Kill for Thrill Page 10

  When they arrived, Lou Purificato and Donny Mahan found Leonard barely breathing and lying face down in a pool of blood. Everything around Leonard Miller was covered in blood, and the officers immediately began valiantly trying to save their dying colleague. Most of Leonard’s blood had spilled from his body, and despite their tireless efforts, it was too late. Leonard Miller never regained consciousness, and within moments, Lou Purificato and Donald Mahan were huddled over the lifeless body of their friend and colleague. Silence—cold, crisp and forever—gripped the west end of the Apollo Bridge. The light snow that had begun to fall seemed to hang in the air, as if fearful of touching down on the hallowed ground where Leonard’s lifeless body lay. Instead, it swirled, danced and hovered just above the ground.

  Leonard Miller, the only child of Frank and Evelyn Miller, was dead. His lifelong dream, realized for only three short days, had claimed him in the midst of doing what he loved. His sacrifice, felt deeply by the two men who were with him to the last, would ripple throughout the valley for the next twenty-nine years. As the news of Leonard’s death began to spread, the town awoke to a haze of disbelief and sorrow. No words will ever heal the wounds felt by this close-knit community; nor will justice ever truly come for those who knew and loved Leonard Miller. He was gone, and nothing, not even Donald Mahan and Lou Purificato, could bring him back. Michael Travaglia and John Lesko had claimed their fourth victim and disappeared into the night without a trace.

  At 4:50 a.m., the harsh, shrill ringing of his telephone startled Tom Tridico awake. For veteran investigators such as Tridico, a 5:00 a.m. phone call is neither unexpected nor unusual. The call that Tom received this morning was both. In the career of a police officer, few phone calls are dreaded more. The news of the murder of a fellow officer strikes both deep and hard—in part because not only has a comrade made the ultimate sacrifice, but also because, in some small way, it serves as a cold reminder of one’s own mortality. After gathering the details and hanging up the phone, Tom numbly dressed and headed out to the scene.

  The freezing drive—made even colder by its purpose—from Tom’s home in Greensburg to the outskirts of Apollo took him forty-five minutes. On the seat beside him lay a photo of Michael Travaglia. When he arrived at the scene, the cluster of firefighters, EMS personnel and police officers was surreal. He struggled to focus and knew that as tough as what he was about to do was, he owed it to Leonard Miller.

  As he stepped from his unmarked car and walked toward the group, he saw the lifeless body of fellow officer Leonard Miller. Trooper Robert Luniewski was one of the stunned crowd huddled around Leonard’s body. Tom recognized him immediately and approached. He put aside his own grief and fears and began the most difficult investigation of his career.

  Tom walked the scene with Bob Luniewski, making notes and directing Trooper Marshall to photograph this and mark that for reference. In his mind, he was working any other murder, just like the two hundred cases he had worked before—methodical, clinical and professional. In his heart, he was dying.

  Tom sketched the location of the tire tracks in his notebook, and a sharp glint from something lying in the roadway caught his eye. He walked over to where the tracks began. As he bent down, the light from the dozen or so police cars that encircled the scene danced and flashed off several shards of broken glass lying in the highway.

  Tom called Trooper Rick Marshall over. As crime scene photographer, Tom had worked with Rick hundreds of times before. Without a word from Tom, Marshall raised his bulky Speed Graphic to his eye and snapped some pictures. The flashes popped, shooting milky blue light out one hundred yards in all directions, and Tom blinked his eyes. No matter how many times he did this, he always forgot about the flashes.

  After Rick took two pictures, Tom placed a brown paper evidence bag beside the glass, and, instinctively, Rick took several steps back to get a wider shot. Tom appreciated working with Rick. Rick understood the fundamentals of crime scene photography, and Tom couldn’t remember a single time that he had to remind him to get wide, medium and close-up photos of his evidence. Rick was a good trooper.

  When Rick nodded to Tom, he knew that it was safe for the crime scene unit to begin collecting the shards of glass and he moved on. A theory began to emerge, and he mulled it over in his head as he began walking toward Leonard’s body. Tom had consciously avoided this since he had arrived, but he knew that his investigation wouldn’t be complete until he examined Leonard. Tom Tridico was nothing if not complete.

  When Tom knelt beside Leonard’s body, every fiber of his two-hundredpound, middle-aged frame ached. Lying on the cold, hard pavement was one of his own. Separating Leonard Miller, fallen police officer, gunned down in cold blood, from Leonard Miller, the first homicide victim of 1980, was almost impossible. But Tom Tridico knew that there would be no closure for Leonard if he didn’t make that separation. Tom swallowed hard, placed his emotions in a tiny box, slid them high onto a shelf and closed the door. Tom was ready to examine Leonard’s body.

  Tom suspected that the glass on the highway was from the suspect’s car. If that were the case, it had probably come from a gunfight between Leonard and his assailant. Tom gingerly unholstered Leonard’s service revolver. The blue steel Smith & Wesson was ice cold. Tom scratched a tiny mark on the cylinder to later identify its location and then slid the thumb catch. He gently flicked his wrist and popped the cylinder out. Six tiny dimples stared back at him. Tom smiled slightly. Leonard had not gone quietly into the night. Tom flipped the cylinder closed and then glanced over his shoulder. Rick’s slight nod told him everything he needed to know, and Tom handed the revolver off to the crime scene technicians for processing.

  The tiny holes in Leonard’s body were almost invisible. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the massive pool of blood surrounding Leonard, one might almost miss them. It had always amazed Tom how much carnage two tiny holes no bigger than a number two pencil could make. The hole in Leonard’s abdomen would probably prove to be the fatal shot, but Tom knew that was the medical examiner’s call. He glanced at the silver shield lying on Leonard’s chest. Tom Tridico locked the closet door of his emotions and then stood up.

  Tom scanned the scene. He had photographed, sketched and begun collecting what little evidence there was. Not much left to do here, he thought. As he stood there in the growing light of dawn, a fine dusting of snowflakes began to float down from the sky. Without a word, Tom walked to his car. He grabbed a blanket from his trunk and clumsily unfolded it. As he walked toward Leonard’s body, the anger in his stomach began to creep up into the back of his throat. When he reached Leonard, he gently draped the blanket over him. He pretended it was to protect the scene.

  Tom hesitated, inhaled deeply to force the bile back down into his stomach and made a silent promise to Leonard. After a moment of standing there in desolate isolation, a fellow investigator gently tapped his shoulder. He had discovered two possible witnesses to the shooting. Tom’s moment of silence was over.

  SERGEANT TRIDICO VOWS TO FIND THE KILLERS

  Linda McLaughlin and Thomas Bodnar had been standing in the plaza parking lot when Michael Travaglia and his passengers sailed through the traffic signal at First Street and Astronaut Way. They had seen Leonard speed across the bridge after them and then they had heard the gunfire. Tom Bodnar had raced to the middle of First Street and stared off into the frozen darkness on the other side of the bridge, trying to see what had happened. But two hundred yards and the veil of night had conspired against him, and he couldn’t even see Leonard Miller’s headlights. Sensing that there was something desperately wrong, Bodnar ran back to the Stop-N-Go and grabbed the phone to call for help. Other than that, neither Bodnar nor McLaughlin had much information. What they did have was a description of the car. They described a late model, silver blue sports car occupied by several men. This information would provide Tom Tridico with what he needed to send out an all-points bulletin to police departments in the area asking for assistance in the search f
or the killers.

  When Tom arrived back at the barracks, he sorted through the information that had begun pouring in since news of the slaying had spread moments after the shots were fired. Investigative triage was a skill that Tom had perfected early in his career. It had helped him earn his stripes. The physical evidence was scant. A few fragments of glass, plenty of blood—which appeared to belong solely to Officer Miller—and little else. He wished for more but had made cases on less, so he didn’t lose hope. He knew that ballistic evidence would prove helpful, but recovery of the bullets from Leonard Miller’s body wouldn’t happen until several hours later, so he focused on the information that he did have.

  If Miller’s defensive shots had struck his killer, then there were no obvious signs of it at the scene. Of course, that didn’t rule out the possibility that he had, in fact, wounded his assailant, but there were no traces of blood left behind. Tom was getting ready to notify the local hospitals just in case when he was interrupted.

  When Tom stepped into the barracks’ lobby at 7:15 a.m., Ronald Ashton met him with eager anticipation. Ashton wanted desperately to help. He had been on his way to work, heading out Route 380, when he noticed a silver blue sports car parked off the side of the road. Tom held his breath. Ashton had heard the description of the car on his police scanner that morning while he was getting ready for work. Tom thanked his stars for police buffs. The car looked like it had a couple bullet holes in it, Ashton offered. That was all that Tom needed to hear. He immediately signaled for one of the dozen or so troopers milling around expectantly looking for things to do to come take the statement from Ashton and then snatched up his coat and headed to his car.

  After Tom had settled in behind the wheel of his police-issue unmarked car, he radioed for Troopers David Ivey and Steven Szabo, who were patrolling the area, to head to Coopers Trailer Sales out on Route 380 to investigate. Optimistically, Tom dropped the car into gear and headed out to meet them.

  Within five minutes of their arrival, Szabo and Ivey radioed to Tom that they had hit the jackpot. Tom goosed the police car and held his breath. This would be the break they needed, he could feel it.

  By 7:30 that morning, Tom Tridico was standing beside a half dozen state troopers surveying a 1977 silver blue Fiat Lancia. Tridico closed down the entrances to the lot with several uniformed officers stationed at each end. While waiting for Rick Marshall, Tom began a quick once over of the car. He noted two bullet holes in the passenger’s side quarter panel. No doubt the slugs would match Leonard’s gun.

  The driver’s window was shattered, and tiny little fragments of safety glass littered the seats. Tom wasn’t a gambler, but if he were a betting man, he’d have bet his house, impending pension and his daughters’ college funds on the glass fragments matching those he had found at the crime scene.

  Taking a step back from the car, Tom collected his thoughts and began to plan his next step. Unless the killers had stolen another car or hitched a ride, they couldn’t have gotten too far. Hopeful, Tom radioed to his patrol units in the area instructing them to begin canvassing along Route 380. He knew that if he was going to track Leonard’s killer down, he needed all the help he could get. He had the barracks pass along everything he knew up to this point to the police in the surrounding towns of Plum Borough, Murrysville and Monroeville. Tom knew that more eyes were always a good thing.

  Tom didn’t have to ask twice. Troopers, local police and county detectives fanned out across the three counties searching for the cop killers. In reality, Tom hadn’t really had to ask at all. From the moment the news of Leonard’s murder hit the airwaves, cops from every tiny town and borough in a three-county area had been going inch by inch over the countryside, sifting through everything in hopes that something would surface that would reveal Leonard Miller’s killer.

  At 10:00 a.m., the police saturation paid off. As part of the dragnet, Trooper Frank Sheetz had been assigned to canvass along 380. Route 380 is a main artery running through the small town of Holiday Park on the outskirts of Monroeville. As a back route to Pittsburgh, it is pretty well travelled and dotted with convenience stores, gas stations and shopping plazas. Trooper Sheetz hadn’t gotten more than a five-minute walk from the Cooper Trailer Sale’s parking lot when he reached the 7-Eleven convenience store.

  The night manager at the store remembered three strange men at the store around 7:00 a.m. that morning. One of the men had a small cut above his eye, and they were all acting a bit suspicious. Asking the clerk and customers for a ride into Pittsburgh, the men had apparently run into an acquaintance and then disappeared. He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded to the clerk as if the men were headed into McKeesport, or maybe Elizabeth. The man with the cut was described as tall and lean with straggly brown hair and scruffy facial hair. Immediately, Sheetz radioed to Tom Tridico, who sent George Boyerinas and Rich Dickey to the store with the photograph of Michael Travaglia. Dickey showed the photo. The clerk never hesitated. Michael Travaglia was the man with the cut above his eye.

  Within minutes, Tom Tridico was on the phone with the McKeesport Police. Chief Thomas Hanna was on the other end. The camaraderie that emerges among agencies in a time of such crisis is what makes the subculture of the police community such a tightknit group. Eager to do anything within his power, Tom Hanna pledged all his men and resources to aid in the search. Armed with a description of the three men and a photograph of Michael Travaglia, Troopers Sheetz and Griffin set out to join Tom Hanna and his men as they scoured the rusty streets and alleys of McKeesport for three scruffy and deadly men.

  Having dispatched men to all parts of Westmoreland, Allegheny and Armstrong Counties, setting a record-breaking dragnet in motion, Tridico returned to the Kiski Valley Barracks. He sat at a tiny, overcrowded desk running through facts, checking off bits of evidence in his head and staring at the face of Michael Travaglia in his mind. He had done all that he could do. The case was in the hands of his men in the street. He had faith in them. Feeling helpless, Tom reached across the desk, lifted the receiver from its cradle and mashed the stout buttons on the keypad with his tired fingers.

  John Flannigan’s voice reminded Tom of rolling green hills, leprechauns and shamrocks. As he collected his scattered thoughts and began to fill in Flannigan on their progress, it became clearer to Tom that what had begun as a promising investigation had degraded into a waiting game. Tom recounted what he knew to John. Travaglia and two other unknown men had sped through Apollo in a 1977 silver blue Lancia and goaded Leonard Miller into chasing them. After Leonard stopped them, one of the men in the car shot Leonard twice with a .38-caliber revolver.

  Both men agreed that it was comforting to know that Leonard had gotten off six shots. Tom attributed it to good training, and John agreed. Both men knew that tiny victories amid such a catastrophic event were all that they could hope for, and each secretly vowed to hold onto those tiny victories for all they were worth.

  Leonard’s killers had escaped along Route 66 and then abandoned the Lancia near Holiday Park, where they hitched a ride into McKeesport. Although he hadn’t been able to confirm it, Tom was pretty sure that the Lancia was stolen. All of these things Tom knew, and now so did John Flannigan. What neither man knew, but which both desperately wanted to know, was the answer to the question, where was Michael Travaglia?

  Tom reminded Flannigan about Chuck Lutz’s Sonny’s Lounge warrant, Daniel Keith and Ray Scalese (both of whom he hoped were with Michael) and thanked him in advance for anything that he and his men might be able to do.

  Tom Tridico heard the vacant hum of the dial tone in his ear before he even realized that his conversation was over. Numb and bone weary, he lowered the phone into its cradle and stared at the blank desk blotter on the desk in front of him. Tom was not a man who easily admitted defeat. Inside, that voice that always haunted him when he hit a brick wall in a case began to nag at him. Warning him that if they didn’t pick up the trail of the killers soon, it would grow stale, the voice reminded him
of how impotent he was—how human. Tom knew that when the trail goes cold, the odds of solving a case drop drastically. In Tom’s world, failure was never an option, and the few times when it did happen, he took the defeat to heart. Victims left unspoken for, deaths unaccounted for and killer’s unpunished all swirled in Tom’s mind—a seething, jumbled mess.

  Slowly, the face of Leonard Miller crept into the swirling stew of his past and stared at Tom. Expressionless and blank, Leonard’s face looked just as it had twelve hours earlier at the roadside as Tom kneeled over his body—when Tom had made his promise.

  Kneeling beside Leonard Miller, Tom had promised him secretly, silently and earnestly that he would find the killers. He promised Leonard that he would speak for him and would stand up for him to make sure that his blood was not spilled in vain. As Tom Tridico sat in that station house, at that desk, alone with Leonard Miller, he slowly began to realize that he might not be able to keep his promise. For the first time in his thirty-year career, Tom Tridico was scared.

  PART IV

  THE SEARCH IS ON

  John Flannigan spread his notebook out on the podium and looked out over his detectives. He shuffled several papers. His men stared at him in silent anticipation. News such as the murder of a fellow officer spreads like wildfire through the police community, so Flannigan’s men were already fully aware that Tom Tridico and his men were tracking a cop killer. They all knew why they were there. What they didn’t know, and what Flannigan was about to tell them, was that they were going to be crucial in solving the case.