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Phoebe Judge: This episode contains violent
content that may not be appropriate for everyone.
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Please use discretion.
Martha Elliott: He grew up with farm life. And at the age of
about 8, he was called on to start taking care
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of the chicks that were delivered, one-day-old, to
the farm each day. Which involved getting up early
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in the morning, turning on the water, making sure
they're fed, checking on them, caring for them,
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until one would show signs of having some disease
or might not be developing right or had signs that
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it wasn't going to be a good layer. And then his
job was to take that little chick who he'd been
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caring for and wring its neck and kill it.
Phoebe Judge: Michael Bruce Ross was born in
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July of 1959 to an egg farmer and his wife
in Brooklyn, Connecticut. We're hearing
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his story from journalist Martha Elliott.
Martha Elliott: He really didn't like that.
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I mean, he didn't like killing the chicks at
all at first, but he did it because that was
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part of his job. And he did that, and he became
a very hard working farm boy who did everything,
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learned to fix everything on the
farm, cleaned out the chicken manure. Just about every job that you could
think of Michael did. And he wanted to be a
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farmer more than anything, and he wanted
to go to Cornell more than anything. Phoebe Judge: He applied to Cornell and
was accepted. He planned to study in their
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School of Agriculture. But he wasn't just
excited about college, he was very eager
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to get away from his family.
Martha Elliott: His family was extremely dysfunctional. And his mother had
some mental problems. And he, in high school,
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was really not allowed to date. He was not
allowed to really do much of anything and
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getting off — out of her grip was just his goal.
Phoebe Judge: He did escape his mother's grip,
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moving to Ithaca, New York, in 1977, where he
tried to fit in. He joined a fraternity, he tried
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to date. But it didn't work. And it was at Cornell
that the aspiring chicken farmer from rural
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Connecticut began to stalk women. By the time he
was 28, he was on death row and seemed to believe
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he deserved to be there. Martha Elliott would
spend 20 years of her life trying to figure
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out how he got there, and whether Michael Ross
really did believe that he deserved to die.
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I'm Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal.
Martha Elliott: He would just walk behind them, lone women.
And he said he fed off knowing that they knew
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he was behind them and feeling their fear.
And then that escalated, and he finally
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grabs somebody and eventually he rapes someone.
And then just a few days before he graduated,
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he raped and murdered his first victim.
Phoebe Judge: The woman's name was Dzung Ngoc Tu,
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a 25-year-old graduate student,
at Cornell to study economics. Michael Ross was not caught, and after
graduation, he got a job as an insurance salesman,
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and he continued to rape and murder women.
Martha Elliott: Often he would try to gain
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the upper hand with a woman, come up from them
from behind, and put a belt around their neck
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or something else around their neck, and gain
control of them. That didn't always happen,
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sometimes he just gave somebody a ride and then
drove them to someplace where he killed them. But
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he would grab them and then tell them to take off
their clothes, and then he would rape them. But
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according to the psychiatrist who I talked to,
it was not the rape that gave him the orgasmic
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release, it was the actual murder. And that was
how he had sexual pleasure, which is — when your
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sex drive gets connected to the wrong thing, you
sometimes do things that are not within the norm
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of what we would expect of Homo sapiens.
Phoebe Judge: Over the course of her research,
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Martha Elliott came to believe that Michael
Ross was suffering from an extreme form of
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sexual sadism disorder. And Martha thinks
he knew he was sick. He said he'd been
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struggling with excessive masturbation and
violent fantasies since he was a child.
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Martha Elliott: I think he wanted to be caught.
He had been trying to come up with a way to kill
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himself. He couldn't turn himself in because
that would be too humiliating for him. And so
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he finally, one day, in broad daylight, saw a girl
walking down the road and turned his car around in
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a almost screechy, tire-squealing manner. Stopped
it, ran across the road, grabbed her, pulled her
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into the woods, and raped and murdered her. Twelve
people came forward who had seen him or seen his
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car, and then it was easy for the detective to
narrow down who could it possibly be based on
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proximity and where the cars were parked.
Phoebe Judge: The police searched through
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thousands of DMV records before they tracked down
a car registered to Michael Ross and arrested him.
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He eventually confessed to killing
eight women and raping most of them. Dzung Ngoc Tu, Tammy Williams, Paula Perrera,
Debra Smith Taylor, Robin Dawn Stavinksy,
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Wendy Baribeault, and his two youngest victims,
Leslie Shelley and her friend, April Brunias.
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They were only 14 years old.
[Somber music.] The trial lasted almost six months. The jury
deliberated for 87 minutes before returning
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a guilty verdict. The next step would be for
the jury to decide Michael Ross's punishment.
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The death penalty was on the books in Connecticut,
and so would be an option for the jury,
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but it hadn't been used in decades. The defense
argued that Michael Ross could not be executed
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because he was mentally ill, a sexual sadist
suffering from borderline personality disorder.
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Psychiatrists for the defense testified to this,
and Michael Ross's father and sisters described
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his disturbed childhood. The prosecution argued
simply that Ross was a brutal rapist who tortured
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women and murdered them to cover up his crimes.
Martha Elliott: I had moved to Connecticut in the
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fall of 1983, and he was arrested in June of 1984.
There were no reports of serial killers out on the
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loose, but of course, when you see a headline that
says a serial killer was apprehended, you're sort
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of relieved. And I didn't really give him any more
thought till I heard the verdict in his trial,
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which was that he would be executed by electric
chair. And that very much upset me, because I
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didn't even know Connecticut had a death penalty,
and I was brought up believing that all killing is
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wrong no matter who does it, including the state
of Connecticut. And I really did not want my state
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to be using my tax dollars to execute somebody.
Phoebe Judge: But Connecticut requires all death
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sentences to be appealed to the state Supreme
Court. And the defense argued that big mistakes
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had been made during the trial. Most importantly,
the prosecution psychiatrist had actually agreed
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with the defense that Ross was mentally ill, but
that was hidden from the jury. In 1994, the state
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Supreme Court ordered a new penalty trial, not to
address whether or not Michael Ross was guilty,
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but whether or not he should be on death row.
Martha Elliott: He then wrote a long piece for
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the Hartford Courant Magazine in which he said
that he didn't want the families of his victims
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to have to go through another trial and he was
willing to accept the death penalty. And I read
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that piece, and then I wrote to him and asked if
he'd be interviewed, thinking, "Well, is this guy
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serious? Is he depressed? What's he really up
to?" And also, I think, in the back of my mind,
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wishing that he wasn't going to do that because
I didn't want Connecticut to execute anybody.
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And I was the editor and publisher of the
Connecticut Law Tribune at the time, and
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this was a great story. I mean, who says "kill me"
when you get a reprieve from a death sentence?
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[Music.]
Phoebe Judge: The first time she saw Michael Ross face-to-face
was September 28th, 1995, in a courtroom.
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He turned around, smiled at her and
mouthed, "Are you Martha?" She nodded yes. Death row inmates were only allowed to make phone
calls in the evenings and only to landlines,
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not cellphones, which meant Martha would
have to give her home phone number, which she didn't really want to do. She
had a teenage daughter and year-old twins,
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so she gave him her fax line
number to avoid the possibility of her children answering his call by mistake.
Martha Elliott: It took me from the fall until the
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end of April to gather all the information that
I thought I needed and write the piece. And I
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really wanted to be done with it then, because
I had these nightmares of rape and murder,
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and I just was ready to move on.
Phoebe Judge: When Martha talks about nightmares of rape and murder, she wasn't
only thinking of Michael Ross's victims.
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She herself was attacked when she was a student
at Williams College. During her junior year, she
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went into a friend's dorm room, heard a noise, and
found a man standing in the closet behind her.
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Martha Elliott: And I backed up, took a step
backwards. And I forgot that there was a
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ottoman in the middle of the floor, and I tripped
over it and I found myself in a prone position.
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And for the next hour I fought him off, and I
was almost ready to give up. And by that time I
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really thought he was going to kill me, because
he was not responding to anything I said. But
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her roommate came in, and with that he just let
me go and ran out the door and he was caught.
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Phoebe Judge: Martha said she went through a
period of being afraid, afraid of someone in the
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closet, someone under the bed. And that it went
on for a number of years before she got married.
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She says she had buried that traumatic memory
for the most part, until she started working
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on this magazine piece about Michael
Ross. And her husband brought it up, and basically said, "What are you doing?"
Martha Elliott: And said that I was chasing
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demons. And when he said that, I knew exactly
what he was talking about. And it then made me
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fearful and agonized. And I finally decided I had
to tell Michael — and this was before I'd finished
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the story and why I decided I had to tell him —
because I didn't want him to think I had an ax to
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grind, if he ever found out somehow. And I told
him, and that actually was important because it
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made it so that every time I talked to him, I
didn't think about this experience. If I hadn't,
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it would've been in the back of my mind
every time I picked up the phone. Phoebe Judge: What did he say when you told him?
Martha Elliott: He said, "I've caused enough pain.
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If this is causing you pain, you never have to
speak to me again, and forget about writing this
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story. And I'll just never call you."
Phoebe Judge: So he was respectful of the experience you had gone through?
Martha Elliott: Extremely, and really caring,
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and we never spoke of it again. It was like,
it was mine to bring up and if I wanted to talk
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about it I could, but I didn't.
Phoebe Judge: You were really in it thick with him, it sounds like.
Martha Elliott: I was no longer terrified of him
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or even the idea of him. And so I felt comfortable
saying whatever I thought with him, and he knew
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that. One time he said to me, "I forgive Mr.
Shelley," who is a father of one of the victims.
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And I just got very upset and I said, "Who do you
think you are, forgiving Mr. Shelley? You have no
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right to be talking about forgiving Mr. Shelley.
Mr. Shelley may want you dead, but you have
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nothing to forgive him about. He has everything
made to forgive you. And, forget about that."
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And he totally backed off of that sentiment.
Phoebe Judge: In 1996, Martha published her
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article about Michael's wish to be executed. But
Michael kept calling and calling every week.
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Martha Elliott: I didn't have the heart not
to take his calls, because I knew there are
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very few people in the world he could call. And
he became my kind of community service. I was
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listening to his problems and issues and legal
concerns, et cetera. And just being there on
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the other end of the phone, I figured it was the
least I could do for this lonely man on death row,
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who was likely to lose his life.
Phoebe Judge: Martha says it took her a long time to admit to anyone, even herself,
that the two of them had become friends.
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And from her point of view,
his remorse was very real. Martha Elliott: He didn't want to be remembered
for the worst thing he ever did. He wanted to
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somehow make his last act one that, in his mind,
was noble, that he was saying, "End this now. End
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their nightmare, just let's go. Kill me and make
it all stop." And that was his way of trying to
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explain to the families that he was sorry for what
he had done to their loved ones and to them.
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[Intense music.]
Phoebe Judge: But if he had so much compassion for the families and didn't want to make them
endure another trial, why was he publishing essays
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with dramatic titles like "Why I choose death
rather than to fight for life" in publications
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ranging from the Utne Reader to the Journal of
Psychiatry and the Law? For years, he wrote a
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monthly newsletter called "Walking with Michael"
that was mailed to a list of subscribers and
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later published online. If he was so sorry,
then why not disappear from public view?
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[Intense music.]
In April 2000, a new jury convened to determine whether the death penalty was appropriate. They
deliberated for nine days, and like the jury
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before them, chose the death penalty. Michael
fired his lawyers and told the judge he wasn't
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going to fight anymore. He wanted to be executed.
But it didn't matter if Michael Ross didn't want
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to appeal. His lawyers intervened against his
wishes, arguing that he was not competent to
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make that decision because, they argued, he was
suffering from what's called "death row syndrome,"
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a suicidal level of despair thought to be caused
by long-term confinement. The appeals and hearings
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and psychiatric evaluations went on for years.
Martha Elliott: Michael became needier and
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needier, and was calling every day
and all day. And I had not really understood the impact that it was having on
my family, until one morning. At this point,
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my two youngest children are twins and they were
in the fifth grade, and my son had the lead in
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the fifth grade play. And he couldn't find his
script, and they were required to have their
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script with him every day. And he's the type of
kid that always wants to do what he's told. And
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so he wanted me to make a copy of his sister's
script. So I was at the all-in-one printer,
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fax, copier, and I'm trying to make a copy
and the thing dies on me. And I say, "James,
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I can't do this now, I'm on the phone."
And Michael is talking to me, telling me
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about being examined by a doctor to see if he's
healthy enough for execution. And he's very needy
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and wanting to talk. And James is saying, "Take
me to Kinko's and make a copy." And I'm saying,
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"James, I can't now. It's too late,
and I'm on the phone." And he just got hugely angry and he flounced across the
room, threw himself on the couch and said,
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"You are the worst mother in the entire world. You
like a serial killer better than your own son."
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And that cut through the heart. And I got the
message really clearly that I had abandoned
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my children to talk to this man.
Phoebe Judge: That you were paying for, too. You were paying for all these phone calls.
Martha Elliott: Oh, I was paying for it through
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the nose, because those calls that you get from
death row — or from any prison — costs you about
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15 bucks a call. And so, in one month — I had
three lines in my house. One was dedicated to the
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fax, and that was the line he normally called on,
but then I had two other lines. And in one month,
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just one of those lines had a bill of $900.
Phoebe Judge: In May of 2005, the court found
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Michael Ross to be mentally competent and
scheduled his execution for May 13th. Martha
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took a red-eye from California so she could be
there to spend time with him before the execution.
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And just a few hours before he was set to die, she
was able to go in and see him one last time.
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Martha Elliott: And I said, "I wish
I could give you a hug." And he said, "Tell the kids..." Because he, by that time,
knew my children and knew about them and had
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been hearing about them for 10 years. He
had given them a book, Ferdinand the Bull,
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which as you probably know, is the story of a
bull who is very peaceful and who gets stung
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by a bee and then goes crazy. He said, "Tell
them to read Ferdinand and think of me."
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Phoebe Judge: An interesting choice for him to —
Martha Elliott: Yeah, I thought so, too. Because I
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think it was a message of how he viewed himself,
that he had triggers that would make him act a
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certain way, but that he was really not that
person. And I told him I would miss him and I
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would miss our conversations. And that was it.
Phoebe Judge: Just before 2 a.m.,
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the victims' families were escorted into
the viewing area of the execution chamber.
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The viewing area was separated into
three sections: the victims' families, the media, and then Michael's witnesses.
Martha Elliott: What you looked at was this
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big window that behind it, on the other
side of the window was a blue curtain. And so it was reflective with the curtain
pulled. And I could see Mr. Shelly's face
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very clearly in the reflection on the
window. And I thought, "Oh my God, when they pull this curtain, Michael
is going to just totally freak out."
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And they do open the curtain, sort of
like a drama theater or a puppet show feeling to it. And there he's lying on the gurney,
and they had it positioned so that his head was
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looking at the people who were his witnesses so
he could see a friendly face before he died.
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However, he did not open his eyes. He
kept them shut while he was lying there. He refused to give a final statement because I
knew he probably wouldn't do it because he was
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afraid he would break down and cry during it.
And he didn't want to insult anybody or have it
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misconstrued or have people quoting him and
make it sound like he was self-centered. He
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just knew that whatever he said, it wouldn't be
enough. How do you say "I'm sorry" when you've
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done such dastardly things? So he just said,
"No, thank you," when the warden asked him.
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And there's three drugs that you get. The first
one is supposed to anesthetize you and make it so
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you're unconscious. The second drug paralyzes you
so you couldn't blink an eyelash if you wanted to
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or tell anybody that you were still conscious.
And the third drug basically burns through your
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veins and then stops your heart, and basically
would feel like you were being choked to death
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because you couldn't breathe and... Et cetera.
Phoebe Judge: How close were you to him?
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Martha Elliott: Maybe 7 feet away, something
like that. Not too far. And it was totally
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quiet. And it took several minutes, maybe 15
or 18 minutes. And then finally they pulled the
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curtain and then announced that he was dead.
Phoebe Judge: He died at 2:25 a.m. on May 13th,
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2005, at the Osborn Correctional Institution
in Somers, Connecticut. He was 45 years old.
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Martha Elliott: I held it all together until I
walked out of that room. And the head priest for
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the whole correctional system of Connecticut,
Father Bruno, was standing there and he goes,
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"Martha, I don't know how you did that. I could
not have stood there and watched that." And that
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of course was all I needed to start crying.
Phoebe Judge: After the execution, Martha drove straight to the
airport and flew home to her family in California.
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She walked into her house, exhausted and
overwhelmed, and greeted her children.
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They tried to take her to Disneyland to cheer
her up. Her feelings about Michael Ross are
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as complicated today as they were when she
first met him, wondering whether Michael
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Ross's wish to die was an act of atonement
or, along with the many essays he published,
00:24:32
an attempt to tell the world how to view him.
Martha Elliott: There's no emotion that we have
00:24:40
that is completely pure, I don't think. I
mean, he had never read A Tale of Two Cities,
00:24:45
but to me, that was exactly the way he
thought of himself. Like Sydney Carton, the unscrupulous lawyer who goes to the guillotine
saying, "It is a far, far better thing I do today
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than I've ever done before," because this was
his act of redemption and will make people
00:25:06
realize that I'm not so bad as everybody says I
am. Now, did it have that effect? Not really.
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[Percussive music.]
Phoebe Judge: Connecticut repealed it's death penalty
statute in 2012. And last year, the state
00:25:23
Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional to
execute the remaining inmates on death row.
00:25:29
Michael Ross was the first person
executed in Connecticut since 1960. And barring any legislative
changes, he'll also be the last.
00:25:50
Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer and
me. Audio engineering help from Rob Byers.
00:25:55
Special thanks to Jack Hitt. Julienne Alexander
makes original illustrations for each episode of
00:26:01
Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com,
where we also have a link to Martha Elliott's book
00:26:07
about Michael Ross, The Man in The Monster.
Criminal is recorded in the studios of North
00:26:12
Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a
proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of the 13 best podcasts around.
Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight
00:26:24
Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating
creativity, chaos, and teamwork. I'm Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal.
Jingle: Radiotopia. From PRX.