Reasonable Doubt
Northeast Magazine
Hartford Courant
2/21/94
The following piece is excerpted from the article Reasonable Doubt by Tom Condron.
It is reproduced with the author's permission.
Fourth of July, 1989, midafternoon, and Richard Lapointe was going to have a picnic with his wife and son. The phone rang. It was the Manchester police. Could he come down to the station for a little chat? He'd be home in time for the holiday cookout.
Well, OK, he said. He didn't drive, so a detective came out to pick him up. Lapointe wondered if the officers wanted to talk to him again, about the unsolved rape and murder of his wife's 88 year old grandmother , Bernice Martin, more than two years earlier. Their plan was actually a little more ambitious. Police hoped to make Lapointe confess to the crime.
To that end, an elaborate ruse had been planned. Two rooms in the station were festooned with props - pictures, charts, lists, and diagrams - that portrayed Lapointe as the killer. A chart said his fingerprints were found on a knife used in the crime. Another linked him to the crime through DNA testing. There was a list of detectives who were on the "Bernice Martin Homicide Task force."
None of this was true. A suspect who carefully read the "squad assignments" on the task force list might have detected the hokum when he came across the team of "Gannon and Friday," the detectives in the later episodes of TV's Dragnet. Regardless, most people in Lapointe's situation would have realized they were in plenty of trouble.
But Lapointe, a homely, mentally handicapped man with no history of violence, hadn't a clue. he listened as a sergeant quickly read him his rights, then scribbled his name on a waiver form and went upstairs with a detective. Over the next nine hours, he gave police three statements admitting guilt in the rape and murder. Then they let him go home, and arrested him the next day. He was convicted of the crime almost three years later in Superior Court on June 30, 1992. Although prosecutors fought to have him executed, he was sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole. Police, jurors and prosecutors say they got the right man. But dozens of others - people who know Lapointe, advocates for handicapped persons, lawyers who followed the trial - find the case deeply troubling.
"As for protection of individual rights, it was the system at its worst. It was a bad case all around," said Hartford defense lawyer William Gerace, who followed the case. That was my reaction as well.
After attending parts of the trial, reviewing thousands of pages of transcripts, and speaking with more than two dozen people who were either involved in the trial or who know Lapointe, I have two problems with the case: Lapointe didn't get a fair shake. Some believe criminal defendants are coddled and given too many rights and safeguards. Lapointe, who needed them if anyone does, got none. He had no lawyer, his statements weren't taped and his family wasn't allowed to call or visit during the nine-hour interrogation. Police subjected him to lies, trickery and intimidation to obtain his confession. Also, I don't think Lapointe did it.
Mr.Magoo
Richard Lapointe, now 47, was born in Hartford and raised in Hartford's Charter Oak Terrace housing project. As a child he showed little promise. He was, and is, short, chubby, weak, and awkward. He wears thick glasses and a hearing aid. He has a head too large for his body, a pointy chin, poor balance, and a slow walk that is several degrees of plumb. He was slow in school as well. Some kids picked on him and called him "Mister Magoo". The unfairness of this made one gang of kids take Richard under its wing. One of those kids was Jack Jenkins.
"He was the type of kid who, because of his physical stature and appearance, gets picked on. He couldn't fight back. He was the classic 90 pound weakling, so the group I hung out with looked after him," Jenkins said. In one of life's little ironies, Jenkins had become deputy warden of the Bridgeport jail, where Lapointe was taken after being picked on in the Hartford jail. Jenkins recognized his walk as they bought him in and called out, "Magoo?" Then Jenkins did what he'd done three decades before: He looked out for Mr. Magoo.
As a child, Lapointe had remained cheerful despite the ridicule. This was a point of pride; he told a psychologist years later that he felt bigger than the kids who taunted him when he smiled and walked away. He still tries to be accepted as the class clown by telling little jokes, the same jokes over and over, to make people like him.
It wasn't until he was 15 years old that doctors discovered why Lapointe was an inert student. He had Dandy Walker Syndrome, a rare hereditary condition now treated at birth, in which a cyst in the lower back of the brain cavity causes parts of the brain to develop abnormally. The cyst often alters the flow of cerebral spinal fluid, causing hydrocephalus, a build up of fluid that can damage a number of brain functions, such as coordination, speech, memory and abstract thinking. Lapointe had the first of five brain operations at 15. Doctors put in a shunt, or tube, to draw the fluid out of the cranial cavity.
After his first operation, he tried to return to school. He'd stayed back three times in the first eight grades, then entered Hartford Public High School as a 17 yr. old freshman. He didn't make it through the year. He said the school board suggested he drop out, because he was only taking up a seat. Shortly therafter, at 21, Lapointe was picked up for indecent exposure and intoxication. In a recent interview in Somers prision,he said he was walking home from a party with a rip in the crotch of his pants. He received a 10 day suspended sentence. It was his only trouble with the law until his arrest in the Martin case.
After he left school, he settled into life as a dishwasher in a variety of Hartford restaurants. In the mid - 1970's he met Karen Martin, a young woman who had a mild case of cerbral palsy and had only partial use of one arm. They married, and in 1979 had a bright and handsome son, Sean. The delivery was difficult for Karen, and so RIchard had a vasectomy shortly therafter.
They lived on Richard's dishwashing salary and occasional help from Karen's family. They were so poor at times that when Sean got older RIchard would sometimes lower him into the Salvation Army bins to grab clothes. Though they were poor, the ate out a good deal because their disabilities made cooking difficult. Waitresses who worked with Richard often gave him the "bombs," the food orders made incorrectly or sent back by customers. Yet the Lapointes struggled to lead a normal life, and somehow got by.
They settled in Manchester in the early '80's, near some of his wife's relatives. THeir favorite wsa Karen's grandmother, Bernice Martin, whom they called "nana" or "Mother." Mrs. Martin, a former woman with myriad interests; she organized bingo games and Bible readings for her friends, wrote poems, loved sports, and baked cookies for the volunteer firemen.
She lived in a housing complex for the elderly, Mayfair Gardens, a collection of one story, wood and brick shoeboxes a couple of blocks from the Lapointe home in the north end of town. Richard and Karen settled into a routine that included regular visits to Mrs. Martin's house on SUndays. The Lapointe's, devout Catholics, would attend Mass at St. Bridget's Church, have brunch at My Brother's Place, a restaurant on North Main St, then cross the stree to Nana's apartment.
A Warm Day in March
Sean Lapointe had become a Boston Celtics fan, like his dad and great-grandmother, and the Celts were on TV on Sunday afternoon, March 8, 1987. The family gathered in Mrs. Martin's living room to watch the game and chat. They had coffee and a little something to eat. The Celtics lost a tough on e to the Detroit Pistons, 122 - 119, in overtime. The outcome aside, it was a pleasant visit.
The Lapointe's left about 4 PM, and headed home. It was about a 10 minute walk to their house at 75 Union St., a large two family that had been turned into a four unit condominium - Karen'ts family helped with the purchase - in the comfortable, working class neighborhood. It was a warm afternoon for early March.
At about 5:45 PM, Natalie Howard, Mrs. Martin's daughter and Karen'ts aunt, and her husband, Earle, drove by Mayfair Gardens and saw Mrs. Martin putting the garbage out. "Should we stop?" the husband asked. "no, I'll call her when we get home," Natalie Howard said. Howard later called her mother twice, but got no answer. So she called the Lapointes at about 8 PM. They were watching TV. Would Richard go over and check on Mother? Sure, Richard said. He walked over and knocked on Mrs. Martin's door. It felt warm, but he didn't think anything of that. He got no answer, so he walked over to the home of a neighbor he knew, Jeannette King. She let him use her phone. He called Karen and Natalie Howard, and said the lights were out and Mrs. Martin must have gone to bed.
She was a night owl. He was told to check again. He walked back to Mrs. Martin's apartment. This time the door was hot, and he could see smoke coming out from under the eaves. He went back to King's home, excited and out of breath, and dialed 911. Firefighters and police found the living room couch on fire, filling the apartment with smoke. Mrs. Martin was on the living room floor, unconscious. A volunteer firefighter dragged her out. She was pronounced dead shortly therafter. The 88- year old woman had been bound tightly around the neck and wrists, stabbed and sexually assaulted. The couch fire was one of three the assailant set in the apartment, apparently to destroy evidence.
Police interviewed dozens of people, including Karen and Richard Lapointe. They said they were at home from about 4:15 until Natalie Howard called at 8 PM. Although Richard Lapointe remained on the list of 26 suspects, investigators thought they knew who the killer was.
Peanut Butter
Around the corner from Mayfair Gardens is a cozy neighborhood pub, Kelly's Pub and Restaurant. Shortly after Mrs. Martins murder, police officers came into Kelly's with pictures. Had the owners seen any of these men? Annette Kelehan, wife of Charles "Kelly" Kelehan, said yes. She pointed to a photo of a gaunt, dark haried man and said he looked like a man who'd been in the bar the weekend Mrs. Martin was killed. The man was the notorious Frederick Rodney Merrill, known as "the peanut butter bandit" because he'd once broken out of jail with a gun slipped to him in a jar of peanut butter.
Merrill, now 46, is much less romantic a figure than his nickname might suggest. He is a career criminal with countless burglaries, robberies, and other crimes, as well as four prison escapes. He is also charged in at least two sexual assaults. His connection to the Martin case was tantalizing.
He was seen in the bar. He fit the general description of someone seen running across North Main Street away from Mayfair Gardens shortly after 8 PM the night of the killing. More significant, he was arrested three days later for sexually assaulting a 55 year old woman in South Windsor, less than three miles away.
While Merril was in jail for the South Windsor incident, Manchester police tried to connect him to the Martin killing. Before they could, Merrill bid adieu. In August, he escaped from the maximum security section of Somers prison. He was found in Canada, and jailed in Toronto for nine crimes, including sexual assault. He escaped again, was recaptured, and is now in a Canadian federal prision in Quebec province.
Manchester police eventually dropped Merrill as a suspect because of his blood type. There were two bits of forensic evidence found in Bernice Martin's apartment. One was a drop of blood on an envelope that may or may not have belonged to the assailant, the other was a semen stain on the bedspread that probably belonged to the assailant. Tests showed both were left by someone with type A blood. Merrill is type AB negative. That left the cupboard bare. Murders are relatively rare in Manchester, especially rape-murders of kindly old ladies. The Martin family, which included a state trooper and other solid citizens, wanted it solved.
About a year after the crime, local officers worked with the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit in Quantico, Virginia, to create an "offender's profile". The unit, noted in Thomas Harris's novel The Silence of the Lambs, analyzes a crime scene for characteristics of the criminal. It can, for example, sometimes be determined how experienced the criminal was from how he committed the crime. Although the Manchester police wouldn't open their files or comment for this story because the conviction is being appealed, persons close to the case said the profile of Bernice Martin's killer was of a young man, a loner, possibly a member of her family who lived nearby and knew Mrs. Martin and where she lived, a man who was socially inept and had a weak self-image, a man who had problems with overbearing women.
The group that assembled the profile was headed by a New York State Police Lieutenant, John Edward Grant, who was spending the year with the FBI. Grant stayed with the case through Lapointe's arrest. The profile, however, didn't produce an instant suspect. After the case had gone unsolved for two years, it was assigned to a new man. Paul Lombardo, a 12 year veteran of the force, had been a detective for a little more than two years, and was on his second homicide investigation. He is a tough, non nonsense, hard driving cop in the Joe Friday mold. After reviewing the offender profile and the case file, Lombardo started interviewing the people involved. He interviewed Natalie Howard, and then, on June 8, he interviewed Richard Lapointe.
After that, he stopped interviewing suspects. He believed Lapointe was the killer. He now turned his efforts to proving it. If he is right, Lombardo should be credited with a brilliant, 221B Baker St. piece of intuitive police work. Because despite all the stuff on the police station walls, Lombardo had nothing to prove Lapointe killed Mrs. Martin. He did learn that Lapointe had type A blood, like that found in the victims apartment. But so does about 41 percent of the population.
Lombardo declined to comment for this story, but testified that he settled on Lapointe because the little man acted strange and did a number of suspicious things. Lombardo said when he called Lapointe in June to speak to him about the murder, Lapointe answered, "Why, am I a suspect?" Lombardo found this response unusual. When asked if he'd committed the murder, Lapointe's denial was "passive," not the "very strong affirmative objection you would expect." He said Lapointe assumed a "runner's position" while being questioned - that is, he had his feet pointed toward the door. Lombardo took this as an indication of guilt. Lombardo knew he needed more for a conviction. He called Grant, who by now was back in New York. Opinions vary on how useful offender profiles are, but Lombardo was a believer. He asked Grant if Lapointe could have been the killer.
Didn't Lapointe have an alibi? Grant asked. Lombardo said he could defeat the alibi with a witness. Even though some of the profile doesn't fit Lapointe - he was neither young nor a loner - Grant said that Lapointe was a very interesting possiblity.
Working with Grant and the hartford County State's Attorney office, Lombardo set up the sting on the fourth of July, when he knew lapointe would have a day off. They'd display the phony evidence props. Lombardo would interrogate Lapointe. Another detective, Michael Morissey, would go to the Lapointe home and interview Karen Lapointe.
Can I go To the Bathroom?
The interrogation of Richard lapointe began about 4 PM. In a second floor office, Lombardo began by telling Lapointe that the cops had plenty of proof that he did it, knew that he did it, had his fingerprints on a knife found at the scene, and now wanted to know why. It's not illegal, nor is it unheard of, for police to lie to a suspect of even display phony evidence. Lapointe denied committing the murder, but eventually asked Lombardo if it were possible for a person to do such a crime and then black out and not remember it. Lombardo said it was possible. After an hour or two - neither man could remember exactly - Lapointe gave Lombado a two sentence statement: "On March 8 I was responsible for Bernice Martin's death and it was an accident. My mind went blank."
Lapointe then went to the bathroom. Afterward, he recanted the confession, saying he gave it so he would be allowed to go to the bathroom. Lapointe asked about using the phone to call his wife or a lawyer. Lombardo said he pushed the phone in front of Lapointe, but didn't leave the room or offer any other assistance. He said Lapointe never picked up the phone. Lapointe said when he asked about calling a lawyer, Lombardo told him: "Later." It's unclear if Lapointe understood why he needed a lawyer. He said he asked because he'd seen it done on a TV show.
Lapointe said Lombardo "played games" to get him to confess. "I'd say, 'You just want me to say I did it," and he'd say, 'See, you just said you did it." Lombardo kept talking. As the evening wore on, Lapointe dictated another confession:
"On March 8th, 1987, I went to Bernice Martin with my wife and son. We left the apartment in the late afternoon and went home. I left my house some time after that to take the dog for a walk. I was at Bernice Martin's apartment with the dog. We were both there together and the time was right. I probably made a pass at her and she said no. So I hit her and I strangled her. If the evidence shows I was there and that I killed her, then I killed her, but I don't remember being there. I made a pass at Bernice because she was a nice person and I thought I could get somewhere with her. She was like a grandmother to me, that I never had."
Liar on the Wire
As Lombardo interviewed Richard, Michael Morrissey, a veteran detective, arrived at the Lapointe home and began to question Karen. Morrissey wore a "wire," or a hidden microphone, and secretly tape recorded this conversation with the help of his brother Officer Joseph Morrisey, who was outside in a patrol car. The transcript makes it obvious that Michael Morrissey lied to Karen numerous times. He said DNA testing had proved Richard was the killer, that he cut his hand and left a drop of blood in the apartment, that neighbors had heard screaming and seen Richard carrying something into the apartment. Morrisey tried to coax Karen into turning on her husband, and threatened her with loss of her son...
Despite this, the fragile woman stuck to her story. "That's not Richard, " she said, twice, as Morrissey described how Richard might have done the crime. Did Richard ever hit their son? "never" How did he treat you? "Fine". Karen added one element she'd forgotten the first time. She said on the night of the killing Richard went out to walk the dog at about 5PM, before dinner and was back in 20 minutes. She was emphatic about it saying they had dinner at 5:30 and that Richard was there.
Since Bernice Martin was seen alive at 5:45 PM, this should have been an alibi. BUt Morrissey din't see it this way. He returned to headquarters and took over the interrogation of Richard Lapointe. The pitch was that Morrissey had broken the news to the wife, and she was supporting him and wanted him to talk, so how he could tell the whole story. Curiously, even though Morrissey wore the wire when talking to Karen, and he and his brother went directly to the station afterwards, there is no tape or transcript of Morrissey's interrogation of Lapointe. Taping is not required by law, but is standard practice in some jurisdictions. After another four hours of questioning, another confession surfaced.
It starts with the family visit to Mrs. Martin's apartment, and their walk home at 4 pm.
"After being home awhile I left to walk the dog. I then walked back up to Bernice's apartment and she invited me in. We had a cup of coffe and I sat on the couch. I remember having my matches and my smoking pipe in my jacket pocket. After my coffee I went into the bathroom. When I came out Bernice was in the bedroom combing her hair. She was wearing a pink house coat type of outer wear with no bra (I could see her breasts when she bent over.) I grabbed her with my hand around her waist area. When I did that she pushed me. I threw her on the bed and took off her underwear because I wanted to have intercourse with her. I got my penis inside her for a few strokes and then pulled out and masturbated. I did cum on the bed spread when I was finished. I had already thrown her underwear on the right side of the bed. After the sex she said she was going to tell my wife Karen. I then went to the kitchen and got a steak knife with a hard plastic brown handle and stabbed Bernice in the stomach while she was laying on the couch. The rest of the incident I do not recall although I admit to having strangled her."
(When he later testified about the confession, Morrissey said Lapointe demonstrated how he strangled Mrs. Martin with both hands.)
Finally, after midnight, Lapointe was presented with a third interrogator, Capt. Joseph Brooks, head of the detective division. Brooks knew Lapointe because both frquented My Brother's Place. Brooks said he was brought in because Lapointe "continued to vacillate." That is, he'd give a statement, then recant and say he was just parroting what they told him, saying what they wanted to hear so he could go to the bathroom or go home. Police insisted that Lapointe was always free to get up and walk out of the station. But even Brooks testified that Lapointe told him he didn't know he wasn't under arrest and could leave.
After Morrissey left her home, Karen Lapointe called her mother Margaret Dana of Farmington. Dana called Karen's brother , Kenneth Martin of Wallingford. They met at Karen's house. At 10 PM, Dana and Kenneth Martin went to the police station. They wanted to find out what was happening with Richard, to see if he needed a lawyer and take him home if possible. Dana testified a police lieutenant told her that he couldn't interrupt the questioning. He also said that Richard had been told about getting a lawyer, but had said he didn't want one. No one told Lapointe his family members were there. After a half hour, an officer suggested they go home, and told them he would call when Richard could be picked up. Kenneth Martin called again at midnight. The police put him off, again. Asked why she didn't push for a lawyer for Richard, Dana said, "We thought he was just being interviewed. We had no idea what had transpired that night."
Lapointe told Brooks he was cold, hungry and tired. Finally, well after 1 AM, they let Lapointe go home. It's unclear if Brooks had complete command and control on the Lapointe case. He testified he didn't know Morrissey secretly taped the interview with Karen Lapointe.
Regardless of who called the shots, it seems unusual that they'd let a confessed, sadistic sex killer go home to a wife with cerebral palsy and a small child. Would they have let Fred Merrill go home? Lapointe got up and went to work the next morning. He was arrested that evening, after Lombardo had finished the application for an arrest warrant. Although Lombardo claimed to have other evidence linking Lapointe to the crime, what he really had were the three confessions he and Morrissey sweated out of Lapointe over nine hours the night before....
Do mentally handicapped people sometimes confess to crimes they haven't committed? Unfortunately, yes. Robert Perske of Darien - an author who is a former pastor, a former mental retardation caseworker and administrator and a past president of Connecticut Associaton for Retarded Citizens - has written a book about it, titled Unequal Justice.
He writes that many people with mental disabilities become hugely reliant on authority figures and try inordinately to please them, even if it means giving wrong answers and incriminating themselves. he said such people look for clues from interrogators on what to say, and often don't understand abstract concepts such as waiving rights. "They often think it is waving to the right, or something like that," Perske writes. He took a close interest in the Lapointe trial. Unfortunately for Lapointe, he wasn't on the jury.....
Lapointe's lawyers said a person with Lapointe's limitations would have been too intimidated to leave or to resist police pressure to confess. Their argument turned to the depth of Lapointe's limitations. His lawyers called a psychologist, Anne Phillips, and a psychiartist, Dr. Kenneth Selig, who supported their contention and testified Lapointe was a mentally damaged man, vulnerable, and gullible. Phillips said Lapointe had "no ability to challenge figures of authority," and said if he were told something was true he'd think it was true. She said passive responses were to be expected from him, and shouldn't be seen as signs of guilt. Lapointe had intelligence, she said, but, because of his brain damage, couldn't use it to make sense of the world.
Along with the experts, Lapointe's lawyers paraded in a host of Manchester people who knew Lapointe. They described him as a jolly meek "Mr. Peepers" man who was "slow," "not all there," "very simple", "mildly retarded", and - most commonly - "childlike" or a "child in a man's body." Many witnesses used similar words for Karen lapointe as well.
Tom Moriarty, a manager at Andy's Foodtown market when Lapointe worked there as a bundleboy, said Lapointe believed everything he was told. One day when the store was out of bananas, Lapointe kept demanding to know why. To kid around, Moriarty said he'd forgotten to water the banana tree in the back room, and there were no bananas on it. Lapointe believed him. Witnesses said numbers were very difficult for Lapointe. James Higgins said he once bought a beer from Lapointe when he was tending bar at the knights of columbus. he said he gave Lapointe a $5 bill and got more than $15 in change.
Creamer (prosecuting attorney) didn't let this stand. She methodically attacked the expert witness, as she would later do in front of the jury. She emphasized that Lapointe, whatever his shortcomings, was heading a family and holding a job. Worse, for Lapointe, he scored 92 on an IQ test, putting him only in the 30th percentile, but still the lower part of the average range. That he did so well was a surprise to all who knew him, but it helped Barry [judge] decide the confession was voluntary, and that Lapointe knew what he was doing. He denied the motion. Lapointe not only lost his motion, he lost his familly and his in-laws.
When he was first arrested, the Martin family supported RIchard. It hadn't occured to them that he might be the killer. "I was very shocked; it had never entered my mind," Natalie Howard told me. BUt by the time the case came to court, the family appeared to have been won over by the police and prosecution.
Elizabeth Martin, Karen's stepmother and one of the few family members who stood by Richard, said she would have come to the hearing from upstate New York to testify as a character witness, except other family members gave her the impression that "the evidence against him was overwhelming."
Karen filed for divorce, and reclaimed her maiden name. she was one of the last witnesses at the hearing to suppress the confession, and she weakened her previous statements. She'd said several times earlier that Richard stayed home after he came back from walking the dog, before 5:30 pm, on the night of the killing. This time she said that from 6:15 or 6:30 pm to about 7 pm, she was upstairs getting her son ready for bed, so she wasn't sure whether Richard was home then. When she and Sean came downstairs, she said, Richard was there, watching TV, not sweating or bleeding, looking and acting as he had before. While she testified, Karen appeared to look away when Richard looked at her. At one point, when the subject of Richard's disabilites came up, Karen blurted,"There's nothing wrong with Richard." Lapointe's lawyers now felt Karen had turned on her husband, become a potential liability, a loose cannon. They didn't call her to testify again.
GUILTY
With the confession in evidence, Lapointe's lawyers were forced to attack it again. At his trial last spring, they brought in Phillips again and another psychiatrist, Dr. Donald Grayson. Grayson said he found Lapointe's story that he signed the confession to go to the bathroom and get himself out of a stressful situation "quite believable". He also noted that Lapointe had a certain body of knowledge - he does children's crossword puzzles, and has memorized the state capitals. This may be why he scored as well as he did on IQ tests. Grayson called this "ice cream knowledge", nice to have but not useful in solving the problems of day to day living.....
Lapointe took the stand and said several times he didn't kill Bernice Martin....Those who support Lapointe saw the cross examination as another example of his inability to stand up to authority figures and his inclination to tell such people what they want to hear. The jury viewed his testimony differently - as the squirming of a guilty man. Deliberations lasted only one hour....
Because of trial tactics and the rules of evidence, the jury did not hear everything. Combining at least three important pieces of informatin the jurors did not hear with much that they did, and talking with some people who didn't testify, I believe there are several square and honest reasons to doubt Lapointe's guilt.
The Case for Lapointe
Whoever raped and murdered Bernice Martin was a raging, violent maniac. Richard Lapointe is a meek and timid man who'd never struck his wife or child...."if he was walking his dog and the dog stopped, he wouldn't even jerk the chain to get it moving again, " said Charles Kelehan, the pub owner....
Whoever committed the crime set fires to cover it up. "I can't see Richard being able to think of that," said Peter Engelbrecht, who worked with Lapointe at Friendly's, and now works for the Manchester ARC...
Lapointe was terribly clumsy. He frequently cut himself. he had trouble with simple tasks such as stocking supermarket shelves or making a sandwhich. Lapointe had a bandage over a cut on his hand. It fell into a seafood sandwich and he left it there. So much for that...
Time Frame
....in the 30 to 45 minutes, Richard Lapointe, a man who is slow and slow witted, weak and a legendary klutz, had to take a 10 minute walk to Bernice Martin's apartment, have coffee with her, rape her, bind her, stab her, set the apartment on fire, take a 10 minute walk home, and sit down to watch TV, in the same clothes, not sweating or bleeding, looking as if he never left. If Karen told the truth about her family's activities that evening, it's very hard to believe Richard guilty...
The Warrant
Much was made, on the arrest warrant and at the trial, of specific facts that Lapointe provided to police that only the killer would have known. These facts were supposed to be additional proof, beyond the confession, of Lapointe's guilt. They prove nothing. Analyzing them one by one, they are either false or were known to more people than the killer....
Wrong Theory
....Let's dismiss the first two confessions as ludicrous and oxymoronic. A rational person cannot admit to having done something he can't remember doing. Let's go to the third confession that Lapointe gave to detective Morrissey.
In this one, Lapointe leaves to walk the dog, goes over to Mrs Martin's apartment, has coffe, then goes to the bathroom. When he comes out, MRs. Martin is sitting in a housecoat with no bra, brushing her hair. Lapointe can see her breasts when she bends over. he assaults her on the bed. he gets his penis in for a few strokes, then withdraws it and masturbates on the bedspread. She tells him she is going to tell his wife. So he goes and gets a knife and stabs her on the couch, strangles her with his hands, and then doesn't remember anything else.
Family members say Mrs. martin was a proper woman who wouldn't have appeared as Lapointe said. Lapointe is supposed to have said, "I already had thrown her underwear on the right side of the bed." Would Richard Lapointe, a man with a weak memory, remember a detail such as that almost two and a half years later? Or is it something police fed him, because it happened to correspond to a photo of the scene?
More importantly, the autopsy showed so many cuts and bruises in and around the vagina and urethra that Katsnelson says the rape was most likely done with a blunt instrument. Then there is the location of the body. Police believed Mrs. Martin was raped and stabbed, then placed on the living room couch, which was then set on fire. So says the warrant. This somewhat corresponds to Lapointe's confession - he says he stabbed Martin on the couch - but not to what experts believe actually happened.
Subsequent testimony by Katsnelson and others showed Mrs. Martin wansn't on the couch. She was found across the room, six or eight feet from the couch. That led to a new theory: that Mrs. Martin was raped and stabbed in the bedroom, and then somehow crawled outside the bedroom door, where she lost consciousness.
Finally, Morrissey was clear that Lapointe admitted strangling Mr. Martin with both hands. Katsnelson says Mrs. Martin was not strangled with two hands. "This is not a manual strangulation," he said. He said because of the kinds of bruises present, it was strangulation by compression, most likely by a blunt object being pushed against the right side of her neck.
Thus the salient elements of the crime didn't happen the way Lapointe confessed to them. Curiously, his confession did correspond to the police theory of the crime. Is it possible, as Lapointe claims, that police officers put words in his mouth? Or that he confessed to what he read in the paper? Or some combination of the two? The facts known only to the killer were also known to the police.
Epilogue
.....Lapointe, who has been in custody since the day after he gave his confessions in 1989, remains in Somers prison. He is much as he wsa in Manchester. John Salo, educational psychologist at the prison, said Lapointe's reading level is mid-3rd grade to early 4th grade, making him functionally illiterate. This means there's a serious question of whether he understood his Miranda rights in the two minutes Manchester police took to read them to him and have him sign a waiver. Salo said Lapointe is taking the lowest level adult education class, but has trouble focusing on readin gor listening for more than five or seven minutes at a time. He sometimes gets exhausted after one class The other men in the class seem to like him. They kid and tease him about his absentmindedness and lack of energy, but seem to look out for him.
He jokes with them, sometimes about his own weak vision and poor hearing. Lapointe doesn't participate in prison exercise activities, goes to church, reads the newspaper occasionally and watches little tv. Salo, like the mental health experts who testified at the trial, described Lapointe as the kind of low-functioning person who is subservient to authority. He wore brown khaki prison clothers the day I visited him in December. I looked into his big eyes, which don't seem to move together and asked if he committed the murder.
"No, I did not," he said quietly, but not what I would call passively. "I got a bad deal." He was cheerful most of the time I was with him. He said the loss of his son was the worst part of it. The props, the stuff the police hung on the walls, the "Mission Impossible" style sting the police prepared for Lapointe? It was probably more trouble than it was worth. Lapointe said he only remembers seeing the picture of Bernice Martin."
From Reasonable Doubt, by Tom Condon, Northeast Magazine, The Hartford Courant, February 21, 1993 (Not in its entirety)
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