Their Last Breath

By David H. Swendsen

State police officer Lt. Tom Provens is the lead officer investigating a brutal child prostitution ring. The investigation begins with a desperate 911 call and the discovery of the bodies of three young girls in an abandoned mansion in Massachusetts. Provens enters the evil universe of Sir William, a world of heartless enforcers, greedy landlords, and tortured children abducted off the streets and forced to become sex slaves. Unraveling this web takes Provens and the father of a missing ten-year-old girl on a desperate international journey, ending in the unforgiving jungles of the Amazon Valley.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796034639

David H. Swendsen

David H. Swendsen is a retired resource law enforcement officer. He was a Wisconsin Conservation Warden for eight years and retired as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Agent-in-Charge of the Six State Northeastern Region, in Boston, after over twenty years of federal service. After federal retirement, he taught resource law enforcement at the University of New Hampshire, Wachusetts Community College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for over eighteen years. From 1989 to April of 2010, he taught and directed, using over 50 selected instructors, the National Park Service’s Ranger Law Enforcement Program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. This program is only one of nine 400+ hour such programs in the U.S. It prepares its graduates to receive commissions as Seasonal National Park Rangers throughout the U.S. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Swendsen has written several resource law enforcement books, including Badge in the Wilderness, by Stackpole in 1984. His first novel, Fault Island, was published by Outskits Press in 2009. His latest novel, A Real Nightmare, was published by Xlibris in 2010.

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Prologue

LAST BREATH

She did not move. Her slender, youthful body lay on the bed clothed only in silken, lavender, lacey bra and matching panties. Massachusetts State Police Officer Edward Crowley saw no signs of breathing, but her blue eyes were frighteningly wide open. The knotted, golden cord around her slender neck had forced her to take her last breath. The hands that twisted the cord had efficiently taken from her, her short life. Her long glistening blonde hair lay neatly across her now-silent, well-formed breasts. Crowley thought, Even in death, this very young unmoving woman was beautiful. He found no pulse when he checked her still-warm wrist, but Crowley suspected only sixty minutes before she had called 911 on her cell phone. She had whispered to the Cheshire police dispatcher, Please help me––he is taking me to the bedroom where he will kill me.

Officer Crowley had raced to the scene this 8:30 on a Monday morning in September, guided to this old mansion by dispatcher Jamie Bryant. Jamie quickly used her incoming phone location electronics system to direct him and another officer to the exact location of the urgent, whispered call. Crowley, now somewhat stunned by the sight of this young girl, probably no older than sixteen, lying dead in this lavish bedroom, thought, How damn tragic.

Suddenly the bedroom door flew open and his fellow officer, Jake Cardenzo, came into the room shouting at Crowley, Holy hell, Ed, there are two young dead girls in the bedrooms on the second flo––or. Jake stopped short and gasped upon seeing another dead girl’s body on the bed before him. Crowley said, Jake, she has no pulse but still has body warmth. If she made the cell phone call, she has probably been dead for less than several hours. These two experienced officers—both in their forties, in good physical condition, and well-trained in handling dead bodies—at this earth-shocking moment stood and looked at each other almost in disbelief.

The two officers were both thinking, These beautiful young dead girls were about the same age as their daughters. What a sad loss to these girls’ families, wherever they may be. This was not exactly an everyday happening, even for experienced and well-trained police officers. After radioing their initial find and asking for assistance, the two officers carefully searched the rest of the old building. They were hoping not to find any more startling surprises.

While they began their search, help was on the way. More officers, ambulances, and EMTs were only minutes away. The officers on the scene thought they might find more victims, maybe still alive, in the old mansion. The mansion sat high on a hill looking down on a stretch of the Scenic Byway, a winding route that leads through the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. Officers Crowley and Cardenzo had arrived at the mansion in separate patrol cars. Both had looked for fresh car tire tracks in the steep driveway and in the small parking lot behind the mansion. There had been a rain the night before, and only tracks made since the rain would be visible. There were none. From the mansion to the Byway was a good one-half mile. Not a distance any escaping killer of the young girls would want to travel on foot, should he or she want to get away from the scene of the crime in a hurry. The two officers did a brief search of the mansion but waited for help to do a complete top-to-bottom search. They did do a preliminary search of the large garage that stood behind the main building but found no live suspects anywhere in the area. They found no more dead scantily clad female bodies during their hurried two-man search. It appeared that vehicles had been in and out of the garage recently. A complete search and comprehensive search and evidence collection would begin upon the arrival of the on-the-way enforcement reinforcements.

Officer Cardenzo’s second-story find of the other two dead young girls was very similar to Crowley’s discovery. Each lay in a large lavish bedroom on large expensive beds and each wore only sexy, revealing undergarments. Each had a golden cord around her neck sealing off her breathing and forcing her to take her last breath, ending each young girl’s life.

The rooms where the three girls were found all had numbers on the doors. Crowley’s lavender girl on the first floor was in room #1. That was the only bedroom found on the first floor. Jake Cardenzo’s dead girls were found on the second floor. In room #3, Jake found a beautiful black girl of maybe fifteen. Her young body had started to stiffen as rigor mortis had begun to set in. Jake estimated that she had been dead for four or five hours. In room #5, just across the hall, Jake had found another white teenager, a very attractive slender girl with beautiful long, black hair. She too had been dead for a matter of hours.

It turned out that there were ten large, lavish, numbered bedrooms in the mansion. There was no question in Officers Crowley’s and Cardenzo’s minds that this was a well- used brothel, where young girls were providing sex adventures for well-paying, warped-minded men. It appeared that these three young girls that were found dead at this, no doubt lucrative, operation had outlived their usefulness. Someone had decided it was time to quickly silence them by causing each young girl to take her last breath.

PART 1

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Chapter 1

Dead Girls in the Mansion

The old Van Nortonburg Mansion that looks down on travelers who wind their way along a Massachusetts Berkshire County section of the nation’s Scenic Byway system has many historic stories it could tell. Some true tales, well-guarded, and some purposely hidden carefully behind its non-confessing, quarry stone walls. The Van Nortonburg Mansion was built in 1945 near the old road that leads to the top of Mount Greylock. Rudolf Van Nortonburg and his wife, Marta, lived together in this large mansion until the death of Rudolf at age sixty-four in 1989. Rudolf was found hanging from the rafters in the large barn/garage, which housed his horses and expensive Rolls-Royce automobile. Officials called his death a suicide, but many doubted this rich land baron would ever want to kill himself. Marta, who was fifty at the time, married her former butler, Alex Chichester, age thirty-five. Six months later, Chichester was found shot to death, and again, in the barn/garage, supposedly by robbers who attacked him at 2:00 p.m. as he parked the Rolls-Royce and stepped from the car into the garage. They reportedly stole his wallet and watch, but not the car. They then disappeared, never to be caught. Marta stated she was sleeping in the mansion and didn’t hear the four shotgun blasts that sent four slugs into Chichester’s body. Sometime in 2001, Marta disappeared from the mansion with her latest husband, twenty-nine-year-old Albert Merton. The two had made the mansion into a semi-hotel, with ten bedrooms for tourists who were headed to Mount Greylock on vacation. Their overdue bills and mortgage payments were never recovered, and Marta was never heard of again. The mansion went into receivership, but sometime in 2008 a buyer bought the property and it appeared to lay vacant and abandoned since that time.

Crowley and Cardenzo heard the arriving reinforcements as police cars and ambulances tore up the steep drive toward the mansion with sirens blaring. Soon there were uniformed officers getting together with Crowley and Cardenzo in the parking lot making their search plan and plans to remove the dead girls from where they had taken their last breath.

The state police captain at Cheshire had sent Lieutenant Tom Provens to be in charge of the mansion deaths investigation. Provens, in his forties, had worked his way up the ladder to become a lieutenant by determination and a record that showed he could always be counted on to complete every case he was assigned to. After conferring with Crowley and Cardenzo, the six newly arrived officers were set up in teams to conduct the needed on-scene investigations. These officers, with their cameras and forensic gear, went right to work. Each room where the dead girls lay on their beds would be thoroughly gone over for clues. Pictures would be taken prior to examining the dead girls and moving them out of the building into waiting ambulances that had been summoned from the town of North Adams. Lieutenant Provens set up a command post in a first-floor room that had been previously used as an office to sign in guests when the mansion was a hotel. All searchers were looking for evidence that would identify the three dead girls. Photos taken were run through the missing girls’ files in the state police system.

State Police Captain Albert Bartlett at the Cheshire headquarters had already assigned someone to locate the records as to who now was the present owner of the mansion, and what part might the owner have in just how this mansion was being used as a western Massachusetts, Berkshire, house of prostitution. The captain wanted to also find out what part, if any, did the property owner play in using underage girls as slave prostitutes in this illegal operation. Search teams could find no evidence to identify the three dead girls.

After each girl was examined, their bodies were removed to the ambulances that were in the lot behind the mansion. Each of the seven bedrooms in the mansion was thoroughly searched. It appeared that all of the rooms had been in use in the last week or so. A large closet next to the room that Lt. Provens used as a command post was found to contain hangers and boxes of fancy gowns and sexy undergarments similar to what the girls were wearing when they drew their last breath. Although a thorough search was made within a circle of fifty yards surrounding the mansion, farther-out searches later turned up two important finds that put a whole new light on this illegal operation. Behind the barn/garage, down a well-travelled path, the searching officers found a large opening in the trees. It turned out to be a helicopter landing pad. It also appeared to have been used since the rain of the night before. The mystery of no fresh escaping tire tracks on the drive down to the Scenic Byway was solved. The second find executed by careful searchers, using a search dog, was what appeared to be a number of graves, just beyond the helicopter pad. Several looked to be not too old. Digging equipment would have to be brought in to thoroughly uncover just what was buried not very far from the mansion. Lieutenant Provens advised his chief by phone that this investigation of these mansion killings and its illegal girl house of prostitution was just the beginning of something much bigger.

Chief, I believe that this travesty that went on here at the Old Nortonburg Mansion is just the tip of a much larger iceberg. The sophistication of the operation that went on here in the Berkshires, I am damn certain, sure is part of a much bigger illegal operation that is going on in more places in the northeast, and maybe even beyond the northeast. Hopefully, what we find here during our investigation will lead us in a direction that will help melt this whole child devastating iceberg.

Tom, you have my full support in this investigation. We must get to the bottom of this illegal use and slaughter of these young girls. Keep me informed. I am already starting an investigation into the use of helicopters in this child prostitution business.

Okay, Chief, I will keep you informed of any progress made here at the mansion.

Chapter 2

Secret Airport Haven

The well-dressed man approached the pilot of the just-parked helicopter. From your cell phone report everything went well, Raymond. I am pleased that you and your crew followed my orders in a timely manner. It appears that the elimination procedures and your well-executed, unseen departure were done just as I had ordered.

Yes, sir, as Greggor and Roberto and I were leaving the mansion, crossing over the highway, headed toward Greylock, we looked down and saw two police cars roaring toward the mansion. We had had much of the day to prepare the girls and clean up afterward. I imagine, sir, that will be our last flight into that mansion.

Unfortunately, we will not be using that facility any longer. It was a good financial success for several years, but it became too risky in the last few weeks to continue our operation there. For the present, Raymond, I want you to hangar your helicopter here until further notice. Just in case your bright blue craft could be seen and identified headed to or from the mansion during the last year or so, I believe it best that it just disappears for a while. I will contact you when we again will need you and your crew at one of our other facilities. Just remind your crew members that your activities that you participated in today are not to be discussed with anyone.

Yes, sir, answered Raymond, the events of the last several days at the mansion … never happened.

After looking commandingly directly into Raymond’s eyes, the tall, intimidating man then turned and walked back to his large Cadillac Fleetwood and drove off toward Interstate 90.

Digging equipment had arrived back at the mansion. The Pittsfield State Police Headquarters had volunteered and had sent their search dog named Pounce to the mansion. The dog had immediately been put to work. By late that morning, the dog had led her handler to four or five probable gravesites down past the frequently used helicopter pad. The caterpillar-like digger soon had uncovered the first gravesite. About four feet under-ground, a large sturdy cardboard box was lifted out of its resting place. In the box were three naked bodies wrapped in heavy plastic. The bodies were partially decomposed but could still be identified as young girls. The digging continued, led by the search dog, Pounce. By late afternoon, and with no more indication by the dog of more graves, only one more body was recovered in the area. This body was recovered in a heavy wooden box. It was more decomposed than some of the others. It was fully clothed in underwear, jeans, a sweatshirt, and wore blue sneakers. Again, all the bodies appeared to be young girls. A second ambulance had been brought in, and the four corpses were now pronounced dead by a coroner, loaded carefully, and taken directly to the State Police Crime Sub-Laboratory at Springfield, Massachusetts. Once there, the lab would attempt to identify the girls and examine them as to the cause of death. Lieutenant Provens started to wonder just how long this killing of young girls at this mansion had been going on.

Captain Bartlett had given the assignment of establishing and possibly locating just who was the owner of the hotel in what he was starting to call the Dead Girls Mansion case. Bartlett assigned to the much-talented veteran, Sergeant Jack McCreary, the job of finding out what had transpired regarding the ownership of the old Van Nortonburg Mansion. Fifty-year-old Marta, surviving wife of Rudolf Van Nortonburg, and her last known husband, twenty-nine-year-old Albert Merton, suddenly disappeared after going deeply into debt while trying to run the mansion as a hotel. They now were nowhere to be found. Without any prospective buyers appearing on the scene, the mansion went into receivership sometime in 2008. McCreary first had to find out what the courts decided, as the courts, not the attorney general, appoint receivers. Sergeant McCreary found that the courts had no list of qualified receivers in regard to this mansion. As the petitioner, the attorney general’s office, at this point, invited any potential receivers to apply directly to their office if they were interested in taking over this property. Possible receivers could be a local group or organization, an individual, a charity, a general contractor, or a developer, with plans to renovate or prepare this mansion for possible rental or some viable future use. McCreary found in the county records that in 2008, the receivership was assigned to a nonprofit organization that called themselves Homes for Needy Children, Inc. Their main office was listed as 600 Corporate Boulevard, Suite 37, Albany, New York, 12222. The listed phone number was 518-886-7889. McCreary called this number and was told that number was no longer in service. He then contacted the Albany Police and asked if they could send an officer to the address listed for Homes for Needy Children. A return call from the Albany Police an hour later advised McCreary that Suite 37 at 600 Corporate Boulevard was vacant, and according to a building manager, that office has been vacant for several years. The building manager said he had no forwarding address for the organization––Homes for Needy Children.

Checking with the office of the Massachusetts court officials from Berkshire County, who had assigned the mansion to Homes for Needy Children, he found that since that assignment and several phone calls back and forth with the organization regarding ongoing construction, they have not had any contact with that organization since 2009. It appeared to McCreary, after checking out worldwide for an organization by the name of Homes for Needy Children, that, if there had been such an organization, it no longer existed. At this point, McCreary suspected that the persons that passed themselves off as a Home for Needy Children Organization, in reality, instead used this remote mansion as a safe, profit-making place to practice child prostitution. This obscure and semi-remote mansion that appeared for years to be abandoned was, in fact, being used not only for an illegal house of prostitution, but used underage children as their slave prostitutes.

When Sergeant McCreary reported his finding back to his captain, both men began to realize just how big this investigation had become. This was not just a Berkshire County prostitution case. The fact that the instigators of this devastating crime, who decided to permanently eliminate those slave girls who might expose the operation, made it clear that their operation was much larger than what the captain called the Dead Girls Mansion case. Law enforcement entities everywhere knew that child prostitution was escalating not just in America but in nations all over the world. This case appeared to be just the tip of a much bigger, much more complicated, as Lieutenant Provens called it, a bigger iceberg.

It was time to bring in the federal authorities. It was time to move this investigation on to a higher level. Captain Bartlett was immediately on the phone.

The dead girls’ bodies found in the rooms of the mansion and the corpses that were dug up back of the mansion garage all ended up at the State Police Springfield Crime Lab. There the first three dead girls found in the mansion in rooms #1, #3, and #5 were examined first, in an attempt to establish as close as possible the time of death and confirm that their last breaths were caused by asphyxiation, which resulted from the gold cords that had been tightened around their necks. Asphyxiation was determined to be the direct cause for the termination of each of these three young girls’ deaths. Chemical analysis of their bodies showed that all three had been drugged prior to the use of the strangulation cords that would end their lives and permanently silence them. Someone needed to keep these girl slaves from exposing the illegal child prostitution operation that was going on at this mansion.

The lab statistics of the dead, lavender, golden-haired girl that Officer Crowley found on the bed in room #1 showed her to be a five-foot-two-inch Caucasian, weighing ninety-four pounds, with still wide-open blue eyes, and with a red rose tattoo on her left breast. Time of death was approximately two and one-half hours prior to the arrival of Officer Crowley. There were no other means of identifying her. There were some healed-over welts on her back, indicating possibly whipping scars. Her ankles and wrists were scarred, indicating that she was possibly confined in chains at one time.

The lab statistics of the dead black girl that Cardenzo discovered in room #3 was judged to be about fifteen years old. She was five-three and weighed 101 pounds. She too had no means to identify her, but also had a bright red rose tattooed on her left breast. She also had old welts on her back and buttocks and also retained scars on her wrists and ankles. Chemical evaluation of this beautiful young girl indicated that she took her last breath at least four hours before Officer Cardenzo found her.

The dead girl that Cardenzo discovered in room #5 was a slender, very attractive, Asian girl of about fourteen years of age. She had long, curly black hair. She was four-ten and weighed ninety-one pounds. There, again, was no way to identify her, but she also had the red rose tattooed on her left breast and, it appeared, more recent welts on her back and buttocks. She also had scars on both ankles and wrists.

The state police lab investigators felt that these three underage girls had previously been beaten and held, possibly chained, in a detention room, somewhere else prior to being used as slave prostitutes in this mansion’s lavish bedrooms. The police found no jail-like holding room in this mansion, causing them to assume that the three girls had been held and tortured at another location. This brought out the concern that similar child prostitution houses like this mansion must also be operating somewhere in the nearby New England area.

Chapter 3

Girls and Graves

The four buried corpses that were found by police search dog Ponce in several graves located back of the barn/garage behind the Van Nortonburg Mansion, after an initial inspection, were loaded by the police searchers into a waiting ambulance, which