The Man in the Monster by Martha Elliott Page A

was a telephone interview. However, securing a spot on a prisoner’s phone list also takes time. Michael explained the process in a letter. First, the prisoner has to request that your name be added to his list. To make this happen, you have to write to the prisoner. Letters in prison are not delivered in a timely manner—those incoming are censored, and sometimes so are the prisoners’ responses. On Connecticut death row, prisoners could add or subtract only one name once a month, and the request had to be submitted just before the first of the month or it wouldn’t be considered until the next month. Then it would take a few more weeks for the name to be cleared and placed on the list. The DOC has to make sure that prisoners are not calling convicted felons or conducting any illegal business from prison. It took more than six months from our initial correspondence before Michael was able to call me.
    At that time, death row inmates made calls in the evening, and all calls had to be made to a residence, not a cell phone. That meant that I’d have to give him my home phone number. He said he’d understand if I didn’t want to give it out. I hesitated because I had a teenage daughter and twins who were not yet two years old, so I was extremely anxious about what I felt was the same as inviting a serial killer into my home. I rationalized that it would be okay because I gave him the fax line number to avoid the possibility of my children answering the phone by mistake. Yet I remained terrified that my children might somehow be compromised by being only one beep of the fax machine away from a serial rapist and murderer.
    I wanted to speed up the process, so I asked Ann Cole if I could talkto Michael when he called her. She agreed, and we made a date for January 30, 1996. Ann Cole Opinion Research was at the time on the eighth floor of an old prewar building just off Times Square in New York City. It’s one of those buildings with long, winding hallways that house hundreds of little businesses in small offices behind stenciled doors. I arrived well ahead of the scheduled 6:00 P.M . call.
    As we waited for the phone to ring, my anxiety level rose. It was the same bogeyman fear that his letters had provoked—I worried that he would say something bizarre or threaten me. I had just watched a parole hearing for Charles Manson on Court TV, so I was convinced that Michael Ross was more likely to reveal his sadistic mind over the phone than in a letter. It didn’t matter that Ann and I could easily hang up. It didn’t matter that we were literally hundreds of miles away. I was petrified.
    â€œHello. This is the MCI operator. You have a collect call from”—Michael’s recorded voice briefly stated his first name, and the male operator continued—“who is an inmate in a Connecticut correctional institution. The state has recorded this call and may have recorded your telephone number. To deny charges hang up now, or to accept charges press 5 now or say yes after the tone.” Ann said yes.
    â€œHello,” announced the upbeat voice on speakerphone.
    â€œHi, Mike. It’s Ann.”
    â€œThis is Martha,” I said.
    I did
not
want to talk about the murders yet and wasn’t sure I ever could. I immediately steered the conversation toward why he thought his trial was unfair.
    He reiterated his position that he didn’t want his complaints about Satti and Michael Malchik, the state trooper who arrested him, to come out until the judge had accepted his deal to forgo another trial. He believed that Malchik had deliberately distorted evidence to secure a deathsentence. “For example, they testified that when I was strangling one of the victims, my hands cramped and I stopped and I had to massage my hands and then the victim started moving and I strangled her again. That never happened,” he insisted. He said his proof was that Malchik and Satti had