Thanks for the very useful timeline, FF. Just one correction:
* 12/22/1970 -- Carmichael & DeFreitas rob NJ bank of $60,000
That would be Carmichael and Brown. The date the UID and Carmichael are supposed to have arrived, December 28, is also the date on which DeFreitas pulled a $30k solo job and divided the proceeds with Gardner and Brant, in town from Rhode Island for that purpose or to meet the new guests, or whatever.
Brown, at some point, told a cop that they had sent most of their takings to a Boston lawyer. I'm unclear whether it was for this job or for a different one. Consider it a retainer fee. At any rate, Carmichael arrives with a briefcase with money in it, and DeFreitas makes a show, on the evening of Carmichael's arrival with the UID, of dividing up his most recent takings before the guests, saying to Brant and Gardner that that's what partners in crime do. I'm inclined to believe Rainello's testimony that the strangers arrived with Gardner, and I'd venture a guess that they were put in touch with him by this lawyer, assuming he existed, although at trial DeFreitas, Gardner and Brant were said to have kept properties in Providence for the use of other criminals, which is a strange and interesting side business, if it's true.
It seems unlikely that Brown and Carmichael would have stuck together right up until the December 22 job, though it's possible. The likelihood of them being apprehended together would have been greater than if they'd split up. Maybe Brown knew who the UID was, but he wasn't called to testify in DeFreitas and Brant's trial. You'd think that he might have been quizzed about it by police after he was recaptured, though. It's more likely they planned their last robbery together by phone, did the job, and split up again.
It's possible that they got steered to Gardner through street connections or jail connections, and that they decided to put some distance between them, with Carmichael and the girl heading out of town to the A-frame. I've mentioned it before, but one bothersome bit of Gardner's testimony is that when he went to help bury Carmichael and the UID, he was given another $15k. And as I've also mentioned before, summoning him to Ledyard to help bury them, when Brant was already there, seems odd.
Was it a 'finder's fee' kind of arrangement, whereby Gardner and DeFreitas would split the $30k that Carmichael would have gotten from halving the bank job profits with Brown? Was the whole thing premeditated? Was the business about being afraid the girl would talk, and having to kill Carmichael because he loved her just a convenient excuse to justify whacking them to Rainello? Was it something they'd contemplated in advance, and this little bit of justification was enough to push the possibility over the edge? There seems to have been a little hesitation there. They allowed Carmichael and the girl to open the bank account and acquire an apartment. At the same time, their ability to do those two things would have made it clear that nobody was looking for them in those quarters, that they were anonymous, at least for the moment.
The problem is that the actual Dirk and Lorraine Stahl lived right there in town, and if the girl was nervous, she was not unintelligent to feel so. Somebody might overhear a cashier thanking Mrs. Stahl upon receipt of a check and wonder how many Mrs. Stahls there were in Ledyard, or a bank teller addressing Mrs. Stahl, or an acquaintance might try to call Lorraine Stahl via the phone directory, only to find . . . Lorraine Stahl, and blow the whole business up--and that might put the heat on 'the Emersons.'
The prosecution built its case on the testimony of Gardner and Rainello, both of whom had good reasons to massage the facts at issue to their benefit. Rainello said that Gardner brought Carmichael and the young woman to the A-frame, though Gardner did not. Gardner claimed that the version of events he'd heard included Rainello calling Carmichael and the UID to come over on the day they were killed, and that she helped clean up the murder scene, which Rainello refuted. Both were immunized for their testimony. The defense seems not to have been terribly competent. Much of Gardner's testimony was permitted to go before the jury on technical grounds. They chose to believe the prosecution.
It's likely that the verdict they delivered yielded a modicum of justice for the deceased, but what the truth is, we are most unlikely ever to know. Brown escaped one last time from St. Albans, VT, got into a high-speed chase with shots fired, wrecked and abandoned his car, and was shot and killed (accidentally, it was ruled) by a Burlington, VT cop who was trying to get him out from underneath an above-ground pool deck. The other two escapees were captured and returned. That was in 1977. Of all the above-ground people before that moment, Brown was the likeliest to have known who she was.
