“What else can you tell me about the case?” Moores sat with Kane and Roberts, who glanced briefly at their notes.
“There’s been a lot of trouble at this address in the past few months.”
“So, it’s unlikely this was a random target.”
“The homeowner, Vicki Bader, reported a burglary on January 11th of this year. Someone broke into the home and killed her parakeets. Otherwise, nothing else was taken.”
“A month later, on February 14th, some of her windows were shot out with BBs.”
“On Valentine’s Day,” Moores observed.
“On the same day, her tires were slashed while she was at work in Kingston. She filed a report with the Kingston Police.”
“Mrs. Bader told me yesterday that she is recently divorced and in a nasty custody battle over her three children,” Roberts said. “Given the nature of these other incidents, we think that maybe the pipe bomb and these other things are tied to the custody battle.”
Moores took careful notes. “What has the ex-husband said about this?”
“We haven’t talked to the ex-husband about the other incidents. Taken alone, they weren’t really much of anything. Even Mrs. Bader said she hadn’t accused him of the other events. But she said we should talk to her ex-husband about this one.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because she said she’d seen him make bombs before,” Roberts replied. “She said he’d fill a pipe with gun powder, then put Vaseline on the threads of the cap.”
“Did she say why he’d use Vaseline?”
“To prevent a spark when he’d screw the cap on.”
Moores put his pen down. “That’s an awfully specific detail for the average housewife to know about bomb making.”
Kane and Roberts nodded at each other. “That’s what we thought.”
“Could she have made the bomb herself?” the inspector asked. “Be responsible for the other acts too?”
Roberts wanted to say something, but Kane noticed she seemed unsure how to phrase what she was thinking.
“Mrs. Bader kept saying she knew what would go into such a bomb, though she said she didn’t know how to make one. Then she said she didn’t even have a drill to build the bomb.” Roberts raised an eyebrow. “At the time, no one had said anything to her about a hole being drilled into the bomb.”
Three sets of eyes darted between the metal device on the table and each other. “She might have gotten tired of waiting for us to accuse her husband for the vandalism, so she kicked it up a notch,” Kane offered.
“Why would she do that?”
“I’ve seen people do crazier things to get an edge in custody battles.”
...Mary Jean Martin liked to hang out after work at a Brighton, Massachusetts pool hall named Brighton Billiards, more than an hour from Seth Bader’s Stratham home. It had an authentic “Color of Money” kind of feel to it. Customers brought in their own expensive cue sticks carried in black leather box cases lined with red felt, with pool sharks passing cash back and forth after games of nine ball.
Mary Jean could play well enough, but she wasn’t there to make money. In addition to his box business, her father had also once owned a pool hall, and she liked the scene. She had made friends—some through work, some through other connections—who also liked to hang around this particular pool hall. They would have drinks and laugh, then go to someone’s house and play cards. It was a scene that belonged exclusively to Mary Jean, one that Seth knew of but was not invited to partake in.
“Here she comes. My fiancée.” That’s how Sebastian Caradonna would greet Mary Jean. They had met several years earlier at the law firm; he was a client in a civil case. They were not lovers, but they struck up a friendship and eventually started moving around in the same social circles at the billiard room.
Caradonna was in his late 40s and had a persnickety manner about him. He liked to dress neatly. He was stick thin, with sunken cheeks and a trimmed mustache. He was Boston Italian, not Old Country. He liked nine ball, but wasn’t nearly as sharp as his friends who guiltlessly took his money during his frequent losing streaks at the tables. Caradonna liked to pretend to be a big shot, though no one in the pool hall actually made him for one. He enjoyed dropping faux-subtle references to connections he had, people he knew, and “jobs” he’d had a hand in.
Sibby, as Sebastian Caradonna liked to be called for short, was not a “made” man as much as he was a trust fund baby. But although his family was wealthy, Caradonna was on the outs with his kin. The details he gave were all intentionally opaque, but the pool hall crew knew that Caradonna had physically attacked his brother in a dispute over how to handle their mother’s declining health. He was on probation, and the rumor was that Caradonna had tried to run his brother over with the car. Now the family was essentially paying Caradonna a stipend to stay away from them.
One afternoon, Mary Jean started showing off some gold jewelry she wanted to sell. The prices she was asking were way too low and everyone knew why she was getting rid of it.
“They’re Seth’s crazy ex-wife’s,” she told the friends she trusted. Mary Jean’s attitude toward Vicki Bader was one of indifferent hostility. Vicki was a financial obstacle, not a rival for her lover. The suicide attempts did not move her heart. They only reinforced what Seth said about her: Vicki was fucking crazy.
The girlfriends of the pool players fingered the bracelets and convinced themselves they were must-have items. They had no issues about buying the gold chains from her at a reduced rate.
“What do you have there, my fiancée?” Caradonna peeked into the crowd of ladies passing over twenty-dollar bills. Mary Jean showed him what was left: a diamond ring that was likely some family heirloom. Caradonna bought it and had the diamond placed in a gold tiepin.
...Vicki continued to work on herself. Although she was heavily medicated, she still felt antsy, ill-at-ease. Something wasn’t working but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
Just before Valentines Day, Vicki decided to write a letter to Joey and Matt. She figured it would be a low-risk way of rekindling their relationship. If they responded with a letter of their own, it could be a good indicator of whether or not the boys truly were done with her, or whether Seth was deceiving her.
She pulled out a piece of stationary and began in hopeful tones.
2/13/95
Dear Joe + Matt,
I’m writing to say Hi and keep in touch. I’m seeing Sam and would love to see both of you but Seth says you refuse to either see or speak to me. I hope you change your mind. Please feel free to call or write to me anytime.
Things are going well here. I’ve left your rooms exactly as you left them (Aack!!!) and am looking for a job.
How’s it going with you? [ . . . ]
Well boys, keep in touch and if you want to see me let me know.
I love you.
Vicki then surprised herself when she signed the bottom of the letter, because it was not a term she had used before with the older boys.
Love,
Mom a/k/a Vicki
Very neatly, she placed the letter in an envelope, attached a Garfield return address label in the corner, and addressed it to “Joe & Matt Bader c/o Seth Bader.” Then she took her letter to the Post Office and sent it certified mail for $2.52.
On February 28, 1995, Vicki Lynn Bader strode down her driveway to her mailbox, reached in and pulled out the day’s mail, only to find something unexpected. She turned around and headed right back inside.
Vicki put aside the bills and coupon fliers in favor of a single letter addressed to her. She could tell by the handwriting and the postmark that it had come from Joey. She hadn’t spoken with him in many weeks, and she would finally be able to hear what he had to say.
She ran a finger under the flap of the envelope and tore it open on the seam. She pulled out the paper and stared at it for a moment. It was the letter that she had loving written to the boys two weeks earlier. Why did they send it back? Did they read it?
She noticed there was writing on the other side of the paper. She turned it over to find another letter written on the back.
“Dear Fat Ass . . .”
What is this? she thought. Vicki didn’t know what to make of it. It was definitely Joey’s handwriting. Unbelieving, she blinked her eyes and started to read the letter over again.
Dear Fat Ass,
I’m sorry I didn’t send you a gift for Valentine’s Day. I was going to send you some rat poison and pudding but Seth wouldn’t let me. It would be purchased by me (secretly) and sent to you on Mother’s Day (even though I have never thought of you as a mother except as a mother fucker). Although I do think of you as a fat asshole who tried to trick us into loving you.
If you cared for us even a little, you’d let us be where we want to be. Get a job so you won’t have to make Seth pay you money, and leave us alone (this goes for Matt too for he encouraged me to in the note). I feel also that Sam should not see you because you are a very dangerous person. I don’t want to waste too much effort on something like you, so I’m going to end this letter.
Hatefully,
Joe and Matt
All of the air left her lungs. There were tears in her eyes but she didn’t feel like crying. The room started to spin and her hands shook so violently she had to put down the letter. The letter was so vile, so deeply hurtful; she felt the world closing in all around her. She picked up the phone.
“Dr. Shopick,” she said through heaving breaths. “I want to voluntarily commit myself to the hospital before I do something I regret.”
Caradonna nodded toward the corner of the room at a white shopping bag with plastic handles from Lord & Taylor.
“See that bag?” he said. “Remember that bag.”
Stuto nodded. He had come to expect this kind of intrigue from Caradonna. At the pool hall, Caradonna was always saying stuff like “Look at the guy over there. Remember that guy.” And then he’d would introduce him to “that guy” weeks later, with no further explanation about the subterfuge.
They didn’t pick up the bag or look into it. They had no further discussion that night about it. The men went out to play pool, leaving Mary Jean home to watch television and go to bed. They got in the car and cruised up the Interstate on their way to Brighton Billiards.
“In that bag is the bomb that Mary Jean told us about. She’s gonna pay seven or eight thousand dollars for someone to drop it off and light the fuse.”
Caradonna didn’t know that Stuto had already had his own conversation with Mary Jean about the job. Caradonna again told Stuto to commit the bag to memory.
The next time Stuto saw that Lord & Taylor bag was when Caradonna carried it into DiPietro’s pizzeria while he working. Caradonna had called the restaurant looking for him.
“I’m coming down with that bag. I need to give it to you now.”
Stuto was in the middle of the dinner rush and so distracted at first that he didn’t know what Caradonna was talking about. “Yeah, all right. Whatever.” It wasn’t until after he hung up the phone that it clicked. He’s bringing the fucking bomb here! I’m at work! My uncle is here. What the fuck am I going to do with a bomb?
When Caradonna appeared in the doorway, Stuto waved a finger to signal him to follow. They went up a stairway to the offices above the pizzeria. Caradonna had worked at DiPietro’s many years earlier, long before the place had changed hands, so he was familiar with the layout. Stuto stuck his nose in the bag. The device was covered with some crumpled tissue paper, but he could see the coil of red fuse wrapped neatly on top of it.
“Mary Jean says the fuse will burn something like a foot a minute, so you’ll have plenty of time to light it and get away.” He gave the kid further instructions on where to place the device. “You put this next to the garage and it’s going to blow the house right off the foundation and kill anyone inside. This ain’t no firecracker.”
They briefly talked money. Caradonna said the payment was likely to be in the thousands. He didn’t tell Stuto that Mary Jean had already paid him $6,800 in hundred dollar bills and the money was inside his coat pocket. Then Caradonna hinted that he and Mary Jean had had some kind of argument about the bomb. “Make sure, whatever you do, you don’t give this back to her.”
Caradonna slipped down the stairs leaving Stuto literally holding the bag. His head jerked back and forth, searching for a place in the office to stash the bomb. He cleared some room on a high shelf and stuck the bag there. But before he could go back to work, Stuto’s curiosity got the better of him. He kept thinking about the long fuse he saw curled up in the bag and the amount of time it would take to detonate the bomb. He had been told there was going to be about fifteen feet of fuse and therefore fifteen minutes of getaway time. He’d be on the Interstate by the time the bomb went off.Stuto reached back into the bag and cut off a six-inch length of the fuse. He brought it over to the sink and lit it with a cigarette lighter. The supposedly long-burning fuse was consumed in seconds.
“Holy fucking shit!” Stuto went into a panic. This guy is trying to fucking kill me.
