She visibly gathered her strength so she could stand alone. Sobbing, shoulders slumped, she turned to a pretty, young brunette. Tears also ran down the cheeks of the other woman, who reached out to hug Mary Jean.
“This is my friend, Melissa Lowder,” Mary Jean told the policeman. “She just got here.”
“Do you know the little girls?” Thornton asked Melissa. “I mean, could you identify them?”
Melissa nodded solemnly, then clutched her wadded Kleenex and mopped her eyes.
“I hate to ask you, but we need to have their identification verified. Why don’t you take Ms. Pearle to the squad car. My officer will stay with her.”
Melissa nodded and ushered Mary Jean to the waiting car.
As her heart pounded, Melissa Lowder accompanied the officer through the lobby and into the elevator.
Once the door slid shut, Thornton asked, “What do you know about this Battaglia guy?”
“He’s a CPA. Had his own business until recently, but he still keeps his office. A few months ago, a small oil exploration company hired him as their chief financial officer. That business is downtown.” Then she cautioned, “He’s been a Marine, and he’s still very fit and strong.”
As the elevator stopped at the fourth floor, Melissa was filled with foreboding. The doors slid open and the two began their way down the long hall. In the distance she could see the opened loft door. Everything looked hazy and smoky inside, but even from this distance she could detect the outline of a small child stretched on the floor. A gasp of horror caught in her throat. She was doing this for her friend, and that thought was the only thing keeping her going.
She entered the loft, careful not to step on spent bullet casings, and then hesitantly headed toward the first body. Tears filled her eyes. It took every bit of resolve for Melissa to look down.
“This is Liberty,” she stammered. “She was only six years old.”
Police escorted Melissa into the kitchen; tears were still rolling down her cheeks. “Faith,” she said somberly. “She was nine.”
She turned to leave the most devastating scene she had ever witnessed in her life, but one of the officers stopped her.
“One more thing, ma’am. We found this picture on the countertop. Can you identify him?”
Melissa glared at the smiling face. “Yes, that’s John Battaglia,” she said bitterly, tapping the photo with her forefinger. “That’s who you need to find.”
TWO
Dark clouds hovered over the family of John Battaglia Jr. even before he was born on August 2, 1955. After his birth, tragedy continued to shadow him.
His Grandfather Battaglia, an Italian immigrant, lived in Brooklyn, New York, where he raised his family. Rumors abounded that Grandpa crossed the ocean with more than just his family and dreams of finding success in the New World. Through his contacts from the land of the Mafiosi, the family patriarch was said to have had a connection with organized crime. John Jr. would later brag that his grandfather had been a Mafia chief in Chicago. In any event, John Battaglia Sr. was just a boy when his father robbed a bank at gunpoint, was arrested, and was sent to prison.
Because of the disgrace he brought upon his family, Grandmother Battaglia divorced her husband. She took her children and fled to Florida, hoping that nobody there would learn the family’s ugly little secret.
In the next generation, John Battaglia Sr. married a pretty, sensitive blonde named Julia Christine. Soon after their marriage, he joined the military and served as a specialist in logistics with the Army Medical Corps.
Their first child, John David Battaglia Jr., was born at a military base in Alabama. John Jr. took after his mother. At two, he was a beautiful child with green eyes and blond ringlets.
The Battaglia clan grew rapidly, and two brothers and two sisters soon followed. The house was filled with the aroma of Italian dishes, but also with intimidating threats, harsh discipline, and drunken brawls.
The large Catholic family stayed closely connected to the church. As the oldest, John was nudged into serving as an altar boy. That gave some structure to John’s fragmented life as he began to spend three to four hours a week assisting priests to prepare the sacraments. But he fought wearing the black floor-length cassock covered with a lace-trimmed white surplice.
Because of John Sr.’s military career, the family moved like gypsies. They were always pulling up stakes and having to make new friends. Their nomadic life took them from Alabama to Texas, then to Washington, D.C., Germany, Oregon, and New Jersey. As a career military man, John Battaglia Sr. disciplined his children like a drill sergeant. Their father’s rule was “Do as I say and don’t ask questions.” Questions earned them swift punishment—their father’s belt on their backsides.
However, John Battaglia Sr. disagreed with anyone who said he was a harsh taskmaster, insisting that he only “paddled some rumps.” But the punishment he dished out went further than that. He broke one son’s guitar over his back.
In 1970, John Battaglia Sr. left the military after fifteen years of service. He continued to stay in the Army Reserve for many years, ultimately retiring as a lieutenant colonel. With his medical background, he landed a job in Oregon as a hospital administrator and emergency services manager.
It was in Oregon that John Jr. began his first year of high school, where he also played football. The following year, his father was transferred to New York City, much to John Jr.’s disappointment. He was yanked out of high school and forced to give up his football team and all the new friends he had made. But his father had a chance to set up the first addict-run drug clinic and the first publicly financed abortion clinic in the country.
They lived in Dumont, New Jersey, a town of 20,000 in the upper northeast corner of the state, where John Jr. attended Dumont High School. Dumont was just across the Hudson River from New York.
It was difficult for John to get close to his father, whom he saw as intolerant. Instead, he saved his attention for his mother, Julia, whom he loved very much. When his father became agitated and demanding, his mother would say, “Don’t get your dad upset. Just go to your room.”
Always the peacemaker in the family, Julia was a woman with fragile emotional health. She suffered from severe depression for weeks at a time, and once had been treated at Englewood Hospital for eighteen days. She drank heavily to alleviate her depression, but that merely intensified her problem.
Her hospitalization at Englewood had provided only temporary relief, because her despondency came back. On the evening of December 5, 1972, her husband broke the news that he was going to commit her to Bergen Pines, a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey. She flew into a frenzy at the prospect of being sent to what she viewed as a prison. Finally, a doctor came to the house to administer a sedative. John Jr. was only seventeen at the time he witnessed the confrontation.
The next morning, John Jr. was the last person to speak to his mother before she climbed into her year-old Buick and drove one hundred miles north along the Hudson River, crossing into New York State. She found a scenic overlook not far from the West Point Academy, and pulled off the road.
The river splashed over granite boulders, and had, over time, carved deep slices into the rock cliffs that supported the Palisades Parkway. Dense vegetation of every description—tall pines, huge leafy oaks, and wildflowers—covered the hilly terrain and trailed down to the water’s edge. Surrounded by all this beauty, she stepped out of her car and walked almost fifty feet. As she stared down at the pounding river, she pulled out a 9-millimeter German Mauser. Placing it to her right temple, she squeezed the trigger. She dropped to the pine needle-covered ground, falling on top of the gun. The Palisades Parkway Police found her lifeless