Three thousand pages of grand jury transcripts didn’t just walk out of the New London Courthouse on their own.
They had help.
The sworn testimony of 107 witnesses implicated a former mayor and other powerful public officials directly in the cover-up of the hit-and-run death of 20-year-old college student Kevin Showalter on Christmas Eve 1973.
The case was cooked from the start. Then it was derailed at key intervals. Forces greater than incompetence and negligence were at play.
Judge Joseph Dannehy, the one-man grand jury, determined that the initial response “almost presaged, if it did not actually predestine, the shocking and abysmal failure of the New London Police Department investigation.”
Dannehy at that time was the presiding judge for Windham County.
New London officials did not take kindly to Dannehy’s appointment by Chief Justice John Cotter, at the behest of Gov. Ella Grasso. Nor did they roll out the welcome mat for the special prosecutor, Austin McGuigan, who had a track record of convictions for organized crime and political corruption; or the Connecticut State Police detectives who did the field work for the state grand jury.
“We know who killed the Showalter kid, how come you don’t?” a state police detective working for a federal grand jury asked a New London patrol officer.
In a 37-page finding released in 1978, Dannehy named former Mayor Harvey Mallove as the probable driver. Evidence which might have ensured conviction was either lost or destroyed.
So, too, with the grand jury testimony: lost or stolen. That certainly fits the pattern.
Yet, the disappearance of the 3,000 pages from the New London Courthouse was not revealed until 2005 when The Day of New London unsuccessfully filed suit to release the grand jury testimony.
I wrote about the sordid background of the case in March: “Who Ditched the Showalter Grand Jury Transcripts?”
The victim’s mother Lucille Showalter got the runaround, the blind eye and the big shaft from the state’s attorney and that presiding judge at that time. The prosecutor C. Robert Satti came up with a phony suspect after Dannehy’s finding and the judge – Mallove’s best friend Angelo Santniello – admitted tipping off Mallove that he was a suspect before the state police identified him as a target.
“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 projected a sense of invulnerability. He routinely called Satti ‘Do Nothing Bob Satti’ and disparaged the New London police officer initially in charge of the investigation. Lt. Konstanty Bucko, saying, “Bucko wrote ‘The Book of Stupid.’ ”
In any criminal caper, it helps to look at who had access, motive and power to do the dirty deed. The theft or destruction of the grand jury transcripts required labor and planning. The perpetrator or perpetrators needed access to a courthouse vault and, naturally, would not want their presence to be noticed – and if observed – as anything out of the ordinary.
What now?
Now and then, like magic, missing documents reappear. It’s not inconceivable that individuals in law enforcement, the court system or others retained copies of at least some testimony.
The silver lining in this case is that it would be much harder to conduct and maintain such a cover-up today. The last few chief justices and the current court administration have demonstrated a credible commitment to transparency and responsiveness. The current state’s attorney in New London also has been responsive.
Following is a report from the state Judicial Department regarding questions raised in the March column:
FYI, on March 6, 2025, you inquired about the status of missing transcripts from the first phase of the Showalter grand jury investigation. We have worked over the past several weeks on your request, with the goal of searching again for the missing transcripts. I use the word “again,” because as you know from documents that we provided to you earlier, a search occurred in 2005.
We started with the New London Judicial District Courthouse. A Judicial Branch employee went to the court to determine what documents were physically there regarding the Showalter grand jury investigations Judge Joseph Dannehy conducted from July 5, 1977-Dec. 7, 1977, and from October 1980-July 1981. Working with staff at the New London court clerk’s office, the Branch confirmed that sealed transcripts from the reopened grand jury investigation that spanned October 1980-July 1981 are at the courthouse. However, and as noted following the search in 2005, there were no grand jury transcripts from the first investigation. We also checked with the Norwich Judicial District Courthouse, which did not have the transcripts either.
Simultaneously, we tracked down documents – including transcripts and exhibits — from the 2005 case of The Day Publishing Co. v. The State’s Attorney’s Office, KNL-CV05-4003427-S. These documents were very helpful, in that they shed light on the 2005 search that Judge Patrick Clifford ordered after learning that the transcripts from the first grand jury investigation could not be located.
Meanwhile, staff from the Windham Judicial District clerk’s offices searched courthouses in Danielson, Putnam and Willimantic. They were unable to locate the transcripts. Similarly, staff were unable to locate the transcripts at the Judicial Branch’s centralized Records Center. In addition, the Branch’s Legal Services Unit searched its records and archives at both its current location and the Supreme Court building. Again, the transcripts were not located.
Throughout our search, everyone involved hoped that we would locate the missing transcripts. However, the Branch ultimately has reached the same conclusion that was reached in 2005: the transcripts from the first phase of the Showalter grand jury are missing. We are grateful for all the efforts of Judicial Branch staff to try to find the transcripts, and Chief Justice Raheem Mullins and Chief Court Administrator Elizabeth Bozzuto were fully supportive of our efforts.
The Judicial Branch cannot speculate on what might have happened, as it is impossible to establish a chain of custody regarding who last had the transcripts or where they last were, in a case that spans more than 50 years, with most of the key people involved now dead. Thus, at this point, the Judicial Branch does not anticipate further action on its part.
The current New London State’s Attorney, Paul Narducci, and two co-workers manually searched two areas in their office where closed files are kept and did not locate the missing transcripts.
They were there or in control of the state’s attorney’s office under Satti for a period of time after Dannehy’s finding was made public in February 1978. Indeed, in May 1978 Satti wrote a report of his own in which he referenced his access to the transcripts and asserted there was “no corruption” on the part of New London police in this matter.
Narducci said Monday evening he could not determine at this time whether a crime was committed in connection with the missing transcripts. In a prior conversation, Narducci said his reading of state law gives custody of the grand jury transcripts to the clerk of the court. He said if the transcripts were stolen or destroyed it could be a larceny case. He also noted that Chief State’s Attorney Patrick Griffin was searching his office and storage for the missing files. Efforts to reach Griffin Friday and Monday were unsuccessful.
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.