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Kimberly Cates, a 42-year-old nurse from a quintessential small New Hampshire town, was murdered last October by a group of angry, isolated, outcast adolescent boys. Now the alleged ringleader of the group—and the one who wielded the machete that left over thirty wounds on Cates’ body—is on trial for first-degree murder.
That would, of course, be Steven Spader of creepy-letter-to-local-newspaper-to-make-his-rantings-public infamy.
And while it’s not the three ring circus personified by the trials of Charles Manson and O.J. Simpson, coverage of the carnage perpetrated by kids robbing homes and killing a woman and seriously injuring her daughter just for kicks (Spader’s accomplice Christopher Gribble, whose first-degree murder trial is scheduled for February, told authorities that he “had wanted to kill someone for a long time and was disappointed he didn’t feel any emotion following the Cates killing”) is really pretty disturbing.
While video clips show Spader steepling his fingers and trying to stare down prosecution witnesses, I can’t help but be disgusted by the fact that Kimberly Cates, who literally …
… shielded her daughter Jaimie with her mutilated body as she was dying, has become more a vehicle for these hoodlums to achieve some sort of dark fame than as the mother, wife, community member, health care worker, and human being that she was.
But don’t get me wrong, it’s not like the essence of Kimberly Cates is being completely ignored.
According to WMUR, one of the items stolen (and later pawned at a classy establishment called Cash 4 Gold located at the Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua) was a bracelet of sentimental value given to Cates by her mother, Lisa Piasecki, to be saved for her daughter, Jaimie (who somehow survived the violent, bloody attack). Interesting that a bracelet linking three generations would serve as a key piece of evidence.
And it’s not like the horrific injuries Jaimie Cates sustained, not to mention bearing witness to the brutal murder of her mother, are being glossed over.
Milford police Sgt. Kevin Furlong was the first officer to respond to the home. He said he saw Jaimie through the front window of the home, and she raised her head, which was covered with blood.
Furlong said he was able to break the door down, and he found Jaimie lying on the floor. He said it looked like she was trying to scream, but she wasn’t able to make a sound. He said she was finally able to whisper to him when he told her he was a police officer.
“She said in a whisper while shaking that she thought that her mommy was dead,” Furlong said.
Furlong testified that that Jaimie had serious injuries, including lacerations to her face and extremities. He said he saw that part of her foot was missing.
And, of course, there are the horrible repercussions that David Cates has had to endure both as a widower and as the father of a young girl physically, emotionally, and irreparably scarred for life.
Cates has avoided all media exposure since the attack, but in court Wednesday, he laid open his private life. He said that before October 2009, he averaged 26 business trips per year as an engineer for BAE Systems. He said that changed after the attack.
“Because Jaimie needed me there, and I needed to be there with Jaimie,” he said.
Between the lines there is the overwhelming guilt that David Cates must carry Atlas-like on his shoulders. Although it’s doubtful that his presence would have changed the basic course of events on that terrible night, I can only imagine the what-ifs that must haunt him incessantly.
But while the Cates family has avoided any sort of media coverage of their very private pain, Spader has literally basked in the limelight even as most of his co-conspirators have turned against him.
Both Quinn Glover, who pled guilty to burglary charges in exchange for testifying against Spader, and William Marks, who has a trial date set for June on conspiracy to commit murder charges that will likely be lessened because he too is a key prosecution witness in Spader’s trial, were present on the night of Kimberly Cates’ murder although neither participated in the attacks on either Kimberly or Jaimie Cates. Autumn Savoy, who pled guilty to concealing evidence and providing a false alibi for Spader and Gribble, also provided key prosecution testimony.
Spader’s excesses have been interesting, to say the least, including correspondence with a fellow prisoner at Hillsborough County Jail.
Inmate Chad Landry said Spader passed him several notes while they were incarcerated. Landry said the notes were “kited” back and forth by putting them in a book and sliding them under the bars.
Some of the letters were titled “bedtime stories,” and as Landry read them to the court, many in the gallery were brought to tears by the gruesome details.
“I came from the right to the right side of the bed. (Christopher) Gribble’s to the left,” Landry read. “I wasn’t aware of the little girl. I figured it was the dad. I swung the machete down. The little girl jumped out of bed into Gribble’s arms.”
Landry had nothing to do with the attack. He said he received the handwritten letters from Spader during the 37 days they were in the jail together.
“The mom was on the bed, naked,” Landry read. “Her left side was all cut up. Her face was cut open.”
Oh, and of course there’s the Spader-penned poem shared by prosecutor Peter Hinckley in his opening statement.
Another toe is gone.
How did we go wrong?
We had the perfect plan.
Machetes in our hands.
Went went up in the house.
We turned the power off.
Quiet as a mouse.
We went up in the house.
We went up in the room.
Mommy is it you?
Your mommy isn’t here.
I slit her throat, from ear to ear.
Now we’re all in jail.
Now we all have no bail.
Friends turning over friends.
And this is how the story ends.
As evidenced by both this poem and his rambling tirade to the Nashua Telegraph over the summer, Spader doesn’t have a literary bone in his body. Or a soul.
This monster’s looming shadow has essentially rendered Kimberly Cates just a name. Why has the media allowed this to happen … and why do so many apparently thrive on the lurid nuts and bolts of one guy’s insanity?
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At the very least this guy’s egomaniacal enjoyment of the limelight makes him seem like even more of a sociopath than he already seemed to be. But if he doesn’t get life in prison at the very least I may have to become a Republican just because they like harsher sentencing.
Wow,I live in South Africa,so this is the first I’ve heard of this story.I know people always go on and on about the violence in my country,but even still,I get shocked by stories like this one.Doesn’t seem like Americans are any better off than us South Africans are.
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I live in Virginia, and I’d not heard the first thing about this horrific incident.
As a citizen, I have severe reservations about the death penalty. As an attorney, I feel these reservations are fairly well founded in skepticism of our system of justice. That said, I would strap this little fucker down and push the needle into him with no small amount of glee.
However, I feel the larger issue here is the media actually printing this drivel. To what end? I don’t mean to be rash, but any media outlet that published this sociopath’s pathetic ramblings is no better than their author. Reprehensible.