The shark became a monster; his jaws opened wide to eat me with words: “You loved him, didn’t you, you fuck? You snuffed the kids because they knew what you and Anderson were, and you couldn’t take it. You loved him! Admit it, goddamn you!”
I moved forward, and Dusenberry raised his gun. It was two inches from my face with the trigger at half pull when I knew that attacking meant he was the winner; retreating meant I was. Smiling like Ross at his most stylish, speaking like Martin Plunkett at his most resolute, I said, “I used him; and I’ll use you, and in the end I’ll prevail.”
Dusenberry lowered his weapon, and I held out my hands to be cuffed.
From the New York Times, February 4, 1984:
The trial of Martin Michael Plunkett, the admitted murderer of four Westchester County citizens, took only four hours yesterday, but the legal controversy surrounding him may be as complex and far-reaching as his trial was short — and a certain mystique regarding the man himself seems to be building.
Arrested in New Rochelle last September 13 for the knife slayings of Dominic De Nunzio, Madeleine Behrens, Rosemary Cafferty and Richard Liggett, Plunkett refused to speak to investigators, court-referred psychiatrists and the legal counsel appointed him. In fact, he spoke to no one and offered no written statement until two weeks before yesterday’s trial, when he admitted the four killings in a notarized statement that directed investigators to the spots where he buried the murder weapons. Spuming legal aid, he repeated the statement to the presiding judge and jury yesterday, and was convicted on both his statement and the corresponding physical evidence. The jury convicted him after deliberating for only ten minutes, and Judge Felix Cansler handed down a sentence of four consecutive life terms without possibility of parole. Plunkett was then driven to Sing Sing Prison and placed in a protective custody cell, where he remains silent on the details of his four murders, and on everything else.
Plunkett was captured as the result of testimony given by another admitted killer, Ross Anderson, 33, formerly an officer with the Wisconsin State Police and the cousin of Mr. Liggett and Miss Cafferty. Facing trial in Wisconsin next week on three counts of rape and murder dating back to 1978 and 1979, Anderson was not called on to testify against Plunkett because federal authorities deemed it “logistically messy.” Stanton J. Buckford, Chief Federal Prosecutor for the Metropolitan New York area, told reporters last week: “Had Plunkett not made his statement and backed it up with corroborative evidence, we would have needed Anderson’s testimony. As it stands now, we won’t need it. Anderson’s testimony has to do with a murder he alleges Plunkett committed in Wisconsin back in ’79, and since Plunkett will most certainly receive the maximum sentence in New York, I do not want him traveling to Wisconsin — a non-death penalty state — just to get slapped with more time. The man is highly intelligent and extremely dangerous, and, I deem, a major escape risk. I want him to remain in maximum security in New York.”
The alleged Wisconsin murder brings up the Plunkett case’s most pressing point — how many more people has Martin Plunkett killed? Since suspicion originally fell on him as the result of probes conducted by the F.B.I.’s Serial Killer Task Force, police officials all over America are asking themselves that question.
Inspector Thomas Dusenberry, the head of the Task Force and the officer credited with solving the Anderson and Plunkett string of homicides, thinks many more. “I would say that Plunkett has murdered at least forty people, and that his killings date back to San Francisco in 1974. I think he killed George and Paula Kurzinski in Sharon, Pennsylvania, in 1982, a famous unsolved case, and that when you count unreported disappearances, his killings may number as many as a hundred. You may think, with Plunkett in custody and legally buried, knowing exactly how many people he killed isn’t important — but it is. For one thing, it would spare the loved ones of missing people untold anxiety to finally know their people are dead; and, most important, if homicides we make Plunkett for are still being actively investigated, we can close the investigations out and save many police man-hours. At the time I arrested him, Plunkett implied he would make all the facts regarding his killings known. I only hope he does it fast.”
Municipal police departments in at least four states are building cases against Plunkett. The Aspen, Colorado, authorities suspect him of eight murder/disappearances in 1975 and 1976, and Utah, Nevada and Kansas police officials suspect him of another fifteen to twenty within their jurisdictions.
Inspector Dusenberry said last week: “I’ve shared my Plunkett data with every department that’s requested it. They deserve to know what we have. But prosecutors are getting indictment-happy, and it’s ridiculous. Without a confession from Plunkett, it’s all just too cold. No witnesses. No evidence. I’ve talked to two men Plunkett sold murder victims’ credit cards to years ago. They couldn’t make a positive ID based on his current appearance. It’s all too old and too vague, and, at bottom, it’s motivated by outrage and personal ambition. Plunkett is going to be convicted in a non-death penalty state, and no New York judge is going to let him be extradited elsewhere and executed, as much as he deserves it, and as much as a lot of hungry D.A.’s would love to fix it up.”
As for the Anderson case, the former policeman is set to go to trial next week in Wisconsin. He pleaded guilty at his arraignment, and is expected to receive the maximum sentence Wisconsin state law allows: three consecutive life terms. Anderson has admitted raping and killing women in four other states (two of them with the death penalty), and prosecutors in Kentucky, Iowa, South Carolina and Maryland are seeking legal loopholes to gain indictment warrants on.
Anderson himself has remained quiet about his crimes and his relationship with Plunkett, offering “no comment” through his attorney when queried by out-of-state police officials and district attorneys. “It’s all in their hands,” Inspector Dusenberry has said. “If one of them wants to talk, lots of people, including me, will be all ears.”
From the Milwaukee Post, February 12, 1984:
Ross Anderson, the former Wisconsin State Police lieutenant who was also the killer known as the “Wisconsin Whipsaw” was convicted of the 1978–1979 rape-murders of Gretchen Weymouth, Mary Coontz and Claire Kozol in a brief trial held yesterday in Beloit District Court. Judge Harold Kirsch sentenced Anderson, 33, to three consecutive life terms without possibility of parole, directing that he be placed in an institution offering “full protective custody” — a term used to denote maximum security prisons that have special facilities for “high visibility” offenders, i.e., former police officers, celebrities and organized-crime figures who might be subject to attack if housed among the general inmate population.
After the verdict was handed down, Beloit D.A. Roger Mizrahi told reporters: “It’s a disgrace. Three Wisconsin girls dead, and their killer spends the rest of his life playing golf at a country-club slammer.”
From the editorial page of the Milwaukee Journal, March 3, 1984:
Ross Anderson murdered seven people. His friend Martin Plunkett murdered at least four people, and some policemen familiar with his case say without hesitation that his number of victims ends at about fifty. Both “men” had the good fortune to be convicted in states that do not allow capital punishment, and both men are such heinous criminals that they cannot be allowed to live with other criminals — for even hardened robbers and drug dealers would be so outraged by their presence on the prison yard that their safety would be jeopardized.