Days before execution, killer controls fate

HARTFORD -- At 2:01 a.m. Wednesday, an executioner chosen by the state of Connecticut is scheduled to send a lethal flow of three drugs into the veins of Michael B. Ross, a sexual sadist who murdered six teenagers and two young women in the 1980s.

But there is still uncertainty about whether New England's first execution in 45 years will take place. The outcome rests neither with the families of the victims and other death penalty supporters who have waited 21 years for Ross's death, nor with foes of capital punishment who have worked frantically to prevent it.

The drama that precedes executions in the United States usually involves head-to-head combat between supporters and opponents, as appeals make their way through the courts. But here, the death row inmate himself holds the most dramatic card: whether to go through with the execution, as he has said he wants, or to make an 11th-hour request for a stay.

Ross still can appeal and stop the procedure, even after he is led into the execution chamber, lawyers and legislators said. Some think that Ross will make such a startling request, turning what had been intended to be society's retribution into another moment in the spotlight.

Over two decades in prison, Ross has sought to parlay his criminal notoriety into celebrity status.

He has written articles for psychiatric journals and has granted dozens of interviews. He has distributed a newsletter from prison that details his incarceration and his views about the death penalty.

In preparing for his execution, Ross acts, in the words of his father, Dan, like the director of a theatrical production.

''The bottom line is we are enabling this guy's narcissism," said state Representative Michael Lawlor, a Democrat from East Haven who is House chairman of the Judiciary Committee. ''Look at what we are doing: All of the attention is on Michael Ross. I mean, this is insanity. This is the absolute opposite of the intended result."

The uncertainty surrounding the execution has complicated the mix of stark, conflicting emotions.

In a largely liberal state where no one has been executed since 1960, heated debate about the planned execution has been punctuated by public calls for revenge, mercy, justice, and humanity. And for a region that has long been viewed as a firewall of opposition to the ultimate penalty, Ross's scheduled death looms as a public-policy Rubicon.

To Edwin Shelley of Griswold, the first lethal injection in state history is about eight lives that ended brutally, and about the shattered families the victims left behind. Shelley's 14-year-old daughter, Leslie, was bound and murdered by Ross in 1984. For him, the execution would culminate two decades of anguished longing for justice.

''It is part revenge; it has to be," said Shelley, 66, a retired postal worker. ''Who wouldn't want to be five minutes alone with the murderer of his child?"

Michael Malchik, the former State Police detective who arrested Ross in 1984, has voiced concern that Shelley and the other victims' parents will be denied the satisfaction they seek.

Ross, 45, has said he chose to waive his final appeal and accept death to spare the victims' families further pain. But Malchik has expressed fear that Ross may change his mind on his deathbed, in the latest self-centered act of a man whom he considers to be a master manipulator.

''My guess is that this is not going to happen," Malchik said of the lethal injection. ''He loves the limelight. He loves the publicity."

For many residents of Connecticut, the depravity of Ross's several crimes has made him into what Malchik described as a ''poster boy for the death penalty."

A farm boy from northeastern Connecticut who graduated from Cornell University in 1981, Ross confessed that he had killed eight girls and women, ages 14 to 25, in eastern Connecticut and New York from 1981 to 1984.

The murders, Ross has said, resulted from an obsession with sexual violence that only a ''chemical castration" through medication has curbed. In a psychiatric journal, Ross said he ''could relive the rapes and murders that I committed, and when reliving those despicable acts in my mind I could experience such orgasmic pleasure that it is hard to describe."

Malchik said he is convinced that Ross, who was working as an insurance salesman when he committed the crimes, would have killed again if he had not been arrested. Ross's casual confession to the detective and a later tour of the murder sites were stunning and unnerving, Malchik said.

At one murder location, Malchik said, Ross ''just turned to me, matter-of-fact like he always was, and said, 'You know, Mike, strangling someone is not like what you see on TV. I had to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until my hands cramped up.' "

Dan Ross, the prisoner's father, who opposes the execution, wrote to the state Supreme Court that his son ''appears to view himself as the director of a theatrical production. He talks about guest witnesses, prosecution witnesses, final statements, who would be viewing the body, funeral services, monuments, etc. . . . His narcissism renders him incapable of making a rational decision and leaves him out of touch with reality."

In Michael Ross's public statements, both in his newsletter titled ''Walking with Michael" and in media interviews, he has described in grandiose detail how he hoped his death would help abolish the death penalty.

However, Ross also twice tried to commit suicide in prison, and the approaching execution has led to depression that his celebrity is waning, visitors have said.

Robert Nave of Amnesty International, who saw Ross in August, recalled that the inmate had seemed ''very frustrated that with all the letters he was writing, nobody seemed to be giving him any attention. . . . I think he is upset by this loss of status, but I also think that he wants it back very badly and is willing to die to get it back."

The state Supreme Court has received 11th-hour appeals, filed by public defenders and Ross's father, to block the execution.

Connecticut, which has eight prisoners on death row, has not executed anyone since Joseph ''Mad Dog" Tarbosky was electrocuted in 1960 for murder. New Hampshire is the only other New England state with the death penalty, but its death row is vacant. In Massachusetts, which abolished capital punishment in 1984, no one has been executed since 1947, although Governor Mitt Romney wants to bring the death penalty back.

When Romney's counterpart in Connecticut, Governor M. Jodi Rell, decided last month not to grant Ross a reprieve, Rell cited a letter that Shelley had written

''Let me be clear about this: I have no sympathy for Michael Ross," said Rell, a Republican. ''There is no question of guilt. There is no evidence that is missing or DNA that needs to be tested. Michael Ross admitted to heinously raping and strangling eight women."

Shelley intends to witness the execution, which he said will follow 21 years of unending pain that began with the disappearance of his daughter Leslie and her best friend, 14-year-old April Brunais.

''I've laid awake at nights attempting to imagine the fear and pain that my daughter went through while she was tied up in a car and her friend was being murdered," Shelley said. ''Then later, this S.O.B. knelt on my daughter's back and said, 'I'm sorry,' while he murdered her."

Rell pledged to veto any decision by legislators to abolish the death penalty to stop the execution. ''I do believe there are crimes and actions which are so repugnant to society as to warrant the death penalty," she said.

Death-penalty opponents agree that Ross's crimes were horrific. But that does not justify capital punishment, they say.

''He's really not the issue," said Alicia Flynn, 24, as she and other protesters lobbied legislators last week at the state Capitol. ''The issue is that the State of Connecticut is going to kill people in all of our names."

In a poll of Connecticut residents conducted this month by Quinnipiac University, 70 percent of those surveyed said they believed Ross should be put to death. But only 59 percent said they favored the death penalty.

Opponents of the death penalty have continued to fight to halt the execution despite Ross's decision to waive his final appeal.

In a brief filed this month with the Connecticut Supreme Court, the state public defenders office argued that Ross was incapable of making such a decision. This, they said, was because of what they called mental illness exacerbated by 18 years of confinement on death row. The court did not accept their argument.

Yesterday, in a rare weekend session, the justices heard an appeal from the Missionary Society of Connecticut. By late yesterday, no decision had been rendered on this or two other pending appeals.

Nave, the Connecticut coordinator for Amnesty International's program to abolish the death penalty, said protesters would keep a vigil outside the Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers.

As they have done before executions in Texas and Florida, protesters said, they will light candles and say prayers when Ross is scheduled to die.

''We don't rape the rapist. We don't rob the robber. But here we stoop to the level of the murderer," Nave said. ''This is state-sponsored murder and state-assisted suicide."

Representative Lawlor said he believes an execution will tarnish the state's reputation and play into Ross's hands.

''I support the penalty that Michael Ross apparently fears the most -- life without the possibility of parole," Lawlor said. ''Instead, he gets to go out when he wants to go out, with his picture on the front page of every newspaper."

Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at macqua@globe.com.