BARRINGTON --- James M. Debardeleben, indicted last week for the murder 13 1/2 years ago of Barrington real estate agent Edna B. MacDonald, was charged because a succession of Barrington police officers wouldn't give up.
John Migliaccio, a Rhode Island assistant attorney general who took Barrington's case to the Providence County grand jury, said that he knows of no other police departments that showed more "dogged persistence" than Barrington in investigating the strangulation slaying of Mrs. MacDonald.
Barrington Police Chief Alfred T. Oliver Jr. shrugged off the accolades.
"We just operate under the premise that no crime is unsolvable," Oliver said.
Instead of taking credit, Oliver issued a press release thanking the Secret Service, Rhode Island Atty. Gen. Dennis J. Roberts II, the state police, former Barrington Police Chief Stanley D. Gontarz, the state medical examiner's office and the Rhode Island Board of Relators.
But in an interview last Friday, Migliaccio praised the Barrington force. "I just can't believe the work they did," he said.
MIGLIACCIO SAID all one has to do is compare Barrington's work with that of other police departments around the country since Debardeleben's arrest by Secret Service agents on counterfeiting charges in Tennessee in May, 1983.
The case broke when the Secret Service agents traced several phony names used by Debardeleben to an apartment in Alexandria, Va., and to storage bins in Manassas, Va., and Alexandria.
From the apartment and bins, the agents said they seized counterfeiting equipment, tape recordings of women being tortured and sodomized, 200 to 300 pairs of women's panties, coded murder plots in Debardeleben's handwriting, coded itineraries, and the photographs of up to 1,000 different women, many naked and many now unaccounted for, the agents said.
The Secret Service sent out a flyer on the evidence to police departments across the country. Most filed it away without taking much notice.
BUT BARRINGTON saw a similarity between Mrs. MacDonald's slaying and the murder two years ago of 37-year-old Bossier City, La., realtor Jean McPhaul. She too had been strangled.
Oliver immediately put Det. Sgt. Louis J. Gelfuso and Det. Gary M. Palumbo on the case.
At first, it appeared Debardeleben wasn't Barrington's suspect. Gelfuso and Palumbo sent a series of questions about him to the Secret Service, and the answers were all negative.
But a Secret Service agent remarked, "Hey, we seized 18,500 documents from this guy. Why don't you come down and take a look?"
In early May, Gelfuso and Palumbo flew to Secret Service headquarters in Washington. By that time, the Secret Service had cross-referenced the 18,500 documents by computer.
Secret Service agent Gregory J. Mertz had also, by that time, broken the code used by Debardeleben.
The Barrington detectives spent five days going over the computerized file in Washington. They discovered a coded murder plot that closely resembled how Mrs. MacDonald and Mrs. McPhaul were slain. They also obtained a sample of Debardeleben's handwriting from the Secret Service.
BUT HOW to pick up the threads of a case 13 1/2 years old? For Barrington it was easy because its policemen never left the trail, and that, Migliaccio said, separates the Barrington force from other police departments.
Gontarz was the chief when Mrs. MacDonald's body was found late on the night of April 30, 1971, in the basement of a newly built house on Heritage Drive, strangled with one of her stockings.
The former chief, now retired and living in Arizona, once described himself as "obsessed" with finding Mrs. MacDonald's slayer. In the 11 years between her murder and his retirement, Gontarz tracked down every lead, traveling throughout the Northeast with his detectives.
Oliver was on the force at the time of the murder. He saw the commitment. Gelfuso was a rookie patrolman at the time, and saw it too. So did Palumbo, who joined the force a year later.
Without that commitment, the flyer from the Secret Service might have been filed away without a thought, as other police departments did, Migliaccio said.
Now that the code has been broken, the Secret Service is notifying many of those departments that Debardeleben was in their area when crimes were committed. Others picked up on similarities to crimes in their areas.
But many cannot do anything because the trail is cold, with witnesses lost.
Barrington never lost contact. Armed with photographs of Debardeleben, Gelfuso and Palumbo went to the witnesses.
"They spent long, hard hours reinterviewing all the witnesses from 1971," Migliaccio said. He said 22 witnesses will be called at Debardeleben's trial in the spring and several, he added, will put Debardeleben in Barrington at the time of Mrs. MacDonald's slaying.
The detectives also matched Debardeleben's handwriting to forms filled out at a Barrington real estate agency by the man last seen with Mrs. MacDonald.
"MY POINT," said Migliaccio, "is other police departments did not have the continuity of pursuit as did Barrington. So, they cannot resolve crimes that Debardeleben has been linked to because they did not persist in following up every lead over the years.
"Chief Gontarz and Chief Oliver," Migliaccio said, "had the presence of mind to continue to allocate time to a significant case."
"From the day this murder happened," Gelfuso added, "we have maintained a constant contact with the case."
Oliver and his detectives don't want the spotlight. But in an offhand comment not meant for attribution, Gelfuso said of the hours he and Palumbo worked: "You know how pilots log their hours? We don't have a log sheet, but we'll put up our hours against any pilot."
KEYWORDS: police investigation
SECTION: NEWS
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