I'll Be Watching You. M. William Phelps

was the same old story: self-defense. The Rutgers woman had come on to him, and when he refused her advances, he had no other choice but to strangle and stab her to death.

      But she had forced him to do it, of course. What was he supposed to do?

      The murder had occurred in 1983. Same set of circumstances.

      “He looks like a Boy Scout,” Fred Schwanwede told the court during one of Ned’s plea hearings. “He doesn’t look at all dangerous. He looks like he could be the boy next door.”

      Wasn’t that what made Ned even more dangerous—that he looked like and could portray the friendly neighbor?

      The Good Samaritan.

      The salesman.

      Softball player.

      Life of the party.

      Ned didn’t have that evil look of a serial killer, or the rough look of a multiple murderer. In public, he was warm and funny and forthcoming. Just a pleasure to be around.

      Ted Bundy redux, in other words. Bundy, who chose mostly college girls and worked his way into their good graces with his all-American pretty-boy looks and charming demeanor, liked to sexually mutilate his victims. In one case, he broke into the dorm room of Lynda Ann Healy, a university student, knocked her unconscious, dressed her in jeans and a T-shirt, wrapped her in a sheet, and tossed her into his car without anyone seeing. Healy’s body was found about a year later—she had been decapitated and dismembered.

      28

      I

      Fred Schwanwede—a name, he professes, that he shares with no one else in the United States—was chief of sex crimes with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office. He knew from looking over the file that Mary Ellen Renard was, he said, “extremely lucky to be alive.” Most of the cases resulting in the injuries she had sustained hadn’t turned out so well. “Had Miss Renard not been so lucky,” Schwanwede speculated, “this case probably would have gone on unsolved. If he had killed her, chances are that unless he did something else subsequent to that and left a print or some other identifying forensic evidence somewhere else, Miss Renard’s homicide, if it had become that, would have never been solved.”

      Ned had never been arrested. There was absolutely no connection between him and Mary Ellen until that night when they met at the singles dance. Aside from Ned and Mary Ellen’s chance meeting at Kracker’s, there would have been no way to tie them together. Even the print Ned left on Mary Ellen’s windowsill wouldn’t have done any good. There would have been nothing to compare it with.

      Looking at the case, Schwanwede was fortunate, he knew, that Mary Ellen lived to tell her story. Going after a homicidal maniac and, with any luck, putting him away was what Schwanwede got up in the morning to do. If there was one prosecutor who could go after Ned, and pull in that Middlesex County case to make sure Ned’s jury knew the type of fanatic for blood he was, it was Fred Schwanwede.

      As Schwanwede sat one morning and read the file on Mary Ellen, he was appalled by the sheer intimidation and manipulation Ned had obviously used to gain her confidence and trust.

      II

      To Mary Ellen Renard, allowing her attacker to skate on a plea of twenty years—suffice it to say after she was told he had also murdered a woman five years before in a strikingly similar fashion—made her sick to her stomach. The fact that Ned could be out in eleven years made her body ache, her mind race.

      Mary Ellen later said the prosecutor’s office came to her and told her it was going to allow Ned to plead out his case. “At first, I was upset. It was not OK with me,” Mary Ellen later insisted.

      She had explained to the prosecutor’s office that she was fully prepared to face Ned in court and testify. She knew the consequences to her already shattered emotional state, understood how tough it would be, but she was resolved to put him in prison, where he belonged. “They told me I had no choice in it—that it wasn’t up to me. But they did talk to me about it before they went ahead.”

      Prior to the plea deal, Fred Schwanwede called Mary Ellen with a request. “Snelgrove’s attorney wants to meet you,” he said.

      It seemed like an odd demand. “It’s very unusual,” Schwanwede said, “but I will allow it. I have to be present, and he won’t be allowed to ask you anything about the case.”

      Ned’s attorney John Bruno’s strategy was to find out what type of witness Mary Ellen would make during trial. He wanted to see how she’d react on the witness stand, even though he had to keep his questions formal: Where’d you grow up? Where’d you go to school?

      Mary Ellen decided to do it. Why not? She could show Bruno—and Ned—that she wasn’t about to back down and curl up like a scared little girl and essentially be victimized all over again. Ned had violated her once. She wanted that control back. As it was, there were times when Mary Ellen would be forced to park her car as close to her building as possible and, after checking left and right, looking for Ned, jump from her car and race into the building as fast as she could. When alone, she was scared he was going to dash out from around a corner and grab her. Facing him, facing off against him, she would be able to take that fear back.

      As they sat in Bruno’s office, Mary Ellen recalled later, Schwanwede and Bruno talked about the town of Newark, where the courthouse was located, and how beautiful the nearby cathedral was, which was when Mary Ellen spoke up, saying, “That’s where my brother was ordained.”

      “Your brother’s a priest?” Bruno asked with shock.

      “Yeah,” she said.

      At another point in the conversation, Schwanwede asked Mary Ellen how her weekend was. “I went to visit my grandchildren,” she said casually.

      “You’re a grandmother?” Bruno interrupted, again quite astonished by the admission.

      At forty-five, Mary Ellen was better-looking than a lot of women half her age. She had an innocent beauty that went far beyond her stunning looks and shapely figure. Bruno couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Even more, he knew Mary Ellen had an ironclad reputation of attending church and living at home, added to a perfect professional work record, a brother who was a priest, and many friends who could vouch for her. Plus, she was strong-willed and spoke with authority.

      The perfect witness.

      Leaving, Fred Schwanwede said, “Everything you talked about in there said you were going to make an excellent witness.”

      The jury would have bonded with Mary Ellen inside five minutes of her direct testimony. Bruno was a smart enough lawyer to know that although he would take a few shots at her while she was on the stand, he could alienate the jury by attacking Mary Ellen and her terrifying ordeal. Branding her in the newspapers as the instigator was one thing, but doing it in court would blow up in his face. They’d hate him—and his client—for it. He couldn’t blame Mary Ellen.

      In the parking lot, showing Mary Ellen to her car, Schwanwede said, “Look, I have a hunch Bruno knows his client is guilty.”

      Weeks later, when Schwanwede met with Mary Ellen again, he felt bad about having to plead the case out, but he explained to her that juries were funny. “You never know what they’re going to do. This way, we get him off the street.”

      Mary Ellen was unhappy, but she understood.

      Although most of the professionals involved knew Ned was a danger to society—and if he had the chance, he would act out on his perverted sexual fantasies again—Mary Ellen had no idea she would, some twenty years after that conversation with Schwanwede, be once again confronted by Ned and his sadistic behavior.

      29

      I

      During a hearing before Superior Court Judge James Madden, Ned addressed the court. Standing in front of the bench, he looked like an eighteen-year-old high-school senior. With his blond hair and blue eyes, small frame and baby face,