Catch the sparrow, p.14
Catch the Sparrow, page 14
People wondered how the two had ever been hired in Greece. Pignato and Joseph started pointing fingers everywhere else, in a game of corrupt telephone.
Sergeant Robert Trowbridge, one of the men on the team that arrested Edward Laraby in the Bethany Swenson case, was suspended from the force, and admitted to falsifying Pignato’s background check. The background check included fake letters from two former Rochester police chiefs and one from Rochester mayor Bob Duffy, who later said “there was no way [he] would ever give a positive recommendation” for Pignato.
Trowbridge said he’d fudged the background check at Rahn’s request. Rahn, though, said it was Auberger’s choice to hire Pignato, so he figured it was a “fait accompli,” and he had to make it happen. Auberger swore he knew nothing about the cooked-up background check and thought it was legit.
Trowbridge, who’d been covering for his chief before, now wanted to come clean. Rahn had told him he wanted a positive report on Pignato, so Trowbridge and Pignato worked together to fabricate the quotes in it. Rahn had told him not to call Mayor Duffy, Trowbridge said.
The prosecution presented a similar narrative regarding Nick Joseph, claiming that Rahn knew the extent of Joseph’s infractions the night Joseph almost killed Alexis Sharp and baby Azaria. Worse, he’d purposefully tried to obscure the evidence, telling Joseph on the phone that morning to wait until the drugs were out of his system before going to the hospital. Protocols had been broken, the defense argued, because of inaccurate information about the accident from Rahn’s subordinates
In April 2010, Rahn was found guilty on seven counts. On the felony charge of offering a false instrument for filing—that is, Pignato’s falsified background check: guilty. On the three felony charges related to stalling Joseph’s investigation—hindering a prosecution, tampering with public records, and falsifying business records: guilty. On three misdemeanor charges of official misconduct and falsely reporting an incident: guilty. Five other charges were dismissed. His wife, Marilyn, wept when the verdict was announced. “This is so unfair,” she said. “The criminal justice system stinks.”
“You were sworn to set the moral and ethical tone for your department,” judge Francis Affronti said at Rahn’s sentencing, where he gave Rahn one and a half to six years in prison. “The example was one rather of deceit and favoritism and abuse of power.” Sandra Doorley called it “a corruption that cannot be tolerated.”
Some Greece residents see Rahn as a fall guy for Auberger. Baxter calls him a “tyrant.” The truth might lie somewhere in between.
By the time Loszynski and his team were finished, the price tag for the investigation had reached $930,000. In total, eight officers resigned or retired, including Rahn and Trowbridge. In his report of his findings, Loszynski concluded that the corruption ran so deep that he “wondered how the department ever functioned.”
The Greece PD, despite a remaining core of solid, honest officers, was in shambles when Todd Baxter took his oath during that hectic spring. The same day Rahn was convicted, Baxter promoted sixteen officers in Greece—men and women he said were loyal and hardworking—to a newly created leadership team. “We’re moving forward like a rocket ship,” he said.
I imagine there to be variations on this archetypal trifecta of upstanding cops—the hard-nosed Dave Connors, the politically savvy Todd Baxter, the protective teddy bear Stan Chizuk—all over the country, just as we can surmise that there are Nick Josephs and Gary Pignatos everywhere, too, endangering innocent people and taking advantage of vulnerable ones. Joseph and Pignato just happened to get caught.
I think of the woman Pignato coerced into sex, who must have felt disenfranchised or powerless, who believed that acquiescing to his intimidation was her only avenue; of the many others whose safety or peace of mind he violated; of baby Azaria, born before she should have been, fighting for her life because Joseph came careening down a highway blasted on coke and liquor—and I can’t fathom why no one tried harder to intercede.
I remember again Baxter’s words when we met for coffee in Rochester: “The corruption stifled everything.”
And what impact might these decades of corruption have had on the investigation into Stephanie’s disappearance and murder?
“Maybe the administration wouldn’t give these guys”—Connors and his team—“any freedom” to really investigate with independence, Baxter says. If they had, he continues, “Maybe you could’ve had Stephanie’s killer long before.”
What if Nick Joseph and Gary Pignato had never been hired? What if those women had never faced the trauma of Pignato’s behavior? What if Timothy Milgate’s murder had been solved before his sister Debbie died?
And I ask one more what-if for Jerry, who died without real closure to the greatest loss of his life, a tragedy that consumed the last eighteen years of his life. What if? I wonder, and I remember sitting by Jerry’s deathbed, watching his eyes search the ceiling of his hospice room as he muttered “місячне світло,” the Ukrainian word for moonlight.
PART IV
Hunters and Prey
32
What filtered down to me as a teenager was that the main person of interest in Stephanie’s case was a man with a spotty past who was on parole when he was hired as a maintenance worker in her apartment complex. All I knew was that he had been arrested for sexually assaulting a girl my age on the street in Rochester.
Sandra’s CD expands the picture for me. When Ed Laraby was released from Attica after an eight-year sentence for robbery, on January 18, 1991, Stephanie had been teaching strings in Greece for just under five months. She’d made friends and was seeing a new therapist. Life was brighter for her.
But Laraby’s options were bleak. His brother-in-law Randall Glen had a gig as a maintenance worker at the Newcastle apartment complex. Glen talked to his boss, William Shaffer, and Laraby was hired on January 23 for $6.50 an hour, after lying on his application. Laraby answered the question “Have you ever been convicted of any crime?” with one word: “No.” I suppose Shaffer either didn’t look into or didn’t care about Laraby’s past.
Maintenance workers at Newcastle were on call during appointed shifts to respond to tenants’ needs. They were given a set of master keys to enter apartments, so they could make repairs when someone wasn’t home.
On January 25, Laraby signed a form agreeing to return his keys at the end of each shift, so accusations couldn’t be leveled at the crew in case of a break-in. It was a formality, really; the keys were the type anyone could make copies of at a hardware store for a few cents. And in fact each guy held on to a set of keys, only returning them if he quit or was fired. The job was a piece of cake. Mostly, Laraby made quick fixes to leaky toilets, cleaned out clogged drains, tightened valves in washing machines, and changed light bulbs.
Nine times in the months between January and July, Stephanie Kupchynsky filled out a residence service request slip. Seven of those slips were signed by Laraby or Glen. Twice, Stephanie had been home to sign the form. Laraby completed both of those repairs; he stayed at least an hour each time. Also in those six months, Laraby made two repairs in Annette Alferov’s apartment, across the parking lot.
By the first week of July, Laraby was getting under his boss’s skin. One morning, according to the disciplinary report Shaffer wrote, he heard the raised voices of Laraby and the maintenance superintendent, Willie, outside his office. Shaffer went out to investigate and saw Laraby standing by a workbench, glaring at Willie.
“I suggest you get back to work!” Willie said.
“I don’t give a fuck about this job, and you’re not going to tell me what to do!” Laraby said.
“That type of language and that type of attitude will not be tolerated as long as you’re an employee at Newcastle,” Shaffer said, only then realizing that Laraby was clenching a screwdriver in his hand.
Laraby waved the screwdriver in Shaffer’s face, taunting him. “Well, I don’t particularly care for your fucking attitude, either.”
Shaffer took a few steps back. Speaking to Willie but keeping his eyes on Laraby, he said, “I suggest you send this man home for the day, until he can calm down and talk in a rational manner.”
But Laraby’s hostility only intensified over the next few weeks as he grumbled about finding a new job. On the morning of July 22, as Willie was filling in time sheets, Laraby griped again, “When I get my new job, you won’t have to worry about me.”
“I don’t want to hear the bull today, Laraby,” Willie said.
Laraby stared at him. “OK, I’ll take a sick day.”
“I don’t care what you do. You’re responsible for your own actions,” Willie said, and Laraby walked out.
But once again, instead of firing him, Willie gave him another chance. When Laraby showed up for work on Tuesday, Willie told him if he brought a doctor’s note for Monday, they could forget about the incident.
But Laraby was indignant. “If I have to get a sick slip for Monday, I’ll get one for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.”
Willie told him that if he did that, he shouldn’t come back at all.
Laraby stormed out. He didn’t show up Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. On Friday, he came back with a sick slip for Monday. “Did you mean what you said about not coming back?” he asked Willie.
“Yes, I did,” Willie said—and Laraby was jobless again.
It was July 26. Five days later, Stephanie took Maxine and her kids out for ice cream, stopped at the Tops market, went home, called her dad, and was never seen again.
Nine months later, in the early morning of April 10, 1992, Annette Alferov was brutally raped in her home.
Two and a half weeks after that, on April 29, Laraby tried to check himself into rehab at Park Ridge Hospital, telling the intake counselor he’d been drunk and high anywhere from twice a week to every day since he was eighteen, even getting drunk on homemade wine in jail; that he’d been snorting coke since his release; and that he sometimes took his son’s Ritalin if there was nothing else around. He told the counselor that life wasn’t worth living—he often fantasized about suicide, and it was getting worse lately because of some “remorse over fucked up things.” He said he’d most recently considered suicide on April 12, two days after Annette was raped.
Four months later, in August 1992, the cops caught Laraby as he grabbed Bethany Swenson by her crotch so hard she was lifted off her feet, right on Monroe Avenue. His short bout of turbulent freedom was over.
33
From newspapers and files, I piece together the narrative of Laraby’s adult life up to the point he was hired at Newcastle Apartments. Whatever Sandra’s CD can’t tell me, I find in Laraby’s many cameo appearances in the Democrat and Chronicle.
By the time he turned eighteen on February 20, 1971, Ed Laraby had been jostled among many homes. At the time, his legal address was that of his stepfather Harold, who had married his mother Alice soon after Ed’s birth and given him his last name. He had lived with Harold before, during middle school. This I know from an article published May 7, 1967, entitled “Six Rabbits Rescued When Fire Hits Shed.” Fourteen-year-old Ed was babysitting his three younger half siblings when their shed, which housed twenty-five pet rabbits, “raised as a sort of family hobby,” caught on fire. The article says that Ed “managed to save six rabbits … but couldn’t save 19 of the pets.” I feel a pang of pity for the tender teenager Laraby might have been, until it occurs to me to wonder: How did the fire start in the first place?
On August 24, 1972, six months after his nineteenth birthday, Laraby enlisted in the army. On his enlistment papers, Laraby answered “Yes” when asked if he had ever been arrested—for driving without a license. He said he had spent fifteen days in jail, the first of his many imprisonments.
Laraby also wrote in his enlistment form that he was in a car accident when he was sixteen and suffered facial injuries that landed him at the Genesee Hospital. How severe the injuries were, he didn’t say, but they were bad enough that he lost some bottom teeth and began wearing a dental plate.
When Laraby arrived at Fort Dix in central New Jersey for basic training, Stephanie was about to start third grade in East Brunswick, less than an hour’s drive away.
Laraby’s tenure in the army was short. After fewer than five days at Fort Dix, he fled.
Later, when asked why he’d run away, Laraby wrote, “I was a kid who never had any discipline in his 19 years of existence. When I got to the induction barracks at Fort Dix and ran into all that discipline, I panicked and took off.”
On September 28, the US Army declared Laraby a deserter. Ten days earlier, he had been arrested for assault in Canada. His second prison stay was a seven-month stint in Ontario, where his AWOL status was discovered.
On May 7, 1973, officers drove Laraby across the five yawning arches of the Peace Bridge, which stretches across the Niagara River from Fort Erie, Ontario, to Buffalo, New York. He was apprehended there by FBI agents, who locked him up in the Erie County jail, and then the stockade in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
Commanding lieutenant Arthur Shemwell agreed that Laraby should be discharged “for the good of the service.” When interviewed, Shemwell wrote, “Laraby went to great lengths to show what a tough hoodlum he is. He described nine months in a Canadian jail for assault, during which time, he became a heroin addict. He described ‘street life’ and considerable prison experience. PV1 Laraby, regardless of the precise truth of his tales, is a very short-sighted individual, who ought to be discharged immediately.”
Laraby was discharged, “under conditions other than honorable,” on June 8, 1973, and he moved to an apartment in Rochester, near his stepfather.
On October 19, a little more than four months later, a man picked up a fifteen-year-old hitchhiker in Perinton and brought her to a nearby railroad station in his van. There he cut her clothes off, beating her with a belt when she struggled, bound her with a pair of socks, raped her, and left her there bound, gagged, and blindfolded, with her glasses replaced, useless, on her face over the blindfold.
On November 12, a man with a similar description picked up a seventeen-year-old in Brighton, drove her to Cobb’s Hill Park, and raped her.
By the end of the week, Laraby was arrested and charged with both rapes.
One year later, on October 25, 1974, Laraby pled guilty to one of the rapes; in exchange for the plea, charges of first-degree sodomy and possession of a weapon were dismissed. He was sentenced to six and a half to twenty-five years. Judge Hyman Maas, in response to hearing of Laraby’s troubled, unstable youth, said “Nothing in the whole story would justify what was done that night.”
Behind bars, Laraby studied law books and became a “jailhouse lawyer”—the inmate who tries to find a legal loophole and get his sentence reversed. In 1976 he filed an appeal, claiming that his sentence was “harsh and excessive.” The appeal was denied. He followed two years later with a detailed application for a hearing, claiming that there were several instances of incompetence on his lawyer’s part. This time the judge, Donald Mark, granted a trial, noting, “This may be one of those cases where the defendant has developed a belated insight into how his attorney should have represented him.… Nevertheless, [he] is entitled to an evidentiary hearing.”
Waiting for trial, Laraby worked to clean up his image from inside Attica’s walls. He earned his high school equivalency diploma in 1979, was on the dean’s list after his first semester at Genesee Community College, and took a course in sheet metal fabricating technology.
Next, he appealed to have his dishonorable discharge upgraded to an honorable one, so that he would have an easier time reentering society and the workforce. Ten letters of recommendation from various friends and family were sent to the Veterans Outreach Center to support his review, describing him with words like diligent, responsible, well-liked, respectable, and level-headed. The letters, all following the same template and looking as if they had been typed on the same typewriter, claimed he was a decent, upstanding citizen who was making sincere efforts to straighten out and start a new life with his wife, Terry, whom he’d married in 1975 in what must have been a jailhouse ceremony, one year into his first sentence. Even Terry’s mother wrote to say Laraby was “trying to better himself to make a good life for [her] daughter.”
The army denied the upgrade.
He joined Attica’s Seventh Step Foundation, a rehab group based on the seventh step of twelve-step programs, which urges addicts to embrace the pursuit of humility. He became the group’s public relations director, and he started writing advice columns for the Golden Times, a local newspaper for senior citizens.
His columns were meant to arm senior citizens with safeguards and insights that would help them avoid becoming victims of crime. In one, he recommends good locks for windows and doors: “Remember, the burglar tries to gain entrance into your home as quickly and as quietly as he can. The harder ‘YOU’ make it for them and the longer it takes them increases the chance that someone will hear or see them. So get tough, senior citizens, and use our tips wisely.”
In another, he covers robberies and purse-snatching, advising readers to stay calm if they are robbed. In an almost perfect description of himself, Laraby writes, “The amateur robber is usually a teenager, and more likely than not, he is a vetran [sic] from a broken home, who has no respect or moral convictions. This in itself makes him a very dangerous person.”
