Slain woman was too afraid to aid prosecution, family says

Gary A. Gomes

NEW BEDFORD - Her family had pleaded with her to prosecute. Robyn Lague Mendes had been beaten by her boyfriend before, but still, when he finally appeared in court in 2006, she would not pursue the attempted murder case against him.

Mendes was scared, family members assumed. They said the boyfriend, Gary A. Gomes, had told her she could never leave him.

On Sunday, six months after he was released from a short jail sentence that he negotiated with prosecutors, Gomes allegedly killed his former girlfriend in his mother's apartment. It was a day after he allegedly killed his mother, Katherine Gomes, 61. Both women were stabbed to death.

Police said Gomes had planned to kill Mendes's estranged husband but was thwarted on Tuesday.

The killings have troubled Mendes's family as well as investigators. As they try to find out more about the days before the killings, they are also trying to learn more about the last six months, the last several years, to try to determine how a relationship, as volatile as it was, could turn deadly.

For Mendes's family, the answer lies somewhere in the complexity of domestic violence, where a woman, a loving mother of three, had seen danger before but could not escape.

"There are a lot of things that keep you there, and a good part of it is terror," Mendes's only sister, who asked not to be identified, said yesterday as she helped gather the belongings in Mendes's Phillips Road apartment.

"He just wouldn't let her go, he told her that."

Gomes is being held without bail, charged with two counts of murder, as well as kidnapping for holding Mendes's 12-year-old daughter hostage while he hatched a plan to kill Mendes's estranged husband, Victor Mendes, authorities said.

Gomes's lawyer, Gerald FitzGerald, did not dispute the allegations during his client's arraignment Wednesday but said he plans to contest the charges.

According to family members and court records, Gomes, 35, and Mendes, 49, had met several years ago, at a time when Mendes was briefly separated from her husband.

The relationship quickly turned violent. Twice, Gomes was charged with beating her, for allegedly dragging her into the woods and trying to strangle her. She had restraining orders against him in 2005 and 2006.

Family members were concerned about the relationship. The sister said Mendes did not attend their father's funeral three years ago. She said Robyn had told her that Gomes had kept her captive.

But when prosecutors levied attempted murder charges against him in 2006, the case fell through. Mendes, though she had testified at dangerousness hearings, refused to proceed with the case, according to family members and a former prosecutor.

Former Bristol district attorney Paul F. Walsh Jr. said yesterday that he had researched the 2006 case and learned that Mendes recanted her testimony, saying that she went into the woods willingly and that she even tried to have the restraining orders dropped.

A judge rejected the request, however.

"She actually complained about the assistant district attorney forcing her to go forward," Walsh said yesterday. "She said she did not want to testify."

Toni Troop, spokeswoman for Jane Doe Inc., a network of victim advocate groups, said the broad outlines of what is currently known about the violent relationship between Mendes and Gomes reinforces the need to provide assistance to victims of domestic violence.

"No one wants to believe that someone who they've loved and who purported to love them would kill them. So the denial is very real," Troop said.

She said that many times the involvement of an advocate increases a domestic violence victim's chance of breaking away from the dangerous relationship.

"They can't solve this by themselves," she said.

Family members said they knew nothing about any ongoing relationship Mendes had with Gomes. Some family members said they did not even know Gomes had been released from jail.

However, one person familiar with the situation who requested anonymity because the case is ongoing, told the Globe that the two had a romantic, though volatile, relationship that did not end when Gomes went to jail.

To Mendes's family, she was a loving mother of three: a 27-year-old daughter, Misty Bourassa; a 21-year-old son, Steven Barnes; and a 12-year-old daughter they did not want to identify. She had two grandchildren, five brothers, and a sister.

She enjoyed time with family and listening to Bon Jovi and Keith Urban.

And she did not deserve to die, they said.