1980's mall rapist seeks parole

Salem News
1980s 'mall rapist' seeks parole
Convict chalks up attacks to low self-esteem, cheating lovers
January 6, 2009
By Julie Manganis staff writer


A brutal repeat rapist whose crimes terrorized the North Shore and other Route 128 communities in the early 1980s is asking the state Parole Board to let him out of prison after 25 years.
But it's not clear the board is ready for that, comparing Phillip Pizzo, 60, dubbed "the mall rapist" by media at the time, to serial killer Ted Bundy.
And two prosecutors whose offices put Pizzo in prison in 1984 were among those testifying yesterday afternoon at Pizzo's parole hearing in Natick.
Pizzo "may be the worst rapist in the history of Massachusetts," Assistant District Attorney Kenneth Bresler, appearing on behalf of Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, told the board.
Bresler said he believes Pizzo, who is from Westford, should never be released from prison, pointing to Pizzo's "delusional thinking," such as his plan to get a job selling cars if he is released.
"His chances of being hired seem doubtful," Bresler argued, not only because he'd be a registered sex offender but because the very crimes he pleaded guilty to involved approaching young women walking alone to their cars in mall parking lots.
Two of those attacks started at what was then the North Shore Shopping Center in Peabody.
In one, the victim was returning to her car from Christmas shopping one evening in December 1983. Pizzo, wearing a ski mask and holding a knife, ordered her to give him her money and not scream. But when she tried to comply, he then simply shoved her into the passenger seat of her own car, punched her and threatened to break her nose if she didn't stop screaming.
He then drove her car to his car, covered her face with a hat to keep her from seeing where they were and forced her into his car.
It was the beginning of a nightmarish ordeal for the woman, who was a college student at the time. He drove her to his home, her hands tied behind her back, forced her to drink vodka, nailed black plastic trash bags to the walls to prevent her from describing the location and then forcibly raped her repeatedly, warning her, "If you fight me, I'm going to have to kill you."
Afterward, he drove her back to the mall, with another warning.
Another incident exactly a month later, involved a young woman leaving her job at the Jordan Marsh bakery. As she started her car, Pizzo opened the door and got in, forcing her to give him her money and then shoving her into the passenger seat and taking the wheel.
The woman begged him to just take her money and jewelry and just let her go. Instead, once again, he took his victim to his home and forced her to drink vodka from a glass he held because she was tied up. He then proceeded to rape her at knifepoint.
After the attack, he then drove her back to the mall, dropped her off and threatened to kill her if she looked back at his car when he left. He also suggested, "Maybe we can meet again."
Until police pieced together a few clues from victims and eventually caught Pizzo, similar scenarios would play out all over greater Boston and the North and South shores. Pizzo would ultimately plead guilty to six rapes and one attempted rape, as well as multiple kidnapping and robbery charges. He received a life sentence. Pizzo has admitted to at least three other attacks for which he was not charged; prosecutors cite the shifting number as more evidence he's not fit to be released.
One of the attacks happened at a mall in Natick just a few hundred yards from where Pizzo sat yesterday, trying to convince the board he was a changed man after years of therapy that got to the root of his behavior: low self-esteem brought on by an authoritarian father and overprotective mother.
"Though he cannot undo the harm he has done, he has tried to change himself," his lawyer, Sondra Schmidt, said.
Schmidt noted that Pizzo has completed all of the available treatment programs at the Massachusetts Treatment Center in Bridgewater, where he's spent at least a decade. Last November, a jury on the South Shore found that Pizzo is no longer a sexually dangerous person, paving the way for his parole petition.
Pizzo, asked his greatest fear if he is released, cited "publicity" and not reoffending. "I believe there is a 98 percent chance I will not reoffend," Pizzo told the board.
Schmidt also said her client is at a low risk to reoffend, citing his age, as well as recent cancer treatments that have left him impotent.
Pizzo himself suggested that the attacks were triggered by a series of disappointments in his life, including the end of a relationship, one of two in which he claimed the women cheated on him.
"She began to cheat on me," Pizzo said, "and she left. Two weeks after that, I committed my first rape."
He described in graphic detail how he tried and failed to meet other women, leaving nightclubs angry and heading to the Combat Zone to watch hard-core pornography. The attacks often included acts he'd seen in those movies, he said yesterday.
Parole Board Chairman Mark Conrad raised the question of whether 25 years in prison is enough punishment for an offender who not only shattered the lives of his victims, but terrorized tens of thousands more.
Pizzo acknowledged he couldn't put a number on his sentence. And Conrad, in an opinion later shared by another board member, Thomas Merigan, compared Pizzo to Bundy, not for the nature of his crimes, but for his ability to appear outwardly to lead a normal life, hold down a job as an engineer and own a home while carefully plotting his crimes.
"You're a bright man," Conrad told Pizzo. "This is the scary part of it, the planning. You don't really fit on the map. You're kind of a Ted Bundy type. You're one of the scary guys."
Board member Cesar Archilla asked about Pizzo's claim that he wasn't violent with the woman, pointing to the punching and use of a knife.
Pizzo appeared to suggest that those incidents were the victims' own fault. One put up a struggle in the car, Pizzo said. The other grabbed the steering wheel and, when he pushed her back with the knife in his hand, "She got cut in the lip."
Archilla and several other members, including Pamela Lombardini, remarked on Pizzo's lack of emotion yesterday.
"I feel like you've been sitting here telling us a story," Lombardini said.
The board is expected to decide within six to eight weeks.