By Richard Gaines
A Gloucester woman who cradled a teenage Norman Pike in her arms while he confessed to the murder of a woman he called his "grandmother" kept the secret from police and suffered in silence for 33 years until a recent re-interview helped break the case open, according to an investigative affidavit released yesterday.
Authorities said Donna Marie Munoz had spoken at the time with Pike, 52, who fled to California with money she gave him and apparently lived as "Dan Franklin" until his arrest a week ago and is now in police custody in San Francisco, fighting extradition.
Meanwhile, Gloucester resident Kevin Ireland, 54, of 9 Oak St. — a second suspect in the 1976 murder of Eleanor Wadsworth in a second-floor office of the Pike Funeral Home where she worked and had a residence — was arraigned yesterday on first-degree murder charges and held without bail pending a probable cause hearing scheduled for April 26.
The third man
A third suspect is believed dead, police have said. That is Richard Joseph Kennedy, a long-haul trucker who made an extended stop in Gloucester — long enough to establish a drug-dealing operation and become known as a dangerous person, authorities said. Kennedy was also identified by the Essex County District Attorney's office in court testimony yesterday as the shooter.
According to the narrative of the crime — recounted in Gloucester District Court yesterday by Assistant District Attorney Michael Patten — the trio of Pike, Ireland and Kennedy were in the process of stealing $1,400 cash from the safe in the Middle Street funeral home, owned and operated at the time by Pike's grandfather, Harold Pike.
According to the narrative, the trio needed the money so the young Pike could repay Kennedy a $100 debt for drugs, but Wadsworth walked in on the crime, and said, "What's going on here?"
Judge Joseph Jennings denied a motion for bail for Ireland by Edward Pasquina, who is the defense attorney.
Calling the evidence "hearsay," Pasquina also challenged Patten's motion to establish probable cause based on a videotaped confession made by Ireland to police.
DA praises Lane
At a news conference in the squad room of the Police Department hours after Ireland's arraignment, Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett praised interim Gloucester police Chief Michael Lane as "the person most responsible for keeping this matter going forward."
Lane was credited with "basic, diligent, tenacious police work" in finding the Wadsworth "cold case" file in March 2009, noting that many people who had been interviewed were still in the area and deciding to heat it up again. After Lane was promoted to interim chief by Mayor Carolyn Kirk last year, he turned the Wadsworth murder case over to Detective Steve Mizzoni.
An affidavit by state Trooper Joshua Ulrich, who worked the case with Mizzoni, was released yesterday by Blodgett and Lane.
The detailed and convoluted 33-year written history of the investigation includes summaries of interviews with Munoz — then Donna Steiner — during the first round of questions that immediately followed the Dec. 2, 1976, murder. It also included the recent series of interviews that led to her emotional confession of a story long withheld — and a life weighed down by a burdened conscience.
Norman Pike was an immediate suspect in Wadsworth's murder. At the time, he had a criminal record that "depicted drug and stealing offenses."
In an interview with Steiner (now Munoz) on Jan. 1, 1977, a little more than four weeks after the murder, state police were told that "Norman had bragged about ripping off grandfather for drugs," and that, at the time of the murder, she believed he owed Kennedy $60 for drugs.
But Steiner kept Norman Pike's confession to her herself, the affidavit shows.
When she was reinterviewed for the first time by Mizzoni and Ulrich on Jan. 21, 2010, Donna Marie Munoz initially said she had nothing to add — but then conceded that she knew things useful to the investigation.
Like a 'big sister'
She described herself as having a "big sister" relationship with Pike, and recalled being at a party with Pike days before the funeral home murder, and hearing Pike assure Ireland that "he could obtain a key to get into the funeral home."
The narrative affidavit went on to describe a meeting that Munoz had had at the time with Pike, "possibly on the day of the murder.
"Donna stated that she had consumed malt liquor and smoked marijuana with Norman, and then they had gone to an abandoned building in Fort Square," the affidavit reads. "Donna expressed that, after arriving at the abandoned building, she had noticed that Norman appeared pale and very upset. He reportedly hugged Donna and rested his head on her shoulder.
"Donna related that Norman then told her about having found his 'grandmother' ... (later determined to be Eleanor Wadsworth, who had once dated Harold Pike) dead in the funeral home office," the affidavit continued. "He then 'blurted out' that he and accomplices had, in fact, caused Wadsworth's death while they had been burglarizing Pike Funeral Home."
After he finished telling her the story, she told Mizzoni and Ulrich in January, Pike asked her for money, explaining that the money the men took from the safe "wasn't enough" to pay for his move to California or Florida.
Ulrich wrote that he and Mizzoni watched as Munoz "became distraught as she recounted having been interviewed years ago."
Sense of 'regret'
"She expressed regret at having withheld information from police," Ulrich wrote.
"At this point during the interview," Ulrich wrote, "Donna held her head in her hands, clenched her hair and stated that she could have helped solve this case 30 years ago. When asked why she had not revealed information to the police in 1976, she indicated that she had 'blocked it out' due to fear and out of loyalty to her friend (Norman Pike)."
The narrative continued:
"Donna noted that she became socially withdrawn at that point in her life. She expressed that she had told her mother about having been questioned by the police about a murder."
The narrative noted that she also moved to California in 1977. It did not note when she returned.
A man answering the phone at the address identified by investigators as her residence yesterday denied that she lived there. Later, calls to the same number were not answered.
Added charges?
Blodgett said yesterday it was "too early" to say whether Munoz could be charged with obstruction of justice for withholding evidence tying Norman Pike to the murder of the woman he called his grandmother.
At the press conference, Blodgett also said authorities had no information about how, where, when and by what cause Richard Joseph Kennedy, the presumed shooter of Wadsworth, himself died.
According to the abbreviated narrative of the crime described by the assistant district attorney to Judge Jennings yesterday, it was Kennedy — the alleged drug-dealing trucker — who "fired three shots into the back of the head" of the victim after she walked into the second-floor office of the funeral home while the robbery was in progress.
"Pike had recognized Wadsworth, and they realized they had to kill her," Assistant District Attorney Patten told the judge. "He fired three shots and the three fled."
Seeking extradition
Blodgett also reiterated that Massachusetts will be seeking a "governor's warrant" to extradite Pike from California, where he has been under arrest for a week.
Robert Wadsworth, a nephew of the Eleanor Wadsworth — he was 12 when she was killed — told the press conference the revitalization of the murder case was inspiring.
"It's hard to believe you guys are still working on this," he told police and the DA's office.
He added, however, that the breaking of the case came too late to bring closure to his father who died with the murder of his sister still unsolved.
Wadsworth had described over the weekend the toll the case had always taken on his late parents — noting that his father "always swore it was the grandson" at the center of the murder.
Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.
