12/01/2005

The Waterbury Observer (Waterbury, CT)
By JOHN MURRAY

The Regan Frenzy

A tornado of controversy, and revulsion, engulfed Waterbury resident John F. Regan this past month. Local, state and federal investigators suspect - at the least - the work of a serial rapist, and have launched a multi-state task force to piece together Regan's movements during the past three decades.

In addition, the national media has zeroed in on the unfolding drama and representatives from CNN, Geraldo Rivera, Good Morning America and Dateline NBC are circling the story.

Although he has yet to be convicted of a single crime, the mounting evidence against Regan in the last 13 months has transformed from a "he said - she said", into an avalanche rumbling furiously down a craggy mountain pass.

He now stands accused of kidnapping and raping the wife of one of his best friends in 1993, of assaulting a female co-worker in 2004, of attempting to abduct a 17-year-old student from a Saratoga Springs high school parking lot on Halloween, and of photographing and stalking women around greater Waterbury.

And in early December a 50-year-old Waterbury woman stepped forward to say that John Regan kidnapped and sexually assaulted her 24 years ago.

Waterbury police believe that Regan may have committed other crimes and are currently looking into the death of two Waterbury prostitutes from the 1980s. The multi-state task force is beginning the laborious process of re-examining unsolved sex crimes, missing persons and murders from any area John Regan was travelling through in the past 30 years.

Consider that just 18 months ago John Regan appeared to be a hard working family man living in one of the best neighborhoods in Waterbury. He was married to a second grade teacher at a parochial elementary school, was a supportive father of three children, and managed a local roofing franchise.

But in the summer of 2004 his outwardly normal life began to unravel. A young female co-worker accused Regan of attempting to sexually assault her. Regan had taken her to his parent's home in the Overlook section of the city under the guise of stopping to check on the house. His parents were staying at a second home in Cape Cod and the Overlook house was empty. When Regan lured the woman into the home he is accused of pinning her down and trying to sexually assault her. She struggled free and eventually brought charges against him at police headquarters on East Main Street.

After Regan was arrested, Waterbury police chief Neil O'Leary, acting on a hunch, asked for and received a DNA sample from Regan. The sample turned out to be a perfect DNA match with a specimen collected from a bizarre and unsolved Waterbury kidnapping and rape case dating back to September 11th, 1993.

Since the statute of limitations on the rape charge had expired, Regan was arrested for kidnapping and released on a $350,000 bond. A trial in the 1993 case was expected to begin in the next few months.

The charge - that he had used a mask and gun to subdue and rape the wife of one of his best friends - was so outrageously off the wall, and despicable, that many people in the community refused to believe he had committed the crime.

As he awaited trial Regan has continued to proclaim his innocence. Neighbors say he was often spotted in the Euclid Avenue neighborhood tossing a football with one of his kids. In the past year the Regans attended local sporting events and would occasionally dine out at a local eatery on Watertown Avenue.

But John Regan's mask of innocence was shattered Halloween night in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., when he was arrested after a failed attempt to abduct a high school cross country star from her school parking lot.

Regan, who had been in New York working on a family construction project, had removed the back seat of his van, laid down a blue tarp, and had pre-knotted ropes waiting to help secure his victim. Regan had parked his van so his sliding side door was lined up next to the driver's door of his intended target.

When the young girl went to her car Regan walked up behind her, wrapped one arm around her waist and covered her mouth with the other. When Regan began dragging her towards his trap, he got more than he bargained for. The 17-year-old girl is an elite athlete on the Saratoga Springs cross country team, which is the top ranked high school squad in the country.

She fought like hell.

When Regan covered her mouth she bite him, kicked him and screamed. She was able to get away and two adults immediately confronted Regan in the parking lot. He jumped into his van and fled, but the adults pursued him in their vehicles and contacted the local police via cell phone. Regan was pulled over and arrested minutes after the failed abduction attempt.

Particularly chilling were the contents reported to be inside the back of the van. Some media outlets reported a blue tarp and a noose. Others reported pre-knotted ropes, a blue tarp, a bottle of liquor and a shovel. Yet others reported a blue tarp, ropes and a rake.

Exactly why John Regan attempted to abduct the adolescent girl from Saratoga Springs High School is unknown, but speculation ran rampant.

He already stands accused of sexually assaulting three women in Waterbury, so it is not a quantum leap to believe that at a minimum he was intent on raping the girl. But the tarp and shovel hint at a possible more sinister conclusion to his plan.

Was John Regan planning to rape, murder and bury his victim?

Only John Regan knows, and he's not talking. And within 48 hours of his arrest in New York he attempted to kill himself by hanging himself with a bed sheet.

The incident sent shock waves across Waterbury, and some residents on Euclid Avenue wondered openly if they had been sharing the neighborhood with a monster.

At the time of the failed abduction in Saratoga Springs, the Waterbury police department was conducting a new investigation into John Regan back here in the Brass City. Police had received a tip from a Walgreen's photo technician on West Main Street that Regan had been taking pictures of women who were unaware that they were being photographed. The technician had recognized Regan's name from local newspaper stories about the 1993 rape case.

Several days after Regan was arrested in New York, the Waterbury police raided Regan's home on Euclid Avenue and removed a computer, film and other items. Police also raided Regan's parent's home, just a few blocks away.

The images on the film from Walgreens were mostly of women running along the desolate Cheshire bike path, and images of the former co-worker who accused Regan of assaulting her in the summer of 2004. She had been completely unaware that Regan had been following and photographing her. On the basis of the photographic evidence, Waterbury police brought new charges against Regan for stalking.

As the story continued to develop at lightening speed, the major media began to take interest. And when the name of Molly Bish was linked to John Regan, the story exploded around New England, and within days, around the country. The case of John Regan was no longer a Waterbury or Saratoga Springs story, and suddenly, and with no concrete evidence to link Regan to Bish, he was now under investigation in one of the country's most sensational and unsolved abduction/murder cases.

Geraldo Rivera's producer called the Observer from Boston. They wanted to devote an entire show to the John Regan-Molly Bish investigation, and they wanted to know what I knew about the case. At the time I was unfamiliar with the Bish case and explained that my knowledge of John Regan was entirely limited to Waterbury and the controversial 1993 rape incident.

That night I went home and looked up Molly Bish on the internet with a Google search. The first site to pop up was mollybish.org, it was the Bish family site used to spur the investigation along.

As I tabbed through the site I was startled to see a color photograph of John Regan half way down the page. Molly's parents had posted the image with an article from the Saratoga Springs newspaper. They suggested Regan was worth looking into as a possible suspect in Molly's disappearance.

I then read about Molly, a beautiful 16 year old blond who had disappeared from a remote pond in Warren, Massachusetts, where she had been working as a life guard. Molly's mother had spotted a suspicious looking middle aged man sitting in a white car the day before Molly's disappearance. She later said she sat nervously in her own car for twenty minutes not wanting to leave Molly alone at the pond with this man.

When Molly disappeared the next day, the man in the white car was considered a top suspect. Mrs. Bish sat down with police and helped create two composite sketches of the man, which were widely seen throughout Massachusetts. The sketches were posted on the site and I pulled them up to look. The man had narrow eyes, short cropped hair brushed straight back, a thick mustache and a bull neck. I looked at the police mug shots of John Regan and there were similarities - particularly the hair and the thick, bull neck.

One glaring difference was the suspect had a thick mustache, and in all the images of Regan I had seen, he was clean shaven. A long-time Regan friend told me the next day that Regan often wore a thick mustache, and I began to wonder if it was possible that our ordinary family man from the Overlook neighborhood was a serial killer.

Molly Bish's father, John, told a Saratoga newspaper on November 13th that "given that he's involved with a young girl here in a parking lot of a high school, the boldness of his actions and his vehicle contains bindings to restrain a victim and that he has photographs of young women, to me this says this is someone who has been doing this for a while."

Molly's mother, Magi, pointed out the similarities between her daughter and the girl Regan is accused of trying to abduct in Saratoga Springs. "This girl was 17 - Molly was three months from being 17 - blond haired, blue eyed, athletic," Mrs. Bish said.

And almost overnight, without any concrete evidence to link Regan to Molly Bish, the story exploded across Massachusetts.

WRKO, the largest talk radio show in Boston, called the Observer and wanted to do a live interview the following morning about the Regan-Bish connection. I called back and said I was unqualified to talk about that, but did possess a strong working knowledge about a previous incident involving John Regan in Waterbury. They said that was okay, and I spent a few minutes early one morning in mid-November talking about John Regan to bleary eyed commuters navigating their way to work in greater Boston.

The Boston Globe published a report November 15th quoting Worcester District Attorney John J. Conte as stating that local authorities in Massachusetts were going to scrutinize Regan's whereabouts at the time of Molly Bish's disappearance.

Conte said authorities planned to subpoena various records, including those from a hotel in the Sturbridge area, to determine if Regan was staying there when Bish disappeared from Commins Pond on June 27, 2000.

''We're trying to get records from the hotel to see if he was there. If he was there, it's still a big step to say he is a suspect. We're taking it very seriously," Conte told the Globe. "It's all speculation at this point."

DNA Conference

On November 21st a press conference was held at the State Capitol to update the media on Connecticut's use of a DNA Data Base. Governor Jodi Rell was on hand, as were law enforcement officials, state prosecutors, state representatives and famed forensic scientist, Dr. Henry Lee, who continues to serve the citizens of Connecticut for $1 a year.

Governor Rell told the gathering that "there is no greater responsibility of government than public safety, and no more important task than solving cold cases."

Dr. Lee explained the DNA project began in the early 1990s when Connecticut was the first state in the country to create a data base. The legislature passed a limited bill in 1994, and the bill (co-sponsored by Waterbury state representative, Jeff Berger) was expanded last year.

"We have a very good record in Connecticut," Lee said. "Very few states can match our record. Every day this DNA is working and lots of cases are being resolved."

And then Dr. Lee pulled out a letter to read to the gathering. It was written by the Waterbury woman who was kidnapped and raped by John Regan in 1993. The letter, which took Dr. Lee about ten minutes to read to the media and dignitaries, examined how DNA evidence helped break open an 11-year-old cold case.

When he finished reading the letter, Dr. Lee said "this letter shows how everybody worked together to solve the crime. John Regan fits the profile of a serial rapist. We think there are many other kidnapping cases he was involved in."

Meanwhile back in Waterbury the police department was looking into any possible links between Regan and two murdered prostitutes who turned up dead on the banks of the Naugatuck River in the late 1980s. Regan lived less than two blocks away from where the women plied their trade in the evenings.

Waterbury police also worked closely with Massachusetts authorities to try and reconstruct Regan's movements in June 2000. At the time of Bish's disappearance John Regan was working as an outside salesman for ABC Supply Co.

Authorities contacted the company headquarters in Wisconsin to try and locate records of Regan's business dealings. Regan had traveled extensively in the Sturbridge area where Molly Bish had been adducted and murdered, but was he there on the day she disappeared?

A company spokesman told media outlets that it would take time to find the records. Meanwhile the speculation about John Regan and Molly Bish raged into a fire storm.

And just as suddenly it was over.

On November 23rd the Associated Press sent a story over the wires stating that the Worcester District Attorney had determined there is "no connection between a Connecticut man (Regan) arrested last month for an attempted abduction in upstate New York and the unsolved slaying of teenager Molly Bish.

"He has never been a suspect in our eyes," Conte said. "We have nothing that connects him."

Conte said investigators have records showing Regan wasn't in the area at the time of Bish's disappearance.

But the media attention didn't die down.

CNN called the Observer November 29th. An hour -long show hosted by Nancy Grace was going on the air that night and they were seeking information. Always alert and on top of returning phone calls, I didn't check my voice messages until 48 hours after the show aired.

A transcript of the show can be found online. Here's a tiny sample from host Nancy Grace; "Welcome back, everybody. Stunning developments out of Connecticut. Yes, that`s where all the rich white people live. A 49-year-old husband, father of three, now being reportedly linked to the deaths of two prostitutes, the attempted kidnapping of a 17-year-old track star right after track practice at her high school, the death and disappearance of an university student, an attempted rape and a rape."

Suddenly, John Regan was a suspect in every unsolved crime in New England. As the media hysteria increased, the Waterbury police backed off interview requests and concentrated their efforts on investigating Regan's movements.

A regional task force of Connecticut State Police, New York State Police, Massachusetts State Police, the F.B.I. and members of the Waterbury Police Department was formed to look into all unsolved rape, missing persons or murder cases in the past 30 years around New England. As authorities piece together Regan's movements as a traveling salesman they will expand their search into every place he has known to have traveled.

One case already drawing attention is the 1998 disappearance of Suzanne Lyall from the University at Albany.

In late November a Saratoga grand jury indicted Regan on charges of second degree kidnapping stemming from his failed attempt to abduct the young high school athlete from Saratoga Springs High School.

Saratoga County District Attorney James Murphy was quoted in the Saratogian newspaper as saying the 17-year-old victim was ready to testify against Regan at trial.

"She is ready, willing and able to do that," Murphy said. "We're going to push this thing along."

Regan's attorney, E. Stewart Jones of Troy, was quoted in various media outlets stating that "Regan's actions at the school that day were misunderstood and Regan's mistake was not staying to explain himself."

If convicted of the kidnapping charge in New York, Regan could face up to 15 years in state prison. Authorities say the charges in Connecticut could mean life in prison. Regan is now in custody at the Central New York Psychiatric Center near Utica, where he was transferred after his failed suicide attempt.

Despite the bizarre media circus swirling around the case, some good came out of all the publicity. A 50-year-old Waterbury woman stepped forward with new allegations against John Regan, claiming he sexually assaulted her nearly 24 years ago.

The woman told Waterbury police that Regan trapped her in his truck and assaulted her on Memorial Day 1981. On December 1st Waterbury Superior Court Judge Frank Iannotti signed an arrest warrant charging Regan with first-degree kidnapping as a result of the woman's allegations.

"Based on all the evidence we have, it's not surprising to me another victim has come forward," said Waterbury Police Superintendent Neil O'Leary. "This is another example of stereotypical behavior of a sexual predator."

Waterbury State's Attorney John Connelly has stated he is working with New York authorities to determine when Regan will return to the city to face charges of stalking and kidnapping.

WHY?

Many people in greater Waterbury have been staggered at the charges leveled against John Regan. He grew up here, he has friends in every corner of the community, how could this have happened? And even more compelling - why?

In the opening pages of "The Evil That Men Do," Stephen G. Michaud explores the question. Michaud's book zeroes in on the work of Roy Hazelwood, a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Behavioral Science Unit, based at the F.B.I. Academy at Quantico, Va. This team helped solve the Atlanta child murder case and was profiled in a novel by Thomas Harris, "The Silence of the Lambs,".

Hazelwood spent years surveying the behavior of serial rapists and could find no comprehensive reason "why some people act out and others don't," although he believes the answer has to do with self-perception.

"One of the reasons that we don't act out is that we have inhibitors, or brakes, to control desires," he said. "They can be social status, religion, personal values or fear of jail.

Those who do act out are convinced they are losers so they don't see how they have anything more to lose by yielding to their desires."

He quotes one serial rapist as saying: "Regardless of how successful I may appear to be, I know I'm going to screw up. So why not go ahead and do it? I'm going to give in to it."