CHAPTER 71 - Impact Statements CHAPTER 72 - The Death Card CHAPTER 73 - Cyril’s Turn CHAPTER 74 - Mark Hare’s Column CHAPTER 75 - Which Version to Believe? CHAPTER 76 - The Big “Why?” CHAPTER 77 - Preserving the Psychological Issues CHAPTER 78 - Two Down, One to Go CHAPTER 79 - Speranza Moves On CHAPTER 80 - The Final Gavel
Author’s Note
This is a story of a small group of people—related by blood, marriage, and lust—who built their own prisons, bar by bar. Some built theirs out of misguided restlessness, others from drug dependency and jealousy. With their self-made cages complete, their lives spiraled out of control in a tragic maelstrom of betrayal. Today one is dead, two others are in prison until they die, and the other is caged for a long time, now by literal—rather than figurative—bars.
And it is the story of a woman who, in the wake of losing her youngest son in a horrible accident, had to deal with the fact that her oldest son had murdered her youngest daughter. The toll on her children over a five-year span had been horrible. Out of four, two dead, one behind bars.
This book hopes to tell the story of the murder of Tabatha Bryant as a cautionary tale, one that will influence its readers in a positive way. It includes details of the happenings of July 13 and 14, in Penfield, New York, that cannot be found anywhere else, not in the daily reports of the local newspapers or in the sound bites of Rochester’s electronic media.
It is based on the recollections of the eyewitnesses I interviewed, on the records of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office of New York, on court transcripts, and other documents acquired during research.
Although this is a true story, some names have been changed to protect the privacy of the innocent. Pseudonyms will be marked as such upon first usage.
When possible, the spoken word has been quoted verbatim. However, when that is not possible, conversations have been reconstructed as closely as possible to reality, based on the recollections of those who spoke and heard those words. In places, there has been slight editing of spoken words, but only to improve readability. The denotations and connotations of the words remain unaltered.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to acknowledge the cooperation and assistance of the following individuals and groups, without whom the writing of this book would have been impossible: my investigative associate Amy Cavalier, of the Messenger Post Newspapers, agent extraordinaire Jake Elwell, of Wieser and Elwell, my editor Gary Goldstein, the Honorable Patricia D. Marks, Monroe County district attorney Michael Green, court reporters Anthony DiMartino and Judy Ging, Essie Bassett, Leroy Bassett, Cleo and Ginny Winebrenner, Patty Winebrenner and “Little One,” Becky Hentges, Samantha Bassett (Tabatha’s sister), Tabatha’s uncle Terry J. Smith, minister to young adults and families in the Grove City (Ohio) Community of Christ, Michael Zeigler, crime reporter for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Corporal John Helfer, public information officer at the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, attorney Charles Testa, Philip Semrau, and Tekla Benson and Bridget Agosta for their help with the photos.
PART I
CHAPTER 1
Penfield
The story takes place in and around Rochester, New York, along the south shore of Lake Ontario, about fifty miles east of Buffalo. Rochester is what’s called a medium-sized city, with a population of approximately 250,000. It is the third largest city in the state, behind only New York City and Buffalo.
Rochester grew where it did because it was a prime location. That’s where the Genesee River flows into Lake Ontario. Later, it became the spot where the Genesee River crossed the Erie Canal. Rochester was a hub of water transportation. The land that was to become the city of Rochester was first settled in 1803 when Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, Colonel William Fitzhugh, and Major Charles Carroll purchased a one-hundred-acre tract on the west side of the Genesee River. The original settlement was near the falls that now marks the city’s downtown area. It was only a few hundred yards from the courthouse where the trial in this case was held. The location was not immediately popular; it was largely swamp with dense forest, and swamp fever, later known as malaria. But the swamp was cleared and buildings were erected. The city took root and grew outward.
The Erie Canal was moved to a new route south of the city, and its name was changed to the Barge Canal. Rochester was no longer there because of water transportation. It found a new raison d’être in cutting-edge technology. Eastman Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb all made their homes in Rochester. In addition, Wegmans, one of the country’s top grocery-store chains, was headquartered in Rochester.
Like many cities in America, during the middle of the twentieth century, suburbs surrounded Rochester as old-time Rochesterians moved out and were replaced by newcomers, often poor minorities, who took their place in the city proper.
Though the city itself had shrunk in population, from 350,000 to 250,000, the metro Rochester area (which included most of Monroe County) had grown by 2003 to a population of close to 1 million. The crime rate in the suburbs was only a fraction of that which law enforcement had to battle in the city. There were, however, lower-middle-class suburbs and middle-class suburbs where the county sheriff’s office was kept busy. While crime within the city limits of Rochester was under the jurisdiction of the Rochester Police Department, crimes in Monroe County, but outside the city, were investigated by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. Despite the boundaries of jurisdiction, the sheriff’s headquarters and the Monroe County Hall of Justice, the courthouse, were in Downtown Rochester.
On the other hand, there were sections of Monroe County where crime was practically nonexistent. One town that rarely experienced violent crime was upscale Penfield. The murder profiled here made large headlines, in the beginning, not because of the fascinating tale behind the crime, but because of its location. There hadn’t been a murder in Penfield in years. The biggest problems facing town officials were more commonly: where to install new sidewalks?
The murder occurred in the jurisdiction of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. That year, the sheriff’s office would handle 12,080 crimes, about thirty-five crimes a day. That’s not bad when you consider the office patrols thirteen towns, and a population of greater than five hundred thousand. Penfield was not contributing its fair share of those twelve thousand crimes. The murder happened in the unlikeliest of spots: on the main floor of a beautiful two-story home not far from