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was his duty to prevent the families any harm. “How can I justify putting the families of my victims through that again? Especially for something as intangible as a principle of ‘justice.’” In order to prevent a new trial, he said he would sign anything, “including something that says I’m the biggest scumbag in the world, that I knowingly and willingly killed my victims in cold-blooded ecstasy, and that I deserve to die, I will do so. For they are only words that won’t change the ultimate truth.” Michael said he didn’t expect me to understand what he was trying to do, but he hoped I would understand why he couldn’t grant an interview at that time unless I promised that none of it would be printed until his negotiations with Satti were completed.
    I read it over and over, concluding that Michael had a motive beyondsparing the families more pain. In some twisted way, he was attempting to shift the blame of pain from himself, the killer, to Satti, the prosecutor. Somehow in Michael’s mind, the pain didn’t come from his horrific acts but from the fact that Satti would revel in the gory details of his crimes in court. It was a convenient rationalization. How else is a prosecutor going to prove his case? The question remained as to whether he, depressed and feeling hopeless about his chances of receiving a life sentence at a new penalty hearing, might actually be trying to get the state to help him commit suicide, seeing it as an easy way out. It also could be an insincere move to get attention in the media.
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    T he Ross case was not first on the docket in that courtroom the day I first saw him. I sat waiting while the judge dealt with other cases, from parole violations to petty larceny.
    Upstairs in the New London court, Michael and Satti were debating the details of their unprecedented alliance between defendant and prosecutor. This was the third time they had met to negotiate Michael’s death—and there would be many more meetings before they had agreed on all the details of the stipulation.
    The stipulation was to say that Michael murdered Wendy Baribeault, Leslie Shelley, April Brunais, and Robin Stavinsky, that the murders had been especially cruel and heinous, that there were no mitigating factors that required mercy, and that the proper penalty was death.
    â€œDo you know what it is like to sit at a table with a man who despises you? Who wants you dead? . . . You cannot imagine what it is like to sit across a table, and have to listen to that arrogant bastard speak of justice,” Michael wrote to me later. “He speaks of how, as the state’sattorney, he not only represents the people of Connecticut, but must protect my rights! He speaks of my rights after all the twisting, distortion, deception, and out-and-out lies that he has orchestrated over the last decade in my case! And I have to sit there, smile and be courteous, and bite my tongue because I’m scared to death that I’ll say something to anger him and that he’ll say, ‘The hell with this, we start picking a jury tomorrow.’”
    Later, Bob Satti would confide in me that it was also difficult for him to sit in a room with Michael, negotiating his death. Satti never publicly wavered in his resolve to secure a death sentence for Ross, but privately he admitted that his negotiations with Ross had somewhat tempered his opinion of him. At the time, I did not appreciate the meaning of what Satti had said: Michael Ross the serial killer was a scary concept, but Michael Ross the man was not. Face-to-face, it is difficult to tell a man that you think he should be executed. Perhaps that’s why the executioner always wears a hood to hide his identity. It may be part of the reason why those who were hanged, electrocuted, or shot were also hooded. The hood creates a barrier. No one wants to see the panic in the face of the