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    Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer
    Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer
    Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer
    Audiobook11 hours

    Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer

    Written by Maureen Boyle

    Narrated by Christina Delaine

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Eleven women went missing over the spring and summer of 1988 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, an old fishing port known as the Whaling City, where Moby Dick, Frederick Douglass, textile mills, and heroin-dealing represent just a few of the many threads in the community's diverse fabric. In Shallow Graves, investigative reporter Maureen Boyle tells the story of a case that has haunted New England for thirty years.

    Boyle first broke the story in 1988 and stayed with it for decades. In Shallow Graves she spins a riveting narrative about the crimes, the victims, the hunt for the killers, and the search for justice, all played out against the backdrop of an increasingly impoverished community beset by drugs and crime. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews, along with police reports, first-person accounts, and field reporting both during the killings and more recently, Shallow Graves brings the listener behind the scenes of the investigation, onto the streets of the city, and into the homes of the families still hoping for answers.

    Contains mature themes.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 27, 2018
    ISBN9781977370686

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    Reviews for Shallow Graves

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    • 5/5
      Book Description:Eleven women went missing over the spring and summer of 1988 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, an old fishing port known as the Whaling City, where Moby Dick, Frederick Douglass, textile mills, and heroin-dealing represent just a few of the many threads in the community’s diverse fabric. In Shallow Graves, investigative reporter Maureen Boyle tells the story of a case that has haunted New England for thirty years.The Crimes: The skeletal remains of nine of the women, aged nineteen to thirty-six, were discovered near highways around New Bedford. Some had clearly been strangled, others were so badly decomposed that police were left to guess how they had died.The Victims: All the missing women had led troubled lives of drug addiction, prostitution, and domestic violence, including Nancy Paiva, whose sister was a hard-working employee of the City of New Bedford, and Debra Greenlaw DeMello, who came from a solidly middle-class family but fell into drugs and abusive relationships. In a bizarre twist, Paiva’s clothes were found near DeMello’s body.The Investigators: Massachusetts state troopers Maryann Dill and Jose Gonsalves were the two constants in a complex cast of city, county, and state cops and prosecutors. They knew the victims, the suspects, and the drug-and-crime-riddled streets of New Bedford. They were present at the beginning of the case and they stayed to the bitter end.The Suspects: Kenneth Ponte, a New Bedford attorney and deputy sheriff with an appetite for drugs and prostitutes, landed in the investigative crosshairs from the start. He was indicted by a grand jury in the murder of one of the victims, but those charges were later dropped. Anthony DeGrazia was a loner who appeared to fit the classic serial-killer profile: horrific childhood abuse, charming, charismatic, but prone to bursts of violence. He hunted prostitutes in the city by night and served at a Catholic church by day. Which of these two was the real killer? Or was it someone else entirely?Maureen Boyle first broke the story in 1988 and stayed with it for decades. In Shallow Graves she spins a riveting narrative about the crimes, the victims, the hunt for the killers, and the search for justice, all played out against the backdrop of an increasingly impoverished community beset by drugs and crime. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews, along with police reports, first-person accounts, and field reporting both during the killings and more recently, Shallow Graves brings the reader behind the scenes of the investigation, onto the streets of the city, and into the homes of the families still hoping for answers.My Review:I found this book to be quite fascinating. Maureen Boyle did an excellent job interviewing over 100 people who were involved in this case and have first-hand knowledge of what transpired. We get an unique perspective of what went on and can form our own opinion of who the serial murderer may have been. It is heartbreaking what the families endured and you can really sympathize with them not getting a definitive answer of exactly who did murder their love ones. With all the twists and turns that the investigation took makes for a real page-turner as the story grips you and doesn't let go. I would highly recommend this book to those who like to read true crime about cold cases that have never been resolved. I won this book from LibraryThing Early Reviewers in exchange for an honest review.
    • 5/5
      Shallow Graves by Maureen Boyle was the story for the hunt of the New Bedford, Mass., serial killer in the 1980's. The author did a very good job telling about the victims, their families, and the suspects. This was a great true crime read.
    • 5/5
      Shallow Graves by Maureen Boyle was the story for the hunt of the New Bedford, Mass., serial killer in the 1980's. The author did a very good job telling about the victims, their families, and the suspects. This was a great true crime read.
    • 4/5
      I grew up in southeastern Massachusetts, not far from where these murders took place. At the time, I was in my early twenties, about the same age as the victims. The murders were on the news a lot and people were always speculating. I remembered the basics, and I know the area well, so this book appealed to me for those reasons. The book title is more a euphemism than a fact. The woman were left along the sides of highways, in deep grassy areas, but not buried at all.The writing style is easy to read, with a conversational type of narrative. The author excels at humanizing the victims. We get to know them as people, rather than just the drug addicts/prostitutes they were known as during the time of the murders. We also meet their families and see what it was like for them personally.Another aspect the author excels at is showing the politics behind the investigation. In many ways, New Bedford had a small town feel back then, including the way a handful of politicians ran things. The investigation suffered because of the backroom politics. Some of the content gets repetitive, while some aspects could have been addressed with more depth. For instance, New Bedford was a town known for lots of crime. I clearly remember being told to stay out of New Bedford, particularly at night, and to never drive there alone. It was, in many respects, more renown for crime than Boston was. But the town wasn't always that way, and it wasn't even all bad then. I would've liked for the author to better address how and why the town fell apart as it did.This isn't the type of true crime book where you get a lot of information about the killer, because we don't know for sure who the killer was. The murders were never solved. This book is more about giving dignity back to the victims, as well as highlighting a lot of crazy stuff going on in a Massachusetts town.
    • 2/5
      I normally devour true crime stories, however the descriptions of this book were way off base of the actual killings. I understand the importance of knowing who the detectives were and what was happening in their lives, health problems, etc. I did not learn much about the victims, except for two of the ine. The details surrounding the politics of this case were vital, but overshadowed the actual crime. I finished the book with n new knowledge than if I just googled the case myself.
    • 5/5
      Doyle takes us back to the crime fighting days before computers. Handwritten or typed reports, no way to find out if a crime nearby was similar to one committed in your jurisdiction without a phone call, no DNA, all add up to the likelihood that a serial killer won't be caught. They didn't have all the labwork available we have today. Doyle's meticulous research, complete with photos, makes this an interesting, riveting read.
    • 4/5
      This is a terribly sad story, and the reader will be left haunted by the victims. They were women who seemed lost - who became drug addicts, or prostitutes because they really needed the money. Often they had supportive family, but somehow they just seemed overwhelmed by life.And so they were preyed upon by a disturbing and odd killer, a lawyer who loved cats and was himself a drug addict. (Although the case is never solved, this man seems to be the perpetrator.)The author is at her best when writing about the people. I really appreciated that we get to know the victims and the police working on the case. You will feel the frustration the investigators experienced as they worked to solve the murders only to discover yet another body, and see what devastation the deaths brought to families. I will certainly never forget the mother who loved her daughter's wedding picture, where the young woman looks pretty and hopeful; later, when I saw the same woman in an online photo it was like another person: thin, haggard, destroyed by drugs.Sometimes the reporting on the investigation itself was a bit tedious, but that, of course, reflects the reality of a murder investigation. So this book does not fall into the "I could not put it down" category. Instead, "Shallow Graves" provides a rare chance to really experience police work - it's a bit like actually being there on the case - in all its frustrations, surprising discoveries, pain and very, very difficult days.
    • 4/5
      Shallow Graves by Maureen Boyle is a solid book. It's a very detailed look at a string of murders in the late 1980s in New Bedford. A serial killer of street women is active and disposing bodies along the highway. Throughout the investigation two potential suspects are identified but never charged. With one commiting suicide and the other dying the case is now a cold case just waiting to be solved.
    • 4/5
      There is a permeating sadness throughout Maureen Boyle's SHALLOW GRAVES. Sometimes the maddening slowness of the investigations rise up right through Boyle's words. One can feel the frustration in her writing. She took on the task of chronicling the New Bedford Highway serial killings, and it is easy to recognize that telling the story of the women who lost their lives was painful for her. Not only was it difficult for Boyle to write about the events of 1988, but it was almost impossible for those working the case not to feel tremendous burnout. SHALLOW GRAVES is not an uplifting story by any means. The reader feels the contagious sadness, and it is into this sadness that one falls, turning the pages, one after another, wondering why someone thought the lives of the victims was so dispensable.Although the case did not get the publicity of the Ted Bundy case or that of the Green River Killer, it was prominent news in Massachusetts in the late 1980s when women started disappearing around the city of New Bedford in southeastern Massachusetts. New Bedford was once a prominent, vibrant fishing city, but in the 1980s, the city had fallen on hard times. Many escaped the tedium of extended families, the burden of childcare, and the dead-end role of minimum wage jobs by indulging in a few drugs, a few drugs that eventually became too many. It wasn't difficult, though, to pick up a few extra bucks for narcotics. Men looking for sex were plentiful, so the women hit the streets to stir up a little cash. The going rate in New Bedford seemed to be much lower than it was in the closest big city of Boston. In fact, it seemed the women were working for hardly anything at all (about $20 was the price quoted.) Suddenly women - all young, but ranging in age from teenagers (19) to nearly middle-aged women (36) started showing up dead along public highways, disposed of in the bushes, trees, or marshes on the sides of the roads and discovered by public workers, dog walkers, and others. Although many of the bodies were found in towns surrounding New Bedford, most of the women's activities were traced back to a certain square in New Bedford, and that is where detectives started their search. Boyle writes something close to a police procedural about how the detectives went about their work. The male and female detective team, Dill and Gonsalves, are highlighted in the book as being extraordinarily understanding of the women, their lifestyle, and very sympathetic to their families and the deaths they were dealing with. Dill and Gonsalves come across in the book as being two very sensible and non-judgmental detectives, something refreshing when even the press at the time seemed to highlight the victims' drug use and prostitution before even highlighting the crime.That is part of what stands out about Boyle's book. There were good people working the case. There were people who cared about justice being served. Yet all the public was seeing and reading seemed to emphasize the women's lifestyles rather than their murders. It was a bit mystifying. If a series of wealthy wives from an affluent suburb were the victims of a serial killer, would the community and the press have acted the same way? Would they have wondered what the women did for work or if they worked at all? Would they wonder what their hobbies were or how they passed their time? There is something in SHALLOW GRAVES that hints of discrimination. If the victims hadn't been poor, hadn't had addictions - would the case have been solved sooner?The reader also learns about the prosecutor and a bit about politics, and there is a close-up look at two or three of the main suspects. Interestingly, it did not seem that law enforcement paid a huge amount of attention to what the women on the streets of New Bedford were telling them. After all, these females knew their trade and they - in many instances - knew their customers. The women reported the men who liked to play rough, the ones who frightened them, the ones who dumped them off and refused to pay. The police had a lot of leads on possible suspects just from the women's own experiences with their clientele. When one particular suspect rose above the rest as the most likely - the women in general did not believe him capable. He had been with a lot of women; many women knew him. They didn't feel he was the one. Yet, rather than listen to the intuition of the women who knew him as a paying customer, law enforcement focused more on the fact that he had known all the victims. It seemed as though law enforcement wanted to cooperate with the ladies of the street and vice versa, yet no one was really taking the women seriously. Was it because they were women? Because they did drugs? Because they sometimes worked as prostitutes? Or was it because law enforcement wanted a quick open and shut case and thought they had found one?SHALLOW GRAVES is not cheerful reading, but it is a well-researched and well-written book. Most importantly, it tells the story that many have forgotten, the story of women killed and thrown away, the story of a frightening and disgusting year in the history of southeastern Massachusetts. Maureen Boyle has made sure that the women will not be forgotten. The work is similar to "LOST GIRLS: An Unsolved American Mystery" by Robert Kolker, a book that is comparable in the fact that there is no sure resolution.
    • 4/5
      I had never heard of this case before, the New Bedford Highway serial killer, so I thought I'd give this a read. And it was extremely informative! Well researched, with enough background, and case material, to really give the feeling that I knew as much as could be known about the nine women and their terrible fates. It isn't a very "exciting" read, but it is straightforward and thorough. And I was haunted by this quote, "There were fifteen children left behind when their mothers disappeared in 1988." That is a punch to the gut, if there ever was one. If you enjoy true crime, you'll enjoy this book!
    • 2/5
      'Shallow Graves' by Maureen Boyle was a September Early Reviewer book. In my experience, a true crime book can go one of two ways: it can be written in a style that makes you forget it's real, or it can be boring due to technique or content. Shallow Graves was unfortunately the latter. The subtitle for the book is "The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial KIller' pretty much describes its content. The timeframe is the late 80's, bodies are being discovered along a stretch of a Massachusetts highway, a small group of cops begin to connect the dots, and a full-scale investigation is kicked off. In the meantime, more bodies are discovered and the case is politicized by a grandstanding DA. My problems with the book are:- there's a lack of detail in situations where more would be better. As interviews take place, there may be a summary provided, but no depth whatsoever.- the investigation took place on the cusp of the DNA era. Again, very little forensic discussion was included- would've been interesting to get into more detail about how the police investigators, the coroner, etc. did their work in that pre-CSI timeframe- on the other hand, while the victims were mainly prostitutes/drug users there was more discussion than necessary about that aspect of life in their community- the major suspects weren't really introduced until midway through. There really didn't seem to be any sort of analysis comparing the 2 major candidates... the police, or DA, focused on one, forgot the other, then returned to the original.The writing in Shallow Graves was very straightforward and pedestrian. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but a 'peppier' technique might have made the experience a little less like reading a 250 page news article and more like reading a book.
    • 5/5
      Maureen Boyle, a journalist, has written an excellent book about the serial killings of at least 9 women in 1988. Who killed these women has not been solved. Ms. Boyle has followed this since the beginning. In her book she details the women killed, their families, the police in the investigations and numerous police reports etc. I read a lot of true crime and highly recommend this book for other true crime readers.
    • 3/5
      I'm giving a middling rating to Maureen Boyle's "Shallow Graves: The hunt for the New Bedford highway serial killer" with the admission that some of the things I enjoyed about the book aren't going to be true for most readers.Boyle jams a lot of facts into the book, which focuses on the murders of nine women who were found dumped on the highway in New Bedford in the late 80's. Boyle clearly relies heavily on info from the investigators and I have to believe she includes pretty much every piece of evidence they collected in the unsuccessful attempt to solve the case. I liked some of this detail, having met and interviewed some of the police officers years later and having knowledge about the politics of the time. I think the book suffers in that Boyle treads too carefully not to give her opinion about who might have committed the crime and what role the political climate played in the charges filed against one of the suspects. I think a true crime book like this needs more a definitive point of view. I also think it gets bogged down a bit in all of the detail she provides.
    • 2/5
      I was a little leery about this book from page one - I don't like nonfiction that writes from the point of view of someone the author could not have spoken with, and this book does it a lot. The heavy focus on the drudgery of the police investigation is pretty standard for middle-of-the-road true crime, but it isn't my favorite part of the genre. Then about midway through there's an incident described that misgenders a trans woman and probably didn't need to be included at all; that's where I gave up. Not recommended.