Paula Perrera
Those in Orange County, New York who knew 16-year-old Paula Perrera couldn’t help but like her. She was a bubbly, confident, carefree girl who performed well in school, enjoyed the company of her tight-knit group of friends as much as a good book and was active in the church youth group. According to a November 2000 article in The Times Herald-Record by Oliver Mackson, Paula “never complained” even though she was known to have had an unhappy home life.
Despite her normally cheerful demeanor, Paula’s problems at home peaked in 1981 leading to her unsuccessful attempt at suicide by overdosing on pills, Mackson reported. From that moment on, while on the bus on route to school the kids mockingly called Paula “Tylenol” but she refused to let the comments get to her. On many occasions she chose to bypass the school bus altogether and instead hitchhiked to classes. Mackson said that even though Paula’s boyfriend begged her not to hitchhike because of the inherent dangers, she ignored his pleas claiming that, “only nice people pick me up.”
Then on March 1, 1982 Paula thumbed a ride one last time. That day, she was feeling sick and left Valley Central High School early to go rest at her boyfriend’s house. She hitched a ride from a Cornell University student driving home from spring break. She was never seen alive again.
Eighteen days later, Paula’s battered remains were found in a barren stretch of ground off Route 211 in Wallkill, New York. She had been brutally raped, sodomized and strangled before being tossed into the marshy area off the side of the road. Even though police frantically tried to find her murderer, the case remained unsolved for almost two decades.
Then in 1994 the first break in the case occurred during a televised BBC interview in which convicted serial killer Michael Ross claimed responsibility for two unsolved New York murders. Michael suggested that one of the women he killed he disposed of in the area of Wallkill, New York. Police followed up on the case and determined that the woman Michael was referring to was, in fact, Paula. To support their conjecture they obtained DNA samples from Michael, which were analyzed and compared with preserved evidence taken from Paula’s clothes. The DNA samples were a match and Michael was formally charged with her murder in the fall of 2000.
According to Mackson’s August 2001 article in The Times Herald-Record, Michael Ross was later quoted saying to police during an interview “as soon as I saw her (Paula), she was dead.” Paula was not Michael’s first victim, nor would she be his last. In fact, before his capture in 1983 he would claim responsibility for the murders of 8 young women.
Daniel and Patricia Ross’ marriage was beset with problems from the beginning. The troubles began while Patricia (“Pat”) was in high school and became unexpectedly pregnant, which led to their forced union. According to a 1996 article by Martha Elliott in The Connecticut Law Tribune, “Pat wanted no part of the marriage or of being the wife of a chicken farmer in Brooklyn, Connecticut.” Yet, at the time she had little choice.
Michael Ross was born on July 26, 1959. He would be the first of four children born to the hapless couple over the space of five years. Elliott claimed that during Michael’s youth there was evidence that his mother, wrought with psychiatric problems, mentally and physically abused him. In fact, Pat purportedly became so psychologically unstable and volatile towards her children that she was admitted to a psychiatric institution on at least two separate occasions and Daniel eventually became the primary guardian of the children. Elliott further suggested that when Michael was eight, there was evidence that his teenaged uncle, who babysat him and formed a close bond with the boy, sexually abused Michael before committing suicide at the age of 14.
Agriculture and Life Sciences
Despite the trauma Michael endured, he managed to excel in school. He had a special interest in animal science and dreamed of one day owning his own farm. In 1977, after graduating from Killingly High School, Michael went on to study agricultural economics at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
While at school, Michael was socially active and joined several organizations, including the Alpha Zeta fraternity and the Future Farmers of America, Katherine Davis reported in the Cornell Daily Sun in October 2000. Moreover, he became involved in several relationships with some beautiful young co-eds, one to which he became engaged. However, Elliott claimed that the relationships always ended in failure and Michael’s “dream of the perfect family began to be crowded by other fantasies — disturbing, violent, sexual fantasies.”
It didn’t take long for his fantasies to spiral out of control. During his second year at school Michael started to stalk young women. Eventually his violent sexual urges took on a new dimension when he began raping many of the women he stalked. Amazingly, he evaded capture for a couple years. However, in September 1981 shortly after his graduation he finally landed himself in jail for assaulting a young teenaged girl.
At the time of the incident, Michael was working as a management trainee for a Cargill, Inc. in North Carolina, Rebecca James reported in a Syracuse online article. During a business trip to Illinois, he kidnapped a 16-year-old girl, dragged her into the woods and gagged her before being interrupted by the police in mid-activity. Michael was arrested for unlawfully restraining the girl, was fined $500 and put on probation.
The police had no idea that the man they arrested and subsequently let go was responsible for not only assault but something much more sinister. That May, the body of Dzung Ngoc Tu, 25, was discovered in Fall Creek located at the bottom of a gorge in Ithaca, New York. Initially police believed that she committed suicide. Eventually, they realized that Dzung was actually the victim of a brutal rape and murder. Michael’s violent fantasies had taken a deadly toll and Dzung would be considered his first known murder victim.
Elliott stated that following the murder of Dzung, Michael tried to kill himself but that he didn’t because he “was too chicken to do it.” He further claimed that Michael tried to convince himself that he would never hurt another person ever again, yet by that time his compulsions had gotten the better of him. Michael was a man out of control and on the verge of a murderous rampage.
On January 5, 1982, Michael abducted 17-year-old Tammy Williams while she was walking home from her boyfriend’s house in Brooklyn, Connecticut. She was later found raped and strangled not far from where she disappeared. Michael was never suspected in the case and thus had the freedom to continue his killing spree, which resulted in the murder of Paula Perrera approximately two months later.
In April 1982 Michael struck again, this time in Croton, Ohio close to where he had found a new job at a local egg farm. At around midnight on April 2nd, Michael went to the home of a pregnant off-duty policewoman, claiming that his car broke down. He asked for a flashlight, which the woman supplied him with and Michael left allegedly to fix his car.
Michael returned a short while later asking if he could use the woman’s telephone. James suggested that he spoke briefly with the woman and told her his name and where he worked. After gaining the woman’s confidence, Michael attacked her.
The woman put up a courageous fight and managed to scare Michael off. She then promptly called her co-workers who rushed to her assistance. After receiving a description of the assailant, his name and where he worked, the police were able to locate Michael the next day. He was immediately arrested and charged with assault. According to Michael Newton’s book, The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, he was bailed out of jail by his parents a little more than a month later and “sent home to Connecticut for 16 days of psychiatric study.”
The psychiatric reports showed that Michael was indeed suffering from psychological problems, which he blamed on the 1981 divorce of his parents. Surprisingly, even though he had a criminal record including two sexual offenses, there was little action taken to ensure that he remain under constant psychiatric evaluation or police surveillance. This allowed Michael the freedom to carry on with his murder rampage.
On June 15, 1982, Deborah Taylor, 23, and her husband ran out of gas near Danielson, Connecticut and spilt up to look for a filling station, Newton reported. While she was walking on the side of the road, Michael abducted, raped and strangled her. Newton said that a jogger found her skeletal remains approximately four months later. Michael was not initially suspected but he would later be linked to the case.
In August 1982, Michael finally appeared in an Ohio court for assaulting the pregnant policewoman. During the proceedings, he plead guilty to the charges, was fined $1,000 and served four months in jail before being let out on probation. According to James, “the probation report suggested he make better use of his free time, perhaps by taking classes, starting a jogging program or learning to fly,” hoping the activities might discourage his violent behavior. The recommendation was shocking and pointless. It isn’t difficult to understand that such activity would do little if nothing to deter a violent serial rapist.
Once out on probation, Michael went back to Connecticut and began working as a door-to-door insurance salesman. He was able to secure the job after lying about his criminal record during the application process. It is likely that he spotted his next victim while canvassing potential clients.
On November 19, 1983, Robin Stavinsky, 19, disappeared while hitchhiking in Norwich, Connecticut. Newton reported that joggers found her remains a week later near a local hospital. She had been raped and strangled.
At the time of the discovery, investigators working the case were able to link Stavinsky’s murder with that of Tammy Williams and Deborah Taylor’s because of the marked similarities between the cases. Most of the victims were of similar stature, had been sodomized, found face down and strangled. It was becoming increasingly clear to the police that a serial murderer was in their midst, yet at the time they had few clues as to the identity of the killer. Working with the evidence taken from the crime scenes, they worked frantically to put a face to the serial murderer.
Then on Easter Sunday 1984, Michael committed his first double murder. Fourteen-year old friends April Brunais and Leslie Shelley from Griswold, Connecticut were walking home from the movies on route to a friend’s house when Michel kidnapped them. When the girls’ bodies were later found it was clear that they both had been brutally raped and murdered in a similar manner as Michael’s previous victims.
Two months later, Michael claimed his eighth murder victim. On June 13, 1984, 17-year-old Lisbon, Connecticut resident Wendy Baribeault was abducted in broad light. Witnesses claimed that they last saw Wendy alive walking down State Highway 12 allegedly on her way to a convenience store. Her remains were found several days later.
Like Michael’s other victims, Wendy had been raped and strangled. However, unlike the previous murder cases, there were witnesses who said they “noticed a thin white man with glasses driving a blue, late-model Toyota” following her the day she disappeared, James reported. It turned out to be the break investigators were hoping for.
Detective Michael Malchik, who worked on the Tammy Williams case, was assigned to chief investigator of Wendy’s murder case. Malchik began his investigation by pursuing the car that witnesses claimed to have seen. Elliott said that Malchik printed out a list of 3,600 locally owned blue Toyotas which matched the description. Coincidentally, the first person on the list he visited on June 28, 1984 was Michael Ross. During the interview, Malchik immediately became suspicious of the young man.
Malchik described the visit as “a roller coaster ride” because every time he was about to leave the apartment, Michael would “drop him a crumb that would make him think that he should ask more questions,” Elliott reported. Eventually, Michael couldn’t withhold his ghastly secrets any longer and confessed to some of his crimes. Initially, he told Malchik only of Wendy Baribeault’s murder but then later, while in police custody, he confessed to also killing April Brunais, Leslie Shelley, Tammy Williams, Deborah Taylor and Robin Stravinsky. It would be years before he would claim responsibility for killing Paula Perrera and Dzung Ngoc Tu.
a police truck
In July 1987, Michael went on trial for Deborah Taylor and Tammy Williams’ murders. He pled guilty to their murders and received a maximum sentence of 120 years. The following month he was tried for the murders of Wendy Baribeault, April Brunais, Leslie Shelley and Robin Stravinsky and convicted. He received a total of two life sentences and six death sentences.
During and after the trials, Michael became angered because he felt that the judge and jury were biased and the testimonies of some of the witnesses were grossly inaccurate. Yet, probably his greatest source of irritation was that he felt the court failed to recognize his alleged mental illness. Michael suggested that this was most evident when the judge disallowed testimony by his psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Miller. The defense team claimed that had Dr. Miller been allowed to submit his testimony concerning Michael’s psychological state, the jury would likely have been more lenient during the penalty phase. Moreover, his “mental illness” might have even been considered a mitigating factor, which could have spared him the death penalty altogether.
In protest, Michael filed a long list of complaints and petitioned the state for a new trial. After examining his case, the Judicial Review Council and the Statewide Grievance Committee dismissed his complaints, Elliott reported. However, Michael continued the appeals process and eventually his case was taken to the high court.
In July 1994, The Connecticut State Supreme Court decided to uphold Michael’s murder convictions but overturned the death sentences, “finding that the original trial judge excluded evidence that might have helped Ross prove he suffered from a mental illness or defect,” Richard Biegenwald reported in a 2000 Serial Killer Hit List article. As a result, the court ordered a new penalty hearing, which would be delayed for several years. In the meantime, Michael battled his psychological problems and courted death.
The earliest account of Michael’s purported mental illness began when he was a little boy. James quoted Karen Clarke who wrote in a 1992 Police magazine article saying that, “as a little boy, he had fantasies about women — about bringing them to a special underground place, hiding them and keeping them to love him.” She was further quoted as saying that “as a teenager, he molested several little neighborhood girls… as an adult his fantasies grew more sexual and progressively more violent.” Some believe that Michael’s anger towards his mother was one of the primary contributors to his aggressive feelings towards women. However, it has also been suggested that his violent behavior was actually due to a hormonal imbalance in the brain. What is most likely is that it was a combination of both factors.
In his writings from jail, Michael often described his violent sexual urges as a separate uncontrollable entity that would suddenly take him over without warning and propel him to do things he knew that were wrong. He wrote in a 1998 article titled “It’s Time for Me to Die: An Inside Look at Death Row,” that his urges were like “living with an obnoxious roommate” that he could not escape because it was always present. He further stated that he would often get “orgasmic pleasure” from his fantasies and acting them out, yet he would also be “disgusted later by the exact same thoughts.” After relieving himself from his fantasies he said he “felt such a sense of loathing and self hatred” that he often longed for death to liberate him from his mental torture.
A vast majority of the psychiatrists who treated Michael diagnosed him with the paraphiliac disorder known as “sexual sadism.” In his book The Psychopathic Mind: Origins, Dynamics and Treatment, Dr. J. Reid Meloy described sexual sadism as “the conscious experience of pleasurable sexual arousal through the infliction of physical or emotional pain,” which is characteristic in most sexual psychopaths. His psychiatrists made several attempts to reduce Michael’s “repetitive thoughts, urges and fantasies of the degradation, rape and murder of women,” which he claimed he couldn’t get out of his head. Michael said that the female contraceptives Depo-Provera provided some relief of his symptoms in that they helped to reduce his testosterone levels to “below prepubescent levels,” further leading to a significant reduction in his violent urges and fantasies.
However, the relief was temporary. Michael developed liver problems as a direct result of the hormones and had to discontinue using his medication. Soon afterwards, he complained that the violent sexual urges re-emerged. A little more than a year later, Michael was given an alternative form of female contraception, which allowed him to regain control over his sadistic impulses to attack women.
The medication purportedly allowed Michael the clarity to grasp the full extent of his horrific crimes. Even though he claimed that he could sparsely remember the details of the murders he did begin to realize some of the agony he caused the families of his victims. He claimed in his article that he was haunted by their pain but knew that there was nothing he could do to absolve what he did. Consequently, Michael decided to put himself and the families of his victims out of their prolonged state of misery by volunteering for execution. His controversial decision would be met with mixed reactions ranging from anger to relief and cause a temporary upheaval in the system that was unaccustomed to prisoners seeking a state assisted suicide.
Michael spent the better part of four years working with state prosecutors to circumvent a new penalty hearing and secure an agreement to proceed directly to the death chamber. On March 11, 1998, Michael signed a 10-page “death pact” with state prosecutor C. Robert Satti acknowledging his crimes were cruel and heinous and pleading with the court to hasten his execution. However, a Superior Court judge decided to invalidate Michael’s agreement with Satti, declaring that it was unconstitutional and “unsettling.” The court further ruled that a new penalty hearing must be held, which was exactly what Michael wanted to avoid.
attorney
The penalty phase retrial was scheduled to begin in April 1999 with the selection of the jury. Biegenwald said that that same month Michael allegedly had “a change of heart” and decided that he no longer wanted to be executed. His team of defense lawyers planned to revert to their original strategy, which was to prove that Michael’s mental illness was in fact a mitigating factor that would make him ineligible for a death sentence. The prosecution team wanted to push for capital punishment and intended to “prove the existence of so-called aggravating factors,” reported WTNH-News Channel 8 in Hartford, Connecticut. They would have a long wait before either side would be able to present their arguments.
Approximately 10 months after jury selection began and a great deal of legal wrangling, Michael’s penalty hearing finally got under way. It took three days for the prosecution to present their case, which began with the testimony of the victim’s relatives and police officers that investigated the murders and ended with a videotaped BBC interview of Michael discussing how his victims suffered. Their arguments were powerful, as was the testimony of the victim’s families, making it an even more difficult challenge for the defense team to sway the jury.
The defense had their work cut out for them but they too were able to present a strong case. The jury listened to testimony from Michael’s prison psychiatrist Dr. Stanley Kapuchinski, who stated that his client suffered from sexual sadism and that the symptoms were relieved by drug therapy. His statement supported the defenses contention that Michael’s murder rampage was provoked by his mental illness.
Michael’s father also took the stand and pled for his son’s life. Daniel Ross said that “he felt it would be a mistake to execute Michael Ross” because “he is a biological specimen” that could ultimately provide valuable information into the psychopathology of a serial killer, WTNH reported in March 2000. Michael’s aunt also testified on his behalf and asked that he be spared from the death penalty. Perhaps one of the most unexpected persons to take the stand in Michael’s defense was Sam Reese Sheppard, the son of Dr. Sam Sheppard who was convicted of killing his mother in Ohio in 1954. A WTNH article said that during his testimony Sam openly opposed the death penalty and suggested that Michael would be of better use to science than he would be dead.
Yet, the defenses defining moment was when they introduced Dr. Miller’s testimony, which was barred from Michael’s original trial. In a letter written to the court 13-years earlier, Dr. Miller suggested that Michael’s mental state was a mitigating factor, which he believed should play a role in the type of penalty that was handed down to his client. Following the induction of one of their most important pieces of evidence, the defense made their closing arguments then rested their case hoping that the jury would agree with Dr. Miller’s conclusion.
After nine days of deliberation the Superior Court jury of nine men and three women finally reached a verdict. On April 6, 2000, Michael received once again the death penalty for the brutal murders of April Brunais, Wendy Baribault, Robin Stavinsky and Leslie Shelley. Diane Scarponi said in an April 2000 article that Michael, “stood impassively as the verdicts were read” whereas the families of the victims “wept or sat with bowed heads.” It had taken the state a total of 16-years since Michael’s arrest to secure a death sentence against him and they were determined to make it stick this time. If the state gets their way, Michael will be one of the first people to be executed in the state of Connecticut since 1960.
In August 2001, while his death penalty sentence was pending appeal, Michael was extradited from his death row prison cell in Connecticut to the Sullivan County maximum-security prison in Fallsburg, New York. He was transferred to Orange County to face arraignment in the rape and murder of Paula Perrera. On September 24, 2001, Michael stood before Judge Nicholas DeRosa and pled guilty to the first-degree murder charges. The following month he was sentenced to 8 to 25 years in prison for brutally killing Paula. Surprisingly, Michael expressed relief when the sentence was handed down and was quoted saying, “I regret that this has taken so long to be taken care of,” Timothy O’Connor reported in The Times Herald-Record.
Michael managed to evade being charged for the rape and murder of Dzung Ngoc Tu in 1981. James quoted Tompkins County District Attorney George Dentes suggested that it was pointless to seek a conviction against Michael in her murder because he has already been sentenced to death in Connecticut. Besides, Dzung’s family in Vietnam has no interest in pursuing the case and would prefer not to relive the pain that has torn their family apart.
The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled to uphold Michael’s previous death sentence in May 2004, despite repeated appeals by his lawyers. The following October, an execution date had been set for January 26, 2005. Michael had decided to discontinue his 18-year long appeals process and had instead accepted his fate.
Finally on May 13, 2005, Connecticut granted Michael Ross’ request when it carried out its first execution in 45 years. The New York Times reported that “in defiance of public defenders and others who wanted to save him, Michael Bruce Ross chose to forgo further appeals…. Ross convinced judges he was competent, smirked at psychiatrists who said he was suicidal and often seemed exasperated by his inability to reshape his image.”
“This was not an act of suicide by Michael Ross,” said defense attorney T. R. Paulding, who helped Ross with his appeals. “It was a decision that required courage.”
Michael Ross was executed by lethal injection at Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers, CT. Nine members of his victims’ families witnessed his final moments. Ross chose not to make any final statement.
Biegenwald, Richard (2000). Michael Ross. Serial Killer Hit List.
Davis, Katherine (October 18, 2000). Cornell U. alumnus arraigned for 1982 murder of girl. University Wire. Cornell Daily Sun.
Elliott, Martha J. H. (April 29, 1996). Michael Ross: Why a killer offers to die. The Connecticut Law Tribune.
James, Rebecca (August 19, 2001). Serial killer got his start at CNY. The Syracuse Newspapers-Syracuse on-line.
Mackson, Oliver (November 2000). Paula’s friends recall ‘little lamb.’ The Times Herald-Record.
Mackson, Oliver (August 24, 2001). An average guy and his monstrous crimes.
Newton, Michael (2000). The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. Checkmark Books, New York, NY.
Meloy, J. Reid (2002). The Psychopathic Mind: Origins, Dynamics and Treatment. Jason Aronson, Inc. New Jersey.
O’Connor, Timothy (2001). Serial killer sentenced in death Valley Central student. The Times Herald-Record.
Ross, Michael (1998). It’s time for me to die: An inside look at Death Row. Published in the Journal of Psychiatry and Law.
Sargeant, Alan (2001). A glimpse into Paula Perrera’s soul. Orange County Publications, a division of Ottaway Newspapers Inc.
Scarponi, Diane (April 6, 2000). Conn. Serial killer gets death. AP Online.
WTNH-News Channel 8 (February 22, 2000). Michael Ross penalty hearing begins today. New Haven, Connecticut.
WTNH-News Channel 8 (March 9,2000). Father of serial killer pleads for son’s life to be spared. New Haven, Connecticut.
WTNH-News Channel 8 (March 13, 2000). Son of Sam Sheppard testifies for Ross. New Haven, Connecticut.
WTNH-News Channel 8 (August 6, 2001). Ross arraigned on New York murder charge. New Haven, Connecticut.
WTNH –News Channel 8 (September 21, 2000). Convicted killer Ross charged in 1982 killing of NY teen. New Have, Connecticut.