MASK OF THE BEAST:
The Life and Crimes of a Convicted Triple Murderer

By BM Gluck – Copyright 2007

“My first hit was an act of treachery, the ultimate deceit. Four bullets in the back, one in the neck, and a broken promise made at the parting of the oncoming river. As soon as I pulled the trigger, I became larger than death to all my associates.” Craig Francis Szemple – inmate #263906

PART ONE
The Victims

CHAPTER ONE

The Woods are Lovely, Dark, and Deep. . .

November 21, 1975 was a day for the trivia books: the Concorde made its first Transatlantic flight from London to New York; Beatle Paul McCartney’s wife, Linda, was acquitted of drug charges; Columbo episode Try and Catch Me aired on Television; and a deer hunter named Anthony Esposito was hunting his Thanksgiving dinner in the woods of Mt. Olive township, just off Interstate 80, in northern New Jersey.

Rain was in the air, and the forecast, as reported by local radio station WRNJ, was for “showers in the late afternoon continuing throughout the night.” Record warm temperatures, some 15 degrees above normal would continue for several more days. It had not been this warm, this time of year, since 1948.

But there was nothing at all trivial about this day for Anthony Esposito. It would become memorable for reasons other than the Concorde’s flight, or Linda McCartney’s drug acquittal; or even the record warm temperatures . . . it was a day that would become etched in the hunter’s memory for a most sinister reason—the most sinister reason of all—murder.

37 year old Anthony had driven from his home in nearby Randolph Township for a day of hunting. Shortly after arriving in the woods of Mt. Olive Township, just before daybreak, he shot at and missed, a four point buck; and he’s been stalking it all morning. But it seems his quarry has outsmarted him and his visions of venison are fading fast. The excitement and anticipation of the hunt has long since vanished.

Tired, hungry, and frustrated, he decides to call it a day and work his way back to the car, which unfortunately is several miles away. Before making the long trek back, however, he sits down on a nearby tree stump, cracks open a thermos of coffee and fishes out the last remaining cinnamon donut from his ditty bag. There is dampness in the air and although overcast, it is still a nice day and he begins to relax. Re-energized and in slightly better spirits, he begins to walk in the direction of his car which is parked at an access area just off Route 46. Cars and trucks are traveling Interstate 80 a few hundred yards to his right and he wishes his car were parked there instead. But it is not and he resigns himself to the long walk back.

Suddenly—a rustling in the brush up ahead. Rapidly bringing his Winchester .30-30 lever action to eye level, he scans the area, but sees nothing. Turning slowly, quietly, in a tight circle, he continues looking through the rifle’s scope searching the trees around him. He listens. Still nothing. Whatever it was is gone now. Disappointed, he begins to lower his gun—but stops.

There, framed in the cross-hairs of his scope, is a deer. A big, beautiful, four point buck, perhaps even the one he had shot at earlier this morning. His body tenses with excitement. He begins to squeeze the trigger ever so slightly. Breath comes in long shallow draughts. His pulse quickens. The deer remains frozen in his sights. Esposito squeezes the trigger just a bit more until he feels some resistance. Then just a little more. Mustn’t breath, he thinks. Squeeze real slow . . . real slow.

BANG.

The deer is gone in a flash. The cross-hairs are empty. “What the fuck?” he yells. “I didn’t pull the damn trigger.” He shakes his head in disbelief thinking it was another hunter. Again, BANG. This time he gets it. It was a truck backfiring out on the Interstate. “Damn the timing,” he mutters, “just my luck.”

He takes one final look through the scope, but, the deer is gone. So is the rush of excitement. But panning the area one last time, he sees something about 150 yards away. Whatever it is, it looks out of place. A feeling of apprehension spreads over him. He adjusts a knob on the scope of his rifle. The image snaps into sharp focus.

“Ya know, I thought it might be some construction stuff or trash somebody dumped in the woods,” he later told a reporter for the Mt. Olive Chronicle. “You find crap people dump here all the time. Pisses me off, but they do it. Anyway, the brush was pretty thick, and I couldn’t tell what it was until I got up real close. There was this big plastic sheet, a tarpaulin, spread out at the base of the tree and you could see it was covering something. And I had a real bad feeling about this.”

He remembered thinking, working his way deeper into the brush, that the only reason he could even see the thing was because the foliage was gone and the bushes were bare. In the summer months, he would not have noticed it at all. And as he gets closer, his feelings of foreboding unleash a childhood memory. One that had been hidden for many years.

When Anthony was seven, his pet Golden Retriever, Jesse, had disappeared after chasing a rabbit into the trees bordering his house. Three days after the dog’s disappearance, Anthony was riding his bike down a little-used path in the woods a couple of miles from his home when he began to smell something foul. He pedaled toward the source of the offensive odor. And there, just off the path, lying in the brush, he found Jesse.

The Golden Retriever had been shot in the neck and in the hind quarter, and the sight of its rotting flesh and maggot riddled body was too much for the youngster. Dropping his bike, he ran as fast as he could, fighting branches and bushes, until finally, upon reaching his home, he threw open the door and collapsed in a frenzied, bawling, heap.

For the next several days, the seven-year old remained in bed. He would drink little and eat even less, and it was many weeks before his life would get back to normal. And the family would never speak of the dog, or of what Anthony saw that day ever again.

Buried for some thirty years, this tragic episode leaps out at him today like some long forgotten nightmare. He cannot shake the feeling of death as he looks through the telescopic sight of the Winchester. He knows he should just leave and forget about the tarp, and whatever is lying beneath it, but his curiosity holds him hostage. He continues walking toward the plastic shroud. Memories from long ago wash over him. The sense of dread is overpowering. He is nearly frozen with fear.

But he is hooked.

Propping his Winchester against the tree, he bends down and reaches for a corner of the tarp. Instantly, two huge rats run out from under the plastic sheet, scurrying into the underbrush. “Holy Shit,” he yells, falling backward in surprise. A nearby oak becomes his refuge. He leans against the massive tree, bent over, hands on knees. Gulps of breath are interrupted only by the pounding of his heart banging away inside his head. He stands there shaking, gasping for air. “What-the-fuck was that?” The staccato words spit from his mouth as if from a machine gun.

Shielded by the tree, he soon regains his composure, and his nerve. With curiosity overcoming fright, Anthony walks carefully back to the plastic covered mound. Cautiously, he pokes the tarp with the muzzle of his rifle to be sure there are no more surprises, and when there are none, yanks off the cover, much like a magician pulls the tablecloth out from under a fully dressed table.

What he sees next buckles his knees, doubling him over. He hits the ground hard. Warm bile creeps up into his mouth; he tries to keep it down but can’t. The vomit explodes in a torrent of bitter 7-11 coffee and small chunks of cinnamon donut. It is not a pretty sight, but then neither is the thing decomposing there in the brush before him. What the hunter has stumbled upon is not trash or construction waste at all. What he has stumbled upon . . . is a human corpse.

Wiping his chin and sour mouth on his flannel sleeve, the hunter shakes his head as if in a trance. “I shouldn’t be here,” he mumbles. Images of his dead dog again flood his brain. He starts to gag, head bobbing, body convulsing. But there is nothing left. Run, is all he can think of. But he doesn’t. He is drawn, as if by a magnet, toward the repulsive thing lying there in the forest debris.

A quick glance from a few feet away reveals the skeletal remains of, as far as he can tell, a boy wearing jeans, a green t-shirt, brown socks, and sandals. The flesh has already rotted away and what is left is only bone and clothing. Nature, along with the vermin in the forest, has done its dirty work, and the cadaver is well on its way to becoming dust once more.

Warily, the hunter scans the woods around him. Although the young man seems to have been dead for quite some time, he takes no chances. He removes the safety from the Winchester and runs in the direction of the highway; his rifle extended in front of him as if he is crossing a shallow creek. His eyes darting in all directions and with sweat pouring down his face, he runs for the roadway . It is not far, only about 100 yards to the edge of the trees. But he is terrified and the short distance seems like a marathon. A couple of minutes later he stumbles out of the woods, climbs the embankment onto the shoulder of Interstate 80 and flags down an 18-wheeler that has been creeping up the steep incline of the roadway.

“You got a CB radio?” he yells up at the driver. “Call the state police. There’s a dead kid back there in the woods.”

————– To be continued…