09:18 AM EDT on Monday, September 29, 2003

BY JESSICA RESNICK-AULT
Journal Staff Writer

FALL RIVER -- The three detectives whipped out their flashlights and began to search the dark roof on the city's south side.

The tip that Tommy Picard slept here, atop a manufacturing plant on Globe Mills Avenue, had come from a reliable source who swore that this was the boy's chief hideout. So, that night in late October 1988, police officers scaled a fire ladder to the top of the building.

But the roof was empty, Police Chief John M. Souza recalls. No blankets, no comic books, no indication that an 11-year-old runaway might be using it as his home.

The mill was just another dead end.

The search for Tommy had begun on Oct. 2, when his mother, Judith Picard, reported him missing since 1 p.m. the day before. The youngest of five children, Tommy was street-wise and would stay out late -- but not for so long, she told the police.

Journal photo / Gretchen Ertl From left, Fall River Police Chief John M. Souza, Lt. Gene Rodrigues, and Det. John Fagan stand in the hallway of the Fall River Police Department with some of the files that the compiled on the Tommy Picard murder case.

The Journal was unable to locate Judith Picard for this story. Her son, Harold Picard, said his mother did not want to be interviewed.

HAROLD PICARD, the oldest sibling, says he still remembers the argument that sent Tommy running from their house on Wilbur Avenue.

The boy had arrived home with only one bag of groceries -- he'd left the rest at nearby Newman Poultry.

"What are you -- stupid?" Harold, then 17, scolded his brother.

Tommy bolted from the house and took off on his blue 10-speed bike.

When his mother reported him missing, Souza says, she told the police that he had run away one time before. She said she had checked with his friends, but they hadn't seen him.

Officers in the crime prevention division, which usually handles runaways, searched for Tommy for a week, but found no sign of him.

"As time passed, it became apparent to us that this was a serious matter," Souza says. On Oct. 9, the case was kicked over to Gene Rodrigues and George Schoonover, partners in the Major Crimes division, where Souza was a sergeant. A state police detective joined the investigation as well.

They asked the media for assistance, and Tommy's photograph ran on the front page of the Fall River Herald News and in The Providence Journal. The school photo showed a brown-haired boy and described the white-and-green striped shirt, gray corduroy pants, and white sneakers he was last seen wearing.

The calls began to pour in. Two more detectives joined Rodrigues and Schoonover, and they worked exclusively on the Picard case, checking out each lead.

Tommy Picard

Gene Rodrigues, now a lieutenant, remembers looking for Tommy in a trash compactor at Almacs supermarket on Griffin Street.

The detectives questioned Tommy's friends and every classmate at the Osborn Street School, where Tommy was a fifth grader.

A 40-member search team from Brockton came to help the local police on Oct. 12 and 13.

They looked for Tommy on the Nobska, a decrepit steamship docked in Fall River, and checked at a Bickford's restaurant where someone claimed to have eaten with him. One caller placed Tommy with his 15-year-old brother, Doug. But Doug firmly denied having seen Tommy.

Souza recalls frequent phone calls at 2:15 p.m., placing Tommy on Rock Street among the flood of students being dismissed from the Matthew J. Kuss Middle School.

A classmate of Tommy's was certain she had seen him at a neighborhood restaurant, eating Chinese food. She was a good student, Souza says, a trustworthy kid with no reason to lie.

"You get so many tips, and even though they're not panning out, you have to check them all out," Souza says. To keep morale up, they posted a huge photo of Tommy in a police station office dedicated to the investigation.

"It was overwhelming," Souza says. "We had disappointment after disappointment."

Tommy's father joined in the search, though he was dying of the liver disease cirrhosis and had been in and out of the hospital. Harold L. Picard Sr. trudged out into the woods, searching for his son for two hours. He scoured the area around Cook Pond, where several witnesses said Tommy had headed on the day he disappeared.

Picard Sr. died shortly afterward, on Oct. 16.

The temperature dropped to 37 degrees on Halloween. With October's passing, Souza says, his concern intensified.

He and the detectives in Major Crimes interrogated people they considered possible suspects, including Tommy's brother, Harold.

"They kept questioning me," Picard remembers. "It was like a movie."

"He wasn't discounted, because we had to talk to everyone," Souza says.

THANKSGIVING ARRIVED without any new developments in the case.

But that afternoon, Picard says, two of his friends came over -- they had been at Cook Pond and had seen a bike in the woods buried beneath two crosses. They thought it was Tommy's.

Harold went down to check it out. The bike, he agreed, belonged to his brother. The seat looked wrong, he said, but that was not surprising -- Dougie and Tommy used to tinker with bikes, trading their parts.

The three teenagers called the police, who asked Harold to lead them to the bike.

Even now, at age 32, Picard speaks angrily about being interrogated near Cook Pond.

"They're questioning me. While they're questioning me, the K-9 is running in and out of the water, freaking out."

Picard says he asked the police why the dog was running around, but they said it was nothing, probably just oil from dead fish attracting the dog's attention.

"We don't seriously think he's in there," Sgt. Alan Sherman told The Journal on Nov. 29, 1988. (Sherman retired last year.)

Souza explains that the dog was not trained to find bodies, and that the department's leadership decided not to dredge the pond, despite the dog's excitement. In retrospect, Souza says, dredging the pond would have been a good idea, and today, it would be done right away.

"You can Monday-morning quarterback all you want, but you can't go back," he says.

ON JAN. 7, five teenagers walking across the frozen pond came upon a body, partially protruding from the ice about 25 feet from shore.

"It was a Saturday, and we got the call in the afternoon, and obviously, we knew it had to be Thomas," Souza says.

The pond was frozen so thoroughly that the fire department had to carve out the block of ice that the body was embedded in.

Tommy's striped shirt was tied around his neck. It had been used to strangle him.

After months of hopes that rose daily only to be immediately dashed, Souza says, "The day they found his body was very solemn for all of us."

Tommy's family buried him on Jan. 10, the day he would have turned 12.

"IT'S VERY DIFFICULT to deal with a murder investigation that starts months after the murder," Chief Souza says.

Because of the prolonged exposure and the water, the medical examiner could not determine when Tommy had died. The detectives researched dating methods, hoping for a more precise answer, but found nothing they could apply to the case.

They retraced their steps, and the day had Tommy had disappeared.

"That was it. He was never seen by anybody else," Gene Rodrigues says.

Now, Souza says, they believe all the tips and reported sightings were mistaken at best.

"I think that Tommy died that day."

The detectives returned to witnesses they had interviewed before, with a renewed focus on the afternoon of Oct. 1, 1988.

Neighbor Alan Gray had reported seeing Tommy with a group of kids that day.

"Tommy was outside playing with some kids on a bike or something, and they were swearing," Gray recalls. "I told him to watch his mouth, because my wife and daughter were coming out."

Gray says he noticed Tommy a few minutes later, yelling to a man a block or two away, asking the man to "wait a minute." Gray thought he recognized the man, but he was too far away to be certain.

Another neighbor had also seen Tommy riding off on his bike that day. Tommy told him that he was going down to Cook Pond to meet another adult from the neighborhood -- the same man he had been shouting to, Gray thought.

That man was among the people the police had questioned when they were still investigating Tommy's disappearance as a missing-person case. Now, they questioned him again.

The man became their prime suspect. He brought a lawyer with him to the interviews, and invoked his constitutional right not to answer certain questions, Souza says.

The investigators brought the suspect before a grand jury in February 1989 to request an order for blood and hair samples, which was granted. They were hoping that forensic testing on Tommy's remains and other evidence would yield a match.

Meanwhile, calls continued to pour in from people who claimed they had seen Tommy during the three months he had been missing, people who insisted he had not died right away.

Souza and Rodrigues recall the man who came in Feb. 23, saying he had proof of Tommy's whereabouts. He had taken the boy to Florida, to Disney World, he told the detectives. Photographs of Tommy with Mickey Mouse would prove it, he claimed.

"He was the person that came forward, and [said he] was able to corroborate all of those sightings that Tommy was alive during that time," Souza says.

"Gene says, 'This is it. It's going to be true,' and I'm shaking my head," Souza recalls. Rodrigues nods -- he did believe they were on to something.

They asked for the photos, but the man stalled, saying a friend had them. The detectives worked on obtaining a search warrant.

But when the man saw the effort the detectives were making, he backed off from his story.

No, he told the officers, he had never seen Tommy Picard. There were no photos, no trip to Disney World. The whole thing had been a ploy for attention, Souza says.

The investigators went back to their primary suspect and the idea that Tommy had been killed the day he disappeared.

But they never presented a case to a grand jury. Souza says the district attorney at the time told the detectives there might be enough evidence for an indictment -- but not for a conviction.

"We lived and breathed this case from October to January," Souza says. But by late spring of 1989, the feeling was: What more can we do?

WITH NO ONE charged in Tommy's death, rumors persisted in the community that Harold Picard had killed his brother.

"Through my whole 20s, people were questioning me," he says. "It was like I had to go to trial every other day."

Because of that experience, Picard says, he is especially eager to see Tommy's killer caught.

"He should be in jail."

Souza, too, says he wants the killer convicted.

"If, in fact, the person who is responsible for this is out there, we hope every day that they would come in and talk to us."

Tips still come in occasionally on the Picard case, Souza says.

And, while acknowledging that DNA technology hasn't helped so far, he adds that he doesn't want to discount the possibility of a breakthrough.

"Tommy, the poor kid," Souza says. As he pores over the reports, Souza's composure breaks for a moment, and he holds his head in his hands.

COLD CASE CONTACT: The Fall River Police Department may be reached at (508)324-2802.

Jessica Resnick-Ault can be contacted by phone at (508) 674-8401 or by e-mail at JRAult@projo.com

DIGITAL EXTRA: Look back at past installments in the Cold Case series, at: projo.com/extra/2003/coldcase/