Judge Freed Abusive Husband Days Before Killing
By Jessica Heslam and Franci Richardson
Originally published in The Boston Herald, March 28, 2002
An Amesbury wife-beater who executed his estranged spouse with a single shotgun blast and then took his own life Tuesday night had been released without bail by a Newburyport judge less than a week after threatening to kill her.
"He said stop screaming or I'll shoot you," read a police report from the March 11 incident in which William Cotter, 39, assaulted and threatened to shoot his wife, Dorothy Giunta-Cotter, 35, whom he held for two-and-a-half hours in her Amesbury home. "He kept telling (me) he couldn't understand why I was afraid and that just like he told the judge, he wouldn't do anything."
But Cotter made good on his promise to kill his wife five days after Newburyport District Court Judge Peter Doyle denied the prosecution's request for $5,000 bail and sent him back into the community with the condition he stay away from his wife. Cotter had been charged with violating a restraining order, threatening to commit a crime and assault and battery.
Doyle was at a conference yesterday and could not be reached for comment, but Joan Kenney, spokeswoman for the trial court, defended the judge's decision to set no bail.
"The purpose of the law is to ensure that the defendant appear at the next court date. It's not used for preventive detention," she said. "In this case, Cotter came to the court voluntarily with a private attorney. He had no prior record of violence. There was no request for a dangerousness hearing. There was a restraining order in effect, but the judge did not consider him a flight risk.
"This is a tragic situation and one that judges constantly fear, but the judge acted appropriately."
Just after 10 p.m. Tuesday, Cotter—armed with a sawed-off shotgun and a gun belt loaded with ammunition—broke into his wife's home, where he shot his high-school sweetheart once in the back before firing a fatal blast into his own chest.
The bloodbath erupted as the couple's terrified 12-year-old daughter, Kristen, hid upstairs, talking to police. Her sister, Kaitlyn, 18, was next-door at a neighbor's house.
Kristen had earlier called a neighbor and said her father had a gun and was trying to get into the house, according to Amesbury Police Lt. Gary Ingham.
A police dispatcher reached Kristen on the phone moments after her crazed father burst through the front door.
"She said her father had just gotten into the house and wanted to kill her mother," Ingham said.
At one point, Cotter picked up another phone.
"He said 'If anybody comes in here they're going to get hurt real bad,'" Ingham said.
The first-arriving police officers heard Giunta-Cotter's terrifying screams for help, Ingham said.
One police officer who went inside came upon the couple in a near pitch-black alcove off the kitchen. As the officer neared Giunta-Cotter, her husband fired his shotgun into her back.
The officer, temporarily blinded by the blast, called out to Giunta-Cotter, whom he could hear breathing as she laid in a pool of blood.
The officer then fired 11 rounds in the dark toward Cotter, who was reloading his single-shot gun about 6 to 8 feet away. Cotter, who was not hit by police gunfire, then shot himself in the chest.
Cotter, whose shotgun was not registered, wore a gun belt that held a "potpourri" of ammo and a pair of handcuffs.
"There's no question that he intended to shoot his wife," Ingham said.
Cotter, a contractor for a local cable television company, and Giunta-Cotter were later pronounced dead at Anna Jaques Hospital in Newburyport.
Giunta-Cotter's social service advocate said the tragedy could have been avoided had Cotter been jailed.
"Had he not been granted bail, he would be behind bars long enough for her to make some other decisions about her safety and the childrens' safety while the court could have done a more comprehensive investigation," said Suzanne Dubus, executive director of the Women's Crisis Center in Newburyport, where Giunta-Cotter had sought help.
The Cotter murder-suicide was the result of two decades of horrendous physical and mental abuse Giunta-Cotter suffered at the hands of her husband whom she met when she was 15, according to an affidavit Giunta-Cotter filed with the court Feb. 22 seeking a restraining order.
Giunta-Cotter said she endured drunken beatings, being strangled to the point where she passed out, and threats to kill the entire family if she ever left him, according to the records.
"He said it would be better if we all died together," she wrote. "He said it wouldn't be that hard to do… . Somehow I was able to talk him out of it.
"He has specifically told me over and over that if I ever leave him, he will come and find me wherever I am and he will kill me." The target of abuse changed on Jan. 3, after Cotter struck Kristen when he became upset that she wanted to wear wrinkled pants to school.
"(Kristen) was increasingly becoming a target of his," said Dubus.
The two fled to Maine, leaving Kaitlyn at home after thinking she'd be safe there. They both returned when Cotter filed for temporary custody of the girls.
After seeking refuge in a Crisis Center shelter and readying for a divorce, Giunta-Cotter finally got a stay-away order against her husband and moved back into her Amesbury home.
But Cotter could not deal with the possibility of life without his wife.
"He said 'If I can't have you, nobody else will,'" Kaitlyn recently told a neighbor who didn't want to be identified. "(Kaitlyn) added, 'My father's a whacko.'"
A teary-eyed friend called Giunta-Cotter a beautiful woman and good mother.
"She was dedicated to her children," said the woman, who did not want her name used. "It's a terrible tragedy. These children now have no parents."
