30 | The Third Rail
Trial day four.
Paul Duffy on the stand. He wore a blue blazer, rep tie, and gray flannel pants, which was about as formal as he ever managed to dress. Like Jonathan, he was one of those men it is easy to imagine as boys, men whose appearance almost forces you to see the boy inside. It was nothing particular about his physical features, but a boyish quality in his manner. Maybe it was just the effect of my long friendship with him. To me, Paul remained twenty-seven years old forever, his age when I met him.
For Logiudice, of course, that friendship made Duffy a slippery witness. At the start, Logiudice’s manner was tentative, his questions overly cautious. If he had asked, I could have told him that Paul Duffy was not going to lie, even for me. It just wasn’t in him. (I would have told him also to put down his ridiculous yellow pad. He looked like a goddamn amateur.)
“Would you state your name for the record, please?”
“Paul Michael Duffy.”
“What do you do for work?”
“I’m a lieutenant detective with the Massachusetts State Police.”
“How long have you been employed by the state police?”
“Twenty-six years.”
“And what is your current assignment?”
“I am in a public relations unit.”
“Directing your attention to April 12, 2007, what was your assignment on that date?”
“I was in charge of a special unit of detectives assigned to the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office. The unit is called CPAC, for Crime Prevention and Control. It consists of fifteen to twenty detectives at any given time, all with the special training and experience required to assist the ADAs and local departments in the investigation and prosecution of complex cases of various kinds, particularly homicides.” Duffy recited this little speech in a drone, from rote memory.
“And had you participated in many homicide investigations prior to April 12, 2007?”
“Yes.”
“Approximately how many?”
“Over a hundred, though I was not in charge of all of them.”
“Okay, on April 12, 2007, did you receive a phone call about a murder in Newton?”
“Yes. Around nine-fifteen A.M. I got a call from a Lieutenant Foley in Newton informing me there had been a homicide involving a child in Cold Spring Park.”
“And what was the first thing you did?”
“I called the district attorney’s office to inform them.”
“Is that standard procedure?”
“Yes. The local department is required by law to inform the state police of all homicides or unnatural deaths, then we inform the DA immediately.”
“Who specifically did you call?”
“Andy Barber.”
“Why Andy Barber?”
“He was the First Assistant, which means he was the second in command to the district attorney herself.”
“What was your understanding about what Mr. Barber would do with that information?”
“He would assign an ADA to run the investigation for their office.”
“Might he keep the case for himself?”
“He might. He handled a lot of homicides himself.”
“Did you have any expectations that morning as to whether Mr. Barber would keep the case for himself?”
Jonathan lifted his butt six inches from his chair. “Objection.”
“Overruled.”
“Detective Duffy, what did you think Mr. Barber would do with the case at that point?”
“I did not know. I suppose I figured he might keep it. It looked like it might be a big case right from the get-go. He kept those sorts of cases a lot. But if he put someone else on it, that would not have surprised me either. There were other good people there besides Mr. Barber. To be honest, I did not really think about it much. I had my own job to do. I let him worry about the DA’s office. My job was to run CPAC.”
“Do you know whether the district attorney, Lynn Canavan, was informed right away?”
“I don’t know. I presume so.”
“All right, after telephoning Mr. Barber, what did you do next?”
“I went to the location.”
“What time did you arrive there?”
“Nine thirty-five in the morning.”
“Describe the scene when you first arrived.”
“The entrance to Cold Spring Park is on Beacon Street. There is a parking lot at the front of the park. Behind that there are tennis courts and playing fields. Then behind the fields it is all woods, and there are trails leading off into the woods. There were a lot of police vehicles in the parking lot and on the street out front. Lots of cops around.”
“What did you do?”
“I parked on Beacon Street and approached the location on foot. I was met by Detective Peterson of the Newton Police and by Mr. Barber.”
“Again, was there anything unusual about Mr. Barber’s presence at the homicide scene?”
“No. He lived pretty close to the location, and he generally went to homicide scenes even if he didn’t intend to keep the case.”
“How did you know Mr. Barber lived near Cold Spring Park?”
“Because I’ve known him for years.”
“In fact, you two are personal friends.”
“Yes.”
“Close friends?”
“Yes. We were.”
“And now?”
There was a hitch before he answered. “I can’t speak for him. I still consider him a friend.”
“Do you two still see each other socially?”
“No. Not since Jacob was indicted.”
“When was the last time you and Mr. Barber spoke?”
“Before the indictment.”
A lie, but a white lie. The truth would have been misleading to the jury. It would have suggested, wrongly, that Duffy could not be trusted. Duffy was biased but honest about the big questions. He did not flinch as he delivered the statement. I did not flinch at it either. The point of a trial is to reach the right result, which requires constant recalibration along the way, like a sailboat tacking upwind.
“All right, you get to the park, you meet Detective Peterson and Mr. Barber. What happens next?”
“They explained the basic situation to me, that the victim had already been identified as Benjamin Rifkin, and they walked me through the park to the actual scene of the homicide.”
“What did you see when you got there?”
“The perimeter of the area was already taped off. The M.E. and crime-scene-services technicians had not arrived at the location yet. There was a photographer from the local police there taking pictures. The victim was still lying on the ground, the body, with nothing much around it. Basically they froze the scene when they got there, to preserve it.”
“Could you actually see the body?”
“Yes.”
“Could you describe the position of the body when you first saw it?”
“The victim was lying on a hill with the head at the lower end and the feet farther up the hill. It was twisted so the head was looking up toward the sky and the bottom half of the body and the legs were on its side.”
“What did you do next?”
“I approached the body with Detective Peterson and Mr. Barber. Detective Peterson was showing me details about the scene.”
“What was he showing you?”
“At the top of the hill, near the trail there was a good deal of blood on the ground, cast-off blood. I saw a number of droplets that were quite small, less than an inch in diameter. There were also a few larger stains that appeared to be what is called contact smears. These were on the leaves.”
“What is a contact smear?”
“It’s when a surface with wet blood contacts another surface and the blood transfers. It leaves a stain.”
“Describe the contact smears.”
“They were farther down the hill. There were several. They were several inches long at first, and as you went farther down the hill they became thicker and longer, more blood.”
“Now, I understand that you are not a criminalist, but did you form any impressions at the time, or theories, about what this blood evidence suggested?”
“Yes, I did. It looked like the homicide had taken place near the trail, where there were blood drops that had fallen, then the body fell or was pushed down the side of the hill, causing it to slide on its stomach, leaving the long contact smears of blood on the leaves.”
“All right, so having formed this theory, what did you do next?”
“I went down and inspected the body.”
“What did you see?”
“It had three wounds across the chest. It was a little difficult to see because the front of the body was soaked in blood, the victim’s shirt. There was also quite a bit of blood around the body where it had apparently been draining out of these wounds.”
“Was there anything unusual about those bloodstains, the pooled blood around the body?”
“Yes. There were some molded prints, shoe prints and other impressions, in the blood, meaning someone had stepped in the wet blood and left a print in it, like a mold.”
“What did you conclude from those molded shoe prints?”
“Obviously someone had stood or knelt beside the body soon after the murder, while the blood was still wet enough to take the impression.”
“Were you aware of the jogger, Paula Giannetto, who discovered the body?”
“Yes, I was.”
“How did that figure in your thinking about the molded prints?”
“I thought she might have left them, but I could not be sure.”
“What else did you conclude?”
“Well, there was quite a bit of blood that had been cast off during the attack. It had sprayed and also been smeared. I did not know how the attacker might have been standing, but I figured from the position of the wounds on the victim’s chest that he was probably standing right in front of him. So I figured the person we were looking for might have some blood on him. He might also have a weapon, although a knife is small and pretty easy to dispose of. But the blood was the big thing. It was a reasonably messy scene.”
“Did you make any other observations about the victim, particularly about his hands?”
“Yes, they were not cut or injured.”
“What did that suggest to you?”
“The absence of defensive wounds suggested he did not struggle or fight back against his assailant, which suggested he was either surprised or never saw the attack coming and did not have a chance to get his hands up to block the blows.”
“Suggesting he may have known his assailant?”
Jonathan levitated his butt a few inches above his chair again. “Objection. Speculation.”
“Sustained.”
“All right, what did you do next?”
“Well, the murder was still relatively fresh. The park had been sealed, and we immediately searched it to ascertain if there were any individuals in it. That search had begun before I got there.”
“And did you find anyone?”
“We found a few people who were pretty far away from the scene. No one seemed particularly suspicious. There was no indication that any of them were connected with the homicide in any way.”
“No blood on them?”
“No.”
“No knives?”
“No.”
“So it’s fair to say that in the early hours of the investigation you had no obvious suspects?”
“We had no suspects at all.”
“And over the next few days, how many suspects were you able to identify and develop?”
“None.”
“What did you do next? How did you continue the investigation?”
“Well, we interviewed everyone we could who had any information. The victim’s family and friends, anyone who might have seen anything the morning of the murder.”
“Did this include the victim’s classmates?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“There was some delay in getting into the school. The parents in the town were concerned about us interviewing the kids. There was some discussion about whether the kids needed to have a lawyer present at the interviews and whether we could go into the school without a warrant, into the lockers and things. There was also some discussion about whether it was appropriate to use the school building for the interviews and which students we would be allowed to interview.”
“What was your reaction to all this delay?”
“Objection.”
“Overruled.”
“I was angry, to be honest. The colder a case gets, the harder it is to solve.”
“And who was running the case with you for the district attorney’s office?”
“Mr. Barber.”
“Andrew Barber, the defendant’s father?”