The New London train station had a decent bar in the late 1970s. With City Pier behind it and Electric Boat and Pfizer across the river and the U.S. Submarine Base not far away, I occasionally thought this might be the place to watch World War III. At least you wouldn’t have to write the story. Plus, there are worse ways to go – like changing a tire on your girlfriend’s car on Christmas Eve and getting run over by a hit-and-run driver.
I’ve replayed certain moments – pleasant and bizarre – at this bar many times over nearly five decades:
Tommy Simmons of Uncasville played the piano and sang pop and Motown and showtunes. Simmons took friendly requests. “Green Onions” was among my favorites on his playlist.
And there I was sipping beers with Harvey Mallove, a jeweler, former mayor and prime suspect in the Christmas Eve 1973 hit-and-run death of 20-year-old Kevin Showalter, a Mitchell College student and tennis player.
“Andy, I didn’t kill the kid in any way, shape or form,” Harvey told me multiple times.
It took a while for this to sink in. It’s still sinking in.
As I told colleagues of Harvey’s declaration, one of us would remark now and then, “Yeah, I told my mother I didn’t break that window playing baseball in any way, shape or form.”
Harvey’s utterances in 1977 came during a grand jury probe into the hit-and-run, which was directed by Judge Joseph Dannehy of Willimantic and Special Prosecutor Austin McGuigan. As a professional courtesy, I would routinely call Harvey to give him a general heads up on what would appear in the next day’s paper and to see what he might have to say. He would remain accessible and friendly, even on the day the report came out naming him the probable driver. I had called about 20 hotels person to person in Jamaica before reaching him on a well-timed getaway. On another occasion, Mallove had suggested I look into the personal life of Dannehy, the judge overseeing the hit-and-run probe.
At the behest of Gov. Ella Grasso, Chief Justice John Cotter had ordered the grand jury probe.
This came after Mallove’s best friend, the presiding judge in New London, Angelo Santaniello – and Santaniello’s former law partner, State’s Attorney C. Robert Satti – ignored and/or refused numerous requests by the victim’s mother historian Lucille Showalter for a grand jury. Showalter’s mother would press, unsuccessfully, to have Santaniello and Satti investigated for hindrance of prosecution. A similar plea to state officials from a local chapter of the National Organization for Women went nowhere.
Santaniello would, however, call my boss, Norwich Bulletin Managing Editor John Peterson to say he never goes out on Christmas Eve.
Mallove attended two parties that Christmas Eve, one of them in Groton at the home of Santaniello’s close friend and political ally, former State Sen. Peter Mariani.
Indeed, then-Presiding New London Superior Court Judge Santaniello later admitted in a taped conversation – subsequently played on WFSB’s Eyewitness News Magazine – tipping off his best friend, Harvey Mallove, that Mallove was a suspect.
“I did talk to Harvey,” Santaniello told Mrs. Showalter on Oct. 17, 1975, “and I said, `You’re suspected.’ As a matter of fact, at that time a police officer came to him on the same day or the next day, and told him you were making accusations about him and that he was a prime suspect.” The day before, Mallove told Mrs. Showalter, “Judge Santaniello is of the opinion that you fingered me.” It was not until 1977 that state police formally named Mallove a suspect.
Mallove was wired beyond the court system. After being named the probable driver, he was invited to the White House as one of 100 prominent Americans for a briefing on strategic arms limitation talks with the Soviet Union. Local cops from top to bottom and even some in the state police were loyal to him. No one was ever charged in this case.
By the time the state police took over the case for the grand jury in late 1976, auto body putty from the death car retrieved by a tow truck driver and given to New London police had disappeared from the evidence room. In its place state police found floor tile. Other achievements by New London police included mixing headlight glass from three different cars. While in the custody of New London police, the possibility that Showalter’s clothes were contaminated from a source other than the death car was “great,” the grand juror Dannehy wrote in his report.
Dannehy found that New London Police Lt. K.T. Bucko falsely stated all six of Mallove’s cars had been physically inspected after Showalter was killed. The grand juror determined the cars never were inspected by New London police and at least two cars had damage to the right front around the time of the crash.
In December 1976 a lawyer for Mrs. Showalter filed a lawsuit against the unnamed person[s] responsible for the killing of her son. Five Superior Court judges would recuse themselves.
Dannehy in a 1978 finding would rip New London police for their “shocking” and “abysmal” failures, determining they did “virtually nothing” to solve the case.
There remain multiple trails for the reasons why. The trails also show more than a few potential intermeddlers following the grand jury had motive and opportunity to lose or destroy the transcripts.
Along with numerous friends and colleagues, major political players showed up at the wake for George Ryalls, a lead state police detective on the case and later a senior inspector for the chief state’s attorney. Ryalls, who served four years in the U.S. Navy and about eight years in East Lyme as a patrolman, went on to help solve mob hits and game fixing connected with World Jai Alai. At the Showalter grand jury, Ryalls would occasionally dance in the hallway doing an impression of the Peter Sellers character Inspector Jacques Clouseau.
Ryalls “stood alone when others preferred to look the other way at corruption and organized crime,” McGuigan, then chief state’s attorney, said upon Ryalls death.
When I saw Satti at the wake for Ryalls, Satti complained there never should have been a grand jury. Satti had gone on – after the grand jury finding – to concoct a phony suspect, a mentally ill person who eventually killed himself, as the hit-and-run driver. Judge Dannehy characterized a second proceeding put forth by Satti as “common gossip” and “bare supposition.” The Satti maneuver did not alter the conclusion: Evidence that might have ensured Mallove’s conviction was either lost, mishandled or destroyed.
Dannehy did cite Ryalls and fellow Connecticut State Police Detectives Lt. Richard Hurley, Justine Miller, Frank Paparelli, Charles Wargat and Michael Stergio – among a total of as many as 17 detectives who worked on the case – for their “dedication and extraordinary skills.”
“Their conduct was impeccable, their manner courteous, their methods fair and always objective,” Dannehy wrote. “For so much as this inquiry effectively accomplished, all credit must reflect on these distinguished and eminently professional members of the Connecticut State Police Department.”
Dannehy on occasion called me into his chambers. At one point he admonished me to stop writing as if I was in the room. I was only able to do that because my mentor Peterson had briefed me on the significance of scores of likely witnesses. My challenge was to identify and write about who testified on a given day. Some witnesses were more truthful and friendly than others. One New London cop who talked to me in person during the day in Willimantic denied every meeting me when I called him at home that night. In all, I identified about 80 of the more than 100 witnesses who testified.
The grand jury room supposedly was soundproof. Dannehy’s voice was deep and could be booming when he was angry or wanted to make a point. A court sheriff and I could hear him yelling at a New London cop during one day of testimony.
Now come the questions of how and why 3,000 pages of grand jury testimony disappeared from the custody of the Connecticut Judicial and Criminal Justice departments and what those public servants in charge are going to do about it.
This theft or disappearance was noted following a Nov. 4, 2005 ruling in The Day Publishing v. State’s Attorney DOCKET NO. CV05-4003427, in which Judge Elaine Gordon inexplicably found the assertion that this case “involves a significant public interest” to be “strained.” The Hartford Courant, in an editorial that initially ran shortly thereafter, “OPEN THE SHOWALTER FILE,” cited the disappearance of the 3,000 pages of grand jury testimony.
I addressed just two questions to the following officials on March 6, 2025: Chief Justice Raheem Mullins, CT Supreme Court; Chief Court Administrator Elizabeth Bozzuto; Presiding Judge Karen Goodrow, New London Superior Court; Chief State’s Attorney Patrick Griffin; New London State’s Attorney Paul Narducci.
Here are the questions: What crimes and/or violations of normal and customary court procedures have been committed regarding the theft or disappearance of 3,000 pages of sworn testimony in the Kevin Showalter Hit-and-Run Cover-Up which was the subject of a grand jury run by Judge Joseph Dannehy and Special Prosecutor Austin McGuigan with the assistance of 17 Connecticut State Police Detectives? What are you going to do about it?
On Monday and Tuesday, an official with the state Judicial Department said the legal services division was reviewing the questions. I got the impression they were taking the matter seriously and being diligent. I had discussed the questions and the case with officials in that department and the Chief State’s Attorney’s office last week. Alaine Griffin, communications director for the state Division of Criminal Justice, which includes all state prosecutors, said on Monday she would be getting back to me on Tuesday. Tuesday morning and afternoon, Griffin did not respond to text, email or voice messages.
As for the Showalter family, a surviving younger brother, now a pastor at a church in the Midwest, told me the case occupied his life as a young person when he was supporting his mother. The pain they endured was exacerbated by the unending struggle to find answers in the face of such obstacles.
Andy Thibault, co-author of “You Thought It Was More – New Adventures of the World’s Greatest Counterfeiter,” teaches investigative reporting at the University of New Haven. He covered the first Showalter grand jury for The Norwich Bulletin and the second for United Press International and WNLC Radio.