Because You Loved Me (12 page)

After a strong cup of coffee, Chris called work. It was 7:30
A.M
. Chris knew Jeanne’s coworkers settled into work about then. It took a few minutes, but Chris finally got someone on the phone he worked with closely and knew personally. Someone he could talk to and break the news.

“Are you OK, Chris?” the woman asked. Chris didn’t realize it, but as he spoke, he wasn’t making much sense. “What’s wrong?”

“No,” Chris said, “I’m not OK.” He began crying.

“Is there a problem?”

“I’m not…coming in today. Jeannie’s…we had a problem last night…Jeannie, she’s—”

“Chris, slow down. What’s going on?”

“Jeannie’s gone.”

“What?”

“I have no idea what happened. I’m calling you because I haven’t slept all night. I’m…I’m just letting you know.”

Chris hung up. He walked around his apartment for a few moments trying to figure out what to do next. Still in shock, he didn’t know how to react. Was there any way to prepare for such a tragedy?

When walking in circles didn’t work, Chris sat down on the couch and “dozed off for a while.”

At 8:30
A.M
., a ringing phone woke him.

“Chris, it’s Jennifer Hunt. We met last night.”

Hunt, the victim’s advocate, had some news, she said. She wanted to share it with Chris before the media got hold of it.

“Yeah, yeah…I remember you,” Chris said, just waking up. He rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”

“How are you doing?”

“Not too good, Jennifer, obviously.”

“Well, I have some good news and some bad news.”

Chris thought,
Good news/bad news? What good could come out of this? How could things get any worse?
Chris wasn’t sure if he had heard Hunt correctly.

“Really?” Chris asked. “What’s that?”

“Are you sitting down?”

“I am.”

“We do want you to know that we do have two suspects in custody we’re holding for Jeanne’s death.”

It was like a “breath of fresh air,” Chris recalled—at least at first. He was elated. Something to grasp on to. They had caught the creep who took Jeanne from him. The healing could begin. It was something, albeit a small victory, he could focus on besides losing Jeanne.

“Oh God, thank you, Jennifer,” Chris said with exalted praise for the arrest. All he had been thinking about throughout the night was what would happen if law enforcement failed to find the perpetrator and no one was brought to justice—that some monster was actually going to get away with taking Jeanne’s life.

“Not for a second could I have prepared myself for what Jennifer Hunt would say next. There was no way it was even part of what I had been contemplating.”

“Well,” Hunt started, “the two suspects we have in custody are Billy and Nicole.”

She let the words hang for a moment through a period of absolute silence.

“No. What are you saying? What do you mean?” Chris thought he had heard her wrong.
I’m still half asleep. She didn’t just say what I think she said.

“Billy and Nicole, Chris. I’m so sorry. They confessed.”

“They confessed to what…
What
do you mean?”

“To doing it.”

“You’ve
got
to be kidding me—
Billy
and
Nicole
?”

“Yes. Billy’s the one that did it.”

Chris still had no idea how or even why.

“No. I cannot believe it.”

Hunt didn’t say much more about Billy and Nicole. Instead, she explained how she was going to call back after more details were released.

“Why?” asked Chris.

“We don’t know,” responded Hunt matter-of-factly. “There’s some indication that they wanted to be together and live in Connecticut.”

“Why didn’t they just
go
?” Chris said in anger. “Just go. Move there. Take off together.”

“All I know is what I’m telling you. I am so sorry to have to give you this news. We’re here for you in any way you need us. I don’t have any more details. But I do have to tell you these things because they are going to be released to the press very soon.”

Chris said Hunt made it clear to him that it was her job as a victim’s advocate to explain the details of the crime before the media gobbled it up and spit it out in the newspapers. Once reporters got hold of the news, it could turn out any way.

“What happened?” Chris asked. His mind raced; he was going through everything Nicole and Billy had said or done that week, looking for some sort of sign, indication, reason.

“Well, we really don’t have it all right now. But apparently Billy went into the house with a bat…. He and Jeanne fought…. There were multiple stab wounds. There was evidently a struggle. Billy swung the bat and hit her in the head. Then he grabbed some knives and started to stab her. From what I understand, there were nine stab wounds—”

“No,” Chris said, interrupting. “Stop right there. I don’t want to hear any more.”

“Chris, these are just the preliminaries. We haven’t got any more details.”

“Nope. Stop. I can’t hear any more. Stop it!”

“Are you going to be all right?”

Silence.

“Chris?”

“Yes. I’ll be OK.”

After they said their good-byes, Chris sat on the edge of the couch and tried to digest what Jennifer Hunt had told him.

“I remember not really crying all that much, but I am sure I did. But I kept thinking, ‘Is this really happening?’ It was similar to the time when I found out I had MS. Doctors are telling you certain things that your mind is just not prepared to wrap itself around. It was the same feeling here: what Hunt was saying didn’t seem real.”

Nicole and Billy were now officially in custody. Both were talking—but telling vastly different versions regarding what had happened on Dumaine Avenue the previous night, along with those crucial days and nights leading up to Jeanne’s death. If Chris thought things were complicated now, the weeks, months and years ahead were going to confuse matters further as he began to learn—and accept—why Jeanne had been murdered.

There had to be more to it, thought Chris. A daughter does not murder her mother because she doesn’t want her to see a boy. Nicole wasn’t like that. The questions many asked as details started to emerge became: Was Nicole involved in the planning of her mother’s murder, as she herself had claimed? Or was she covering for Billy? Maybe Billy was a psychopath and had murdered before? No one really knew him.

Then, as details, scarce as they were, emerged during the following days, others wondered if it was Nicole’s idea from the start. Had she planned her mother’s murder and, through sexual favors and promises of love, manipulated a mentally ill boy into killing her mother and taking the blame? Was it Nicole’s sick and twisted idea from day one? Had she been putting up a front all those years? Were rumors of a deep-seated admiration for ghosts and witches true? Had Jeanne’s death been the product of a daughter who led two lives?

When partial facts of the case were made public on the morning of August 7, friends, coworkers and family members of Jeanne’s were left to wonder if Nicole harbored some sort of hidden personality. Few could believe Nicole was involved in her mother’s death on the level authorities had claimed. It had to be some kind of mistake: Billy must have threatened her; maybe he forced Nicole to take part and told her what to say if she was questioned. Maybe he threatened to kill her, too?

As word of Nicole’s admitted involvement spread, Jeanne’s loss consumed the community. Jeanne had not only touched Chris McGowan’s life, but had a presence in Nashua that soon fueled the community’s growing sorrow and shock. Perhaps it was just the way Jeanne lit up a room when she smiled. Or the funny snorting noise she made when she laughed. How everyone admired the way Jeanne took charge of Drew and Nicole and made them better kids; worked herself silly to support the children and keep a roof over their heads and the house out of foreclosure. Despite working three jobs, in the face of a mounting number of unpaid bills, she had such a delightful ability to keep an encouraging attitude about everything. Nothing, it seemed, could destroy Jeanne’s will or character.

Now she was gone—and Nicole, according to what Chris had learned from Jennifer Hunt, had had a hand in it. It didn’t seem at all like the Nicole that Chris had watched grow up over the past couple of years. And Jeanne, how she was going to be missed, not only by Chris, but by the hundreds of people in the community whose lives she had touched.

Jeanne was born in Malden, Massachusetts, on August 29, 1959, raised and educated in Braintree. Malden and Braintree, then, were rural suburbs north and south of Boston. For kids growing up around Boston’s North and South Shore during the 1960s and ’70s, it may have seemed that candy drove the economy: on just about every street corner, in every neighborhood, a penny-candy store with a soda fountain stood with its granite columns and ringing doorbells. The rougher neighborhoods may have been bustling with gangs, but for kids like Jeanne Dominico, life seemed carefree and judicious.

As a youngster, Jeanne embodied the look of a carefully raised child reared by well-educated parents. Her Italian heritage was obvious during those early years. Jeanne’s black silky hair and thick eyebrows made her a spitting image of Nicole at the same age. Like the other kids she hung around with, Jeanne wore bell-bottoms, turtlenecks and big-buckled, patent leather belts. She was one of those kids the others in the neighborhood were drawn to because of her lively nature and tender attitude. Jeanne never judged people. To her, everyone was equal.

Although quite private of their memories, former neighbors said Jeanne’s family was “close-knit.” One childhood friend later explained to reporters how she and Jeanne, as kids, sang “Diana Ross songs…in her garage and talked about boys.” Jeanne’s house became somewhat of a “gathering place for the neighborhood children, and her mother was one of those ‘Kool-Aid moms’ who welcomed and watched out for everyone. She was great. Her family was great. Her mom was always very, very nice to us,” remarked that same friend. “It was a nice place to be. We grew up in a nice neighborhood.”

When Jeanne started her own family many years later, no job was beneath her, especially when it came to providing for her family. Reports show that after Jeanne and Anthony divorced, she worked numerous part-time jobs to keep food on the table: school aide, crossing guard, lunchroom monitor, hand at the local Nashua Post Office, cashier at McDonald’s, house cleaner and babysitter of neighborhood children. It didn’t matter to Jeanne Dominico, as long as she could give her children the life she wanted them to have.

On the morning of August 7, Attorney General Peter W. Heed and Nashua police chief Donald Gross sent out a one-page press release. In meager, albeit pointed, detail, it somewhat explained what happened the previous night inside Jeanne’s home:

Whatever Billy had told the police, obviously, was enough to place him under arrest and hold him for murder. But there was more. After a brief description of the charges against Billy, adding how he had “repeatedly stabbed [Jeanne],” the press release outlined the true shocker of the story:

Billy’s first day in court was scheduled for later that same afternoon, at two-thirty, inside the Nashua District Court, a five-minute ride from the NPD.

By late Thursday morning, Denis Linehan and Mark Schaaf had conflicting versions of what happened to Jeanne. Yet, in separate interviews, Nicole and Billy had confessed, which was all law enforcement needed at the time to arrest the two teenagers. Search warrants and affidavits were in the process of being prepared. But for now, Billy and Nicole were in jail, while law enforcement collected evidence and built cases against both.

When Chris McGowan learned of the latest details, he was conflicted. Something still wasn’t sitting right with him. He found Billy to be “odd” at times, knew he came from a broken home, but had trouble believing Billy could have stabbed Jeanne to death and beat her with a baseball bat.

“The first time I met him,” recalled Chris, “jeesh, I thought I was going to break his hand when I shook it. He seemed so weak and fragile. Jeanne could take care of herself. I didn’t understand.”

The fact that Nicole was somehow involved made it that much more of an impossibility.

No way,
Chris thought.
There’s more to this.

“Jeannie and Nicole had problems,” Chris recalled, “but this murder was something so far removed from reality, it was impossible for me to think Nicole was involved.”

Chris was resolved to find out more; he needed to know what happened.

The entire community of Nashua, which Jeanne had been a part of in so many different ways, had trouble believing a woman of Jeanne’s moral caliber could die in such a tragic manner—and that her daughter could somehow be involved. What made the crime even more chilling was the planning Billy and Nicole had admittedly conspired in. As stories surfaced regarding Jeanne’s constant struggle to make her children’s lives as enjoyable as she possibly could, her death took on an even greater impact among the community. People started coming forward to talk about a high-spirited woman they viewed as nothing less than a patron saint. A rambunctious, abundant woman, so generous with her time and spirit. Coworkers stood by watercoolers shaking their heads.

“Can you believe it?”

They bowed their heads while sitting at their desks. They stopped for a moment in the restroom to remember, to cry—to realize that Jeanne’s bottomless well of constructive energy would not be a part of the office environment ever again.

Amybeth Kasinskas was distraught. She woke up that Thursday morning and found out she had lost both Nicole and Jeanne. Reports of Anthony, Amybeth’s father, having been such a burden on Jeanne and her life only made matters worse for Amybeth. That afternoon, as the town mourned and people started speaking out, Amybeth was seen wandering around Jeanne’s house in a daze. Later that day, Amybeth told the
Hartford Courant
that Jeanne and her dad had “lived together for more than twelve years before they were married. I know that my father is mourning somebody he is going to love for the rest of his life.” Adding, “She was an amazing, wonderful, wonderful person…a very compassionate person. She always reached out to anybody. No matter what. When she had no money, she’d feed you before she fed herself. She always considered me one of hers. I always had three parents, and I was always grateful for that…. She just always did the right thing. She always looked out for everybody, and she took care of her kids…and worked herself to the bone.”

As Chris began to accept that the months and years ahead were going to be a maelstrom of unanswered questions, he could only dredge up one memory after the next where Jeanne seemed to outdo herself. It started when their relationship became serious. Chris and Jeanne, like any couple experiencing the early euphoric highs of a new romance, began to open up and share those secrets early lovers talk about during courtship. For Chris, one of the first times he realized how genuine a person Jeanne was—such a sincere soul he was falling in love with—turned out to be the way in which she treated him after learning about a potentially debilitating disease he had. Chris had reservations about telling Jeanne—as he had most people in his life—for fear that she might pity him.

“But honesty,” he insisted, “was something Jeanne and I swore by.”

In late 1989, Chris started having problems with his eyes, legs and hands: shaking, trembling, blurriness, instability. He first thought it was the onset of simply heading into his thirties. He was getting older. The body changes. So be it.

“Give me some medication,” he told the doctor upon a visit, “and it’ll go away…right?”

After two weeks of taking medication, the symptoms seemed the same, and some worsened. So the doctor put him through a salvo of scans, MRIs and a battery of other tests.

Weeks went by and Chris didn’t hear anything from his doctor, so he called.

“What’s going on with me?” he wondered.

The shaking in his hands had gotten worse. His vision was cloudier.

“Well, it’s what we thought it was. The MRI came back positive. You have lesions in the brain consistent with MS.”

“MS?” asked Chris. “Yeah. OK. What are you talking about?”

Chris had no idea what MS was, other than an image of the
Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon
he watched every year. Confusing MS with muscular dystrophy (MD), Chris saw visions of himself in a wheelchair, an astronaut-like breathing apparatus tied to his back, slurring his speech and drooling.

“It was ignorant of me to think that way,” recalled Chris. “But it’s the only picture I had. Come to find out, a very small minority of MS patients end up in wheel-chairs or in bed. It’s just not like that.”

According to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, “MS is thought to be an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system (CNS),” meaning the brain, spinal cord, optic nerves. “Surrounding and protecting the nerve fibers of the CNS is a fatty tissue called myelin, which helps nerve fibers conduct electrical impulses.” Those afflicted with the disease, however, can suffer a wide variety of symptoms. For some, like Chris, “abnormal fatigue” might coincide with “severe vision problems” and a “loss of balance and muscle coordination, making walking difficult.” In others, “slurred speech, tremors, stiffness and bladder problems” are the norm. Some of the symptoms can “come and go over the course of the disease,” while others may last indefinitely.

One symptom Chris could relate to was bladder control.

“When I have to go, I
have
to go at
that
moment.” In fact, he had tried to make that clear to the officer escorting him around the crime scene.

Beyond that, Chris considered himself lucky. He suffered mild symptoms for the first eight years after being diagnosed, knowing at any time his life could change, and for the first seven years he was able to live and work without taking any medication. It wasn’t until 1997 when he had to start injecting himself once a week to divert any major symptoms.

“You know, I don’t go around telling people I have MS,” said Chris. “But Jeannie knew. I told her one night when we were going through the ritual of dating and getting to know each other.”

“So what,” responded Jeanne to Chris’s admission. “I’ll help you any way I can.”

And with Jeanne, when she offered what was a common gesture of goodwill, it wasn’t out of courtesy or simply trying to be nice. She meant it.

Weeks later, Chris knew exactly the type of person Jeanne was when she showed up at work one morning and seemed to know more about MS than he did.

“I was reading something online last night,” Jeanne said, “and learned so much about what you have. I can help you.”

Chris was pleasantly stunned. Here Jeanne was taking on a man with what could be a potentially incapacitating disease, yet diving headfirst into his life, learning all she could about it so as to better help him manage the daily ups and downs of the disease.

“She started asking me all sorts of questions about it, and really took a caring approach to how I was feeling. She wanted to know everything there was to know.”

It wasn’t that Chris was looking for someone to take care of him. But Jeanne, in all of her kindness, didn’t judge him or make the disease a part of their relationship.

“She didn’t look at me differently after she found out, or treat me differently. I appreciated that. It deepened my love for her.”

Sitting in his apartment during the afternoon of August 7, Chris felt the same way he had on the day he was given his MS diagnosis: helpless and immobile. He was paralyzed by the thought that he wouldn’t be driving to Jeanne’s that night, walking in the door, sneaking up behind her, grabbing her around the waist, kissing her on the cheek.

She had vanished from his life.

As he stared out the window, watching the birds peck at the lawn, Chris wondered what he had left.

“It was like, OK, now what the heck do I do? Where do I go from here? I was lost without Jeanne—and still am.”