This is a horribly sad story from Boston. And outrageous.
This is yet another tragic case of the "rights" of convicted sex offenders trumping the rights of the public to be safe on the streets.
Woman slain at Route 24 rest stop
By Francie Latour, Globe Staff and Emily Ramshaw, Globe Correspondent, 7/19/2002
RIDGEWATER - On the other side of the bathroom door, she would find
cars, lights, people, the highway - safety, if Alexandra Zapp could dodge the
man blocking the way out with his body, and a knife.
The man had seen her pull
in to the rest stop off Route
24, prosecutors said,
wearing flip-flops and
clutching her wallet and
keys as she headed for the
ladies' room in the early
morning hours yesterday.
He had pulled the knife
and he had waited for her.
Zapp opened the door to
her attacker, and what
police say happened next
surprised no one who
knew the fiery athlete: She
began to struggle.
Zapp weighed less than 100 pounds, but she was strong. Prosecutors said she
fought savagely against Paul J. Leahy, biting and head-butting her way out of his
grip. Then, already bloody and still cornered by the stalls, she tried to reason with
her killer: If he let her go, she would tell others that Leahy had rescued her from
another attacker.
Her pleas failed: Moments later, the struggle began again, and shortly before dawn
it ended with her death.
In a random killing already raising new questions about the state's sex offender
registry, Leahy, 39, of East Bridgewater, was charged with murder, kidnapping,
armed robbery, and armed assault. Within hours of the murder, Bridgewater police
officials revealed that they had known about Leahy for years. He is a convicted
rapist with a criminal record stretching back 19 years. But a backlog in the
classification of sex offenders in the state prevented his name from being registered.
Police said Zapp, who was heading home to Newport, R.I., was stabbed
repeatedly in the neck, chest, hands, and shoulders after she bolted for the door
hoping to escape. In details they said came from Leahy's own vivid statements to
police, prosecutors said Zapp threw herself to the floor, trying desperately to kick
Leahy as he overpowered her.
''She walked into that restroom, and she never came out alive,'' said Assistant
District Attorney Frank Middleton, describing in a Brockton courtroom yesterday
the brutal struggle that unfolded as Leahy, an employee of the Burger King at the
service stop on Route 24 southbound in Bridgewater, allegedly stabbed the
30-year-old Zapp to death.
''Anybody willing to do what he did to an innocent woman is nothing else than a
cold-blooded killer,'' said Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz.
Help came within seconds of the stabbing, but there would be no rescue. At about
4:20 a.m., an off-duty State Police officer who had stopped for gas heard thuds
and groans through the wall as he entered the adjoining men's room.
Still in uniform, Lieutenant Stephen O'Reilly dipped his boot into the blood he saw
coming from the women's room, according to a State Police spokesman. It was still
wet, and as O'Reilly approached the door with his gun drawn, he could hear the
sound of running water.
When he opened the door, prosecutors said, O'Reilly found Leahy standing by a
sink and holding Zapp's wallet. All around him, O'Reilly told police, bloody streaks
covered the restroom walls. Steps away, behind the second-to-last bathroom stall,
O'Reilly said, he saw the lower half of Zapp's body.
''`I lost it, I lost it,''' O'Reilly told police Leahy said to him, moments before a
lifeless Zapp was rushed to Morton Hospital in Taunton. At 5:40 a.m., just over an
hour after her Volvo pulled into the side entrance of the Burger King, Zapp was
pronounced dead.
A court-appointed lawyer for Leahy, Frank Spillane, said he would have no
comment on the charges until Leahy's court appearance Aug. 8.
Calling the crime heinous, Middleton asked that Leahy be held without bail. As the
prosecutor recounted the details of the killing for 15 minutes yesterday, Leahy
never lifted his head. He kept his head down as Middleton described Leahy's
lengthy criminal record, which began at age 18.
It began with motor vehicle violations, but the crimes quickly turned violent, and
then sexual, after Leahy was convicted in 1984 of entering the home of a
13-year-old Brockton girl, forcing her into a bathroom at knifepoint, and assaulting
her.
Then, after a short stint in the Plymouth County House of Correction, Leahy
walked into a Brockton pizza shop, forced a woman into a back room, and raped
her. He served 13 years of a 15-year sentence for the charge. By 2000, he was
back in court again, this time charged with accosting a minor and asking her to
perform oral sex. He served six months in county jail, and sometime later he began
working at the Burger King on Route 24.
As a convicted rapist, Leahy would be a candidate for the state's sex offender
registry. But because of legal challenges, the registry board was blocked from
processing cases until last year. As a result, only 1,000 of 18,000 offenders have
been registered.
Officials at Burger King would not comment on Leahy's employment or whether
they conducted a routine background check before hiring him. In a statement, the
fast-food chain said only that it was saddened by the crime and was working with
authorities in the investigation.
In Newport, at Papers, the stationery store where Zapp worked part time, friends
and customers gathered to grieve and express shock at Zapp's murder.
''We can't comprehend that it happened, even now,'' said Judith Carroll, who owns
the store. ''It should not have happened to her.''
To Zapp's friends, she was known as Ally, a confessed daddy's girl whose
personality towered over her diminutive size. From horseback riding to sailing - in
which she was certified to instruct - she had a voracious appetite for life, according
to her friends.
''She was so full of energy and a nonstop talker. She was always telling us stories,''
said Carroll. ''An elegant lady with a bubbly personality. She commanded an
audience. She had so much charisma, people were just attracted to her.''
An animal lover, Zapp cared for her coworkers' pets when they were out of town.
She had been working at Papers for about 18 months. Absorbing the loss
yesterday, Carroll embraced customers as they rushed into the store.
Recalling Zapp's athletic physique and ease at hoisting heavy boxes through the
store, Carroll and employees imagined aloud that she put up a gutsy fight before
succumbing to her attacker. ''Ally was not a naive young lady,'' Carroll said. ''She
was strong physically and mentally.''
Zapp was a keelboat training coordinator at USA Sailing Association in
Portsmouth. Monday was her last day in that post.
''We are greatly saddened to announce that former US SAILING Keelboat
coordinator and caring friend Ally Zapp was murdered early this morning,'' the
organization said in a statement on its Web site yesterday. ''On behalf of the entire
US SAILING family, we express our sincerest condolences to her family and
friends.''
Corey Dade of the Globe Staff and Globe correspondent Todd Wright
contributed to this report. Material from the Associated Press was used.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 7/19/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. |
