Murder By Increments - The Complete Series

Excerpt from Murder By Increments

It's squaresville, Ken would say of his hometown, Rochester. There was nothing there; nothing waiting for him but a job at Kodak.

He invoked Kodak often as a convenient shorthand for all the reasons Rochester was a nothing place, hardly fit for a man like him, a man with dreams and ambitions.

The company that actually invented the digital camera in 1975 haplessly dropped it from their line out of fear it would threaten their core business, a decision that ultimately stripped it of its position as the foremost manufacturer of photographic equipment. Kodak became a poster child for postindustrial irrelevance, as did many mid-size cities in the northeast. Ken couldn't see into the future, but he knew Kodak was a place for losers, and so was Rochester.

The other thing Ken always talked about was the cold. Over one hundred inches of snow a year, nine months of which were spent indoors. The townsfolk awoke in darkness at six o'clock and didn't know if it was morning or night. The May Lilac Festival suffered a regular deficiency of lilacs.

The Buonos weren't bothered about the cold and gloom. They had been toughened by endless days working in the hot sun of San Buono, in the Abruzzio region of Italy. In 1919, when Kenneth's mother Frances was born, Rochester was an industrial boomtown. Her parents were among the millions that migrated from Southern and Eastern Europe after the war. They settled in Utica, Syracuse, Buffalo and Rochester in great numbers, and the cities prospered with the influx of labor. The work was hard, the cold and snow horrendous, but there was a good living to be made, new homes, and space to raise families. And that was all that really mattered.

The Buonos were a typical Italian family of their time and place. Devout Catholics, they believed a large family was proof of God's bounty. Frances was one of eight children. Her father worked long, exhausting hours as a manual laborer supporting his expanding brood. Mother was occupied all day with the tasks of managing the household and feeding the children. They were provided for materially, but had little in the way of undivided attention or nurturance from their parents—although such was hardly unusual in Italian migrant families at the time.

Even so, there was perhaps always in Frances a feeling of being overlooked; a hunger for love and attention that seemed forever beyond her grasp. The shy, sweet temperament of Nicholas Bianchi therefore suited her. This was no man about town who she must share with everyone else.

The two met at Jefferson High, where they became fast sweethearts. Even then they were a study in contrasts. Frances was opinionated and liked to take charge. Nicholas was retiring and gentle. He was, according to the mores of the time, an abject failure as a man. He tried to enlist in the army but was rejected because of his phobias of insects and worms, and a chronic stutter, for which he had been mercilessly teased throughout school. He joined the American Brake Shoe company as a laborer, where he would routinely put in twelve-hour days. If he couldn't represent his country he could still do the backbreaking work required of a man with little prospects to put bread on his table, feed a family, and earn some kind of respect in the world. Nobody disputed Nicholas' ability to work, but over time, he developed a gambling habit, and all the punishing hours of labor were often for nothing.

Frances and Nicholas married in 1941, and despite their incompatible natures, in the early years at least, they were thought to be very much in love.

From the beginning Frances knew that she, too, wanted a big family. As soon as they were married, Frances and Nicholas began trying for a baby. Soon, however, it became obvious something was wrong: nothing was happening. She consulted a doctor and learned that not only was she unable to conceive, but that she was suffering a life-threatening condition and needed an immediate hysterectomy.

The procedure was a success, but afterwards, Frances spiraled deep into depression. Her whole life had prepared her for motherhood. The traditional Catholic view held that the birth and rearing of children was a woman's primary purpose. She took her barrenness as a personal failing. The hysterectomy also resulted in premature menopause, further derailing an already perilous emotional state.

Nicholas hated to see his wife so miserable, so it was not difficult for her to persuade him that they should seek an adoption.

The little boy they eventually settled on was the biological son of a young man who shared the same Italian Catholic heritage. Handsome, with fair skin, dark hair, and bright blue eyes, he was just over six pounds at birth and physically robust.

It isn't clear how much the Bianchis knew about his time on earth before he reached their care, but when Frances laid eyes on him, she knew he was the one she wanted. He was perfect.

* * *

Ken's biological mother, Florence King, was a beautiful but dissolute go-go dancer.

Still a teenager, she had already been in and out of children's court for several minor offences, and spent her days drinking, chain-smoking and sleeping with just about any man who crossed her path.

Florence neither knew nor cared what contraception was. At sixteen she fell pregnant with Ken, one of four unplanned children. Soon after she set her sights on a new paramour, a soldier from Buffalo. The child was an inconvenience that did not fall within their plans, and Ken was made a ward of the state.

Baby Ken began life unloved and unwanted, and things would continue for him in this vein for quite some time. A foster arrangement was found for him with an elderly woman in Rochester, but the woman was indifferent to his care, leaving him with friends and neighbors to be looked after. When the authorities became aware of this, Ken was placed in a new foster home, but it seems this arrangement was not much better than the last. Thus, by the time he was adopted by the Bianchis, he had been passed back and forth between numerous caregivers, who displayed a range of inconsistent reactions to him, from short-lived curiosity to indifference and hostility.

Forensic psychologists believe that the lack of a primary bond with a caregiver in the first three years of life is a common element in the childhood backgrounds of sociopaths and violent criminals. It is also a risk factor for a range of mental disorders in the psychotic and dissociative class.

Young Ken had already had a rough start in life. Was he broken at birth?

Perhaps under the right circumstances, with supportive and nurturing new caregivers, things might have turned out differently. Either way, it didn't much matter, because things in fact were about to get even worse.

The first warning of what lay ahead was the court's hesitancy to award full custody of Ken to the Bianchis. Initially the arrangement was for temporary custody. At this time, Ken was three months old. The court's reasons in delaying fulfillment of the request for full custody are a matter of speculation, but the discharge records from Rochester Hospital where Ken was briefly admitted in 1958 contain a note stating the attending doctor's view that the delay may have been due to questions about the Bianchi's' fitness as parents. Full custody was finally awarded when Ken reached one year of age, much to Frances' relief. From the beginning she was passionately attached to Ken as an antidote to her own feelings of emotional insecurity, and with only temporary custody, she feared he could be snatched from her at any time.

A further ill omen was the fact that the Bianchis had at one time had two other young children in their care under a fostering arrangement, but these children had been removed from the home by the welfare agency. The discharge records from Rochester Hospital noted that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was “aware” of Frances' activities and that Frances had taken care of other children, but they had been taken from her for reasons unknown.