coming school year.
Her uncle, Donald Wright, said it was as though someone had turned off a light switch; suddenly, one day the generous girl, who would surprise the family by cooking dinner, was gone.
One October day, she left school with another student, stole Wright’s convertible and was picked up early the next morning in Harlem driving around in the rain with the top down. She was with two men the New York Police Department identified as ‘‘drug dealers.’’
The next day, she returned to her uncle’s home and pretended to walk to school. Instead she stole a small amount of cash and made off for Burlington. When she arrived in Vermont, she spent the night in a motel with two men Burlington police suspect of involvement with the heroin trade.
Christal later told her family she’d had sex with at least one of the men, and then stole $200 from the pair.
Christal disappeared from the SRS and family radar for months. It appears she returned to New York in the opening months of 2000.
It’s likely she was at Zerega Avenue, the apartment with the view of the Lexington Avenue Local elevated train station. Beneath the station, a martial arts center, Queen Sheba African Hair boutique, a liquor store, pizza parlor and a superette do business in the dappled shadows.
The elevated Bruckner Expressway is nearby, carrying trucks up and down Interstate 95. Jets follow the flight path over the neighborhood into LaGuardia Airport on the far side of the East River.
It’s a working-class neighborhood where no one seems to know Jose Rodriguez. Just a few, like Jose Cruz suspected anything was going on at 1346 Zerega.
Cruz, who is retired, told detectives he saw ‘‘well-dressed’’ men and women coming and going all day and long into the night.
Christal meets Jose
Somewhere in the Bronx, or in Burlington, or in between, Christal Jones met Jose Rodriguez.
They might have met when Rodriguez was hacking for the cab company. Or while Christal was living in a state-supported home in Burlington. Or at a party.
Though struggling with money, Rodriguez was an outgoing man-about-town in Burlington.
His grandmother, Lydia Bauza, kept up the payments on his Expedition. She lent him two of her credit cards and is still paying the $6,000 debt he ran up last year.
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Vermont
May 23, 2004 21:47:53 GMT -5
Post by LadyBlue on May 23, 2004 21:47:53 GMT -5
Rodriguez, though, flashed cash in Burlington.
Rodriguez and his buddies came (to Vermont) looking for girls,’’ said one 14-year-old girl in Burlington. ‘‘They said they’d give them $2,000 to go to New York City with them. That’s money in this town.’’
Jenny Smith, 21, a recovering heroin addict from Underhill now living in Colorado, remembers hearing about Rodriguez even before she met him in the city’s tight-knit drug scene.
He talked in street slang and dressed the part in baggy jeans, a bandanna wrapped around his head just visible under his baseball cap.
He took on a nickname, ‘‘Esco.’’ It’s a brand of clothes aggressively marketed to young urban consumers.
Rodriguez knew he stood out in Burlington, Smith said, and he wanted it that way.
A lot of it was because he was Hispanic,’’ she said. Young girls were wowed by his Bronx roots, his big truck, his Spanish accent. Rodriguez attracted a gaggle of 15- and 16-year-old girls, she said
She said Rodriguez didn’t like people who didn’t fall for his swagger.
Many did.
Rodriguez hosted ‘‘hotel parties’’ around Burlington, said Brandy Mitchell, 19, now serving a one to seven-year term in Vermont for heroin possession.
Rodriguez attracted the girls with his gifts and free drugs, she said. Rodriguez ‘‘could be very, very, very persuasive,’’ Mitchell said. ‘‘He’s got this smile. He’d show up at the clubs in nice clothes and buy everyone drinks. He had a car with a TV and a VCR. He never seemed to run out of money.’’ Christal, she said, was one of those drawn to Rodriguez.
She wanted to be Jose’s girlfriend,’’ Mitchell said. ‘‘He made her believe he loved her.’’
Christal referred to Rodriguez as her boyfriend and intimated to friends that they were an item. But other Vermont teens considered Rodriguez their beau, too. And his grandmother said Lynette Shortsleeve was Rodriguez’s real girlfriend.
Frightening discovery
Chills went down Theresa Jean’s spine when she learned this spring that her 18-year-old daughter was hanging out with Rodriguez.
Jean, who supervises caseworkers in the Department of Corrections, knew Rodriguez from the years he spent in jail for beating his victim in City Hall Park.
He would brag about the offenses that he had,’’ she said. ‘‘There was no remorse, no shame. Almost pride. ... This guy is incredibly dangerous.’’
Jean repeatedly warned her daughter about Rodriguez. She asked that her daughter’s name not be used for fear of her safety. Her daughter was living in Burlington and often hung out with Rodriguez at her apartment or at parties.
What her daughter saw as friendship or affection, Jean saw as manipulation.
He was in his beginning stages of grooming them’’ for trips to New York City, Jean said of her daughter and a friend.
It’s like watching someone getting ready to torture your daughter and kill her slowly,’’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘‘I’ve had dreams of finding my daughter under boards.’’
A growing stable
Authorities believe Rodriguez built a stable of women available for paid sex. Eight to 12 of them might have been from Vermont, including some considered runaways by the state and formally under the custody of the SRS.
Rodriguez was back in Vermont in August, and police knew it. He was charged with marijuana possession. Stopped again in his truck, he was cited for playing his stereo too loudly.
He missed a court date in October in Burlington.
Lydia Bauza knew nothing about a court date. Rodriguez, who lived with her, told her he was interviewing for a job at the Bronx hospital from which she’d retired, and that they appeared poised to offer him a job.
First, though, he had to go to Vermont to take care of some paperwork and to see Lynette, he told his grandmother.
He was gone, she recalls, from Nov. 5 to Nov. 30.
While in Burlington, he was arraigned on the summer’s charges, spent a night in jail, and was detained again for possession of ecstasy.
Technically, the infractions violated the conditions of Rodriguez’s parole.
The Corrections Department says parolees rarely get returned to jail for offenses as minor as marijuana possession and loud stereos.
The Burlington Free Press has requested information about the parole conditions imposed on Rodriguez. The Corrections Department has said it will release some or all of that information this month.
By the time Rodriguez returned to the Bronx, the hospital job had been given to someone else, he told his grandmother.
Letters that flew late last fall among the girls some still in New York, some in Vermont, some in custody, some not sounded much the stuff of high-school-corridor gossip. They suspected one another of snitching and groused about one another.
Beneath the adolescent tattling was a very grown-up, very well-grounded fear that something very nasty was looming.
Indeed, at least one of the girls had talked to police.
Rodriguez arrested
On Dec. 11, New York police charged Rodriguez with a laundry list of misdeeds, based on his dealings with Vermont teens.
The affidavits against him are chilling: Beating and kicking women. Threatening them, vowing to track them down if they disappeared or unleash Vermont associates if they tried to go home.
Today marks two months that Rodriguez has been in jail, held in a floating prison barge on the East River with 800 other inmates. Formally, he’s charged with two counts of promoting prostitution and one count of statutory rape.
After Christal’s body was found, Rodriguez’s bail was increased to $100,000.
His court-appointed attorney, Eric Sachs, scoffs at the charges and the loud whispers that Rodriguez is a ringleader.
This big entrepreneur in charge of all these rings, with all this money, can’t make bail,’’ he says. Sachs dismisses the charges as ‘‘nonsense’’
Lydia Bauza can’t believe the grandson she raised could be involved with what she’s reading in the New York papers.
He was a good guy,’’ she said. ‘‘He still is a good guy.’’
She has visited Rodriguez twice in prison, and he’s doing ‘‘very, very, very bad. He lost 20 pounds, crying, crying, crying.’’
She doesn’t know any of the people said to be involved in the ring and can’t believe authorities aren’t focusing their efforts more on figuring out how such young girls end up in such vicious surroundings instead of crafting ways to prosecute her grandson.
She just wants him to earn his keep, get an apartment, settle down.
Palpable fear
The girls from Vermont just hope he stays away.
“Jose choked me,’’ one girl wrote to a friend just days before Christmas, ‘‘and threw me across the room because I didn’t want to work on the strip. He was always beating on (one of the girls), and he kicked (another) in the face with his Timberlands. ... He’s a scumbag, I just hope he never comes to get me when he gets out of jail.’’
Wrote one 16-year-old girl to Kathleen Wright on Feb. 1: ‘‘I can’t believe this is all happening. I wish I could snap my fingers and it would all be a dream.
I miss Chrissy too, looking at her picture ... makes me wish her back to life ... I miss her so much, you’re right. It probably only gets worse before it gets any better or any justice.’’
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Vermont
May 23, 2004 21:57:54 GMT -5
Post by LadyBlue on May 23, 2004 21:57:54 GMT -5
Jose A. Rodriguez had been caught at least twice with marijuana and once with hallucinogenic mushrooms. Police found ecstasy once in his vehicle. He'd been in a fight, ordered to stay away from his girlfriend and failed to appear at a court hearing. In February 2000, Burlington police watched and listened as an informant bought $500 worth of cocaine in the Staples Plaza parking lot in South Burlington. Rodriguez, never charged, was the driver of the truck from which the sale was made, police said. All of this happened while Rodriguez, 25, was on parole from Vermont prison. Yet his parole officer, David Kopacz, didn't think any of it was a serious enough violation to put Rodriguez back in jail. Not until Rodriguez was arrested by New York City police in December charged with being a pimp and with raping a Vermont teen did Kopacz recommend Rodriguez had violated the conditions of his parole. Rodriguez is in jail in the Bronx, awaiting trial on the New York charges. Prosecutors there also have said they're curious as to what he knows about the death of Christal Jean Jones, 16, of Burlington. She was found, asphyxiated, Jan. 3 on a bed in an apartment in the Bronx. She was at the time in the custody of the Vermont Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services. Paper trail Documents obtained by The Burlington Free Press from courts, from police and from an open records act request to the Vermont Corrections Department show a paper trail of Rodriguez's violations and charges that intensified as 2000 wore on. Each time, the offenses were considered too minor to put him back in prison: a pushing and punching fracas with a nosy teen, a small amount of marijuana on the console of his sport utility vehicle, some dried mushrooms stuffed into a cigarette pack, a car stereo loud enough to rattle windows. Rodriguez was paroled in 1999 after serving less than five years for bashing a man in the face with a cinder block while robbing him in Burlington's City Hall Park in 1993. Paroled inmates leave prison but are still required to live under conditions and with supervision. Rodriguez appeared Nov. 7 in Vermont District Court in Burlington to be formally charged for disorderly conduct stemming from an August fight and for having hallucinogenic mushrooms in his possession. He was arraigned and released. Judge Helen Toor did not know Rodriguez was wanted at the time on a warrant for failing to appear on an earlier marijuana charge. Within hours of leaving court, police stopped Rodriguez. They found what they suspected were tablets of ecstasy, a hallucinogenic drug, in his Ford Expedition. Police learned of the outstanding warrant, so Rodriguez spent the night of Nov. 7 in a South Burlington jail. That day, Kopacz had signed a warrant for Rodriguez's arrest for violating the conditions of his parole, according to documents from the Corrections Department. Early Nov. 8, parole officers learned Rodriguez had been jailed. A parole office supervisor asked Kopacz for a recommendation on Rodriguez. Meanwhile, Rodriguez returned to court and was again freed. Later that day, despite the warrant he'd issued the day before, Kopacz suggested Rodriguez remain free. "... I would recommend that Jose be continued on parole ...,'' Kopacz wrote Nov. 8. ''To reincarcerate and return him through the furlough in Vermont process would prevent his professional progress and return him to the Burlington area where he would likely backslide.'' Nov. 9, Rodriguez was back in court pleading to the marijuana charge. He was released on time served. Rodriguez had applied for and been granted permission to travel to the Bronx, where he lived with his grandmother, Lydia Bauza. Again on Nov. 29, Kopacz communicated with Vermont's parole board. In an e-mail to the board's executive director, Linda Shambo, Kopacz wrote: ''It is my recommendation that Jose's parole should not be violated,'' meaning that Rodriguez should remain on parole. Kopacz reasoned that Rodriguez had a job offer in the Bronx and recommended that his parole supervision be transferred to New York. Shambo OK'd the proposal. The Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center has no record that Rodriguez had a job awaiting him. Kopacz said Thursday he could not speak about the case. Shambo was out of the office and could not be reached. New York arrest Two weeks after the recommendation, Kopacz learned that Rodriguez had been arrested in New York. According to a police report, ''three females detailed how they were enticed from their home state of Vermont by a male perpetrator and forced to engage in sexual intercourse with him. The three females additionally detailed how they were forced to engage in acts of prostitution through intimidation and fear perpetrated by'' Rodriguez. He was arrested Dec. 11. Two days later, Kopacz recommended that Rodriguez's parole be revoked and that he be returned to a Vermont jail. That won't happen until Rodriguez is released from jail in New York. Rodriguez faces a maximum jail term of four years for the rape charge and 15 years for each of two prostitution charges if convicted. He is being held in a 500-bed jail established for sick inmates and those who are particularly notorious. Eric Sachs, Rodriguez's court-appointed attorney, said Thursday that Rodriguez ''is not a risk, but he may be at risk'' by being held in the jail. Sachs has asked a judge to drop the charges of promoting prostitution and rape against Rodriguez. He says the case has become politicized and Rodriguez stands little chance of having a fair trial. A federal grand jury in Burlington is also examining evidence of a suspected interstate heroin and prostitution ring. www.burlingtonfreepress.com/specialnews/heroin/0302.htm
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Vermont
May 23, 2004 21:59:14 GMT -5
Post by LadyBlue on May 23, 2004 21:59:14 GMT -5
A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted Jose A. Rodriguez, a former Burlington resident, for enticing Vermont girls to travel to New York to engage in prostitution, for transporting them to the Bronx and for distributing heroin and cocaine to minors. If convicted of all of the 20 counts, Rodriguez faces 295 years in prison. He is currently jailed and awaiting trial in New York on related charges. His New York attorney on Thursday dismissed the indictment as ''trumped-up charges.'' The indictments do not identify the six victims by name. Five were younger than 18, one younger than 21 at the time of the alleged crimes, all in 2000. Rodriguez, 25, is accused in the indictments of: -- Transporting girls younger than 18 from Vermont to the Bronx on Oct. 4, Oct. 10, Nov. 15 and Nov. 20 so that they could engage in prostitution. -- Enticing one girl younger than 18, and one younger than 21, to go to New York to engage in prostitution on Dec. 4. Some of the activity, according to the indictment, occurred via telephone and Western Union wire services. -- Distributing heroin and cocaine to one girl younger than 18 and two younger than 21 in the spring, summer and fall of 2000. David Kirby, the acting U.S. Attorney in Burlington, couldn't be reached Thursday for comment. Other prosecutors in the office declined to comment on the indictment. "I'm happy something has finally happened, that the case is rolling and he's been charged,'' said Kathleen Wright, mother of Christal Jones. Jones, 16, of Burlington, was found dead Jan. 3 in a Bronx apartment. Her death, later ruled a homicide, spawned a broad investigation into a drug and sex ring that reached from Vermont to New York. The FBI, the New York City Police Department, the Bronx County District Attorney's Office, the Burlington Police Department and the Chittenden State's Attorney's Office cooperated in the federal investigation. Wright said she was disappointed the 20-count indictment made no mention of the homicide case, which remains under investigation by Bronx detectives. "It doesn't mention Chrissy's murder,'' she said ''That's what is uppermost in my mind. I want them to find out who killed Chrissy.'' No one has been charged with Jones' slaying. A medical examiner concluded she died of asphyxiation. Eric Sachs, Rodriguez's court-appointed attorney in the Bronx, said Thursday the federal charges are a ''glorified version'' of the charges Rodriguez faces in New York. In jail there since Dec. 11, Rodriguez faces a maximum jail term of four years for a rape charge and 15 years for each of two prostitution charges if convicted. The victims in those crimes, prosecutors say, were Vermont girls. "These are trumped-up charges due to political and media pressures,'' Sachs said. ''The government appears to be trying to save face.'' The Vermont grand jury meetings were closed to the public. At a grand jury hearing, prosecutors present their evidence to convince the jurors that criminal charges are substantiated. Defendants routinely do not have an opportunity to state their side, as they do in court. Sachs learned of the indictment Thursday when he was contacted by The Burlington Free Press. Jones' death caught Vermont's attention, from the streets of Burlington where she was widely known, to the highest levels of government. At a January service for Jones in Burlington, her friends confided the circumstances of her death to Gov. Howard Dean. He directed the state's lead social services agency to investigate how Christal ended up in the Bronx. He also appointed two people to study how the state Social and Rehabilitation Services Department and police interacted, if at all, in the case. Legislators have taken hours of testimony about the state's juvenile justice system and police appear to have interviewed dozens as part of their investigation. Rodriguez, a Bronx native, is on parole from Vermont prison for the 1993 beating and robbery of a man in Burlington's City Hall Park. Rodriguez and two accomplices smashed the man repeatedly in the head and face with a cinder block and a wooden stake and made off with his wrisch and a small amount of cash. Rodriguez was paroled in 1999 after serving less than five years. He faces arraignment in Vermont on federal charges. Rodriguez's next scheduled New York court appearance is Monday. Sachs, his attorney, has asked that charges against him be dismissed. www.burlingtonfreepress.com/specialnews/heroin/0406.htm
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Vermont
Nov 4, 2004 23:06:28 GMT -5
Post by LadyBlue on Nov 4, 2004 23:06:28 GMT -5
Police have identified the remains of a man found in White River Junction last Friday.
They say the remains are those of John McAllister of Williamstown.
McAllister was reported missing in January, and police are reporting his death as suspicious.
The remains were found near a heavily traveled path near downtown White River Junction and the rail yard there.
Anyone with information is being asked to call Hartford or Vermont State Police.
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Vermont
Dec 4, 2004 22:31:11 GMT -5
Post by LadyBlue on Dec 4, 2004 22:31:11 GMT -5
In a bizarre series of events, police identified a body found in a Canal Street motel room as that of a Massachusetts mother who had been listed as missing since her residence was ravaged by fire earlier in the week. The body of Stephanie L. Rome, 44, of Williamsburg, Mass., was discovered by a maintenance worker at the Econo Lodge on Canal Street late Friday morning.
Brattleboro Police Capt. Eugene Wrinn said Rome was identified from her driver's license and a preliminary investigation had not indicated any foul play. Wrinn said Rome's vehicle had been located and secured pending the completion of the police investigation.
State's Attorney Dan M. Davis said he hadn't heard many of the details about Rome's death, but confirmed that one of his deputies had gone to the scene.
"Nat Seeley went to what was reported to be a suicide," he said.
Rome had paid $110 cash in advance to rent a single-occupancy room for two nights on Wednesday, according to Robin Brockel, who works the motel's evening desk. She said the woman had brought a pet and had listed a New York City address and an assumed name on her registration card.
"She was normal," Brockel said about the woman. "She seemed like she was in a good mood."
Brockel said Rome hadn't called the front desk during her shift on either night. On Friday morning, a maintenance worker uncovered Rome's body when he went to clean the room.
By early Friday evening, Rome's rented room appeared undisturbed, with the curtains open, lights on and bed sheets mussed. Brockel said the motel's management had asked that the room not be rented or cleaned for the night.
Next to the bed sat two cups -- both half-filled with liquid -- a lighter, a pack of cigarettes, and two cigarette butts crushed out in the ashtray. On a nearby table, two additional packs of cigarettes remained, one with a lighter resting on top of it.
Only three days earlier, authorities in Massachusetts listed Rome as missing after a fire destroyed her residence in a Haydenville, Mass., duplex on Wednesday.
Investigators said Rome's 8-year-old daughter was at school when fire broke out, but could not locate Rome, who was last seen early Tuesday evening. The daughter has since been placed with friends of the family by the Massachusetts Department of Social Services.
During a search of the remains of Rome's residence on Thursday, investigators failed to uncover the woman's body, prompting a missing person alert.
While investigators had determined the fire originated in the first floor of Rome's residence, they haven't identified if it was set intentionally.
Rome had worked at Riverside Industries in Easthampton, Mass., as a licensed practical nurse and is described by friends and co-workers as a single mother who was very dedicated to her daughter.
Earlier this week, a friend said Rome had called in sick for work. Rome had also indicated that she planned to attend a conference in Worcester, Mass., but investigators couldn't identify a conference she would have attended.
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