[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 15


TEXAS:

Prisons running low on execution drugs again, but prison agency withholds 
details


A new report surfaced on Tuesday that Texas again might be running out of a key 
drug used to execute its condemned criminals, but state prison officials said 
that they have enough to carry out the next 6 scheduled executions.

What happens after that might be anyone's guess, thanks to a new no-disclosure 
policy imposed by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice on details about the 
execution drugs.

2 years ago, the prison system revealed its drug supplier and the amount of 
drugs on hand after Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued an opinion saying 
it was public information. The prison system had sought to keep the information 
secret, arguing that releasing details about the drug supply might trigger 
violent protests outside the execution chamber or embolden death penalty 
opponents.

Prison system spokesman Jason Clark said Tuesday that the agency is seeking 
another opinion from the attorney general on the execution drug information 
"because the law has changed and due to changing circumstances."

Specifically, Clark said, a state Supreme Court ruling last July could have 
changed the situation. The case, filed by the Austin American-Statesman and 
other newspapers, sought travel vouchers for the governor's security detail 
under the Texas Public Information Act.

In that case, the Supreme Court ruled, for the 1st time, that safety concerns 
might trump laws mandating public disclosure of information that reveals how a 
government spends taxpayer money.

Texas operates the busiest death chamber in the United States, executing more 
than twice as many prisoners last year as any other state — 13 in all. Its 
execution practices have made it a target of death penalty opponents for years.

The Guardian, a British newspaper, reported Tuesday that Texas has only enough 
pentobarbital on hand to complete 6 executions "and may be incapable of 
carrying out further death sentences after June."

The newspaper quoted Maya Foa, a London-based investigator for Reprieve, an 
international group that opposes the death penalty.

Based on state inventory records from a year ago, she estimated that Texas 
probably has 27 vials of pentobarbital, more commonly known by the brand name 
Nembutal, left on hand — and the sole U.S. supplier of the powerful sedative 
has blocked its availability for use in future executions.

Privately, some prison officials suggested Tuesday that Texas has enough 
pentobarbital for more than 6 executions. But even so, other public documents 
hint that Texas and other states face a new difficulty in obtaining 
pentobarbital in the future.

In January 2011, the Danish pharmaceutical company H. Lundbeck A/S announced 
that it would prohibit sales of Nembutal for use in executions. That 
restriction was continued when the firm sold the trademark drug and 2 others to 
Akorn Inc., an Illinois pharmaceutical firm, in December 2011, according to a 
statement about the transaction.

Echoing previous sentiments from other death penalty opponents and open 
government advocates, Foa said transparency in the process is a key.

"Given the recent controversies over execution drugs — illegal imports, botched 
executions, faulty drugs, etc. — you'd think that a department of corrections 
would be doing all it could to show that it was acting legitimately and 
lawfully," she said in an e-mail from London.

Texas faced the same problem 13 months ago, when the sole U.S. manufacturer of 
the sedative sodium thiopental permanently halted production after authorities 
in Italy, where it was made, demanded a guarantee that it would not be used in 
executions — a promise the company said it could not give.

At the time, Texas and 33 other states used sodium thiopental in executions. In 
Texas, the drug was one of three used to sedate and paralyze a convict and then 
stop the heart.

Texas subsequently switched to pentobarbital. A barbiturate, it is commonly 
used to euthanize animals — and other states, including Oklahoma and Georgia, 
now use it in executions as a replacement for sodium thiopental.

(source: Austin American-Statesman)






FLORIDA----impending execution

US High Court Denies Stay of Execution to Fla. Man


U.S. Supreme Court has denied a stay of execution for a man who raped a 
29-year-old mother and left her to drown in the surf of Tampa Bay more than 3 
decades ago.

65-year-old Robert Brian Waterhouse is set to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. 
Wednesday at Florida State Prison near Starke. He has been on death row for 
more than 31 years — longer than any inmate previously executed in Florida.

Waterhouse was convicted in 1980 of killing Deborah Kammerer of St. Petersburg, 
whose body was found in the tidal flats of Tampa Bay. She'd been beaten, raped 
and dragged into the surf. The 2 had been seen leaving a bar together, and 
blood, hair and fibers found in his car linked Waterhouse to the slaying.

(source: Associated Press)

**************

32 years later, man set to be executed for St. Petersburg murder----Murderer of 
woman in 1980 scheduled for execution tonight


Unless there is a last-minute stay, a man condemned for the 1980 murder of a 
woman in St. Petersburg will be executed this evening at Florida State Prison 
in Starke.

Robert Waterhouse, 65, is sentenced to die for the January 1980 murder of 
Deborah Kammerer, 29.

Gov. Rick Scott signed Waterhouse's death warrant on Jan. 4.

Waterhouse was seen leaving a bar with Kammerer the night before she was found 
dead. Blood, hair and fiber evidence also tied him to the murder. He previously 
had served 8 years in prison in New York for raping and murdering an elderly 
woman.

Appeals by Waterhouse's lawyer were rejected by the Florida Supreme Court last 
week, but the lawyer said he intended to explore more appeals in the federal 
courts.

Details of husband's ambush attempt released

A Wesley Chapel man accused of trying to set his wife ablaze, but badly burning 
himself instead, dropped a steak knife and an axe handle as he chased her 
outside her apartment earlier this month, records released Tuesday show. After 
Hillsborough County deputies responded to the Feb. 6 incident at the 
Countrywood Apartments in Carrollwood, they said they found a gas canister and 
duct tape in the car that the man, Matthew Wong, 50, was driving. A search 
warrant affidavit filed Tuesday shows they also found a bottle of ether.

Deputies said Wong, who is estranged from his wife, Gloria Davis, sought to 
ambush her.

(source: Tampa Bay Times)

*********************

>From the archives: What went wrong with Robert Waterhouse?


The following story was originally published on May 16, 1985. Robert Waterhouse 
is expected to be executed in Florida at 6 p.m. today.

On the morning of Feb. 10, 1966, Robert Waterhouse drove from his home on 
Wilmarth Avenue in Greenport to his job at the County Center in Riverhead. 
After work, he stopped off at the Westview Road, Mattituck, home of his 
girlfriend, Barbara Kelly. That’s when things started to turn sour. He says he 
doesn’t remember just who or what caused it, but he and Barbara had a fight. It 
ended with her throwing his ring in the water, his striking her in the face, 
and her mother threatening to call the police. “F— the cops,” Waterhouse 
recalls telling Mrs. Kelly. “Get the Marines. I’m ready.”

Later that night, Robert Waterhouse was ready to kill.

First he retreated to Helen’s Bar on Front Street in Greenport and began to 
drink. By his own account, he drank “all kinds of stuff – beer, scotch, you 
name it, I was drinking it.” He was 19 at the time, but already he was a 
veteran of Helen’s and other North Fork taverns. He says he began drinking in 
bars at age 15; he was big for his age, and most of his buddies were older.

Some of his drinking buddies probably were in Helen’s that night, but 
Waterhouse says he doesn’t remember much besides losing all his money on the 
pool table. At some point, much later in the evening, he lost track of time and 
place, he says. “I guess at some point I decided to leave there. The rest is 
history.”

The Suffolk County medical examiner said 77-year-old widow Ella Mae Carter of 
39 Washington Ave., Greenport, died of strangulation. She had been brutally 
beaten; 14 of her ribs were fractured. Teeth marks were found under her right 
breast. Police said there was evidence of rape, although that charge was never 
brought against him.

The charge filed was 1st degree murder, but Robert Waterhouse caught a break 
some Greenporters haven’t forgotten – on March 13, 1966, he pleaded guilty to a 
reduced charge of 2nd degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life in 
Auburn State Prison. With time off for good behavior, and following a revision 
of the penal code, he was paroled Oct. 29, 1975.

‘Bobby and his friends - were stuck back on the 50’s’

Today, Robert Waterhouse sits on death row in the Florida State Prison at 
Starke, about 40 miles southwest of Jacksonville. He’s been there since 1980, 
when he was convicted of another brutal sex slaying, this time of a 29-year-old 
St. Petersburg woman, Deborah Kammerer. Only an 11th hour court order blocked 
his execution this past March. His fate again will be on the line June 4, when 
lawyers from the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee enter the Pinellas County 
Courthouse in St. Petersburg to seek a retrial in the Florida case.

* * * *

Although Robert Waterhouse has spent 15 ½ of his 38 years behind bars, no one – 
not law enforcement officials, not his former friends, not his family, not 
Waterhouse himself – has adequately answered the question of what went wrong 
with his life. Nor has anyone explained why a two-time convicted killer has 
never had any meaningful psychiatric counseling.

Over the past 6 months, The Suffolk Times has attempted to answer those 
questions by conducting more than 50 interviews with Waterhouse, (including one 
at the Florida State Prison at Starke), members of his family, schoolmates and 
friends who knew him as a boy growing up in Greenport. What has emerged is a 
portrait of a rambunctious but otherwise seemingly normal youth who became 
increasingly antisocial and estranged from his family and friends as he 
approached manhood. Along with an extraordinary number of his teenage 
associates who died before their time at the hands of alcohol, drugs and fast 
cars, Robert Waterhouse never made the transition to adulthood. In the words of 
one person who knew him well, Greenport restaurateur Bob Heaney; “Bobby and his 
friends were still the rebels, with their slicked-back hair and their turned-up 
collars. The times were changing, but they were stuck back in the ’50s.”

* * * *

Robert Bryan Waterhouse was born on December 12, 1946, the 4th of 5 children of 
Mabel Quarty and Roger Waterhouse. Today if you ask Robert Waterhouse who his 
parents are, he’s liable to give you 2 answers. That’s because at the age of 6 
months he went to live with his aunt and uncle, Lois and Chester Foster, on 
Wilmarth Avenue in Greenport. He never returned.

The “adoption” by his aunt and uncle – although Waterhouse is quick to point 
out that he was never legally adopted – is the subject of some controversy. 
According to Lois Foster and her sister, Mabel Waterhouse, both of whom have 
retired to St. Petersburg with their husbands, the circumstances were simple. 
Robert was 6 months old and the Waterhouse family was building a new home on 
Sixth Avenue in Greenport. Mrs. Waterhouse already had three young children at 
home; coping with a new infant was a problem. With the warning that “you’ll 
probably be walking the floor all night” with a crying baby, Mrs. Foster agreed 
to keep an eye on Robert for a few days. Mrs. Foster says she was only too 
happy to accept an infant into her home; she had lost a child at birth only 
shortly before. But “a few days” turned into a lifetime. As Mrs. Foster recalls 
it: “She never asked to have him back, so I kept him.”

The story of how Robert Waterhouse came to live with his aunt and uncle is told 
differently on the streets of Greenport. Numerous people interviewed by The 
Suffolk Times, including several of his boyhood friends, say he was traded by 
his mother to his aunt for a dining room set. As unlikely as that seems, the 
theory appears to have been widely accepted as true in Greenport, and it seems 
possible that it was used to taunt young Waterhouse as he was growing up here.

Waterhouse swears he heard the dining room set story for the first time last 
month, after one of his lawyers returned from a fact-finding trip to Greenport. 
His aunt says “there is no truth whatsoever” to the rumor, but she has an 
explanation for its origin. When he was about a year old – in other words, 6 
months after he came into the Fosters’ home – his aunt said Robert was moved 
from her bedroom to a room formerly used as a dining room. In order to make 
room, Mrs. Foster said she offered to loan her dining room set to her sister, 
who had an empty room at her new home on Sixth Avenue. “But there certainly was 
no trade,” Mrs. Foster said.

Mrs. Foster does remember Robert being taunted about the circumstances of his 
“adoption,” however. “When he was a kid, he used to take the bus to school,” 
Mrs. Foster recalled during an interview on the enclosed poolside patio of her 
retirement home in south St. Petersburg. “He would always turn around and throw 
me a kiss at the corner. But then one day he asked me to start taking him to 
school. He was about 10 or 11 then, but I found out years later – after Mrs. 
Carter – that the kids used to taunt him on the bus and make him cry. After he 
was arrested, (a neighbor) told me the kids used to tell him, “You’re no good. 
You’re mother didn’t want you and she gave you away.’”

(Mr. and Mrs. Waterhouse declined to be interviewed by The Suffolk Times when 
contacted at their one-story bungalow, which is about a mile away from the 
Fosters’ home. Mrs. Waterhouse’s only comment was that she and her husband 
retired to Florida in September 1979 “in order to start over, only it happened 
again four months later. It was like a nightmare all over again.”)

A 1961 entry in his records at the Greenport School, which were reviewed with 
Waterhouse’s permission, stated: “Robert seems to be a cry baby if things don’t 
go his way.”

Several of his childhood friends say he was spoiled by his aunt and uncle. Mrs. 
Foster responds: “What I didn’t have as a kid, I wanted him to have. I never 
had a bike as a kid, so I wanted him to have one. Almost anything he wanted, he 
got. He was disciplined, but he never went without.”

‘He was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’

Waterhouse and his aunt also remember how the kids – and even one Little League 
coach, according to Mrs. Foster – used to make fun of his last name. “I caught 
a lot of hell because of my name,” he said during a recent conversation in the 
interview room at the Florida State Prison. “You know, shithouse, outhouse, 
water closet. I was in a lot of fights because of that. There was one black kid 
– I used to fight with him every day. It was like a standing thing. Every day 
when I’d go home from school for lunch, there he was waiting for me. We’d just 
go at it. One day he’d win, the next day I’d win. To tell you the truth, I 
don’t know what is was all about. I used to think why, why are we fighting? I 
was in a lot of fights as a kid – mostly because of my name. That may be where 
I got my reputation as a fighter, maybe even as a bully.”

At some point, probably in junior high, when he went from 95 pounds to 160 
pounds in the span of two years, Waterhouse stopped taking abuse and started 
handing it out. In the words of one former classmate: “He was an intimidating 
guy. He used to pick on everybody who was smaller than him. He would do 
anything to make himself look like a wild guy, a wise guy. I would describe him 
as a hood.”

The incidents involving altercations with other students punctuate Waterhouse’s 
school records. In 1959, he was given detention for bruising a girl’s arm. One 
entry in his file said: “He seems to enjoy fighting with older boys. The boys 
in his group seem to fear him.” Another stated: “There is a certain nervous 
anxiety indicated by an almost violent chewing of his nails.”

Not all the teachers’ comments were negative. A junior high school profile 
found him to be an ”average student” who “works hard.” He was described as 
“very likable,” and it was predicted he would do well in high school.

For a time during his high school years, Waterhouse was involved in athletics, 
primarily baseball. One former teammate, Joe Gordon, who is now a Southold Town 
policeman, recalls: “He couldn’t field worth a damn, but he could hit a ball. 
He almost got kicked off the team one time, but I don’t remember what for.”

Waterhouse’s former coach, Richard “Dude” Manwaring, remembers. “It was in a 
game against Southampton,” Mr. Manwaring said. “He deliberately kicked the 
third basemen as he was rounding the base headed for home. He was thrown out of 
the game.

“He could be the nicest boy one minute, and then turn around the next and be 
vicious. He was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In the classroom, he was average or 
better than average, but he had a history of losing himself completely. But he 
was never vicious to me.”

Something else Dude Manwaring remembers about Robert Waterhouse is that he used 
to wear combat boots instead of baseball spikes.

Mr. Manwaring was present during the incident that first brought Waterhouse to 
the attention of the Greenport Police. It was October 15, 1964, at a Halloween 
dance at the high school. As Mr. Manwaring remembers, Waterhouse “was half in 
the bag” when he showed up at the dance and was asked to leave by another 
chaperone, Charles Jantzen.

Waterhouse remembers it differently. “I had on a continental suit without a 
tie, and he (Mr. Jantzen) said I had to have on a tie on,” he said. “He wanted 
me to wear a piece of crepe paper for a tie. He wanted to make a clown out of 
me. I said, ‘If you want to f— with me, come outside and get the whole thing.’ 
But he wouldn’t come out, so I took a tire iron and air conditioned the 
windshield of his brand new Bonneville.”

An offer by his aunt to make restitution kept Waterhouse out of jail, but it 
didn’t keep him in school. He was expelled on October 30, 1964. Only through 
the intervention of a sympathetic school board member, which resulted in 
tutoring at the home of Marguerite Layden on Fifth Street, did Waterhouse 
graduate on time in June 1965.

Even before his expulsion from school, Waterhouse was spending more and more of 
his time hanging out with his buddies in front of Rouse’s store on Greenport’s 
Front Street. He was a regular perched on top of a garbage can almost every 
night.

‘We simply turned him loose back into society’

Another regular at Rouse’s, Tony Ficurilli, who now runs a barber shop on Main 
Street, remembers the night Waterhouse showed up wearing a derby, a pink shirt, 
imitation pearl buttons, a vest, black pants and black pointy shoes. “He was 
trying to impress some girl,” Mr. Ficurilli said. “It was summertime, and he 
just walked up to the girl and introduced himself. He said ‘I’m, the 
continental gent,’ clicked his heels, tipped his hat and snapped his fingers. 
She turned and walked away.”

Drinking was an important part of Waterhouse’s existence by this time. He 
bragged about putting away as many as three six-packs of beer a day. Later he 
earned the nickname “Stoney” because of his frequent use of marijuana.

“I was always out in the evening, downtown,” Waterhouse recalls. “And drinking 
was the thing. Every day – a six-pack, two six-packs, a pint of whiskey. 
Anything to get the place away from you.”

That feeling of alienation in his hometown is a recurrent theme with 
Waterhouse. He said: “When I call Greenport a hick town, that’s because it was 
small and still kind of red-necked in its ways. Call me different or whatever, 
but it just didn’t make any sense to me. If you want to be like that, fine, but 
don’t impose that on me.”

Later he said: “I got the feeling when I was 17 or 18 that they were trying to 
make me different – the way they treated me, the way they looked at me. For 
instance, people didn’t like my cousin, Ronnie Quarty, because he was a rebel. 
Because I hung around with him, I got the tag. I think it’s very unfair to tag 
somebody. I mean, the guy was my cousin.”

Ronnie Quarty was another of Robert Waterhouse’s friends who didn’t make it 
through the 1960s. He was killed in a construction accident shortly after 
Waterhouse went to jail the 1st time.

Asked if he thinks he was treated unfairly in Greenport, Waterhouse replies: 
“It wasn’t that they weren’t giving me a shot. It was just that I wasn’t saying 
nothing bad about them. I wasn’t doing anything to them. Why did they want to 
put me down?”

Other than an interview by a BOCES psychologist following the incident with Mr. 
Jantzen’s car, it does not appear that Robert Waterhouse asked for or was 
offered any professional counseling during his troubled teenage years.

Said Dude Manwaring: “With all the things he was doing, he should have been 
helped years ago. All those things showed up, and nobody ever helped the kid 
out.”

Waterhouse’s aunt, Lois Foster, says she “begged for him to get help,” although 
no formal request appears in his school records. “Even before Mrs. Carter, I 
asked for him to be evaluated by a psychiatrist or psychologist. You just don’t 
get any help until it’s too late.”

Lawrence J. Nokes, the BOCES psychologist who did examine Waterhouse on Nov. 
12, 1964, reported that he “justifies (fights and other difficulties) in every 
case as acts of self-defense, or having been justifiably provoked — Robert 
describes the contact he had with his parents, brothers and sisters matter of 
factly, and attaches little significance to the fact that he was not reared by 
his parents.”

In an interview the same day with Mrs. Foster, the psychologist noted: “She 
describes no difficulties with Robert. However, it is evident from her 
conversation that little or no control is placed on Robert’s behavior in regard 
to either controlling the time or the activities in which he participates. She 
states that her husband has never taken an interest in Robert and has been a 
negligible factor in Robert’s development.

“Robert’s behavior seems to be characterized by inadequate control over 
aggressive impulses,” the report continued. “He is able to rationalize his way 
around social convention, and the disapproval which society places on fighting. 
He reacts with hostility when controls are placed on him.”

Mr. Nokes noted that Waterhouse had an IQ of 100, and concluded: “There are no 
factors indicated … that would interfere with his receiving home instruction.”

Unmentioned in Mr. Nokes psychological profile of Robert Waterhouse is an 
incident which, if true, would have profoundly influenced his youth. In a May 
3, 1985, letter to The Suffolk Times, Waterhouse says he was the victim of a 
homosexual rape when he was about nine years old. He said his attacker was a 
neighborhood teenager who has since left the North Fork. “As with most children 
who are molested,” Waterhouse said in the letter, “I was so embarrassed that I 
never told anyone.” No record of the alleged rape exists in the files of the 
Greenport Police Department.

Following his graduation, Waterhouse got a job as an ID checker at the bowling 
alley that used to be located on Moore’s Lane, Greenport, where Jernick Moving 
and Storage now sits. He was there early one morning in August, 1965, when two 
of his friends, Myron “Mike” Prindle and Doug Dean, showed up and wanted to 
drive to Riverhead for breakfast. They never made it. As Waterhouse remembers, 
“They were both loaded before they got there.” The car swerved off the Main 
Road in Jamesport and struck a utility pole. Waterhouse and Dean were thrown 
through the windshield, but survived. Prindle, who was at the wheel, was killed 
instantly.

Waterhouse had a concussion, 13 stitches in his head and another 13 in his 
hand. He was transferred to Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport after one 
night in the hospital in Riverhead, but he says, “I checked myself out after 5 
days because I couldn’t take it anymore.”

The seriousness of the injuries he sustained in that 1965 accident was an issue 
last year, when Waterhouse’s court-appointed lawyer tried to convince a judge 
in a Florida clemency hearing that “some part of Robert Waterhouse was damaged” 
in the crash. According to a Jan. 27, 1984, account in the St. Petersburg 
Times: “That damage should have been detected and treated, (attorney Henry) 
Andringa said. Instead … ‘we simply turned him loose back out into society.’”

Asked if he experienced a personality change following the accident, Waterhouse 
simply shrugs his shoulders. His aunt says he “complained of headaches every 
day after that,” but she adds: “I don’t know if that had anything to do with 
(what followed).”

Following the accident in the summer of 1965, Waterhouse met Barbara Kelly, a 
girl from Mattituck who was about to enter her senior year at Mattituck High 
School. At first, the relationship flourished. In fact, Waterhouse says he and 
Barbara were talking about marriage by the end of 1965, and she even was 
thinking about dropping out of school.

The events of Feb. 10, and 11, 1966, changed all that, of course, and Barbara 
Kelly’s whereabouts have been something of a mystery since that time. What is 
known is that she dropped out of school in February 1966, leaving no forwarding 
address. There is no indication that she completed her high school studies 
because Mattituck was never asked to forward her records to a new school. There 
have been reports that she lived in Riverhead for a while, but repeated efforts 
to locate her have proved unsuccessful.

Waterhouse says the last time he heard from Barbara Kelly was when he was still 
in prison in New York. He said: “She brought me to court to prove I fathered 
her child,” who was born on Aug. 23, 1966. “I didn’t think I was going to get 
out for 20 years, so I signed the papers.” However, now he denies paternity, 
saying he’s not certain Ritchie Waterhouse is his son. Waterhouse last saw 
Ritchie when he got out on parole in 1975. The boy is 18 now, and Waterhouse 
says, “I’d sure like to see him now to see what he looks like.”

Waterhouse claims he doesn’t remember what he and Barbara Kelly fought about on 
Feb. 10, 1966, but his aunt thinks it may have been because his girlfriend “was 
in a family way. I didn’t mind his getting married,” Mrs. Foster continued, 
“but they wanted to move in with us on Wilmarth Avenue, and we didn’t have any 
room. It was only a 2-bedroom house. I thought it was best if he got out by 
himself. I’ve hated myself every since. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if I 
had let them move in.”

* * * *

“When I woke up, my eyes and my head finally started to clear and focus.” 
Robert Waterhouse is speaking about the morning of Friday, Feb. 11, 1966. I 
said, ‘Where is this place? Where am I? Who is that?’ And then it settled in. I 
thought, ‘Oh, my God.’”

Looking directly into the eyes of his interviewer, Waterhouse says he has no 
recollection of what happened inside Mrs. Carter’s house the night he murdered 
her.

The official police account said Mrs. Carter’s nude body was found lying on a 
bed in the bedroom of her five-room home at 6:38 p.m. Friday. The discovery was 
made by Greenport Village Police and the victim’s nephew, George W. Hubbard of 
Central Avenue. Mr. Hubbard, who is now mayor of Greenport, was called to the 
scene by a neighbor, Anthony Andrade of 35 Washington Ave., who became 
suspicious when milk delivered to Mrs. Carter’s home early Friday morning was 
still on the doorstep in the early evening.

Waterhouse immediately became a suspect. He had done yard work for Mrs. Carter, 
and police records indicated he had been charged in the past with being a 
“peeping Tom.” When Waterhouse came to the police station early Saturday 
morning with a family friend, Ken Norwood, he had scratches on his hands and 
face. A warrant was issued, and a pile of bloody clothing was found in 
Waterhouse’s bedroom. Waterhouse confessed to the crime at 6 a.m. Saturday.

‘I thought, “Oh, my God’”

An account in the Feb. 17, 1966, edition of The Riverhead News-Review reported 
the following chronology after, according to police, Waterhouse broke into the 
Carter house at about 1 a.m. Friday. “Police theorize Mrs. Carter fled to the 
kitchen, where she was caught and dragged back to the bedroom. Authorities said 
she fought desperately in the kitchen, through the living room, and in the 
bedroom, where she was brutally beaten, sexually attacked, and then strangled. 
An autopsy conducted by Chief Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Hugh Ashmore, late 
Saturday, revealed she had been beaten, raped, and then strangled.

“Robbery was obviously not the motive,” the news article continued. “(Police 
said) Mrs. Carter’s wedding wring was still on her finger. They also found an 
overnight bag under her bed, containing her savings, $2,333 in all.”

What was Robert Waterhouse doing in Mrs. Carter’s home at 1 a.m. in the 
morning? When he is asked that question directly, his eyes glazed over before 
he responds. “I used to shovel her walk in the wintertime. That’s all.” In a 
recent letter to The Suffolk Times, he said: “I can honestly say that I never 
meant or intended to kill Mrs. Carter.”

The question of Robert Waterhouse’s intentions appears to be key, because 
somewhere along the line prosecutors decided to reduce the charge from 1st to 
2nd degree murder. But that didn’t happen until after a mistrial was declared 
in his first trial when his court-appointed lawyer, Edward LaFreniere of 
Riverhead, was disbarred due to financial irregularities in other cases. 
Attorney Harry Brown of Northport handled Waterhouse’s defense the 2nd time 
around, and he advised his client to plead to second degree murder when it was 
offered on March 13, 1966.

Looking back today, both Waterhouse and Mrs. Carter’s nephew, George Hubbard, 
are upset about that plea, but for different reasons. Waterhouse thinks he was 
ill-advised by Brown. “The suppression hearing was scheduled for Monday,” he 
said in a recent interview. “They had just finished picking the jury on Friday, 
and (the prosecutors) grabbed Brown and offered second degree, with 20 years to 
life. If convicted of first degree murder, I would have done 26 years and 10 
months before even seeing the parole board. It looked like a good deal at the 
time, but I think (the prosecution) knew evidence was going to be thrown out in 
the suppression hearing; that’s why they offered second degree. Brown should 
have explained what we had going.”

‘Greenport gave him a second chance’

George Hubbard: “I was really mad that day. I tried to find the prosecutor, I 
think his name was Mr. Jaffe, but he was out on the golf course. I would have 
killed him, I think. He didn’t advise the family that he was going to let him 
take the lesser plea. We were all upset at the time because we wanted to go for 
broke.”

* * * *

9 years and 10 months later, George Hubbard had another reason to be upset with 
the legal/penal system – Robert Waterhouse was getting out of prison early. As 
Waterhouse remembers it: “A change in the penal code enabled me to go to the 
parole board earlier. My aunt and some other people had gotten a petition 
together, and I had a very good prison record, which didn’t hurt.” According to 
Waterhouse, his parole interview consisted of the following exchange with three 
doctors: “I walked in there, and they said, ‘How are you doing?’ I said, 
‘Fine.’ They said, ‘How do you feel?’ I said, ‘Okay.’ They said, ‘What do you 
think about going back outside?’ I said, ‘That would be great if it happens.’ 
They said, ‘Okay, we’ll see you.’ That was their examination.”

George Hubbard: “The same people who spoke on his behalf about the goodness the 
kid had in him – which is what got him paroled – should really feel responsible 
for the second murder.”

Waterhouse was paroled on Oct. 29, 1975, 9 years and 10 months after his arrest 
for the Carter murder. He immediately returned to Greenport.

Why did he return to the scene of the crime, a small town where everyone knew 
his face and what he had done? “I had nowhere else to go,” he said. “I had $250 
to my name. Where was I going to go?”

After looking for a job, which was a condition of his parole, he found one in 
February 1976 at Greenport Yacht and Shipbuilding, where the both his uncle and 
his father worked as painters. “Steve Clarke gave me that job more out of 
generosity and sympathy than anything else,” Waterhouse says.

Steve Clarke: “At first, I thought the guys in the yard might kill him. But I 
sat them down the first day and told them if they gave him a hard time, I’d 
come down twice as hard on them. We never had any trouble. As far as I’m 
concerned, Greenport was very decent to the guy. They gave him a 2nd chance.”

Waterhouse remembers it differently. “When I came out of the joint, (the sense 
of alienation) was still there, only it was worse. You know: ‘We don’t want you 
here. Why are you here? Why don’t you just evaporate?’”

Wasn’t that understandable under the circumstances? “The prison experience had 
opened my eyes to many things in life,” he says. “But I didn’t see any open 
minds when I came back there. Nobody would say, here’s a 2nd chance.”

What about Steve Clarke? Wasn’t he offering a 2nd chance? “He was doing it more 
out of kindness to my family,” says Waterhouse.

The job at Greenport Yacht and Shipbuilding lasted until about September 1976. 
After collecting unemployment benefits for a while, Waterhouse went to work as 
a bayman with Jim Rock of Greenport, scalloping mostly. But when the season 
ended in March, he said it was time to move on. “I just couldn’t see living on 
60 bucks a week with no prospects for a job,” he says.

However, as with many chapters of Robert Waterhouse’s life story, there is 
another version of his final days in Greenport. A number of people say he 
started to “peep” again and was run out of town. What is known for certain is 
that he did have another run-in with local police. On Oct. 15, 1976, he was 
asked to appear in a line-up at the Southold Town Police station in Peconic 
after a prowler was spotted in Orient. He wasn’t identified by the witness, but 
his aunt said he was being harassed by the police. “He could not have stayed in 
Greenport,” she said. In April 1977, Waterhouse decided to move to Monroe, La., 
the home of his older brother, Roger.

Whatever the circumstances of his departure from the village where he was born, 
raised and returned after nearly 10 years in jail, Robert Waterhouse says he 
hasn’t looked back since the day he left for the last time.

* * * *

Condensed, the years between 1977 and 1980 were divided between Louisiana and 
Florida, mostly in a series of short-lived jobs. In Louisiana, Waterhouse 
worked as a shipping and receiving foreman, painted houses and sold life 
insurance. Although he got the jobs only after lying about his prison record in 
New York, there is no indication that he got into any serious trouble with the 
law while living with his brother and his family.

Florida was a different story. After moving in September 1978 to St. 
Petersburg, where his aunt and uncle had retired a year earlier, Waterhouse 
first worked in a boatyard. After he was fired from the job, he took a job in 
construction, which he held for three days before being arrested on a charge of 
attempted vehicular homicide.

The date was April 26, 1979, and police said Waterhouse deliberately struck 
Lorenzo Sims and Evelyn Prince with his 1964 yellow Chevrolet Camaro while they 
were walking on 11th Avenue S. in St. Petersburg. No reason was given for the 
alleged attack, and a jury ruled it was an accident. Waterhouse was released 
from jail 3 ½ months after his arrest.

It was back into construction until Jan. 9, 1980, when Waterhouse was arrested 
for the last time. Police said he met 29-year-old Deborah Kammerer in the ABC 
Lounge in St. Petersburg on the night of Jan. 2, 1980 – which in itself was a 
violation of his New York parole, since he wasn’t supposed to be frequenting 
bars. Ms. Kammerer, who was described in news reports as “blonde,” petite, a 
bar-hopper and a (former) date of Waterhouse,” was found nude, lying face down 
in the mud flats next to Tampa Bay the following morning. A description in the 
March 12, 1985, edition of the St. Petersburg Times stated: “(Ms. Kammerer) had 
drowned, but not before her 5-foot-2, 90-pound body was repeatedly violated…

“According to the medical examiner, Ms. Kammerer took 22 blows to the head, 
some from a tire iron. Her nose was broken in 3 places, teeth were cracked, 
eyes swollen, neck choked, back bruised. She was raped. There were extensive 
cuts in her rectum, where a bottle was forced. A blood-stained tampon was 
jammed in her throat.”

Although Waterhouse professes innocence in the killing of Ms. Kammerer, he has 
declined to discuss details of the Florida case with The Suffolk Times because 
of the possible impact on his June 4 hearing. However, he did tell reporter Jon 
East of the St. Petersburg Evening Independence newspaper: “I don’t deny that 
she may have been beaten very severely in my car. I never denied that. I just 
denied doing it.”

The police and a jury of his peers didn’t buy that explanation. Waterhouse was 
convicted of first degree murder on Sept. 2, 1980, and a day later he was 
sentenced to death. After a lengthy series of legal maneuvers, Florida Governor 
Bob Graham signed his death warrant Feb. 22, 1985. Only the intervention of 
attorney Stephen Bright of the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee spared 
Waterhouse four days before his execution, which was scheduled for March 19. 
Without debating the merits of the death sentence itself, Mr. Bright argued 
that Waterhouse should not be executed without having adequate legal 
representation. Until he met Mr. Bright for the first time on the morning of 
Friday, March 15, the day the stay of execution was granted, Waterhouse did not 
have a lawyer.

‘He deserves to die’

According to Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer who works with Mr. Bright in his 
Atlanta office, the defense’s primary thrust at the June 4 hearing will be that 
Waterhouse received “ineffective assistance of counsel” in the 1980 Florida 
trial. They also will argue that Waterhouse suffers from “extreme mental 
disorder,” and that he was “incapable of appreciating the criminality of his 
actions.”

Waterhouse says he has only one goal in the Florida case – a retrial. “If they 
overturn the (death) sentence, I’m not really crazy about that,” he said. “I’d 
just as soon go out like I’m sitting here now; in other words, let them execute 
me. If they force 25 years to life on me, I’d be 58 years old before I saw the 
parole board, and still owe New York life parole. No way. I’d just as soon get 
it over with.

“If they did force (a life sentence) on me, and then threw me out in the 
general (prison) population, just give me a couple of days. I’ll be at the 
fence and they’ll have to kill me.”

Mr. Smith thinks Waterhouse may have second thoughts about that if Gov. Graham 
signs a 2nd death warrant. He said: “They all say that. If he gets a little 
closer to execution, He’ll change his mind.”

‘He was standing there like a lost soul, just looking over the crowd’

George Hubbard believes Robert Waterhouse makes an excellent case for the death 
penalty. “I wouldn’t mind pulling the switch on the guy myself, after what I 
saw he did to my aunt,” Mayor Hubbard said. “He deserves to die.”

* * * *

2 final images of Robert Waterhouse: one from a boyhood friend, Ron Tyler, one 
from Waterhouse himself.

Mr. Tyler remembers seeing Waterhouse at the Apple Tree, a Mattituck nightspot, 
after his 1975 parole. “A lot of the guys he used to hang out with were there, 
but no one would talk to him,” Mr. Tyler recalls. “No one could relate to him. 
What do you say to someone who has been in prison for 10 years? It was a very 
awkward situation. As much as I wanted to go up to him and say, ‘Hi, Bob, how 
are you doing,’ there wasn’t anything to say. Everyone must have had the same 
attitude, because no one else talked to him. He was standing there all alone 
like a lost soul, just looking over the crowd.”

Robert Waterhouse, the boy from Greenport who grew up to become a two-time 
convicted murdered, doesn’t ask the sympathy of Ron Tyler or anyone else. 
Defiantly, his hands manacled before him, he says: “I’m okay. It’s the rest of 
the world that’s f—– up. I realize some people can have a problem and never 
realize it, but I don’t think I’m one of those people. If you ask me, I’m 
perfectly okay.

“Besides, for me, yesterday is a memory, and that’s all it is. Yesterday has no 
real relevance. What counts is today and tomorrow – if there is a tomorrow.”

(source: Riverhead News-Review)