DUMMERSTON — A Holyoke, Mass., man who has been the subject of an intensive state police drug investigation for more than a month was charged Monday with the kidnapping and murder of a 31-year-old woman from Bellows Falls who had been living in Brattleboro.
In affidavits filed with Windham Superior Court in Newfane in connection with the arraignment, police allege that Frank Caraballo, 29, shot Melissa Barratt, 31, in the head.
According to a state police press release, Caraballo most recently lived in Brattleboro, but court documents officially name his residence as Holyoke, Mass. A computer search also indicates that Caraballo has lived in Maybrook, N.Y., and Brooklyn, N.Y.
Little is revealed about the life and circumstances of Barratt, whose body turned up in the woods at the side of East-West Road in Dummerston on the morning of July 29, about a quarter-mile from the covered bridge.
The Brattleboro Police Department responded to a 911 call from a passing motorist who discovered the body.
“Oh, my goodness, I recognized the victim, Melissa, from Frankie's Pizza, where shCaraballoe was working when I last saw her,” wrote one user on iBrattleboro.com. “She has a little boy who was with her at the time. Such tragedy and now a little boy is grieving his mother.”
According to court documents, Caraballo told police that Barratt had recently lost custody of the child.
Barratt was arrested May 31 in another drug sting in Springfield, Vt., and charged with selling an ounce of cocaine.
Court documents say that Barratt told Vermont State Police Sgt. Eric Albright at the time that “if Caraballo knew she was talking to the police, he would kill her.”
According to police, at 5:30 p.m. on July 29, Caraballo, who had a known romantic and business connection to the victim that had by then been identified, and Joshua A. Makhanda-Lopez, 22, of Springfield, Mass., were taken into custody following an unspecified motor vehicle stop in Chester.
Caraballo pleaded not guilty to a second-degree murder charge, one charge of kidnapping, a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and a constellation of felony drug charges stemming from a state police undercover investigation into the defendant's activities in the Brattleboro area from June 21 to July 27.
Makhanda-Lopez has been charged with four counts of aiding in the commission of a felony, as well as charges of possession of and sale or delivery of 2.5 grams or more of cocaine.
Both men have been sent to the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, where they are held without bail on the counts related to Barratt's murder.
According to the state police press release, “These charges could be elevated upon the conclusion of this investigation in coordination with the Windham County State's Attorney.”
A fatal dispute
In the court documents, members of the Vermont State Police's Southern Vermont Drug Task Force make their case that Caraballo executed Barratt over stolen drugs, with Makhanda-Lopez driving.
Police say that Barratt, who shared an apartment off and on with Danielle Clemens, 41, at the Chickering Apartments at 995 Putney Rd. in Brattleboro, received a phone call from Caraballo.
Clemens told police that Caraballo asked Barratt to come to his room at the Super 8 Motel at 1043 Putney Rd. on the evening of July 27. The next morning, on Thursday, Caraballo and Makhanda-Lopez allegedly visited Clemens at the Colonial Motel, where she works.
“They told her that Barratt had stolen drugs from them and demanded her to go back to her apartment,” wrote Detective Sgt. Francis LaBombard in the affidavits for both suspects.
“She returned to her apartment with Caraballo and Lopez, and eventually Barratt opened the door and let all three of them in,” he continued.
LaBombard described the “immediate confrontation” where Caraballo demanded the return of his drugs, threatened at various times to kill her, her roommate, and even Makhanda-Lopez with a loaded dark grey handgun.
Clemens said Caraballo told her roommate, “Shut up, bitch, I'm going to kill you.” She said he threatened to kill her as well if she told anyone.
LaBombard wrote that Clemens described Caraballo consulting about the missing drugs on the phone with a party that the court documents refer to only as “his boss.” She also said she heard him talking with a woman who advised him “not to kill Barratt. She told him to torture her instead.”
Barratt, LaBombard wrote, asked Caraballo to let Clemens leave and to let her see her young son one more time.
“Caraballo told her that she had jeopardized his family by stealing the drugs, and she no longer had that privilege,” he wrote.
According to Clemens, eventually, Caraballo told Barratt to leave her identification and personal effects behind, and the two men drove away with Barratt in the back seat.
Police believe that Makhanda-Lopez drove around Brattleboro and eventually to Dummerston, where he stopped the car on Caraballo's order and left the car with Barratt.
“Caraballo told him to play his music and keep his eyes open and to drive up the road and wait for him,” LaBombard wrote.
According to the affidavit, Caraballo soon returned to the back seat of the car, said that Barrett would “find another ride,” and told Makhanda-Lopez to drive him to “his baby mother's place” in Southampton, Mass.
Makhanda-Lopez told police that Caraballo then made a phone call. “Lopez did not know who he called but heard Caraballo tell the person on the phone that the problem had been taken care of,” the affidavit says.
The next day, the two allegedly returned to the apartment and Caraballo told Clemens “that she could get rid of all of Barratt's stuff.” The men took Barratt's computer, iPod, and television.
Out of control?
As word of the murder and subsequent arrest spread through Windham County, one business owner on Elliot Street in Brattleboro perceives the drug problem to be escalating.
Dr. Rebecca Jones, a dermatologist who owns the building that houses her medical practice as well as the Elliot Street Café restaurant at the corner of Elm and Elliot streets, described her reaction to a drug-related murder in the region as “freaky.”
Jones, who describes evidence of drug use in the public rest rooms in the café, has begun working with a prevention specialist from the state Department of Public Health to plan a community meeting to discuss the drug situation.
“Especially with this murder, I'm not feeling protected,” she said.
Next door, on the other side of Elm Street, Suzie Walker, executive director of Turning Point, said her agency will move to Putney Road for reasons that deal mostly with the struggling nonprofit's urgent need to cut its rent costs.
But Walker said that the new home will also benefit the center, a resource for people recovering from substance abuse problems, by removing it from one of the roughest parts of Brattleboro.
“We're a recovery center, so first and foremost we need to be a safe place for people in recovery to be,” Walker said, noting that people using the center for 12-step meetings or substance-free recreation “shouldn't have to worry about people offering them drugs when they're walking here.”
Walker and others in the area noted that a nine-unit apartment building on Elm Street, across the street from Turning Point and behind the café, has been a hotbed of suspicious activity.
“There are six or seven people hanging around on the porch, openly drinking,” she said. “We see activity where people will walk up, disappear inside for five minutes, and come out.”
Walker observed that “people who get here early in the morning see people sleeping on the porch.”
“I walk downtown; I see it,” said Robin Rieske, a regional prevention consultant with the state Department of Public Health, who said she has begun organizing a community meeting, planned for Aug. 10, for people and businesses in the Elliot Street neighborhood to begin confronting the problem.
Jones, Walker, and Rieske agree on two key points. They perceive that the drug activity in the neighborhood has increased, yet all are careful to say that they have no concrete evidence beyond their own observations.
Rieske, who envisions the meeting to “pull in as many people as possible to look at the situation,” expects representatives from the Brattleboro Housing Authority, which operates the Samuel Elliot Apartments, and the Brattleboro Fire Department, whose firehouse is nearby, too.
She also said she expects representatives from the Brattleboro Police Department, and she has extended an invitation to Town Manager Barbara Sondag.
Rieske said the high visibility of the murder makes people aware of the drug problem in town.
“When things like this happen, it makes people hesitant, because they see that things escalate and they can escalate anywhere,” she said - even on a quiet road in Dummerston.
Rieske said the killing illustrates that when it comes to drugs, “this isn't an innocent way to make money - this is serious stuff.”
But, she said, she fears that it might discourage people from getting involved in the community effort to discuss and confront the drug issue.
“Do people want to get involved in ratting out their neighbors?” she said. “Not if they want to get shot.”
Both Rieske and Walker said that it is easy to look at people who are involved in drugs and not see the full dimension of their character, or their problems.
“Even though this was a drug-related death, people who do drugs affect all of us,” said Walker, troubled by a collective sigh of relief that the Dummerston murder was drug-related, and perceived as less of a danger to the community.
“When we put labels on people, we lose our humanity,” she said.
Rieske echoed the sentiment as she visualized Melissa Barratt's last hours.
“At 31? To be taken out of an apartment and just shot?” she said. “We should be looking at this as a community. This happened here.”