A Century After ‘Moby Dick,’ New Bedford Confronts Grim Problems : Drug-Linked Murders Haunt Historic Whaling Town

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. —  The monument to Dawn Mendes’ brief, drug-driven life is a tiny lime-green stickpin in the map that covers a wall of the Bristol County district attorney’s office.

It identifies the spot near a freeway on-ramp where Mendes’ nude remains were found on Nov. 29. There are five other markers clustered on the map, one for each of the murdered women whose bodies have turned up since last July alongside highways near New Bedford.

Investigators say they have good reason to believe more bodies are waiting to be found, and almost every day for the past two months, they have scoured the countryside with one or more specially trained police dogs.

“I don’t know how many people are out there, if you want to know the truth,” Dist. Atty. Ronald A. Pina conceded.

Although it has been weeks since the most recent discovery of a body, at least four other women are missing, Pina added grimly. “I hope they’re not dead, but I also can expect the worst at this point.”

Waterfront Town

The case has brought a new wave of unwelcome attention to this grimy waterfront town, which gained national notoriety during an explosive trial in 1984, when four Portuguese-American men were convicted of gang-raping a woman on a pool table in a tavern known as Big Dan’s.

More than 100 years ago, New Bedford was the proud and opulent capital of the whaling industry--a city of “brave houses and flowery gardens” recalled in Herman Melville’s 1861 classic “Moby Dick” as “perhaps the dearest place to live in, in all New England.” The city remains the nation’s richest commercial fishing port, and prides itself on its romantic past.

The slayings, however, have underscored the fact that New Bedford today has its full share of 20th-Century problems--many of which stem from the fact that it has become what law-enforcement officials say is one of New England’s busiest heroin-distribution centers.

Pina’s investigation is focused on a half-dozen suspects from the area, but he is also pursuing, with authorities in San Diego and Seattle, what he describes as the “wild card” possibility that the crimes could be linked to dozens of unsolved murders in those port cities as well.

Investigators, working with a forensic anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institution, have been able to identify only five of the six sets of skeletal remains.

In addition to Mendes, the victims were Debra Medeiros, 30, whose body was the first one found; Nancy Lee Paiva, 36, a mother of two teen-aged daughters; Debra Perry DeMello, 35, a mother of three and escapee from a Rhode Island prison, and Rochelle Clifford Dopierla, 29, also a mother of two, who had never been reported missing.

In at least one instance, the killer apparently tried to throw police off by leaving one victim’s clothes near another’s body. In the case of the yet-to-be-identified remains, one of the best clues is an earring found lying on the chest--but Pina warned that this too could be a decoy.

Police have released few details of the crimes themselves. Reportedly, some of the victims were strangled and at least one was beaten to death. The murders are believed to have occurred between April and September.

From what the investigators can tell thus far, the missing and the dead appear to have one strong link: Long before the murderer appeared on the scene, they all had been lost to New Bedford’s flourishing drug trade.

Beyond the more sensational aspects of the murders is the deeper issue of “the condition of their lives before they were murdered, and the condition of other lives that are wasted,” New Bedford Mayor John K. Bullard said. “The toll is much higher.”

As each victim has been identified, so has a new story of a life given over to drugs. Some had turned to prostitution, others to housebreaking and shoplifting to get money to support their habits. They fell further and further beyond the reach of their parents, their children and their friends.

“The last time I saw her, she was so thin. Drugs were controlling her,” Charlotte Mendes said, weeping as she recalled the day last September that her 25-year-old daughter disappeared. “She was out there on drugs doing what she had to do, but she was a beautiful child. She was my child, and I’ll always love her.”

Prostitution Arrests

Dawn had a record of prostitution arrests, Charlotte said, but she blamed her daughter’s drug-addicted boyfriend. “He had a spell on her,” the mother said. “She was supporting two habits. If she did not go out there and make the money to get drugs, she’d get beat.”

Charlotte, a mother of 10 who is now rearing her daughter’s 6-year-old son, acknowledged that Dawn’s life style ultimately made her an easy target for the killer. “But just because somebody doesn’t like their life style doesn’t mean they should take their life,” she said. “If she could have changed her life style, she would have.

“All of her torment is over,” Charlotte Mendes added. “That’s what keeps me going now.”

Dawn Mendes and three of the other victims, as well as some of the missing women, were known to frequent Weld Square, a strip of shabby taverns and other storefronts located a few blocks beyond one of New Bedford’s lovingly restored historic areas. Police believe that the killer or killers may have become acquainted with the victims there.

Even now, despite the threat of a serial killer, the grip of narcotics on Weld Square is so strong that the pushers and prostitutes emerge with each nightfall. “Nothing’s changed,” said one local businessman, who asked not to be identified.

Pina said that over the past two years, several organized crime groups from New York have staked claims and developed a thriving heroin-trafficking business on Weld Square and South 1st Street in New Bedford. Police say the area draws drug customers from as far away as New Hampshire.

It also is not the sort of the place where the regulars feel comfortable talking to police investigators, Pina said. “They’re putting themselves in the situation where it’s tough to protect them. . . . The vulnerability is just so bad. But for the drugs, no one would put themselves in that situation.”

Pina declined to name any of what he says are at least a half-dozen suspects, but confirmed that investigators searched the home of Kenneth C. Ponte, a 39-year-old attorney who was acquainted with some of the victims. Ponte has moved to Port Richey, Fla., where his phone number is unlisted. His attorney, Joseph Harrington, did not return a reporter’s call.

If none of the local leads proves fruitful, there is another possibility--one that gives the case broader, more chilling implications.

Within the past decade, authorities in two other port cities--Seattle and San Diego--have suspected serial killers to be responsible for a total of 70 murders of women.

In both cities, the victims were picked off of society’s edges; they were drug addicts and prostitutes who frequented the raunchy sections of town. In both, their bodies were dumped in rural areas near main roads.

New Bedford’s investigators are pursuing the possibility that the murders in their town could fit this pattern--that the murders could be linked.

“It’s a way-outside chance,” Pina said. “It’s the wild-card possibility.”