Digital Extras

The body of Rebecca Spencer lay on its right side on the living room floor, clad in a bloody nightgown, a blue blanket bunched at her feet. Her pocketbook was nearby, untouched. The television had been left on, tuned to the VH-1 music channel.

She had been stabbed 58 times, to the scalp, face, trunk and upper arms. Any number of the wounds -- to her lungs, heart, liver and a vein that empties into the heart -- would have killed her. There were defensive wounds on her hands. The medical examiner would later remove a triangular shard of metal, the point of a knife, from the muscles of her left shoulder.

The police found blood on the back door where the killer had escaped, and a small trail of blood down the driveway.

They found a carving knife with a 10-inch blade in the backyard.

The police announced that they had found the murder weapon.

They kept other details secret. Only the investigators, Spencer's brother, who had discovered her body, and the killer knew that the TV was on the VH-1 channel.

People gathered outside, drawn by word of a tragedy at Spencer's ranch-style house in Warwick's Buttonwoods section.

IT LOOKED like every cop in the city was at the Spencer house that day in July 1987. The mayor was there, too. And news reporters. Thirteen-year-old Craig Price watched the commotion out his window. He felt like he could faint. Two of his friends came by. You're missing all the action, they told him. Somebody got murdered!

Price was nervous, like his guts had turned to ice. He thought the police would be coming for him any minute. He didn't want to go outside, but he didn't want to be the only one not there, which might look suspicious.

He went out and wandered through the crowd. Detectives were questioning the bystanders.

Anybody hear anything? Anybody know anything?

Some of the kids who had played outside Spencer's house the night before told the detectives about the man who had yelled at them from his car.

Price went along with the story. He wrote for the police a two-page witness statement, co-signed by his mother, Shirley Price. He had seen the man in the car about a week before, he wrote, when the man was looking for Spencer's house. Price's statement didn't mention Rebecca Spencer by name. He referred to her as "the woman from the brown house."

Price was astounded that he seemed beyond suspicion. He would later write:

I truly felt like getting away with it was my fate and destiny. I really felt clever and supreme. I acted just like everybody else who thought a killer walked their neighborhood streets.

A newswoman asked Price and a friend how they felt about the killing in their neighborhood.

We both said we were scared. Well, in truth, one of us was scared, but the other one was getting away with murder.

CRAIG PRICE vowed to never speak of what he had done. He would put the murder behind him and fix his life.

The only way I knew how to deal with things was to block it out and resume with life as if this dark deed never happened, and believe it or not, in a certain sense this mental tactic worked.

But his secret would not be ignored.

Knowing that I had some terrible crime to forever block out steadily consumed me, and unceasingly gnawed at my subconscious mind.

The bristly dark creatures in Price's recurring nightmares bled from their hands. They studied him from a perch, squinting down with cunning red eyes. In other dreams, Becky Spencer's corpse would suddenly appear from nowhere and Price would try frantically to hide the body.

He did not understand at age 13 the function of the subconscious, but he felt its effects. He sensed that something deep within him had been broken.

Getting away with murder can be more than stressful for a thirteen year old. It takes a great deal of mental strength to bury such a secret in the most deepest recess of the mind . . . The stress and strain of what I did weighed enormously on my conscience and I was simply too young to adequately cope with it by myself.

During the day, he acted like every other kid in Buttonwoods -- shocked that there had been a killing in the neighborhood, quick to speculate about who might have done it. He retreated to his social life and sports, and decided to try harder at school.

I really thought I would be able to forget the murder once and for all.

Boy was I wrong.

FOR CRAIG PRICE, the fall of 1987 began a time of renewed hope. He had sports, school, friends. His big frame would fill out even more, gaining 35 pounds.

But he had a gnawing feeling that his secret would come back to get him.

He says he started to see racism on the athletic field and became disillusioned. Sports were no longer his "haven."

He took more drugs, including LSD.

He turned 14 in October 1987.

Nearly a year later, police nabbed Price and two friends for a housebreak on Ticonderoga Drive. Implicated by his friends, Price admitted to kicking in the door, but nothing else. "You might have me for vandalism," he told the police, "but you can't get me for breaks."

Price got probation.

LSD became his routine. He believes he took it each day after he turned 15. "The stuff will dent your mind," he says. "But I really thought when I was on it that I could figure out the universe."

On July 26, 1989, Price had a fight with his sister, Kimberly, at home on Inez Avenue. The police were called. They reported that Price ended up in a wrestling match with his father and an officer. Mr. Price helped the officer get Craig into handcuffs. Price spent the night in detention, accused of domestic assault and knocking down a police officer.

THE DAY Craig Price met Joan Heaton and her daughters in 1989, he learned that his friends had lied to him.

Several neighborhood kids had told Price they were going lobster diving and wouldn't be around that day. But yet there they were, on an August afternoon, at the convenience store around the corner from Price's house.

Whatever his friends had been planning, it was obvious to Price that he wasn't invited. He felt like beating up every one of them.

Price says he figured out that his friends were on their way to visit a kid who often had drugs -- a kid Price believed was a racist, which was why he wasn't invited.

Price stormed off.

He was mad at his friends, and far angrier with himself.

Anger consumed me and I felt its flame lick all over . . . It bothered me greatly that I just accepted being lied to and [didn't] speak my mind. I just stuffed it all down, like I always had.

He hurried toward home.

That's when he saw Heaton and her daughters, Jennifer and Melissa, on bicycles. Price knew of the Heatons, the way neighbors know of neighbors without really knowing them.

The Heaton house at 95 Metropolitan Drive was one street from Craig Price's home on Inez. He had never had a cross word with any of them, never a word at all.

This is what Craig Price says happened next:

One of the Heaton girls had slipped her bicycle chain. Price offered to fix it.

He says he sensed a bad vibe from Joan Heaton while he reset the chain, as if she had expected him to steal the bike or something.

The girls were giggling over some childish slang for feces, repeating it several times.

Price wondered, are they referring to me? Why? Because I'm black?

Embarrassment and fury enveloped me, and rage began to sting the center of my being.

He went home, nursing a headache. After what he perceived to be two episodes of racism during one trip to the store, he thought he needed to lie down.

And he thought he needed to kill somebody.

Yes, to kill someone was the panacea.

It was probably no more than two-and-a-half or three weeks later when I next encountered the Heatons, and when I next brought myself to kill.

What regret, what turmoil, and what sorrow I will forever feel when I recall the utter madness and insanity of that dreadful night.

JOAN HEATON and her mother, Marie Bouchard, and Jennifer and Melissa dined together at an East Greenwich restaurant on Friday, Sept. 1, 1989. That was the last day Bouchard saw her daughter and granddaughters alive.

After dinner, Heaton, a 39-year-old widow, brought her mother home. She mentioned that she was taking her girls back-to-school shopping. Jennifer and Melissa were pupils at Park Elementary School, which was opening for the new school year in a week.

Melissa, nicknamed Liss, was entering third grade. Jennifer, called Jen, was going into the fifth grade.

Joan Heaton visited Christmas Tree Shops on Bald Hill Road that day. Her register receipt showed that at 7:24 p.m. she paid for a set of steak knives in a knife block.

At some point that evening, the family returned home to 95 Metropolitan, a light brown ranch with flowers stenciled around the front door. They changed into nightclothes and got ready for bed.

LATE THAT SAME NIGHT, 15-year-old Craig Price was at a beach party at the edge of Greenwich Bay.

Some of the kids were high on marijuana, some were high on liquor, and some on both. A campfire was blazing. Price was high on LSD and marijuana.

He wanted a drink, but he didn't like the kid who had brought the beer; Price had heard that the kid liked racist jokes. From across the fire, Price watched the kid's expression change as he told some kind of story. The LSD distorted the light and shadow on the kid's face, and Price was suddenly angry.

Rage vibrated within me and just like that I wanted to throw this kid in the fire.

Price could not remember walking around the campfire, but he found himself standing in front of the kid with the beer.

What's up? the other boy asked. He smiled.

I'd like a beer.

Sorry, the other youth said. I only have two left. If you had asked me earlier, I would have hooked you up.

Price felt a hot wave of embarrassment.

"Thanks anyway."

He stayed 20 minutes, then left on foot, still angry, on a meandering route through the dark neighborhood, toward home.

He was on Metropolitan Drive, nearly home, when he saw Jay Jay, the family cat, out on a prowl.

As Price stopped to pick up the cat, in front of house number 95, he noticed a woman watching him from a window.

Joan Heaton.

Craig Price watched her back.

She closed the blinds.

Like a rod of white hot lightning, her demeanor I saw through her window that night instantly tapped into the chaotic anger, rage and fury I had buried within.

With each step toward home, Price could feel his anger. It focused into a single burning dot aimed at the woman who he thought had viewed him with contempt and suspicion.

Joan Heaton.

Perhaps it was the LSD and the marijuana I was on, and maybe these drugs did magnify and amplify the way I felt over the situation, but when I reached home I was in an absolute dark rage.

He felt a prick of pain on his hand. He had been squeezing his cat too hard and Jay Jay was trying to get away. Price went inside his house, fed the cat some treats and descended to his new bedroom in the basement. Nobody else was home.

He tried to reason with himself. He rationalized: I'm so angry about the way she looked at me because I'm high. Change the high, he thought, and I'll change the way I feel.

He went upstairs to his old room, with a bag of pot to smoke.

His high changed for the worse.

The more I thought about how I felt, the . . . harsher I felt toward who I "thought" was responsible for how I felt, and now I had worked myself into a trembling fury.

He wandered from one room to another, not really knowing why.

I felt as if I was outside my thoughts and could not penetrate the shell enveloping my reason. Every ounce of energy needed to create thought was strictly and narrowly concentrated and dedicated to anger.

For an hour he seethed, until a solution came to him.

Kill her.

May God be my witness; just the thought of this solution started to ease my twisted and torn mind, and with such clarity I knew the act of killing Joan Heaton was the answer . . . In that very wrong moment, I started to prepare for murder . . . once again.

He dressed in black sweatpants, a black sweatshirt, black leather gloves and Nike sneakers covered in black electrical tape. This was the uniform he wore when he went out to break into cars. He took a screwdriver, in case he had to break into the Heaton house, and a five-inch steak knife from the kitchen sink. He went out the back door.

The night was black and the stars brilliant. Craig Price gazed up at the stars. A few moments passed and he realized he had zoned out in the haze of the drugs.

Bad, he thought. Being distracted could get me caught.

He stalked through backyards, and then hopped a stockade fence onto the Heaton property. It was dark and cluttered with bushes.

Price decided to murder Mr. Heaton first -- not knowing there wasn't one. Then he would kill Joan.

As far as the girls go, it was my utmost intention to let them live.

He started at the right side of the house and peered into the first window. It seemed to be a bedroom. The next, a bathroom. He saw no sign that a man had lived there, no aftershave or shaving kit.

The next two windows looked into the kitchen; one was wide open with just a screen in his way.

He moved to a back door.

Locked.

He went back to the screen and pressed the knife against the mesh. The wire cut so easily. In moments, the screen was open.

Price wanted to be silent. He stepped out of his sneakers and climbed in, onto a table that was up against the wall, in a small dinette space.

Easing off the table, he stood in the kitchen. The LSD made him easily distracted, and he became mesmerized by the hum of the refrigerator. For the first time all night, Becky Spencer came to mind. He drifted back two years, to the moments before he had killed her, when he had rested in her chair while she had slept.

I felt coldly detached, but yet I was aware and conscious that I was detached. There was a strange piercing feeling of a great hollow anxiety . . . a twisted sense of forbidden liberty, a profound sense of sneakiness . . . and a sense of pending doom.

Down the hall, the door to Joan Heaton's bedroom was closed.

He leaned against the door in the dark hallway and grasped the knob.

Clunk!

The screwdriver in his waistband knocked against the wall. Not a loud noise, but audible. He raced on stocking feet back to the kitchen.

He waited.

Had anybody heard him? He listened, listened, listened. The refrigerator enslaved him again with its hum. He shook it off after a few moments, angry for being so easily distracted.

He went back down the hall.

Again, he reached for the knob.

That's when he heard footsteps, getting closer.

Price hugged the wall and held his breath.

To his shock, he felt Melissa Heaton's hand touch his stomach.

She dashed off.

Seconds later a light went on and Melissa met eyes with Craig Price.

She jumped back, wide-eyed and seemed about to scream when Price grabbed her and clamped a hand over her mouth. His plan was coming apart. Not knowing what to do, he carried her down the hall, his hand still over her face. He tripped and they both fell. He dropped the knife. She ripped a short, high-pitched scream.

Price scrambled to her and slapped his hand over her mouth.

Joan Heaton burst from her bedroom.

What to do? He let the girl go and raced at Joan Heaton, crashing into her. She slammed back to the wall and dropped hard. She gasped, "Call 911!"

Melissa was going for the telephone.

Price rushed back to the kitchen.

He reached into the sink and closed his hand around a knife. He stabbed with panic. Then he moved back to Joan.

In their struggle, Price lost the knife.

He knocked her down.

This is when I had to get the knife. My knife, her knife, any old or new knife would do, but I had to find a knife to finish what I started.

He flicked on the bathroom light and saw his knife, practically at his feet. He seized it, then looked around. Melissa was on the floor near the kitchen. Joan was in the hall. Jennifer kneeled unhurt beside her mother, saying nothing, as if in shock.

Craig Price felt a "slap" of grief at seeing Jennifer, for now it was "inevitable" that he "had to kill her, too."

As bizarre as it may seem, a new rage came upon me as I blamed the botching of this crime on Joan, and as our eyes met seconds before I cut the lights back out, the most horror stricken look of terror crossed her face.

Her face gave him pause for a moment.

Then he turned off the light.

PRICE SLAMMED onto the table beneath the window in blind haste to escape the house the way he had come in. A table leg snapped and he tumbled with a tremendous crash. Surely, he thought, the world had heard what he had done and the cops were on the way. He clambered out the window and raced away, carrying a plastic bag with the knives he had used and the knife block he had found them in.

Back home, he flung the bag into a corner of his father's backyard shed, into a jumble of garden tools and bicycle parts.

I couldn't believe what I had just done, and I knew I had done something so horrible that I would probably never fix things, especially with my head. In the darkness of my yard, I cried.

Panic held him spellbound over the next few hours.

What had he left behind?

Fingerprints? Evidence?

He had to go back to wipe the place clean.

He forced himself across the dark neighborhood again, back through the screen he had sliced, into a house stinking of blood, that stench that left a metallic presence at the back of his tongue.

The Heatons were dead.

The bodies were terrible and he did not want to look at them. He got some blankets.

SUNRISE BROKE upon the silent house.

A visitor came, a 10-year-old, looking for her friends, Melissa and Jennifer. Nobody answered the bell.

Two days passed.

Joan Heaton's mother, Marie Bouchard, phoned the house on Monday. No answer. Bouchard and Joan's sister Mary Lou drove to Joan's place. Joan's red Buick was parked outside. Nobody came to the door.

Inside, the air was rancid. A table, set against the wall under a window, was slanted, a leg broken. A rug was rolled up in the hall, blankets piled on it. An arm and a leg stuck out from under the rug.

THE KILLER had covered all three victims with rugs and blankets.

The police recorded that they found Melissa Heaton in the kitchen. She had been stabbed seven times in the neck, chest and left shoulder. She had been beaten on the head, neck and upper back.

Jennifer Heaton was in the hallway. She had 62 stab wounds to the neck, chest, abdomen, arms and legs and contusions to her head and neck, a fractured skull and the snapped-off fragment of a blade, 3 5/8-inches long, embedded in her neck.

Their mother was also in the hallway. She had 11 stab wounds to the face, neck, chest and right shoulder, contusions of the head, neck and chest, skull and rib fractures and blunt trauma injuries to the upper thorax and face.

There was no evidence of sexual assault. The house had not been robbed. The perpetrator had taken away the weapons, but he had left clues:

Sock prints made by a large foot.

A palm print on a table.

And the killer might have suffered a cut in the attack -- there were blood spatters away from the three bodies and Band-Aid wrappers on the floor.

Outside, another chattering crowd had gathered, drawn by the rumors that somebody else in the neighborhood had been murdered. Investigators videotaped the spectators, in case the killer might be among them.

He was.

THE HEATON murders drove Rhode Island into a state of fear and paranoia. Its epicenter was Buttonwoods.

Home owners nailed windows shut, canceled evening walks, cuddled baseball bats in their sleep. They installed floodlights and dead bolts, replaced glass-paneled doors with solid ones, and adopted watchdogs from the pounds.

One Warwick gun dealer sold five shotguns to Buttonwoods women the week after the killings. Another reported selling six semiautomatic handguns. "They're scared, scared to hell," he said.

The people of Buttonwoods looked at each other funny, searching in faces and eyes for signs of guilt, and danger.

The police speculated publicly that the Heaton killings were related to the unsolved murder of Becky Spencer two years earlier.

Twenty-six officers were assigned to the Heaton case, along with three agents from the FBI.

The police fanned out, searching dumpsters for the murder weapons.

They served subpoenas on some 30 hospitals and health centers, demanding information on anyone treated for lacerations in the first five days of September. They set up five roadblocks around Buttonwoods, looking for men with cuts or bruises.

They fingerprinted numerous people who knew the family.

Meanwhile, detectives developed information about Joan Heaton, looking for some link to the killer.

The police learned that Joan's husband had committed suicide in 1983. Through dozens of interviews, the police assembled a portrait of a widowed mother deeply involved in her church, Christ the King, in Kingston, and in her work as a research assistant in the plant sciences department at the University of Rhode Island. She was described as shy with people she didn't know, and didn't seem to have enemies. She enjoyed quilting. She and her daughters attended Mass every Saturday. They sat in the front row.

Detectives got a search warrant for Joan's safety deposit box, which held an insurance policy, a savings bond, tax papers, one pair of earrings, a bracelet, a wristwatch, two rings and three department store credit cards.

The police thought they might have had a break in the case on Sept. 5, when officers spotted a 19-year-old man walking shirtless on Metropolitan Drive. His shirt was wrapped around a deep cut on his right hand. Scratches ran down his right arm. He eventually admitted to cutting himself in a burglary, and passed a lie-detector test.

The same day, two Warwick police officers pulled up to a group of teens walking along Metropolitan. One of the kids had white gauze around his left index finger. Officer Raymond Pendergast knew the young man through local youth sports programs.

Craig Price.

What happened to your finger?

Price claimed he had fallen on a broken bottle at the Masonic Youth Center in Buttonwoods, and hadn't told his parents, or gone to the doctor, because he didn't like needles.

ABOUT FOUR DAYS after the Heatons were found dead, Craig Price lay awake late at night, like many of his neighbors.

He had tried to wipe the Heaton home of fingerprints.

Had he erased them all? Had he left some other identifying clue?

He couldn't stop thinking about it.

He had to go back one more time.

The nocturnal trek to the Heaton home would be trickier this time, cutting across a field of fright and suspicion. It seemed that every porch light was on, every backyard had floodlights.

With a whirling sense of danger, Craig Price slipped for the third time through the window and into the Heaton house.

The bodies had been taken away.

Through the front windows he could see a police car parked outside.

He crept through the house again, wiping down things he might have touched the night of the killings, looking for evidence he might have left.

He didn't see anything that could point to him.

He could not have seen his palm print on the table.

SOMETHING ABOUT Craig Price's story bothered the detectives. They asked his parents to bring him to the Warwick police station on Sept. 9, four days after officers had noticed the cut on his finger.

The police noted that the gash appeared to have an entry and exit point. They pressed Price. Had he fallen on glass the way he had showed them, the cut would have been on the other side of his finger.

Caught in a lie, Price gave them another. He "confessed" that he had cut himself breaking into a Ford Probe with Connecticut plates on Keeley Avenue, a few streets from his house, to get a brown leather wallet somebody had left inside. He had smashed the side window with a rock and sliced his hand, all for an empty wallet.

Price thought that the officers seemed relieved. It was a good story, and partially true. He and his friends had broken into such a car, in that general area in the past.

But the story wasn't perfect.

Price had been unclear about the date he suffered the cut.

There were no abrasions around the wound, which would be expected had he punched out a window.

The police searched Keeley Avenue for broken glass. There was none. They canvassed the area for people who might know someone from Connecticut who owned a vandalized Ford Probe. Police records do not show that they found anyone.

The police arranged to speak again to Price with his parents on Sept. 16, at the police station.

Craig Price gave police a handwritten statement that day, denying he had ever been inside the Heatons' home since they moved there.

The police took his photograph, his finger, palm and foot prints.

Then they hooked the electrode of a lie detector to his finger.

Did you kill the Heatons?

"No."

The machine detected no response from his skin. Price answered more questions, denying involvement in the murders. The test seemed "ridiculously easy" to beat.

Do you know where the murder weapons are?

And I'm thinking, 'Oh, [expletive]! They're in the shed.' I hadn't had time to go back and get rid of them, with everything going on. And it came back to bite me on the ass.

"No," he blurted.

But the machine had detected his indecision, and it exposed his lie.

After the test, the police pushed.

What kind of person could have murdered Joan Heaton and her children?

"A crazy person," Price answered. "He'd have to be to kill the two kids and Mrs. Heaton."

Could it have been, maybe, a housebreak gone bad?

"I didn't do any killing," Craig Price insisted. "I wasn't there!"

But what about the cut?

"I told you guys that I did it breaking into a car."

Not possible. We've spoken with a Ford dealer -- that kind of glass is designed to shatter into pellets; there was no way it could have pierced your finger.

The police had blood, fingerprints and more than 150 pieces of evidence that had been turned over to the FBI for analysis. It was just a matter of time, they warned, before they linked him to the crime.

"Fine," Craig Price said. "I wasn't there."

The Price family got ready to leave.

That's when a detective slid a photograph of the Heaton family onto the table for Craig Price to see.

What could I do? I had to act outraged that they'd accuse me of something like that, so that's what I did.

He yelled that he hadn't killed anyone and accused the police of trying to pin the crime on a black kid. If you're going to arrest me, Craig Price said, do it now, because otherwise I want to go home.

Detectives that day went back to one of Price's friends. Under questioning, the friend admitted that Price had asked him to lie about seeing a Ford Probe on Keeley Avenue.

Police got a search warrant for the Price house.

They executed the warrant at 7:30 the next morning.

PRICE HAD THOUGHT about getting rid of the evidence in the shed, but it seemed that somebody was always around. He knew he was the prime suspect, yet he did not run.

"You can't run," he says, "from four bodies."

A steel-gripped fatalism clutched him. He had screwed up so bad, had sunk so low, he didn't care what happened next, didn't care enough to try to get away. He resigned himself to keep his secrets and to wait.

Price was asleep when the police arrived at his house with the warrant. They gathered the family in the living room. Price was hung-over, and sat quietly as the officers spread out to search the house.

"Where does this door go?" an officer asked.

"Nowhere, the backyard," someone answered.

Price's eyes widened. Would they search the shed?

The police went out to the yard. Price waited, his insides churning. Would they find the bag? Maybe not, not in that mess. He couldn't stand the tension. "I need to use the bathroom," he announced.

"You have to stay here," said an officer.

"I really have to go."

The police relented, but guarded the door. From the bathroom, Price could see into the backyard.

The shed was open and the police had the bag.

They were holding up the bloody knives, and then laying them down to photograph.

Craig Price said nothing. He went back to the living room. A plainclothes police officer was there, too. His sidearm was in its holster.

Price thought: Grab that gun and cowboy outta here.

Then what? Where would he go? How would he get there? He didn't have a driver's license.

Just get that gun.

He put on his sneakers so he could run.

He tried to work up the nerve to lunge at the cop. He felt anxious, as if the ball of nerves bunched in his throat had poisoned the back of his tongue with the same metallic heaviness left by the stench of too much blood.

His resolve hardened to grab the pistol.

But he missed the chance.

Police officers flooded the room. They shouted that Craig Price was under arrest for the murders of Joan Heaton and her daughters. They grabbed him, told him his rights, cuffed his hands and pulled him outside.

On the front lawn, Craig Price took in the scene.

His father was screaming, arguing with the police, his mother wept, his dog was running around barking and trying to bite people. Neighbors who had come out of their houses covered their mouths and pointed. The police were shaking hands over cracking the case.

And Craig Price, exposed as a murderer, felt bolts of humiliation and fear, and then cold dread and a sizzling embarrassment, for himself and for his family, and when those emotions collided inside him with maybe a dozen others, they all extinguished each other and went dark.

Tomorrow: Keeping the killer behind bars