You be the judge: How a violent con was released, only to commit murder

If you're heading to Seattle soon, you might want rethink those travel plans. A good number of people in the of state of Washington are disgusted with Massachusetts for running a state judicial system that unleashed convicted killer Daniel Tavares Jr. on the rest of the country.

Tavares, 41, walked out of prison last July after serving 16 years for stabbing his mother to death. While he was in prison, he assaulted two guards, threatened his father, vowed to get former Gov. Mitt Romney and former Attorney General Tom Reilly, and gave authorizes information on where they could find the body of a woman who disappeared back in the '80s.

Any part of that seems like it should have been enough to keep Tavares behind bars for a while longer. But Judge Kathe Tuttman decided to release him on personal recognizance after Tavares agreed to get a job, live with his sister and check in with his probation officer three times a week.

Tavares checked in twice and then fled to Washington to marry a woman he met on an Internet pen pal site for inmates. Authorities in Massachusetts made some attempts to locate Tavares after he took off, but never moved to re-arrest him. They should have tried harder.

Early in the morning on Nov. 17, Tavares walked over to see his neighbors Brian and Beverly Mauck, a newlywed couple who lived a couple of hundred yards from the trailer where Tavares and his new bride, Jennifer Lynn, were living. According to police records, Tavares was there to collect a $50 debt. Tavares claims Brian Mauck said something that "disrespected" him, and after all that time in prison he wasn't going to take that anymore.

Tavares allegedly took out a gun, put a towel over the nozzle, and shot Brian Mauck in the face. Beverly Mauck tried to run but Tavares caught her by the hair and shot her in the back of the head. The couple was found later that day covered with a blanket on the floor of their living room. Each had three gunshot wounds to the head.

In Graham, Wash., which is about 40 miles south of Seattle, they buried and mourned the Maucks. In Boston, officials began backing into their offices, shrugging their shoulders and pointing their fingers in any direction other than at themselves.

Some people are blaming the prosecutor for the way he handled last summer's hearing. Others are blaming the Department of Corrections for failing to bring assault charges against Tavares sooner. But the lion's share of the blame has fallen on Tuttman, and her decision to overturn a lower court decision that had set bail for Tavares at $100,000 for those assault charges and instead release him.

Mary-Ellen Manning, a Peabody native who now lives and practices law in Salem, represents the North Shore on the Governor's Council, an elected panel that oversees judicial nominations. Manning has asked Gov. Deval Patrick to hold a removal hearing on Tuttman. Manning isn't convinced that the judge has to go, but a removal hearing is the only way to get some answers from her.

"The judiciary has taken the position that they won't answer anyone's questions," says Manning. "I'm trying to get some discussion about what went wrong and why it went wrong."

Patrick has passed on a hearing for the judge but has asked former Essex County D.A. Kevin Burke, who is now the secretary of the Executive Office of Public Safety, to investigate the role the corrections department played in the case.

Meanwhile, people on both coasts are waiting for answers. But here in Massachusetts, no one - with the possible exception of Manning and a colleague on the Governor's Council - seems to be waiting with baited breath.

Last week, Boston Globe columnist Scot Lehigh wrote about the lack of outrage on Beacon Hill about the Tavares case. "So far, the official reaction here has been so muted as to defy belief," writes Lehigh.

But there's been plenty of outrage in Washington. In an interview with the Boston Herald, Beverly Mauck's father Darrel Slater asks how a guy who killed his mother and was charged with more crimes gets out of jail and leaves the state.

"It's because of stupidity in Massachusetts that my daughter is dead," says Slater.

Not your model prisoner Somerset cop Peter Massa still remembers the night of July 11, 1991, when he responded to a call for trouble at the Tavares home on Winslow Avenue. When police arrived, they discovered that Tavares had argued with his mother, Ann, and stabbed her 26 times with a carving knife. Massa did what he could to help the dying woman while other cops on the scene arrested Tavares.

"I remember going up the stairs when the captain was bringing him down in handcuffs, and he was just staring straight ahead. He appeared to be in a daze," says Massa, who believes Tavares had been using cocaine that night. "Apparently, though, he never put up a fight."

Tavares was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 17 to 20 years in prison.

They weren't easy years. Not only did Tavares gravitate toward the white supremacy crowd in prison, more than a third of his time was spent in the Departmental Disciplinary Unit, otherwise known as solitary confinement.

In 2004, the Boston Globe ran a story about several inmates in the DDU, including Tavares. In a brief interview, he said he's been a difficult prisoner but added it's because guards have abused him. And he said he has the scars to show for it. "How many times can you kick a dog before he bites back?" he asked. Not many. Tavares was charged with assaulting guards in 2005 and 2006.

But Tavares' time in prison was marked by several other events. In 2000, he told authorities where to find the body of Gayle Botelho, a Fall River woman who went missing around the time that nine other women from that city were murdered and left along highways leading into New Bedford.

Botelho's remains were found in a shallow grave in the yard of a house where Tavares lived before killing his mother. Tavares told investigators that two acquaintances killed her after a night of "wild partying." People were questioned, but authorities say there was never enough evidence to charge anyone in the Botelho case.

While he was in prison, Tavares tossed off threats to Romney and Reilly, but he seems to have saved his deepest rage for his father, Daniel Tavares Sr., who lives in Florida.

In an interview with the Boston Herald, the elder Tavares says he received incoherent letters from his son with threats such as, "I should break your legs."

After Tavares was released, his father says his son's new wife Jennifer Lynn called to

say he was out and on his way to Florida to get him. The elder Tavares says he started sleeping with a gun under his pillow.

"As far as I am concerned, I don't have a son," Tavares Sr. told the Herald. "I hope they execute him for what he did, and I want to be there when they do."

'A tremendous person'

While Tavares was counting off the days in his cell at Walpole, Kathe Tuttman, a lawyer from Andover, was rising in the ranks at the Essex County District Attorney's Office.

Tuttman was hired by former D.A. Kevin Burke back in 1989. She started out as one of the many assistant D.A.'s in the office but eventually began taking on Superior Court cases. Known around Salem as a brilliant lawyer and an aggressive advocate for victims, Tuttman began to stand out. She picked up various awards for her work and became the head of the D.A.'s Family Crime and Sexual Assault Unit.

Tuttman prosecuted and managed hundreds of cases, but two that stand out show her as anything but soft on crime. In 2004, she prosecuted Alexander Mattei, an inmate who assaulted and tried to rape a handicapped woman in Andover while he was out on work release. Mattei is now serving a 35- to 40-year sentence in state prison.

In 2005, Tuttman took on the brutal case of Patrick McMullen, who was accused of repeatedly beating and raping his three daughters while they lived in an abandoned building in Salisbury. McMullen is now serving several concurrent life sentences, along with a concurrent 40- to 60-year term in state prison thanks to Tuttman and Judge Howard Whitehead.

"Kathe Tuttman is a tremendous lawyer, a tremendous person and a tremendous advocate for victims' rights," says Steve O'Connell, spokesman for the Essex County D.A.'s office.

The one controversy that has dogged Tuttman since she has been dragged into the spotlight involves the case of Daniel Parra, a convicted child rapist from Lynn. Parra served 10 years and Tuttman intended to try to have Parra held indefinitely as a sexually dangerous person. But the D.A.'s office lost that chance after missing two deadlines to file the necessary paperwork. Parra was released and, according to the Boston Herald, now lives in a homeless shelter in Boston.

Not a flight risk

While the Parra case may raise some questions, the answers people want from Tuttman now are about Tavares. But as Tuttman and a lot of other legal eagles in the commonwealth will tell you, a judge isn't allowed to comment on a pending case. And that leaves a bare-bones transcript from Tavares' bail hearing last summer as the one place people can look for an explanation.

Tuttman and Tavares met for the first time on July 16 at the Worcester Superior Court, at the hearing that's been described repeatedly as routine.

A month earlier a lower court judge recognized that Tavares had completed his time for killing his mother but ordered him held on $100,000 bail - $50,000 a piece for the two assault charges against the prison guards.

Tavares' lawyer Barry Dynice argued his client was entitled to be released on personal recognizance. Dynice downplayed the assault cases, saying one charge was for spitting, the other for an assault that allegedly occurred while Tavares was in a cast recovering from surgery on his wrist. And, as Dynice points out, the Department of Corrections waited until the last minute - just as Tavares was due to be released - to bring those charges forward.

Dynice kept the hearing on the issue of bail and insisted Tavares wasn't a flight risk. Not only did he have a place to live and work, he had a 24-year-old daughter and a fiancée in Washington.

"He's received his GED, your honor, and would agree to be on pretrial probation," Dynice tells Tuttman. "He has requested that he be placed on some kind of monitoring system if there's a concern about this."

Tuttman seems to have brushed aside the notion of an electronic bracelet despite the fact that it came from Tavares' own defense attorney. And warnings about Tavares' violent past also didn't do much to sway her.

"He obviously has a history of violence, your honor," prosecutor William Loughin tells Tuttman. "Not only did he just finish a manslaughter sentence, your honor, but he also, I believe, had an armed - he had a robbery charge and he had an assault charge, your honor. So he has a history of crimes of violence, and he committed crimes of violence while he was even serving (for) a crime of violence."

But Tuttman decided that since Tavares did not have any record of defaults there was no reason to assume he would leave.

No one seemed to think that the fact that Tavares was facing another 10 years in prison might encourage him to make a hasty exit from Massachusetts. And no one figured the fact that he might want to see his fiancée would be reason enough to skip any probation calls or appointments.

And those threats Tavares made against his father, Romney, and Reilly, Loughin could have brought them up if he had asked for a hearing on whether or not Tavares was a danger to anyone. Loughin didn't request that hearing - Tuttman was listening to arguments exclusively on bail.

Public opinion seems to say that since the system was dealing with a guy who stabbed his mother to death and had shown some fairly anti-social and violent traits over the 16 years he was in prison, this case and this guy should have raised some red flags and been a priority. In fact, you might think that Tavares would have been walked into court wearing a red banner.

But instead of being on the same page, all of the players in the Tavares case are making excuses and trying to deflect criticism by justifying their particular roles Everyone except for Tuttman, who isn't allowed to say anything.

Manning is still beating the drum for some type of inquiry or investigation on why Tavares was released, but she doesn't seem to have much support from the governor or the legal community who, for the most part, seem to support Tuttman. Lawyers and judges have said she made a legitimate decision given the facts she had in front of her and the constraints of the legal system.

But Manning doesn't seem to buy that, particularly without hearing from Tuttman herself. And she's pretty sure her constituents and the majority of the people in Washington aren't buying it either.

"There needs to be some recognition that the ultimate arbitrator of the law is the public," says Manning. "To not inform the public erodes the credibility of the judiciary - and that lead to anarchy."

E-mail Barbara Taormina at btaormin@cnc.com.