Joan Webster – Justice Denied
By Eve Carson
On Saturday, November 28, 1981, Joan Webster, 25, disembarked from Eastern Airlines flight 960 to a cold and blustery night at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts (MA). The second-year Harvard Graduate School of Design student ended her Thanksgiving break short to return to her dorm at Perkins Hall. On her flight, Joan spoke with fellow passengers and waved to classmates at the luggage carousel. At approximately 10:30 p.m., after collecting her belongings, Joan stepped outside the Eastern terminal to the cab line and vanished. The news of Joan’s disappearance shocked the community, and friends and classmates distributed flyers throughout New England. Joan, the petite student with long, dark hair and a bright smile was popular and well-liked by her friends, peers, and faculty. The media soon picked up the story as the mystery deepened. Everyone wanted to know, what happened to Joan?
Numerous departments joined in the effort to locate Joan. Authorities conducted extensive interviews of flight crews, passengers, airport employees, cab and local transportation personnel at Logan. The official word declared Joan vanished without a trace; there were no leads. It was the kind of story the press devoured; a missing Harvard student from a prominent family in New Jersey. As days turned into weeks, months, and years, the papers and broadcasts fueled speculation of a sensational mystery.
On January 30, 1983, authorities declared a “break” in Joan’s case. Two-time convicted murderer, Robert Bond, allegedly wrote an unsolicited letter to Assistant District Attorney (ADA), Tim Burke, in the Suffolk County MA District Attorney’s Office (DAO) stating he could implicate someone in Joan’s disappearance, a Leonard Paradiso. Bond was in close proximity to Leonard Paradiso as Bond awaited trial for the murder of Mary Foreman at the Charles Street Jail in Boston. ADA Burke was crafting a case against Paradiso for the unresolved 1979 Marie Iannuzzi murder. Based on the receipt of Bond’s letter on January 5, 1983, Burke started the wheels in motion. and arranged for the Massachusetts State Police (MSP) to interview the inmate. The MSP interviewed Bond on January 14, 1983. Sgt. Carmen Tammaro conducted the interview along with his subordinate Tr. Andrew Palombo, both MSP officers assigned to the F Barracks at Logan. Bond claimed Paradiso confessed to Marie’s murder and Joan’s disappearance.
Police had arrested Paradiso on July 6, 1982, for Marie Iannuzzi’s murder. Paradiso, Paradiso’s girlfriend, Marie, and David Doyle, Marie’s boyfriend, all attended Doyle’s cousin’s wedding on August 11, 1979. The next day, Marie’s body was found on the banks of the Pine River, strangled by a black scarf that she wore to the wedding. Paradiso and Doyle were both suspects, as both had prior run-ins with law enforcement. However, there was not enough evidence to arrest Paradiso, and authorities did not arrest Doyle despite damning evidence brought forward by Marie’s family and friends. The case went cold until after Joan’s disappearance. Despite there being no similarities between Marie’s murder and Joan’s disappearance ˗ except they both had long, dark hair. Bond inserted his allegations about Paradiso and commingled the unrelated cases. Even though Joan’s case remained a missing persons case, the state’s theory regarding Joan’s disappearance unfolded on the front pages for several years. Authorities alleged Paradiso picked Joan up at Logan in a gypsy cab, and he drove Joan to Pier 7 in Boston where he moored his boat, the Malafemmina. Bond asserted Paradiso lured or forced Joan on his boat, and he was enraged when Joan rejected his advances. The Bond story fed to the public claimed Paradiso raped Joan on his boat, struck her in the head with a whiskey bottle, took his boat out, and dumped Joan in Boston Harbor. Presuming Joan was deceased, this version of events offered the state an explanation as to why they did not recover a body.
Caption: Photo taken by the Boston Herald when the boat was raised on 9-27-1983
Burke created a spectacle when authorities located Paradiso’s boat submerged in 35 feet of water at Pier 7 near his previous mooring along the Erie Barge. Divers from numerous departments raised the submerged boat on September 27, 1983. The crowds watched as they placed the boat on a flatbed, assigned round-the-clock guard, and the boat was inspected by the FBI. Burke set the expectations low that Joan was not onboard. Divers continued to scour the waters, but found nothing that furthered the state’s hypothesis.
The story of Joan’s assumed fate created a frenzy during Burke’s 1984 prosecution of Paradiso for the murder of Marie Iannuzzi, in which Robert Bond was the state’s star witness. Paradiso was found guilty of Marie’s murder, and with that conviction, Burke amplified the perception of Paradiso as Joan’s killer. During Marie’s trial, jurors watched George and Eleanor Webster, Joan’s parents, present in the courtroom. The Websters regularly held gaggles for reporters outside the courtroom who were eager to document reactions.
After the Iannuzzi trial, authorities made several attempts to entice Bond to testify against Paradiso again, this time in Joan’s case. However, Bond would not cooperate. Paradiso was never charged or tried for Joan’s murder; no one was ever charged. The tides turned against the state’s hypothesis on April 18, 1990, when Dr. Karen Wolf was walking on her property with her dog in Hamilton, MA. She spotted an object blocking a drainage ditch in the remote, heavily wooded area off Chebacco Road. Upon closer inspection, the Wolff noticed the object was human skull and summoned police. Local police organized an extensive grid search of the entire area. On April 26, 1990, authorities found Joan’s grave. Forensic dentist Stanley Schwartz identified Joan through dental records.
The offender stripped Joan of all clothing. None of her belongings turned up in the area except a gold ring and neck chain that remained on the skeleton. The manner of death was blunt force trauma to the head leaving a 2” x 4” hole on the right side of her skull. The killer discarded Joan in a black plastic trash bag in a shallow grave, where a natural basin sometimes flooded with water. The power company recently thinned the wooded area leaving cut logs that the culprit used to conceal the grave. A second layer of logs was added at a later time.
Caption: JLW skull right side 4-18-1990
The area off Chebacco Road was known to authorities for criminal activity. The location was more than 30 miles from the alleged crime scene at Pier 7, and Joan was not dumped in Boston Harbor as the state claimed. Subsequent to finding Joan’s grave, Burke’s hypothesis changed, claiming Paradiso murdered Joan on his boat, then removed her, and travelled some 30 miles to dispose of her body ˗ rather than simply toss the body overboard in the harbor. The revised story did not match the documented Bond allegations, or briefs Burke filed in court. Burke also made a stunning confession to the press, admitting authorities knew when they raised the boat, the alleged crime scene had a broken rudder. If they knew that, why did authorities maintain Paradiso dumped Joan in Boston Harbor up until the remains surfaced? The state’s explanation did not add up.
Two events triggered the urgency to reexamine Joan’s case: written allegations of criminal behavior surfaced suggesting another victim in the Webster family, and the announcement of a tome by former prosecutor Burke in 2006. The tedious task of recovering source documents began. The assistance of a private investigator (PI), an attorney, and multiple Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests produced thousands of pages of relevant records. The staggering number of discrepancies found in source documents exposed a serious level of malfeasance. State and federal authorities knowingly perpetrated a fraud on the courts and the public with the cooperation of Joan’s parents.
Red flags appeared right away. Documents were scattered, there was no central repository of records, and there was the entangled 1979 Iannuzzi murder case with no victimology similarity. Anonymous and unreliable witnesses were the basis of the state’s theory, and the media fueled sensational speculation unchecked. Numerous agencies touched this case including the FBI and three DA offices: Middlesex County, Suffolk County, and Essex County. ADA Tim Burke in Suffolk County was the lead team in pursuit of Paradiso. History of the Boston FBI office is well- documented for corruption in the 1980s, but the Suffolk County DAO was also exposed for hiding exculpatory evidence during this era.
Officials targeted Paradiso on or about January 20, 1982, when the police received an anonymous call implicating Paradiso for the Iannuzzi murder and Joan’s disappearance. The first hurdle in the scheme was to arrest Paradiso for the murder of Marie Iannuzzi. Burke identified Patty Bono as the caller in court records. She alleged a 1972 assault with no corroboration to verify the “she said” story. The woman grew up in the North End of Boston with an officer involved in Joan’s investigation, Sgt. Tammaro. The hunt began a year before Tammaro’s leading interview with Robert Bond, and the “break” in Joan’s case.
Court records for the 1979 Iannuzzi case exposed hidden evidence. The victim’s stepsister Jean Day provided a statement to the PI for the defense that was consistent with her grand jury testimony implicating Marie’s boyfriend. Suspiciously, after the PI’s interview, Day was escorted down the hall by ADA Burke and Tr. Palombo, and then changed her testimony on the witness stand. During further witness testimony, Vincent Milano, an eyewitness who attended a party after his brother’s wedding, placed Paradiso half an hour away from the location Bond claimed. His testimony cast doubt on the other suspect, David Doyle, his cousin. Records revealed abundant exculpatory evidence favoring Paradiso, and source documents support Paradiso was wrongfully convicted in Marie’s murder. Paradiso’s conviction of Marie’s murder bolstered the state’s objective to incriminate Paradiso for Joan’s murder, even without a body.
The discrepancies are too numerous to elaborate fully in this article, but key evidence found in records illustrate the need for accountability.
Contrary to Burke’s representations, an eyewitness did see Joan at Logan Airport on November 28, 1981. Fenton Allen Moore drove Town Taxi #1229, and stated Joan tapped on his window and said “Cambridge.” After Moore loaded Joan’s suitcase in the trunk, Joan indicated a man was with her. The man exchanged words with the cabbie over a heavy suitcase, and announced, “I don’t think we want this cab.” Joan and the man moved to a blue car parked in the cab line.
The police report gave a precise description of Joan and the man with her. The person of interest was a middle-aged white male. He was under 6 foot and approximately 160 pounds. He wore glasses, an overcoat, and described as having a beard. In contrast, Paradiso was 6’2” and more than 200 pounds. Police provided the Websters with a composite of the man on December 21, 1981, but the lead was suppressed by the authorities and Joan’s parents. A legitimate investigation would have been looking for a suspect Joan knew, knew her travel itinerary, and was travelling himself, and a second suspect driving the blue car and aided the offender. Manipulating Joan to another vehicle suggests premeditation, not a random act. The unsolicited Robert Bond letter and his interview with the MSP were the foundational documents Burke used to pursue Paradiso. Burke submitted them to the court in the Iannuzzi case, and the judge sealed the records relevant in Joan’s case. Those records, recovered with the assistance of a PI through another source, exposed further problems with the state’s theory. Burke had not received an unsolicited letter from Bond on January 5, 1983, as claimed. Bond mailed the letter on January 10, 1983, after meeting with the MSP. Police still had not received it when they interviewed Bond on January 14, 1983. ADA Burke and Tr. Palombo filed false documents with the courts. During the police interview, Bond offered a multiple choice for the manner of death. He did not know where the boat ˗ the alleged crime scene ˗ was moored. His story was molded by Sgt. Carmen Tammaro, Palombo’s superior, and not credible. Officers enticed Bond with assistance on his recent conviction and Webster reward money. The Paradiso boat theory was a hoax. Understanding Bond was unreliable and not the source of the allegations, opened another distressing realization about Joan’s murder. The interview included the correct manner of death as one of the options.
However, the Burke letter received after the interview had no ambiguity on the manner of death. Tr. Andrew Palombo and Sgt. Carmen Tammaro of the MSP both knew the manner of Joan’s death more than seven years prior to her remains surfacing. Burke, Palombo, and Tammaro worked closely with Joan’s parents and met with Bond. A police report taken by officers to schedule a meeting on December 8th or 9th, 1982, coincides with the date Bond was transferred to the Charles Street Jail and positioned close to Paradiso. During an interview with a PI and attorney on May 5, 2008, Bond stated, “The guy from New Jersey” sent people to see him, referring to George Webster. Authorities enlisted Bond to entrap Paradiso using the Iannuzzi case as a smokescreen.
On May 3, 1983, Burke contacted the FBI and instigated a bankruptcy fraud case against Paradiso. These records were not part of the current custodian’s files. Case CR 85-010-S affirmed Paradiso’s boat, the alleged crime scene, did not exist when Joan disappeared. He scuttled his boat on July 26, 1981, because the boat had a broken rudder. Judge Bruce Selya presided over the hearing in the Federal District Court of Rhode Island. George Webster contacted the US Attorney’s office handling the case, and the prosecutor submitted three of his letters during the sentencing phase. Paradiso was found guilty on charges related to the boat. For Burke’s purposes, he falsely represented that Paradiso still had the boat when Joan disappeared and later scuttled it. However, FBI lab reports from the boat did not support Burke’s allegations. Despite having evidence to the contrary, four people maintained and promoted a false explanation for Joan’s loss: Tim Burke, Andrew Palombo, Carmen Tammaro, and George Webster. The answer to the Joan Webster mystery lies with these four individuals. The pain of reliving such traumatic events was compounded by the deception to conceal the truth.
The Essex County DAO is the current custodian of Joan’s files. The office assumed responsibility for her case when her remains surfaced in Essex County, and obtained abundant, but incomplete files from the MSP. First ADA John Dawley told me he knows Burke, but does not want to focus on him. He instructed me not to probe deeply ˗ a disturbing warning to a member of Joan’s family. Massachusetts has a history of misconduct and dysfunction in the system that obstructs justice. The DAO has demonstrated an antipathy to resolve Joan’s case and shield the malfeasance that denied Joan justice. The remedy for current and future victims of such systemic abuse is exposure and accountability. Joan’s case is an open, unresolved homicide. Joan Webster – Justice Denied.
Eve Carson is a:
Graduate of Purdue University with a BS Economics and Industrial Management. She has worked for General Motors, IBM, and the Security Industry. She is currently a consultant in an unrelated industry and an independent investigator. Eve was married to Joan Webster’s brother in January 1980, and they have two daughters. She was the only non-blood relative part of Joan Webster’s immediate family during the disappearance and investigation into Joan’s loss
She has written, “Totally Botched: The Investigation into Joan Webster’s Murder,” Crime Magazine, September 3, 2012, and “The Indicators of Misconduct in the Cold Case Murder of Joan Webster,” The Journal of Forensic and Crime Investigation, Vol 1, Issue 1, December 2017. In the past, Eve has appeared as a guest speaker and honored guest at: “Crime Prevention Belongs to Everyone: Reconstructing Evidence in a Cold Case and the Effects of External Factors on Crime Resolution,” 4th Annual International Forensic Research Conference, Atlanta,
GA, September 28, 2015, and “Contaminated Evidence,” 5th Annual International Forensic Research Conference, San Francisco, CA, October 31, 2016. Eve has given multiple interviews on abuse issues and forensic sociology, reconstructing the investigation of the 1981 unresolved murder of Joan Webster. She can be contacted at carsonevee@gmail.com
