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CASE CLOSED: City cops reveal how they stopped a serial killer from striking again
By: JO C. GOODE, Staff Writer
02/18/2006




WOONSOCKET - Convicted serial killer Jeffrey S. Mailhot told police he picked the victims he lured and killed in his Cato Street apartment because he believed no one would miss the troubled women who sometimes turned to selling themselves on the streets to feed the drug habits they battled. But he was wrong.



As soon as victims Audrey Harris, Christine Dumont and Stacie Goulet went missing, their families immediately contacted police and began their own searches around the city.


And what the 35-year-old murderer also didn't count on was a vigilant team of local cops, who would doggedly work to solve the mystery of the missing women and take down a predator who was determined to kill again.

"It was the hunt. It was getting them into his little hole and the thrill once the door was shut. He closed the door and got a rush," said Lt. Edward Lee.

Lee, a sergeant at the time, and his then-partner, Sgt. Steve Nowak, would break the triple murder case and convince a serial killer to confess.

Harris, 33, was Mailhot's first victim, disappearing without a trace in February 2003. Her mother, Claudette Harris, would be the last person to speak to her. Audrey called to say she was coming for a visit, but she never arrived.

Over a year later, in April 2004, the 42-year-old Dumont disappeared, leaving behind uncashed disability checks.
Then police started looking for a possible connection.

"We thought something was wrong after Christine. The city has a history of prostitute murders and prostitutes going missing. After the second victim disappeared - and so close together to the first - we started looking in that direction," said Nowak.

Detectives were handling the cases as missing persons investigations, until Stacie Goulet, 25, vanished on July 3, 2004.

She was last seen at a fireworks display at the World War II Veterans Memorial State Park.

A break in the case

Soon after Goulet went missing, detectives got an anonymous tip. That led them to a woman named Jocilin Martel.
Detectives found Martel at the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI), incarcerated on a probation violation related to a drug charge. She would tell them about how she agreed to go with a man to his apartment at 221 Cato St. who then attacked her.

When Lee returned to police headquarters, he checked police records and found an incident report filed by a city woman named Teese Morris for a similar assault at the Cato Street residence. Both attacks happened sometime between the disappearances of Audrey Harris and Christine Dumont.

When Lee interviewed Morris, she would tell a horrific story about a life and death struggle between herself and the stranger.

At first everything is nice, Morris tells police. She's happy to be with a cute guy for once and he's polite and talking to her.

"Then he just comes up from behind her and grabbed her. She can actually feel herself going out," Lee said.

The pair would engage in a violent battle: Morris kicking her attacker, kicking at the kitchen table, the refrigerator. They ended up in the bedroom and onto the bed. She tried to escape by kicking out a window until she finally was able to get away from the man later identified as Mailhot, Lee said.

"She's pleading for her life. The way she describes it, it was unbelievable. Then he stopped, just stopped," Lee said.
It was a similar situation for Jocilin, Nowak said. She would get away by jamming her finger in Mailhot's eye.

There was a third victim police talked to, but she refused to file a complaint, the detectives said.

Getting statements about the attacks from the two women was the break in the case they needed. The detectives identified Mailhot through utility bills and a picture of him from the Department of Motor Vehicles. Both Morris and Martel identified him in a picture lineup.

"We went to our supervisors and said 'this guy is playing choking games,"' Lee said.

Armed with arrest warrants for the assaults, Lee and Nowak staked out the Cato Hill apartment building, waiting for their assault suspect to arrive home.

A 'nice kid' turns serial killer

How is it that such an unremarkable man become one of the state's most brutal killers?

A family acquaintance said that as a boy, Mailhot grew up on River Road in Lincoln near the Spurwink School with his sister and parents, who both worked at the former Almacs on Mendon Road in Cumberland.

The family moved to the city where Mailhot graduated from Woonsocket High School in 1989, yet his senior photograph doesn't appear, only listing him as a camera shy.

Neighbors where he lived on Grandview Avenue were shocked to learn what Mailhot had been accused of, although he was a loner who didn't bother with other children.

Old girlfriends, friends and co-workers were in disbelief at the charges filed against Mailhot. He reportedly told his sister of his crimes the day he got arrested and wrote a letter to a woman where he worked apologizing for what he did.

During the murder investigation, a Cato Street neighbor accused cops of setting him up. His landlord called him a nice kid who paid his rent on time.

By the time he was 17, Mailhot's mother had died of cancer. Five years later, his father was dead too.

Police said he liked bodybuilding, motorcycles and had an extensive video collection with his entertainment tastes ranging from wrestling, "American Chopper" and the "All in the Family" television series.

Mailhot was the only resident in the four-unit building. No one would hear the sounds of the attacks or cries of help from the victims.

At 5'3" and a muscular 170 pounds, Mailhot was never on their radar for the crimes or the cases of the missing women until his arrest, the detectives said. He had no prior run-ins with police, was a hard working factory worker at Proma Technologies in Franklin, and liked to sing Karaoke at local pubs.

He also liked to hang out at some of the city's seedier establishments on Arnold Street, where prostitution and drug activity abound. It was on Arnold Street, just around the corner from his apartment, that Mailhot met up with some of his victims.

"When we bring him in he's polite and quiet and denies that he's ever had anything to do with prostitutes," Lee said.

The confession

It's late afternoon on July 16, 2004 and Mailhot is sitting in the cramped interrogation room with Lee and Nowak.

Outside, in an adjoining room, other detectives and officers are monitoring the interview inside.

Meanwhile Sgt. Gerry Durand, a member of the Bureau of Criminal Identification (the police department's real life version of the television show "CSI") is at Mailhot's apartment with Sgt. Marc Turcotte to gather evidence in the two assault cases.

Back at headquarters, Mailhot changes his tune about knowing prostitutes when the detectives inform him they have complaints from his two victims and can place the attacks at his home.

But he denies knowing anything about the missing women.
"One of the things that strikes out to us in the beginning of the interview was Mailhot's reaction when Eddie threw out three big pictures of the missing women," Nowak said.

The detectives would ask Mailhot several times if he knew anything about Audrey Harris, Christine Dumont or Stacie Goulet, but continued to insist he knew nothing.
However, Mailhot would trip up not long into the interview.

"At one point he looked up at us and said 'You guys are trying to say I killed those three girls," according to Nowak. "But we never said they were dead, we said they were missing."

According to Lee, Mailhot didn't crack immediately. They had to work him a little longer.

"Steve started hitting him about the families and I just presented him with the impossible situation that teams of police and detectives and all the resources of the state of Rhode Island are at your apartment right now, but of course it was only Gerry," Lee said.

He would go on and threaten Mailhot with the fact that if one fiber or a drop of blood or anything like that that could put those girls in the apartment, he needed to tell detectives what really happened.

Lee would tell Mailhot that the choking games he played with the girls just went too far - he wasn't a monster or a bad guy - he just went too far.

"Then he started tearing up and I'm thinking, 'Oh my God, he's going to do it," Lee said.

Mailhot confessed to the three murders within two hours of his arrest.

"I asked him, 'all of them?' and he answered, "all of them."

"Where are they, Jeff?" asks Lee.

"They're in bags."

The search for evidence begins: Inside, and below, Mailhot's home

The detectives outside start to scramble on the two-way radio to let Durand and Turcotte know that their assault investigation has now turned to a triple murder investigation.

"It almost felt like they were playing a joke," Durand said.

As Mailhot reveals the gory details of his crimes, the on-scene investigators look for evidence.
Durand locates the bathtub where Mailhot reports he dismembered the victims' bodies.

"When I started looking at it, I saw three striations on the edge of the tub. Two are going on way and one going the other way. And then it clicked: that's the saw marks," Durand said.

Investigators not only find one of the three saws he used to dismember the bodies. They also had videotape of Mailhot purchasing the tool.

Lt. Timothy Paul, who headed the BCI unit at the time of the crimes, said he literally seized the contents of the bathroom.

"My guys grabbed everything. We cut the floor, cut out the tub, the toilet, the shower stall," Paul said.

On day two of the investigation, they treated the bathroom with luminol, a chemical that shows invisible blood traces.

The bathroom proved to be a treasure trove of blood evidence that a crime lab was able to trace back to the three victims.

Investigators would even send two cameras down the pipes leading from the Cato Street apartment building looking for clues and a rubber glove he said he used. They cut out two sections of pipe, one was located under the street and unearthed with a bulldozer.

Nowak credits the work of the BCI investigators with finding the facts that would have been used to prosecute the killer.

"They're the ones who found the blood, they're the ones who found the saw marks, they're the ones who dug up the street. Basically me and Eddie found the facts of what happened and these guys with their scientific work proved those facts. A confession alone does not make a case," Nowak said.

In all, they collected 166 pieces of evidence against Mailhot, including a strange photograph of him dressed up for Halloween as a wrestler and holding a stuffed animal in a chokehold.

The Johnston Landfill: The search for bodies

Lee and Nowak continued their interview with Mailhot for six hours, learning that he deposited the bodies in black garbage bags with yellow handles in dumpsters around the city.

They would also find out that Mailhot panicked after he killed his first victim, not knowing what to do with her body. At first, he wrapped her in a carpet and drove around the city in his truck only to return home.

Two days later it would be an episode of 'The Sopranos" that would give Mailhot the idea to dismember the victims in his bathtub.

Mailhot would give the detectives a detailed account of how he coldly set about on accomplishing the unspeakable task, at one point stopping for a beer break.

Police had a confession and the evidence to prove it, but what they didn't have was the victims' bodies. It was a fact that added to the already incomprehensible grief of the women's families.

So the 10-day search began by local police and state police at the state's Central Landfill in Johnston in blistering summer heat and through tons of compress garbage.

It was like finding a needle in a haystack," said Lt. Dennis Perron, who was in charge of the Mailhot investigation, "It was absolutely the most atrocious place.

It's sad to think that will be their final resting place."
But even with the painstaking work in horrendous conditions, Perron said the 20 or so volunteers were motivated to sift through mountainous mounds of trash to find the victims.

Perron said he was at the site when one of the Woonsocket police volunteers found a black, duct -taped plastic bag with the partial remains of Stacie Goulet, reportedly pregnant when she was killled.

The search was eventually called off without police finding any trace of Audrey Harris or Christine Dumont.

Stopping a killer from killing again

Mailhot's average look and seemingly unremarkable life belies the savage murderer he's become. The investigators closest to the case still don't know his motivation - or how he took the leap from an unassuming character to a notorious serial killer.

A look at how Mailhot lived is a telling snapshot of the double life of Jeffrey Mailhot.

"It was like two different people lived in the house," Durand said.

Mailhot's belongings were meticulously organized, said the BCI detective.

"His socks were facing the same direction and folded and t-shirts arranged like they were categorized, folded in half and placed in a file folder," Durand said.

But the sheet that covered his queen-sized bed was too small. And while the rugs were filthy like the bathtub, the rest of the rooms were immaculate. Downstairs in the basement, Mailhot set up a workout area. The weights were in sequential order, perfectly organized like his video and CD collection.

There are shades of Mailhot that fit the criminal experts profile of a serial killer. A white male between 30- to 40-years old, who enjoys the physical contact with their victims. They often use their hands to kill.

He admitted to detectives that he was a bedwetter as a child, but denied a history of cruelty to animals.

Mailhot even suggested to Lee that maybe he killed because his parents died when he was young. But then he conceded that a lot of people lose their parents when they are young, but don't kill people.

Lee called him an organized serial killer.

"The only mistake he made, what was disorganized, is letting the two victims go," Lee said.
Mailhot was becoming a more efficient killer, detectives said. He was also accelerating the time between attacks.
One thing is certain to police: If he hadn't been stopped,

Mailhot would have killed again.

"He made it quite clear," said Lee. "He wasn't done after these three girls. I said, 'Jeff, this isn't over is it?' He said no it wasn't, that he couldn't stop. It was a compulsion."

Last week, in front of the victim's still grieving families, Mailhot pleaded guilty to three counts of murder and two counts of felony assault before the case ever went to trial.

It is unlikely that he will ever see the light of day outside of the confines of the ACI. He won't be eligible for parole until he is 77.

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