Because You Loved Me (24 page)

Although Billy wrote to Tina (or telephoned her) every day since the first week of their relationship, the only day he failed to make contact was on August 6, the first anniversary of Jeanne Dominico’s death. He never gave a reason for it, or mentioned the significance of the day in his letters, but it was a safe bet to assume the day had brought it all back for Billy.

For Chris McGowan, Jeanne’s friends and family, it was obviously a day of mourning. Jeanne had been gone a year, but it seemed like forever. Back in February, Birch Hill Elementary School, where Jeanne had made such an immeasurable mark on students and teachers as a paraprofessional, volunteer and PTO member, honored Jeanne by hosting a memorial service in the auditorium. Some two hundred people attended. Many read poems and told stories of the good times Jeanne had brought to their lives.

The main purpose of the night, according to Chris McGowan, was to “thank” Jeanne for her contributions to the community and to the kids in the school she loved so dearly. When Jeanne left the school to pursue other vocational opportunities, some of the first-grade kids she “assisted,” reported the
Nashua Telegraph,
“cried and refused to go to school.” They were overwhelmed that Jeanne wouldn’t be bringing her lust for life and glowing personality to the classroom again. It wasn’t going to be the same without her.

One woman, a friend of Jeanne’s, stood at the lectern, which was decorated with flowers, crying through her tribute.

“Jeanne’s warmth, enthusiasm and love for life was contagious and you felt good to be in her company. She was always ready and willing to help others…. She gave unconditionally, without looking for something in return because
that”
—the woman paused for a moment to collect herself—“is who she was.”

Nicole’s brother, Drew, sat in the front row among family and friends. What a year could do to a teenage kid. Drew had grown so much. He looked different. More mature. A bit more personable. He was noticeably distraught and still struggling with the permanent pain of losing his mother, his friend, the role model for life he had looked up to. After the principal of the school led Drew up to the stage, the boy shook his head, cried and rubbed his forehead. He couldn’t handle it. In back of him on a large video screen was a photograph of Jeanne and Drew at a Little League game. They were smiling, loving life.

It seemed so darn long ago.

“She was a wonderful person,” said Drew, “even though she was my mom,” which brought about a few muffled, forced laughs.

He talked about disappointing his mother during her final days, and how he was feeling regret over it. It was pain that was going to be around for a lifetime, Drew knew, and he had to learn to overcome it. Jeanne wasn’t bouncing through heaven feeling good about him suffering. She’d want him to carry on.

Before he left the stage, Drew thanked his mother for always being there for him, then exited the stage in tears.

Nicole reached out to Drew in a letter a few months before the ceremony. She expressed her sorrow for what she had done and admitted that “what happened deserves no forgiveness,” asking Drew to understand she was “truly sorry” for everything. She called her crimes “selfish and sick.”

There was some concern on Nicole’s part for her little brother because of the “position” she felt she had put him in with her behavior. Nicole was older now—if only by a year. In the letter, she was perhaps pitying herself. She came across as awestruck over her crimes, as if someone else had committed them. It was a subtle indication of how the ripple effect of tragedy and murder directly (and indirectly) influenced different members of the same family. Nicole promised she was “doing her best” to look out for Drew, even though she was behind bars. Borrowing a slogan from Alcoholics Anonymous, she encouraged Drew to take life “one day at a time,” same as she was now doing. She said she never understood the phrase until “all this shit began.”

The girl had conspired to murder her mother and referred to the crime as “shit.” It was enough to enrage Chris McGowan, who saw a copy of the letter.

“I’m sorry I can’t be there,” Nicole wrote near the end of the letter. She said she loved her brother. Then, regarding her mother, “I miss her too.”

According to one source close to him at that time, Drew never responded to Nicole’s letter. He viewed the letter as it appeared: a feeble, almost patronizing, attempt by Nicole at taking responsibility for her crimes. The only thing she seemed sorry about was getting caught and ending up in jail.

On the night of August 7, 2004, Billy Sullivan was in his cell, belly to the floor, using the light protruding underneath a tiny gap between the bottom of the door and the floor to illuminate the piece of paper he was writing on. He couldn’t sleep. Another inmate had stolen his pillow and “the dumbass c/o” (corrections officer) had refused to get him another one. The lights in his ward had been turned out for the night. He considered “pulling a sprinkler,” he wrote, which would sound an alarm and create chaos in the ward, but feared getting sent to maximum security, or put in the hole, would have ruined any chance of seeing Tina anytime soon.

For the past few days, Billy was at odds with his cellmate, the same guy who had introduced him to Tina. He explained to Tina in a series of letters how he was avoiding the guy because, “I want to kick the shit out of him.” He called the guy a “bitch,” someone who depended on tougher people out on the street to do his dirty work for him. He was appalled by his breath, especially, and wondered if he had ever brushed his teeth (“I’ve never seen him do it…”). He was amazed also that Tina’s girlfriend could get close to the guy because of his body odor. Billy called him “nasty” and “filthy.”

Here was Billy, a scrawny little man with a big mouth, speaking of fellow inmates behind their backs as if they were somehow below him. Although some of what he said may have been true, Billy was, more than anything else, trying to impress Tina and show her how “tough” he was—that he didn’t need to depend on anyone but himself. He could “take care” of himself in jail. This was important to Billy. He wanted respect and believed, beyond anyone else, he deserved it.

Billy’s life was centered around every word Tina whispered to him over the telephone or wrote to him in her cutesy, feminine handwriting. He wallowed in re-reading, over and over, the letters she had written. He said it “improved his day.” He was bowled over by the idea that Tina considered him to be a “good-looking guy.” He complimented Tina on her people skills and the “good deeds” she had done in her life. A lot of Billy’s sentences began, “When I get out of here,” which, in some respect, kept Tina hanging, anticipating a release date. There was always a pot of gold hidden somewhere within the text of Billy’s missives. And Tina fell into it like a sheepskin coat on a winter’s day. Billy made her feel certain that he wasn’t filling her heart with unrealistic promises that were never going to materialize. She had read a few articles online about Billy’s case and had questions, but Billy talked his way out of any doubt Tina was now bringing up.

“How do you know what I look like?” Billy wondered one night while they were talking. It was a few days before their first scheduled visit. He was curious (but he undoubtedly knew) how Tina had seen a photograph of him. He hadn’t sent her one.

“I went online and saw your picture in the newspaper.”

“Oh,” responded Billy.

One thing kept coming up in Billy’s letters and conversations with Tina. How were they going to, in Billy’s words, “work out the distance between Willimantic, CT, and Manchester, NH” after his release? This bothered Billy. There was no way he could live in New Hampshire, he said. He wanted to “remain free” from the state. People would look at him. Point. Judge him. He was a marked man now. People talked about him as though he were some sort of a sadistic killer. “Prejudice,” Billy explained. He was thinking that although his case was likely to be “dismissed w/o trial,” he could still be retried at any time.

“Although I’m innocent,” he made a point to say, “I’m not taking any chances.” Living in New Hampshire, he was sure, invited problems. He wasn’t going to do it. No way. He hoped Tina understood.

Tina promised to work it all out. There were more pressing issues to worry about at the present time. Like, for example, Billy’s mother, Pat. Tina wanted to know what
she
thought of their relationship. Tina was concerned. Did Pat know about her yet? Did Pat like her? Had Billy sent a letter and explained to Pat how serious they were about each other? Tina wanted Pat’s support. It was important to her that she have it.

Billy brought up the subject of his mother quite often. Because of the relationship Billy had with Nicole (or, rather, the relationship Billy had told Tina he had with Nicole), Tina feared Billy’s family was going to reject her. She worried, based on Billy’s version of Nicole, that Pat and his siblings would snub their noses at her. It was important to Tina that Pat accept her unconditionally.

Billy said he was certain she would. How could she not?

“You’re perfect.”

Billy thanked Tina for, as he put it, “staying clean and sober,” and promised he was “staying out of trouble,” too. When Tina kept bringing up Pat, Billy suggested she continue to lead a clean life and there was no reason his family wasn’t going to like her. Then he dropped the subject entirely.

During the middle of August, Tina brought up serious questions about “N.K.,” as Billy occasionally referred to Nicole in his letters. She wanted to know Billy’s true feelings for her. After all, according to Billy, Nicole had set him up; she was the single reason why he was behind bars facing life in prison. A man should have strong opinions about the person responsible for taking away his freedom. Tina said she needed to know how Billy felt.

“I wanted to know how was he dealing with that,” recalled Tina. “He rarely brought it up.”

Billy’s lack of interest in the topic made Tina curious. Billy had expressed such strong opinions and emotion over so many different topics—yet, for someone who had stolen his life, he had little to say.

For every serious question Tina posed about Nicole, or anything else, Billy shot an answer right back at her. During one telephone call, Tina asked, “What about the fingerprints they found, Billy? I read about it last night online.”

“My fingerprints were on the bat because I had helped clean Nicole’s brother’s room that day.”

For Tina, it wasn’t hard to buy.

But, “Your DNA was found in the house—at least that’s what the papers say.”

“I know, I know,” said Billy casually. “You wouldn’t believe this, but I stabbed myself in the thumb one day—really bad—while I was opening a coconut. Just like my fingerprints on the knives. Shit, Tina, I cooked meals in that house. Of course, my prints are on the knives.”

Tina thought about it. It seemed possible, even plausible. Why should she be concerned?

With that, Tina decided she could hate Nicole, too, for what “that bitch,” she soon wrote back to Billy, had done to him. Still, beyond Billy’s misgivings, Tina wanted to know what Pat thought of Nicole before all of Billy’s troubles with her started.

“What I was facing, you know,” Tina remembered. “I just wanted to know him better.”

Just recently, Billy explained, he’d had a conversation on the telephone with his mother about Nicole. He told Tina the story in hopes of explaining, by example, what Pat thought of her.

“Do you have any pictures of Nicole you can send me?” Billy said he asked his mother that night. He wanted to send them to Tina. He didn’t have any because, he said, “the cops took mine.”

“I had one,” Billy later said his mother responded, “but then I stepped on it and…picked up dog shit with it.”

Billy told Tina that if he found any photographs of Nicole when he returned home after getting out of jail, he would “burn them.”

In the same letter, it was as if the mention of Nicole brought out an unusual, depraved side of Billy. After talking about getting rid of all the photographs he had of Nicole, Billy turned his attention toward Tina and began fantasizing about what he was going to do to her when he was released. In the most vile language one can imagine, written in a juvenile manner, Billy spoke of having filthy, violent sex with Tina, doing things to her she had perhaps no idea existed. For a page, Billy carried on and on. Then, quite abruptly, changed his demeanor completely, ending with, “Well, baby, I’m gonna go for now,” as if he had just described a walk on the beach he was planning for the two of them. The varying of subject matter showed how unstable Billy was and how his mind wandered.

Tina, though, fell for it.

That first X-rated letter was the beginning of dozens of pages of writings from Billy over the next several days, which became more explicit with each sentence he wrote. Tina wasn’t fanning the flames by promising Billy anything, other than “I can’t wait to see you…and make love to you, too.” But it seemed once Billy got started exploring his sexual fantasies, he couldn’t stop—as if it became an addiction.

For Tina, it didn’t faze her. In fact, she felt closer to Billy than she had ever been and soon began answering his letters with fantasies of her own. Still, the true theme of Tina’s letters, that is after she fulfilled Billy’s desire to verbalize her own sexual desires, was grounded in a fairy-tale love. Tina spoke of their future together: having kids, setting up a house and Billy waiting for her to finish high school. In his responses, Billy went along with whatever Tina said, juxtaposing his degrading sexual fantasies against the backdrop of transparent promises for the perfect suburban life after he beat the charges against him. Two minds were at work: one feeding into Tina’s romanticized version of the future; the other speaking of triple-X dreams and the twisted needs of a sexually frustrated inmate who had been locked up now for over a year.

The way Billy worked was consistent with that of a sexual predator. Instead of just coming out with it, saying, “This is what I want to do to you,” Billy phrased his sexual desires in the form of a dream.

“I had this weird dream last night…,” he’d begin a section of a letter. Something like, “It’s going to be strange, but let me tell you what happened.” Billy felt safe in that dream state. He could explore a side of himself and let his mind ramble.

Billy waited to see how Tina responded to the letters before going forward with another. When Tina encouraged him, even in the slightest way, he took it a step further. One “weird, weird dream” he claimed he’d had consisted of a unique request from a girl. In the dream, the girl asked Billy to masturbate and climax into a plastic bag so he could send it to her from prison.

“How’d that get into my head?” Billy wondered after describing it.

Tina asked Billy for his idea of the “perfect wedding.” She dreamed of a knight. She ached for that perfect young man. She thought she had him in her grasp. She described in one letter something that had happened to her when she was thirteen. It was the worst experience of her life. She was sharing it with Billy because she loved him “that much” and wanted him to know all of her secrets.

Billy felt bad about what had happened. However, no sooner had he expressed compassion, then he was back describing his sexual fantasies.

For Tina, reading about Billy’s fantasies was “fine.” She could allow Billy an outlet to express himself. But what about love? How would “you love me” when “you’re released”? she asked.

Of course, Billy continued with the same language he had spewed on Nicole for fifteen months: “I owe you my heart & soul” “I love you” it feels “good” to be “so open and honest” with each other.

By August 12, Tina and Billy were counting the days until their first face-to-face visit. Tina was in over her head and didn’t know it. Billy had a plan. He had worked his manipulation over the past two weeks and had Tina exactly where he wanted. It was obvious in the way Tina spoke to him. She wrote to Billy on August 13 that she didn’t “think she could live without him.” She had been watching Court TV the previous night and just the images of court and jail had made her cry. Billy was now the “love of my life.” It was as if Nicole had written the letters herself. They were similar in tone, substance and actual wording.

As Tina fell deeper, a jealous interest in Nicole turned into a bloodthirsty disgust. Billy had managed to convince Tina—using subtlety and charm—that Nicole was their arch nemesis. And what must have made Billy smile when he read it, Tina wrote one day about some of her goals in life and the things she wished she could change in the world. At the top of the list, she wrote, “A child would not need a parental guardian to make decisions for them and would have the option to do whatever they wanted….”

Sound familiar?

Then came perhaps the most important sentence of the letter.

“If I had control over N.H. at all, I would get you out of jail and make inaccurate media illegal.”

Billy had been blaming his confinement, in some ways, on the media coverage surrounding his case.

He had chipped away at the truth surrounding his incarceration. It worked. He had manipulated Tina into thinking the entire state of New Hampshire—the newspapers, television stations, lawyers, Nicole, everybody—was out to get him. He was being framed. It was all a setup.

Billy must have jumped for joy when he read the last part of Tina’s plan.

“I also probably would put Nicole to death (but I didn’t say that)…,” Tina wrote.

Then and there, standing or sitting in his cell reading the letter, Billy had to know he could soon ask Tina for her help. He hadn’t talked about it yet or brought it up because the situation hadn’t felt right. But it was looking more and more like everything was falling into place. Tina could be trusted.

Near the end of the letter, “I’ll do whatever you ask,” she promised before signing off, “Tina Sullivan.”

Looking forward to meeting her new love, Tina called Billy’s aunt in Rhode Island on or about August 14 and made arrangements. Billy couldn’t get through to his own house back in Connecticut and was worried his mother was going to show up during the same visit, so he asked Tina to call his aunt and explain the situation.

“Everything’s taken care of,” Tina told Billy over the telephone a night before the visit. “I’ll see you soon.”