WEBVTT - Chapter 5 | Old Snapshots 0:00:00.070 --> 0:00:05.149 This series includes sensitive and potentially distressing topics, including sexual 0:00:05.190 --> 0:00:21.799 assault and abuse involving children. Listener discretion is advised. And 0:00:21.860 --> 0:00:26.040 now the true impact story. It's the fourth week of 0:00:26.140 --> 0:00:27.820 March 1948, and a manhunt is underway. 0:00:35.330 --> 0:00:37.670 It takes a crime like this a long time to hatch. 0:00:38.450 --> 0:00:40.110 There were three generations. 0:00:39.610 --> 0:00:40.430 Back of this crime. 0:00:40.870 --> 0:00:44.800 John Corey, a dangerous felon, is on the run. There's 0:00:44.810 --> 0:00:46.760 a price on his head of $ 400. $ 300 from a 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:53.360 true crime radio show and $ 100 from a state prison warden. 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:58.070 The tabloids of Connecticut are ablaze with the story. Corey 0:00:58.090 --> 0:01:01.250 had just been released from a long-bidden prison for robbing 0:01:01.310 --> 0:01:04.950 a jeweler as a gunpoint. He no sooner got out 0:01:04.990 --> 0:01:07.630 than he paid a call on his wife, Louise, from 0:01:07.690 --> 0:01:11.500 whom he'd been estranged for years. Now, Louise was no 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:16.399 one's angel. She'd been charged with crimes herself, including kidnap 0:01:16.459 --> 0:01:19.699 and sex trafficking. But she seemed to have turned things 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:23.160 around while Corey was gone. She'd settled down with a 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:26.860 man in Danbury and was raising a daughter, a bouncy 0:01:26.970 --> 0:01:31.050 two-year-old named Sharon. Corey knocked on her door and asked 0:01:31.069 --> 0:01:34.429 her out for a drive. Louise and her little girl 0:01:34.490 --> 0:01:37.690 got in his car. An hour later, he pulled over 0:01:37.730 --> 0:01:41.240 on a quiet lane in Canaan and shot Louise twice 0:01:41.300 --> 0:01:45.339 in the head. Twelve hours passed before someone found her 0:01:45.420 --> 0:01:48.500 on the ground, where Corey had left her to die. 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:54.200 Corey's loaded. 38 was discovered at the scene, but Louise's 0:01:54.300 --> 0:01:58.760 two-year-old was missing. Cops found her a day later, abandoned 0:01:58.780 --> 0:02:01.580 in a car some 20 miles east of the crime scene. 0:02:02.590 --> 0:02:07.360 She'd witnessed the murder from the back seat. That little girl, Sharon, 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:10.480 would grow up to have her own kids. Her firstborn 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:16.690 boy was born in 1963. Sharon named him after his father, 0:02:17.889 --> 0:02:43.130 Howard Gomber Jr. Do you hear my madness? Laughter hides 0:02:43.490 --> 0:03:11.410 my fears. Sorrows depths are endless. I'm Paul Solitarov, and 0:03:11.530 --> 0:03:22.990 this is Season 2 of The Devil's Quarry. After years 0:03:23.050 --> 0:03:25.890 of conjuring with the mayhem he's caused, I find myself 0:03:25.990 --> 0:03:31.070 grappling with a baseline question. Who is Howard Gombert? And 0:03:31.110 --> 0:03:33.220 who or what contrived to make him what he is? 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:36.880 A menace to the girls and women who've crossed his path. 0:03:38.050 --> 0:03:40.310 my team and I went many miles to find out 0:03:40.370 --> 0:03:44.170 what we could. We began with Gombert's boyhood in search 0:03:44.230 --> 0:03:46.790 of clues. We talked to the folks who knew him 0:03:46.850 --> 0:03:49.809 as a child in Florida and to those who met 0:03:49.850 --> 0:03:52.900 him as a teen in Connecticut. Each of them gave 0:03:52.940 --> 0:03:55.860 us a piece of this story, if not a unified 0:03:56.020 --> 0:04:03.060 theory on his nature. Howard spent much of his preteen 0:04:03.100 --> 0:04:07.200 youth in Florida. We're told he adored his mother, Sharon, 0:04:07.540 --> 0:04:11.180 who scratched out a living as a bartender. By all accounts, 0:04:11.220 --> 0:04:16.900 Sharon was a firecracker. Pretty and feisty, resourceful as all get-out. 0:04:17.779 --> 0:04:20.599 She raised Howard and his three siblings mostly on her own. 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:24.820 When she split with Howard's father in Connecticut in the mid-60s, 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:29.330 she headed south with Howard and his younger sister. There 0:04:29.370 --> 0:04:32.570 she met and married roughly half a dozen men. The 0:04:32.610 --> 0:04:36.050 exact number proved hard to pin down. We don't know 0:04:36.110 --> 0:04:38.890 much about those men or what they had in common, 0:04:39.430 --> 0:04:42.690 but several of them at least had a violent streak. 0:04:43.710 --> 0:04:46.810 Their target when it wasn't Sharon was her oldest, Howard. 0:04:47.630 --> 0:04:51.450 We heard from several sources, including Gombert's lawyer, that he 0:04:51.490 --> 0:04:56.770 was severely abused. Not just spanked or slapped, but grown 0:04:56.830 --> 0:05:01.720 man beatdowns of young Howard. Indeed, at a sentencing for 0:05:01.779 --> 0:05:07.100 sexual assault in 2002, Gombert's court-appointed counsel said that as 0:05:07.140 --> 0:05:11.120 a boy, he was, quote, forced to eat dead ants, unquote, 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:17.770 by one of his mother's partners. Things got so bad 0:05:17.830 --> 0:05:20.770 for Gombert that in his middle teens, he left Florida 0:05:20.810 --> 0:05:25.370 to join his dad in Connecticut. At age 15 or 16, 0:05:25.370 --> 0:05:29.320 accounts vary, he moved into Gombert Sr. 's tiny cottage 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:33.600 in New Fairfield. When he arrived, Gombert was painfully thin. 0:05:34.300 --> 0:05:37.640 and carried a juvie criminal record, or so we're told. 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:41.190 But if he thought he'd find refuge in his father's house, 0:05:41.710 --> 0:05:49.289 teenage Howard was sorely mistaken. Soon after he landed, Gombert 0:05:49.310 --> 0:05:52.880 met a girl named Colleen Caruso. She was an 11-year-old 0:05:52.900 --> 0:05:56.700 who lived not far from Gombert's dad. Her house, in fact, 0:05:56.740 --> 0:06:00.800 straddled the line between New York and Connecticut. One day 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:04.040 Colleen was hanging with her grade school friends when Gomber 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:08.039 came traipsing down the road. Gomber was dressed in black 0:06:08.100 --> 0:06:11.440 with his jacket collar popped and a Marlboro dangling from 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:15.500 his mouth. Colleen was flattered by the older boy's attention. 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:18.990 He was cute. I found him to be attractive. 0:06:20.170 --> 0:06:23.750 He quickly attached himself to her circle of friends, which 0:06:23.810 --> 0:06:25.450 the other girls found disturbing. 0:06:26.500 --> 0:06:28.580 They were kind of like standoffish, if you will. They 0:06:28.620 --> 0:06:32.150 really didn't want him around and whatever. And I think, actually, 0:06:32.190 --> 0:06:34.370 from me being around him is how I lost my friends, 0:06:34.450 --> 0:06:34.870 I think. 0:06:36.089 --> 0:06:38.930 But Colleen was in the throes of her first ever crush. 0:06:39.670 --> 0:06:42.690 Gombert seemed so much cooler than the boys on her block, 0:06:43.210 --> 0:06:46.490 with his Peter Frampton shag and his cowboy boots and 0:06:46.529 --> 0:06:50.250 his ready access to weed. Sometimes he'd sneak her into 0:06:50.290 --> 0:06:53.469 his house at night, which was how she met his father. 0:06:55.250 --> 0:06:58.430 Howard Sr. was a burly ex-Marine with a bad temper. 0:06:58.450 --> 0:07:01.230 He was a machinist who liked to work on old 0:07:01.350 --> 0:07:05.260 cars and spend his time tinkering in the garage. But 0:07:05.300 --> 0:07:08.340 he wasn't the only adult in that house. There was 0:07:08.380 --> 0:07:10.300 also Howard's grandmother, Alice. 0:07:11.580 --> 0:07:14.080 His grandmother was the boss, not his father. 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:16.850 She could put the fear in you, like, you know, 0:07:17.250 --> 0:07:19.630 his grandmother was a very tough person. 0:07:19.670 --> 0:07:21.100 She used to hit him a lot, so.... 0:07:22.450 --> 0:07:26.140 Alice had competition when it came to slugging Howard. His 0:07:26.180 --> 0:07:28.440 dad was a heavy drinker with a mean right hook. 0:07:29.460 --> 0:07:32.380 I witnessed him slapping him a lot of times, yeah. 0:07:33.540 --> 0:07:35.640 When he'd knock him down, he'd knock him down. Like 0:07:35.660 --> 0:07:37.260 he'd knock him to the ground. 0:07:39.590 --> 0:07:41.890 Many times Alice would lock him out of the house. 0:07:42.670 --> 0:07:45.850 Gombert spent countless cold nights sleeping rough in the woods 0:07:45.870 --> 0:07:49.369 and backed up onto their yard. In the dead of winter, 0:07:49.490 --> 0:07:52.970 Colleen worried about him freezing to death in his flimsy tent. 0:07:54.170 --> 0:07:57.510 He knew, like, he could survive in the woods like 0:07:57.550 --> 0:08:02.110 a survivalist. So what life he came from obviously couldn't 0:08:02.130 --> 0:08:02.610 have been good. 0:08:07.470 --> 0:08:11.120 Soon enough, she became his lifeline. She'd steal food from 0:08:11.210 --> 0:08:14.540 her house and bring it to him. Things like canned 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:17.520 soup and beans that he'd heat up on a camp stove. 0:08:18.220 --> 0:08:21.580 a warm blanket that she filled from her attic. He'd 0:08:21.620 --> 0:08:24.840 repay her first with cigarettes and beer, and then as 0:08:24.860 --> 0:08:29.060 things progressed, with weed and pills. Weeks after they met, 0:08:29.110 --> 0:08:32.589 he started forcing sex on her, which, given her age, 0:08:32.910 --> 0:08:38.689 constituted statutory rape every time it happened. And then when 0:08:38.750 --> 0:08:41.849 Gombert had earned her trust, he asked her for a 0:08:41.870 --> 0:08:44.070 little help with a project. 0:08:44.090 --> 0:08:48.370 This was broad daylight. Raw daylight. 0:08:50.470 --> 0:08:53.410 I was supposed to wait outside and monitor if anybody 0:08:53.429 --> 0:08:54.330 was coming home. 0:08:56.090 --> 0:08:59.430 Gombert, she says, broke into people's houses while she stood 0:08:59.490 --> 0:09:03.510 watch outside. And what would come out of these houses? 0:09:03.740 --> 0:09:06.650 A lot of times he had food, believe it or not. 0:09:07.559 --> 0:09:09.020 He would go into people's fridges. 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:09.360 Yes. 0:09:10.020 --> 0:09:10.940 Food, jewelry. 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:13.820 Food and jewelry. Things he could stuff into a bag. 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:17.910 Those we'll hear later on. He stole other things as well, 0:09:18.630 --> 0:09:23.330 items of a far more intimate nature. Colleen felt bullied 0:09:23.410 --> 0:09:27.790 by Gombert, but powerless to break away. He had already 0:09:27.809 --> 0:09:30.350 estranged her from her friends and forced her to have 0:09:30.410 --> 0:09:34.130 sex with another boy while Gombert stood and watched. To 0:09:34.150 --> 0:09:37.290 say nothing of the times Gombert bound her hands before 0:09:37.330 --> 0:09:41.030 he raped her in his tent. Eventually, she says her 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:43.500 mom saw bruises on her wrists and called the New 0:09:43.540 --> 0:09:48.620 Fairfield cops to They arrested Gombert, but charged him with burglary, 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:54.270 not rape, for reasons Colleen doesn't understand. Gombert's criminal record 0:09:54.309 --> 0:09:56.469 shows that he was in and out for several years. 0:09:57.290 --> 0:09:59.969 During which span, he made a friend in jail named Jeff. 0:10:02.460 --> 0:10:05.600 I was in for a burglary. I was living on 0:10:05.620 --> 0:10:07.839 the street. I couldn't get a job. I didn't have 0:10:07.860 --> 0:10:11.250 a home. Nobody would hire me. So I had to eat, 0:10:12.470 --> 0:10:17.990 you know, plain and simple. That's why I committed some crimes. 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:23.140 Recently, our reporter Kathleen Horan met up with Joe near Putnam. 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:27.900 They sat at a crowded park and ride on Route 52. 0:10:27.900 --> 0:10:31.800 For muscle, Kathleen had brought her chihuahua, Rufus, who may 0:10:31.820 --> 0:10:36.980 be tiny, but has the underbite of death. The years, meanwhile, 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:40.420 have left their mark on Joe. In his fifties, he 0:10:40.460 --> 0:10:44.100 looks like the Marlboro Man, if the Marlboro Man smoked 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:48.870 something stronger than cigarettes. Joe still counts himself a supporter 0:10:48.890 --> 0:10:52.470 of Gombert's, though they haven't seen each other in three decades. 0:10:53.570 --> 0:10:56.290 We had no choice because it was a two-man block. 0:10:56.650 --> 0:10:58.949 It was just me and him. So either you just 0:10:58.970 --> 0:11:00.700 sit there and stare at the wall all day or 0:11:00.740 --> 0:11:05.230 you talk to the guy you're put with. We would ask, 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:07.100 what are you in for? And he'd say, I don't know, 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:07.520 just that. 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:10.620 And what are you in for? With little else to do, 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:14.210 they chatted about their lives. and relived the rush they 0:11:14.309 --> 0:11:17.490 both got from breaking and entering the homes of neighbors 0:11:17.590 --> 0:11:18.469 and strangers. 0:11:19.670 --> 0:11:22.429 It is an adrenaline rush, especially when the people are home. 0:11:23.750 --> 0:11:26.579 Kind of, you know, like having ice cream on top 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:29.380 of your cake. A little more exciting, a little more fun. 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:32.120 Have you done that when people are home? 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:38.480 Yes, I did. At some point, Gombert moved to a 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:41.319 different jail, but the two friends kept in touch. 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:48.559 He got away with a lot. So did I. But 0:11:50.110 --> 0:11:53.369 once I was finally able to get some work in 0:11:53.390 --> 0:11:58.130 the housing, I stopped that stuff. But even though, I'll 0:11:58.150 --> 0:11:58.850 admit it was fun. 0:12:00.690 --> 0:12:03.360 After they got out of jail, the two found legal work. 0:12:04.140 --> 0:12:06.740 Joe says he hooked Gombert up with a construction gig, 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:10.260 then taught him how to read a tape measure. Soon 0:12:10.300 --> 0:12:12.660 the two were roommates at a party house down the 0:12:12.700 --> 0:12:16.740 street from Howard's dad. There, Joe bought the groceries and 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:20.760 Gomber cooked. Sometimes they went fishing in the lakes around Putnam. 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:24.660 They used to have the little seven-ounce beers, they called 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:27.949 them ponies. You would get an eight-pack of ponies, put 0:12:27.990 --> 0:12:29.429 it in a bucket and let it sink down in 0:12:29.450 --> 0:12:32.050 the water so it would stay cold, and just basically 0:12:32.090 --> 0:12:34.530 sit on the shore, you know, and cast out. 0:12:38.860 --> 0:12:41.460 Joe stayed at that house for about a year, but 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:44.280 says the only neighbor he ever met was Gombert's dad. 0:12:45.420 --> 0:12:48.240 As tight as he was with Joe, Howard never discussed 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:52.090 his family. But Joe had eyes, and they told him plenty. 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:57.210 His dad was pretty tough on him. That I do remember. 0:12:57.250 --> 0:12:59.429 Like I said, his father liked to pick on him. 0:12:59.910 --> 0:13:00.670 How would he do that? 0:13:00.710 --> 0:13:01.850 Like, what do you remember seeing? 0:13:02.590 --> 0:13:03.350 Just comments. 0:13:04.230 --> 0:13:08.060 Like a derogatory comment about what he had done. Or, 0:13:08.100 --> 0:13:10.559 you know, why didn't you do it better? Or like, 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:11.500 what's the matter with you? 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:12.040 You stupid? 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:16.020 So like along those lines, it was in a sarcastic 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:20.900 manner too, because unfortunately, you know, I laughed at the, 0:13:21.059 --> 0:13:23.420 you know, a lot of the comments that his dad made, 0:13:23.450 --> 0:13:26.910 because it was funny. He'd have a smile on his 0:13:26.950 --> 0:13:29.690 face and laugh about it. And, you know, sometimes like, 0:13:29.730 --> 0:13:32.469 you know, throw me a wink. So I don't think 0:13:32.510 --> 0:13:36.120 he was really too mean spirited, but Even if it's not, 0:13:36.260 --> 0:13:38.810 that could have an effect on a child growing up. 0:13:44.030 --> 0:13:47.610 It was Fitzgerald who famously said that intelligence is, quote, 0:13:48.130 --> 0:13:51.170 the ability to hold two opposed ideas at the same 0:13:51.290 --> 0:13:55.820 time and still function, end quote. If he's right, then 0:13:55.860 --> 0:14:00.520 the same is true of emotional intelligence, meaning it's possible 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:04.569 to mourn Howard Gombert's boyhood while deploring who he became 0:14:04.610 --> 0:14:08.830 in manhood. To do anything else is to ignore the facts. 0:14:09.610 --> 0:14:13.880 Howard Gombert had no shot as a child. Just look 0:14:13.900 --> 0:14:16.920 at the men in his life. The abusers his mother 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:20.500 kept marrying, then fleeing. The father he ran to for 0:14:20.580 --> 0:14:24.380 nurture and safety, but who beat and mocked him instead. 0:14:25.370 --> 0:14:29.390 Does that excuse what Gombert's done? No, it surely doesn't. 0:14:30.350 --> 0:14:33.550 But it does help explain his contempt for women, if 0:14:33.650 --> 0:14:37.030 not his depravity. And it goes a long way to 0:14:37.090 --> 0:14:40.810 explaining his need for control, as someone who'd been bullied 0:14:40.870 --> 0:14:46.630 since birth. It also sheds light on Gombert's weapon of choice. No, 0:14:47.190 --> 0:14:50.470 not his knife, his charm. Because when you grow to 0:14:50.510 --> 0:14:55.030 be about 5'7, 150 pounds, you don't get what you 0:14:55.090 --> 0:14:58.910 want or need by force. You get it by deceit. 0:14:59.860 --> 0:15:03.040 by convincing the fellas that you're a good hang and 0:15:03.100 --> 0:15:08.300 convincing women that you're playful and sexy. We know, for instance, 0:15:08.340 --> 0:15:12.100 that Gombert is able to land jobs despite his criminal record. 0:15:12.950 --> 0:15:15.330 And we know he had no trouble finding new women. 0:15:16.370 --> 0:15:19.790 And so it was in 1987 when Gombert found a 0:15:19.810 --> 0:15:23.610 job at a laundromat in Brewster and a young woman 0:15:23.650 --> 0:15:26.950 with a pretty daughter. The name of that daughter will 0:15:26.970 --> 0:15:31.940 be familiar to last season's listeners. It was Rachel R., 0:15:32.670 --> 0:15:35.820 who was eight, she says, when Gombert began raping her. 0:15:35.840 --> 0:15:38.160 The End. 0:16:00.650 --> 0:16:03.010 Eddie C. was a teenager in Brewster, New York, in 0:16:03.030 --> 0:16:06.790 the late 1980s. He was a tall blonde boy with 0:16:06.830 --> 0:16:12.430 a first-class mullet and a cocksure swagger to match. One day, 0:16:12.460 --> 0:16:14.560 a friend told him about a new kid in town, 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:18.140 a girl by the name of Denise Lanza, who always 0:16:18.180 --> 0:16:21.400 had a camera draped around her neck. The first time 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:24.780 Eddie saw her, she was tearing around on her BMX bike. 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:29.740 She came down the hill and I saw fireworks there. 0:16:29.790 --> 0:16:32.360 I fell in love. I was a little kid and 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:33.340 I fell in love. 0:16:34.580 --> 0:16:37.720 Very soon, the two were an item. Though Eddie C. 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:41.420 wasn't the kind you could just tie down. Over the summer, 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:45.580 they invited Kathleen to their house to talk. Denise, who's 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:48.980 still an avid photographer, spread a deck of her old 0:16:49.100 --> 0:16:53.660 snapshots on her table. Laughing, Eddie pointed to one in particular, 0:16:54.260 --> 0:16:56.260 a group of pretty girls with big hair. 0:16:57.640 --> 0:16:59.000 If I wasn't going out with that one, I was 0:16:59.020 --> 0:17:00.620 going out with that one. If I wasn't going out 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:02.210 with that one, I was going out with that one. 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:06.090 But I always loved that one. 0:17:10.010 --> 0:17:11.970 Over the years, the two of them dated a string 0:17:12.010 --> 0:17:15.550 of other people. But something always brought them back together. 0:17:15.570 --> 0:17:18.399 Decades later, they're a couple again. 0:17:19.460 --> 0:17:21.440 I've had the same phone number for over 20 years. 0:17:21.619 --> 0:17:24.540 And the reason why I kept the same phone number 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:26.340 was so that he could always get a. 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:26.699 Hold of me. 0:17:27.790 --> 0:17:30.710 The two of them passed photos to Kathleen while marveling 0:17:30.750 --> 0:17:33.990 at the passage of years. But those pictures weren't the 0:17:34.050 --> 0:17:37.490 reason for Kathleen's visit. It takes a certain kind of 0:17:37.609 --> 0:17:41.570 courage to confront the past, to admit mistakes and reckon 0:17:41.609 --> 0:17:45.909 with remorse. Eddie and Denise had been wrestling with memories, 0:17:46.470 --> 0:17:50.540 memories stirred by season one of our series. They'd listened 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:54.899 to it intently, and something shifted in them. Suddenly, the 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.970 things they'd seen back then looked very different in hindsight. 0:18:01.850 --> 0:18:05.650 Where we originally all started was the Bruce Laundromat. 0:18:05.930 --> 0:18:07.360 What do you mean it all started there? 0:18:08.140 --> 0:18:10.960 That's like where I met Howard and all that. 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:14.800 By laundromat, Eddie means the one in Brewster, not the 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:18.750 laundromat next to shop right seven years later. And he 0:18:18.790 --> 0:18:21.649 got to know Gombert while hanging around there, though he 0:18:21.690 --> 0:18:26.310 was barely a teen when Gombert was 25. Soon they 0:18:26.350 --> 0:18:30.490 were drinking buddies, despite the gap in ages. They did 0:18:30.580 --> 0:18:33.720 odd jobs together and fished the lakes that dotted Putnam. 0:18:35.260 --> 0:18:38.219 Me and Howard used to paint the apartments. You know, 0:18:38.260 --> 0:18:41.879 I was friends with him. Drinking, getting high, fishing. We 0:18:41.900 --> 0:18:43.780 had boats all over the fucking place. If we didn't 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:45.659 have a boat in our reservoir, we had a fucking 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:47.899 pair of fucking locks and we stole it. 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:50.040 Denise knew him, too. 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:54.120 He was as cool as a cucumber. He was laid back, 0:18:54.619 --> 0:18:55.320 you know? 0:18:57.609 --> 0:18:59.710 I was around a lot of other things than she 0:18:59.750 --> 0:19:02.530 was that she never took part in. 0:19:02.970 --> 0:19:04.270 What's the other side that you saw? 0:19:04.290 --> 0:19:10.570 I saw him violent. I saw him smack Rachel's mother 0:19:10.650 --> 0:19:16.820 in the face, backhanded her right in the laundromat. Backhanded her, pow! Like, 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:18.030 almost knocked her fucking head off. 0:19:19.540 --> 0:19:22.180 At the time, Gombert was living with Rachel and her mom. 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:25.700 It didn't matter to me, you know? I was like, oh, 0:19:25.740 --> 0:19:30.800 oh well. Now I was young. I didn't, you know? Now, 0:19:30.820 --> 0:19:31.629 forget about it. 0:19:32.940 --> 0:19:36.480 Rachel R. is mentioned with Gombert's preteen victim, beginning when 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:39.860 she was eight. It took years for Rachel to even 0:19:40.020 --> 0:19:42.680 hint at Denise and Eddie what Gombert was doing to her. 0:19:43.660 --> 0:19:47.380 But despite having seen Gombert slug Rachel's mom, Eddie thought 0:19:47.500 --> 0:19:48.800 Rachel was making it up. 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:53.100 Rachel's trying to, you know, start some shit or, you know, whatever, 0:19:53.140 --> 0:19:57.080 just get Howard out of there. We didn't understand really 0:19:57.140 --> 0:19:58.100 what was going on. 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:02.359 Eddie was just a kid himself back then, and it's 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:05.080 hard to know now whether he couldn't picture such things 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:08.629 or if he simply trusted his good-time buddy, Gombert. 0:20:09.820 --> 0:20:12.160 I was friends with Howard and I liked Howard. So 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:16.060 Howard couldn't do something like that. Howard's not touching her. 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:20.490 I thought Rachel was making it up. I thought, okay, 0:20:20.550 --> 0:20:22.730 so you did something wrong. He smacked you around a 0:20:22.730 --> 0:20:25.850 little bit. Shut up and behave, you know, like that 0:20:25.910 --> 0:20:29.389 kind of thinking. You know, I didn't understand that he 0:20:29.430 --> 0:20:31.129 was doing this to that poor girl. 0:20:31.150 --> 0:20:35.590 Denise didn't see what Eddie saw, but is grappling with 0:20:35.630 --> 0:20:39.250 her own regrets. She lived around the corner from Rachel 0:20:39.310 --> 0:20:42.020 and her mom. And though Rachel was years younger than 0:20:42.060 --> 0:20:45.200 Denise and her friends, she'd let her tag along with them. 0:20:46.260 --> 0:20:50.000 You could see her bedroom from my kitchen window. So 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:53.920 you could hear everything, like if they were yelling or whatever, 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:57.740 you could hear that. And you could tell the difference 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:00.400 whether he was mad when he came in that door 0:21:00.420 --> 0:21:02.180 or if he was chill. 0:21:03.619 --> 0:21:05.940 One day, Denise came home and found Rachel sitting in 0:21:05.980 --> 0:21:11.609 her house. terrified and seeking protection from Gombert. 0:21:11.630 --> 0:21:16.290 And Rachel was in my living room crying, and my 0:21:16.350 --> 0:21:17.670 mother was holding her. 0:21:17.690 --> 0:21:21.730 Denise pauses for a moment to gather herself. 0:21:23.050 --> 0:21:24.990 I didn't know what was going on, so I had said, 0:21:25.050 --> 0:21:26.710 what's going on? 0:21:26.750 --> 0:21:27.270 What happened? 0:21:27.290 --> 0:21:27.810 What happened? 0:21:29.150 --> 0:21:31.810 Denise thinks that Rachel came looking for her after a 0:21:31.890 --> 0:21:36.990 violent encounter with Gombert, but found her mom instead. The 0:21:37.050 --> 0:21:39.350 next thing she knew, someone else was at their door. 0:21:40.410 --> 0:21:45.510 Well, her mother came down to my mother's house and said, OK, 0:21:47.090 --> 0:21:49.950 you know, you have to come home now. And she 0:21:49.990 --> 0:21:53.320 was begging my mom, please don't let me go back there. 0:21:53.430 --> 0:21:54.060 Please don't. 0:21:54.150 --> 0:21:55.060 Can I stay here? 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:57.660 Can I stay here? My mother was like, of course, 0:21:58.359 --> 0:21:58.720 you know. 0:21:59.780 --> 0:22:03.090 Denise says Rachel's mom wanted her to come home. She 0:22:03.150 --> 0:22:05.990 said if she returned without her daughter, it would, quote, 0:22:06.340 --> 0:22:09.060 piss Gombert off even more, unquote. 0:22:10.220 --> 0:22:16.530 And my mom put her behind her and said, no. 0:22:17.250 --> 0:22:18.190 She's not going. 0:22:19.390 --> 0:22:22.150 Rachel's mom went home without her daughter that afternoon. 0:22:23.660 --> 0:22:23.800 And. 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:28.080 I just remember her and my mom, just my mom 0:22:28.160 --> 0:22:28.860 hugging her. 0:22:29.680 --> 0:22:32.500 Every time I think about the stuff that he. 0:22:32.280 --> 0:22:35.800 Did to her and the stuff that she told me. 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:38.960 That I failed her as my friend. 0:22:39.859 --> 0:22:43.780 And I wonder why nobody called the cops. 0:22:47.880 --> 0:22:50.960 Rachel only stayed with Denise for a little while, then 0:22:51.020 --> 0:22:56.490 bit her lip and went home. In the meantime, Eddie 0:22:56.530 --> 0:22:59.930 saw a lot of Gombert. Too much for his own good, 0:22:59.990 --> 0:23:00.530 in fact. 0:23:01.530 --> 0:23:07.520 The partying, the drinking, you know, numerous girls in the shed. Numerous, 0:23:07.600 --> 0:23:11.220 numerous girls in the shed. All hours of the night. 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:14.820 That shed he's referring to comes up a lot when 0:23:14.840 --> 0:23:18.600 you read about Gombert's past. He'd rented it with a friend, 0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:22.239 ostensibly as a place to work on motorcycles. But that 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:23.520 wasn't all they did there. 0:23:24.710 --> 0:23:27.379 There was a non-stop party in there. Non-stop. 0:23:28.600 --> 0:23:31.560 The Shed had two rooms, Eddie told us. The front 0:23:31.619 --> 0:23:34.800 room was for fixing and housing bikes. The back room, 0:23:35.140 --> 0:23:38.440 not so much. There was a sofa and a dartboard 0:23:38.580 --> 0:23:40.200 and a boombox for music. 0:23:41.340 --> 0:23:43.780 I didn't put two and two together until years and 0:23:43.840 --> 0:23:45.399 years and years and years later. 0:23:46.500 --> 0:23:50.110 Years later, after Rachel reported Gombert to the cops, Eddie 0:23:50.160 --> 0:23:53.050 stopped by the Shed, he says. There he saw a 0:23:53.190 --> 0:23:54.949 new girl hanging with Gombert. 0:23:56.030 --> 0:23:56.830 Tell me what you saw. 0:23:57.450 --> 0:24:00.370 I just went in there to, I most likely went 0:24:00.410 --> 0:24:04.109 in there to get drugs. And I knocked on the shed, 0:24:05.410 --> 0:24:07.770 and no one answered the front door, so I opened 0:24:07.790 --> 0:24:09.590 the front door, walked in the back because I heard 0:24:09.609 --> 0:24:12.810 the radio on, and she was sitting right on the couch. 0:24:14.800 --> 0:24:18.409 Eddie didn't recognize her at the time. That would come later, 0:24:19.200 --> 0:24:21.649 when he saw her picture in the paper. and her 0:24:21.690 --> 0:24:24.270 face on missing posters around Carmel. 0:24:27.490 --> 0:24:30.169 She was just sitting there partying, listening to music. I 0:24:30.210 --> 0:24:32.290 think she was drinking a beer, if I'm not mistaken. 0:24:32.310 --> 0:24:36.250 I can see her face right now, plain as day, 0:24:36.310 --> 0:24:39.449 right now, just talking about it. But I know she 0:24:39.490 --> 0:24:41.149 was in there. For a fact, I know she was 0:24:41.210 --> 0:24:41.470 in there. 0:24:42.710 --> 0:24:45.580 That girl he says he saw with Gombert, it was 0:24:45.600 --> 0:24:50.300 none other than Robin Murphy. And so went that evening 0:24:50.359 --> 0:24:54.750 at Denise and Eddie's house. Hour upon hour of reflection 0:24:54.830 --> 0:24:58.670 and regret and an undertow of guilt about the past. 0:24:59.790 --> 0:25:01.990 I'm scared for the next girl. Yeah. 0:25:02.210 --> 0:25:03.250 That's what I'm scared of. 0:25:04.290 --> 0:25:07.430 The couple now view Gombert as a predator and a threat, 0:25:08.020 --> 0:25:11.980 given his pending release from prison in three months. What 0:25:12.040 --> 0:25:14.200 haunts them now is the thing that still haunts me. 0:25:15.730 --> 0:25:18.239 Why did so many people who knew what Gombert was 0:25:18.340 --> 0:25:21.899 up to say and do nothing at the time? His 0:25:21.940 --> 0:25:26.820