Michele R. McPhee - When Evil Rules: Vengeance and Murder on Cape Cod

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TITLES BY
MICHELE R. MCPHEE

Heartless

When Evil Rules

FROM THE TRUE CRIME LIBRARY OF
ST. MARTINS PAPERBACKS

Michele R. McPhee

St. Martins Paperbacks

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as unsold and destroyed to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this stripped book.

WHEN EVIL RULES

Copyright 2009 by Michele R. McPhee.

Cover photo of mans eye by Michael Bader / Jupiter Images. Cover photo of lighthouse by Jupiter Images..

All rights reserved.

For information address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

ISBN: 0-312-94775-5
EAN: 978-0-312-94775-0

Printed in the United States of America

St. Martins Paperbacks edition / August 2009

St. Martins Paperbacks are published by St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

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This book is dedicated to all
who crusade against corruption.

This book would have been impossible without help from the crusaders against corruption, including retired Falmouth Police Officer Richard Smith. Others operate with anonymity, and they know who they are.

I would also like to thank Allison Caplin and Charlie Spicer at St. Martins Paperbacksthe best editors in the businessfor the time spent on this manuscript. Of course my dogged literary agent Jane Dystel deserves endless kudos for her patience and direction. Id also like to thank George Tobia, the extraordinarily talented lawyer who braves the Boston winters but is the talk of the town in Hollywood.

I want to give a nod to my colleagues at 96.9 FM WTKK, Bostons Talk Evolution, where I have a nightly radio show. They have been enormously supportive and generous with time. A special thanks to program director Grace Blazer.

Falmouth is a small town and distrustful of outsiders. Without Craig Galvins hospitality, I would not have been able to make the necessary connections in Falmouth to forge forward. And without the lemon-poppy pancakes at the Moonakis eatery, who would have the stamina to write all summer long in a gorgeous beach town like Falmouth? Thank you to Paul Rifkin, the owner of the best breakfast joint on Cape Cod, and his great staff, especially Karen. I also want to acknowledge the bravery of Loretta Gilfoy in her fight for justice.

I have been a crime reporter for two decadesworking as a police bureau chief at two major city newspapers, the New York Daily News and the Boston Herald. My shoe-leather reporting across the country has netted me a variety of police sources, and the time spent in courtrooms has helped me navigate even the most difficult clerks offices.

It was interviews with law enforcement sources and hours spent culling over piles and piles of court documents that gave me the information that I needed to write this book. But I must point out that while Melvin Reine is certainly a suspect in a frighteningly long list of crimes, he has not been charged or convicted of the three homicides law enforcement officials believe he was involved in. Reine is currently in extremely critical condition at a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane in Massachusetts, so even if police and prosecutors could build a case, it is unlikely that he will ever be sane enough to face a trial.

Michele R. McPhee
February, 2009

WHEN
EVIL
RULES

The early morning light that comes with sunrise on Cape Cod is often breathtaking, as it was on May 10, 2005, when Michael Domingues showed up at 657 East Falmouth Highway. His early arrival served two purposes: he worked for Shirley Reine at her lucrative trash-hauling company, and he was her lover.

While Domingues was a small man who stood just five-foot-three, he was ruggedly built. He was not a handsome man, but he had a fierceness that women found attractive. Certainly Shirley Reine did.

Domingues noted the crimson haze over the cranberry bog across the street from Shirleys house, and out of habit he scanned the windows of the four houses that ringed the tight cluster of cottages that made up the Reine compound to make sure no one was looking out the window. The homes abutted one another in the shape of a horseshoe, and were upscale versions of the classic Cape Cod saltbox with cedar shingles weathered gray by the salty air and harsh New England winters. Each house was ringed by a cedar-post fence and had impeccably manicured lawns and landscaped flowers.

The Reine compound was a massive onethe familys property stretched to the marshes that abutted the land, and went back at least a mile into a wooded area. Thats where the Reines kept the heavy equipment and warehouse that made up the family business, Five Star Enterprises, a garbage removal company that pulled in roughly $5 million a year in profits. The compound was marked with a granite boulder that Melvin had branded with an etching of the family name underneath a truck symbolizing the hauling business.

But no one who grew up in Falmouth or spent any substantial amount of time there needed the reminder. Everyone in town knew who Melvin Reine Sr. was and where he lived. Most locals stayed clear of the area and would not even pull a U-turn in the Reines circular driveway for fear of attracting the old mans ire. Some would glance up at the gilded fox on top of the patriarchs roofa taunt of sorts to the town from Melvin Reine, who would often brag that he was as sinister and crafty as a foxand think about how the town cops often turned a blind eye to his well-known arson threats. If you crossed him, he would throw a spent match. When that happened, something was going to burn. And Melvin Reine would never be implicated.