IF YOU KNEW Bobby Staunton, Police Chief of Bondstone, even with prepared remarks (which he barely glanced at) and trying to do his duty with respect to the Town Select Board, he had a tendency to ‘go off,’ and get all emotional and say way more than was necessary. While the prepared remarks ‘stood’ and anyone can get a copy, I was at the meeting and made a recording of what he said which is set forth below, and if you want the truth of what happened at the Black Goat, this is probably the closest you’re going to get to it, the ‘official story’ of course designed to keep the full horror of the murders from affecting the reputation of this quiet little town any worse than it has been….
Hi, are we ready?... Can we start?.... Hello, my name is Robert P. Staunton—yes, I know you all call me Bobby—and I’m the police chief of Bondstone… I would like to begin by thanking the Mayor and the Town Select Board for requesting this summary of the events concerning the triple-homicide at the Black Goat B&B which occurred last July 2nd and July 3rd. Our town hadn’t… is that right?... hasn’t recorded a murder in its long and storied history since the Billings Farm incident in 1905, which we all know about and honestly if you go by the farm, instead of a gruesome murder you’d think it was the most exciting thing that ever happened here…. Everyone calls us a ‘sleepy’ Vermont village, and so we were until this tragedy occurred, which, sadly, as you all know, reached the national press and has affected the image of Bondstone and the entire state.
Thanks in part to the support of our town, for which I will be forever grateful, I’ve been cleared of misconduct in the investigation by everyone involved, but I do still feel considerable guilt at not seeing potential clues in certain events which preceded these crimes. Although no one, I think, can blame me for finding the end result... unimaginable.
Everyone in Bondstone got to know, to some degree, Lavinia and Phil at the Black Goat since their arrival five years ago. They were ‘city folk’ seeking a new life in the country after accumulating some kind of fortune in banking or whatever, and they had renovated the Black Goat to the highest standards. Everyone was amazed at their expenditure, as well as the way they managed to find the curious ‘black goat’ paraphernalia scattered throughout the B&B. Then we all watched as, to no one’s especial surprise, the slow fading of that happy honeymoon period, especially the drudgery of it all, began to ‘get’ to them. You know that happy look in their eyes became one of quiet resignation until things started to get weird.
Us townspeople saw they were bored and irritated, and their dreams not at all what they expected. The B&B thrived financially, or at least so it seemed, given how it always seemed to be fully booked, mostly due to its location across from the Village Green. But the tedium of cooking breakfasts and taking reservations, concerns about liability, the occasional bad guest, and the two or so years of Covid had clearly affected them, but most of all, the monotony, the lack of variety, of ‘newness.’ Based on my experience of this sort, I figured they’d either suddenly leave, like the owners of the Riverside Inn, as so often happens in the B&B business, or after a few more years, resignation would set in, the monotony would become their joy, and they’d find a quiet happiness like the rest of us who have taken up permanent residence in this small town.
But my first clue that something truly strange was going on was a phone call I received back in June, the month before the murders. I thought it was strange for a town police chief to receive a complaint from someone staying at a B&B, and at first, I thought it was some kind of prank. The caller seemed very reluctant to provide information about himself, except his first name, Jack, and although we don’t take official statements unless the individual has fully identified themselves, the sound of his voice had an authentic tone of concern. And over my years as a police chief, I’ve learned to pay attention to these things.
The caller said he had just stayed at the Black Goat for four nights, and a number of strange events had caused him alarm, one in particular. First off, he noted, as others in the village have, just how churlish Lavinia and Phil had become. He wasn’t sure why they were so rude—he had thought perhaps they didn’t like him because he brought a younger girlfriend of his, or because he and the girlfriend were so affectionate with each other, or because they arrived late from New York. Regardless, he gave a long list of complaints: when they checked in, the owners insisted they stay in Room 5, even though his reservation confirmation said Room 3 (which would have given them a view of the street, not the back), the breakfasts they received were of surprising poor quality, the staff seemed to be on ‘pins and needles,’ they didn’t leave coffee out after breakfast was over (which was not a valid complaint as B&Bs generally do not do this), and they made them ‘feel bad’ when they requested their room be cleaned after the staff had left for the day. When they came back in the evenings after dinner, they felt as if items had been moved, notably from in front of a mirror over the dresser, and in the bathroom full bottles of beauty cream seemed to have been used and left half-empty.
But there was one particular incident which had caused alarm. There was an old upright piano in the living room. It was clearly marked with a sign: ‘Do not play after 6 p.m.’ However, on their last night, when they came back from dinner, the guy on the line, who admitted he was a little tipsy that night, decided to play the piano despite the prohibition, just very, very softly. He could barely hear his own playing. But after the second song, ‘Both Sides Now,’ he heard the door open to the B&B (the owners lived next door) and Phil walked into the room and immediately said, ‘Jack, if you could stop playing, there’s a clear sign on the piano that says to stop at 6 p.m.’ So he stopped, put the cover back on the piano and sat next to his girlfriend on the couch, and Phil left the room.
As he sat there, what bothered him, other than how Phil could have possibly heard him playing, was how Phil had known that it was Jack, even though his back was facing Phil as Phil had walked in. The other thing that Jack mentioned was that Phil said nothing to his girlfriend, not even ‘Hello,’ which he felt was very rude.
Jack found this extremely unnerving, and his immediate conclusion (along with his girlfriend’s) was that there was some kind of hidden camera in the room along with a very sensitive microphone. They searched everywhere but found nothing.
They then proceeded outside to the illuminated pool on the property, just to get away from the house. They sat down in some chairs to relax when suddenly the lights went out. They don’t know if the lights were on some kind of timer, but the time when he checked was 10:25 p.m., which he thought was an odd time for the lights to be set. And then, he said the next morning the owners acted ‘excessively’ strangely towards him and his girlfriend, not saying hello, or asking if they had a nice stay, looking at them with eyes he described as ‘hateful.’ He said they ‘couldn’t leave fast enough.’ Jack said it felt like a rather extreme overreaction to playing the piano after 6 p.m., and he couldn’t get it out of his head that there was something seriously wrong with the place, enough to cause him to call the police. If nothing else, he thought spying on the guests, like he believed was going on, was a misdemeanour of some sort.
In light of what happened afterwards, I believe this phone call to be completely genuine, and that the caller and his girlfriend might be featured on one of the recordings that were found on the website, although I never looked. They were in the right room, and it makes sense to me now that they would be ‘hurried to bed’ by the owners in connection with their ‘side business.’
My response to the call was to consider it seriously. It had all the characteristics of a true story. In my line of work, ‘reality is stranger than fiction’ is a saying which seems to apply sometimes on a daily basis. I called the state attorney for advice. He said I couldn’t just go over there and snoop around for cameras; there was no evidence that a crime had been committed, and owners of B&Bs have the right to install security cameras as needed. The attorney suggested that the owners had heard the piano (maybe a complaint from a guest with sensitive ears), and went to their camera for the front door (which is very common in these types of places) to see who it could have been, and surmised the identity of the piano player.
I could not resist, however, stopping by, under the guise of just ‘saying hello’ as I like to do as we check in on our town’s establishments, in the spirit of letting them know we are available if needed. When the Black Goat first opened, I had stopped by frequently to address any concerns they might have as new business owners, and to give them a positive impression of the police. On this new visit, I noticed a security camera at the entrance facing the front door, which gave me a sense of relief. But I also noticed that it didn’t cover the area from the bottom of the stairs to the living room where the piano must have been. Also, I couldn’t help but notice a lot of strangeness in the manner of both Lavinia and Phil—as a long-time police chief of this town, I can tell when something is ‘going on’. But it could be anything—problems in the marriage, problems in the business—but I had a hunch that it had something to do with me based on how they looked at me. Which meant, to me anyway, that something was going on that made them concerned about the police.
My imagination went a little crazy thinking about what it could be. Our little town is hardly a hotbed of crime. We have none of the problems, even of our neighbouring towns, of poverty and small-time drugs, at least visibly, as we run them out of town. I put it down to ‘imagining things’, and so—the way I operate (like every good police chief of a small town who thinks of more about his job than meeting budget by issuing parking tickets) I talked—and there was a consensus that there was just something strange about Lavinia and Phil. Lavinia was described as having something malicious about her, and Phil more along the lines of just being a strange person who always ‘looked at you weirdly.’ They were seen at one of the churches once in a while, and the sense there was that they just ‘came for show’ as they never stayed for coffee hour. When seen at the movie theatre, they sat in the back corner, as if they didn’t want to interact with anyone. They got whole pies (but never waited for sandwiches) at the pie shop. The town convenience store said they were regular customers for their wine. They bought at the high end, and their purchases were steady—they were not ‘falling into drink’ as the shopkeeper liked to say, unless they also purchased elsewhere.
Still, as I testified later under oath, on the evening of July 2nd, I was driving by the Black Goat, following my intuition. And by a remarkable coincidence, I saw who I believe were the shadowy figures of the murderer and his victim going up the side, exterior fire escape stairs that led to Room 5. Mostly I thought it was a clever way to sneak someone into the B&B without alerting the front desk, and I remember smiling at the thought. I slowed down the car, but I don’t think the murderer or the victim noticed me. From the later evidence and testimony of others staying at the B&B, it seems as if the murderer chose Room 5 because of this stairwell, and against the wishes of the owners.
Now it is hardly relevant to the crimes committed, but I think fully supported by the evidence, that Phil was a watcher and Lavinia was a recorder. Phil was the one with the pornography collection hidden in the false bottom of the cabinet in the bedroom, and all the money recovered was put solely in Lavinia’s offshore account.
So Phil was watching the sex, and Lavinia was watching the money. Note that they never stayed around the B&B late at night; people checking in after 6 p.m. punched in a code and then picked up their key at the desk. They probably had dinner and then waited anxiously. Almost always, going back through the records, Room 5 was given to a couple. A frequent visitor of the Black Goat, Mrs Simpson (who remarkably seemed to be wearing the same outfit every time I met her), an elderly lady, said ‘It was clear that the youngest and prettiest couple were always given Room 5. We thought it was because they didn’t want anyone to see them from the street, and the room was where they wouldn’t wake anyone up.’
So my theory is that the murderer must have insisted on Room 5 for the reason I mentioned before. For some reason, though, curiosity, or maybe they had the sound on all the time, Phil and Lavinia were alerted. Or maybe the recording was automatic, and they watched it later that night.
And as we know from the evidence, what a horror they witnessed. The rape and strangulation were bad enough, but the cutting up of the body, placing it into the plastic-lined suitcases, they saw it all. He had clearly done it before, too. The details of this horrific crime have been thoroughly covered by the national press, but to think of Phil watching and Lavinia recording, what must have gone through their heads. Did Phil get a special thrill? Some of the pornography he had was extremely violent. Did Lavinia have any soul at all, thinking only of how she might make some extra from the terrible event she had witnessed?
And who was the sickest of the two? As we know from witnesses who were staying in the other rooms, the next day they were described as ‘completely out of sorts’ and ‘much worse than usual’ during breakfast. One of the staff said she planned on quitting. But at some point Lavinia had discovered that the video was extraordinarily valuable, and could be sold for thousands in the darkest parts of the dark web, with the money transferred in secret, untraceable, unknown, to the off-shore account that Phil probably didn’t even suspect, and Phil wondering perhaps if they should tell the police—but then the existence of the cameras would be revealed, their lives ruined.
But little did they know, the murderer was taping everything himself from his own hidden camera and selling it in the same place, but his recording didn’t show his face. And when he visited the dark website, he must have seen his face on the video on the other tape, and realising the situation he was in, the murderer showed up the very next night and took the lives of the two who had recorded him.
Did Lavinia and Phil deserve to die? Some people feel they deserve no sympathy, although no one deserves to die in that particular way. As you know, I was the one who discovered the unrecognisable bodies. My first thought was ‘bungled robbery,’ then ‘deliberate murder,’ then ‘something just incredibly sick.’ The killer posted a video of this too—which they forced me to watch to confirm it was the crime scene. The obsession with cutting and watching was unbearable to witness. What I discovered was simply unspeakable, and gives me nightmares to this very day. The violence of his crime was explained to me by one psychiatrist as anger not only at revealing his identity but infringing on his own believed right to control the situation. It was his own special way of committing murder, and no one else could take it from him.
The woman who was killed in Room 5, her identity took several weeks to discover, and they only succeeded by finding a piece of hair that escaped the murderer and comparing it to the DNA of missing persons. We suspect he found her on the street in a bigger city, half an hour away. She had no friends, no one was around to grieve for her except a brother who had searched for her for years. Her body has still not been found. Perhaps the sad history of the victim and the guilt of the owners is why the efforts to find him have been so lacklustre, despite his grainy video face being in the newspapers everywhere. Or maybe he has hidden himself in some remote town far away.
As for our town, as the Board knows we were in hell for weeks, until the F.B.I. showed up and ripped the B&B apart, and found the hidden cameras everywhere, including behind the glass eyes of a stuffed crow which was on the mantlepiece above the fireplace in the living room, in various places around the pool, and behind the mirror in Room 5, and other evidence that explained the situation. I deeply regret and apologise to the Town for perhaps being too eager in my interrogations of the people staying at the B&B and what seemed to be half the people in the Town, and for not alerting the F.B.I. earlier. I regret not making any connection between the shadowy figures climbing the stairs and the earlier phone call. Although all the tapes and computers had been taken by the murderer, the F.B.I. was able to access Lavinia’s accounts, and with certain information obtained, make some arrests and remove the videos from the site, although it seems certain they are still circulating somehow. The F.B.I. told us this many-headed hydra of evil will pop up again; these types of crimes are here to stay.
As the Board knows, the Black Goat is abandoned now; no one will stay there, no one will buy it. I heard a claim that someone one night heard the screams of the owners coming from the abandoned house. Maybe after a few years it will be acquired and restored by an unsuspecting couple. They should change the name. Get rid of the outside stairwell. Maybe let the guests play the piano all night long to keep the ghosts away.
Thank you for your time and patience with my story. I’ve never experienced anything like it, and hope not to, and especially hope that this town never experiences anything like it again.
|
