Page 38 of The Writer

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Excerpt from The Taking of Maggie Marshall by Denise Morrow

REMEMBER HOW I said Declan Shaw’s father was a good man on paper? Well, on paper, Ruben Lloyd Lucero definitively was not. His rap sheet began with multiple arrests for statutory rape early in life and only got worse as he got older. He’d been dating those first two girls; the parents had pressed charges because he was over eighteen and their respective daughters were minors. While that is technically a crime in the good state of New York, I did speak to both girls (now women) and both confirmed the relationships were consensual.

I can understand that, and I’m willing to give him a pass for those.

Why?

Here’s why.

When I was sixteen, I dated a guy who was in his second year at Columbia. He was twenty. If you’d asked me then, I would have told you I was madly in love with him and his feelings for me were so strong, it was like our souls were destined to spend eternity together. If you asked me now, I’d tell you the thrill and danger of dating a college boy when I was only a sophomore in high school was what sent my insides swooning, and he was most likely dating a half dozen co-eds in the days (sometimes weeks) we were apart. It wasn’t romance; it was a cultivated experience. It certainly wasn’t rape, not to me. And because my parents never found out and so never had the opportunity to press charges, it wasn’t declared rape by the law either.

So, yeah, I can give Lucero a pass for those early relationships.

But Ruben Lucero didn’t stop. After those two, there were no more underage girlfriends, no more parents pressing charges for statutory rape, but there were other girls, other charges. At twenty-two, just six weeks after completing probation, he was arrested for public indecency. He told police he was overtaken with the sudden urge to urinate while waiting for the subway and didn’t feel he could make it to the bathroom before his business became the business of other people on the platform. The police found no urine on the pavement. What they did find were four teenage girls willing to testify they were standing five feet from Lucero when he decided to drop his pants and smile. That earned him thirty days behind bars, another year on probation, and an additional red mark on the sex offenders list. Two years after that, he was found in an alley with a fifteen-year-old female runaway from Ohio who had turned to prostitution rather than go back home to an abusive stepfather. Lucero pleaded no contest and agreed to enter a treatment program for sex offenders. His twenty-fifth birthday came and went. Post-treatment, Lucero reentered society as (hopefully) a cured man. On paper, anyway.

In order to secure the groundskeeping job at Central Park, he lied when asked if he had a criminal record. On his employment application, he reversed two digits on his Social Security number and gave his name as Lloyd R. Lucero rather than Ruben Lloyd Lucero. He told his interviewer everyone called him Lucky, and that stuck. That little bit of smoke and mirrors was enough to keep park personnel from discovering his past. They did fingerprint him, but apparently those prints were never processed, just placed in his file and forgotten. A former park administrator told me it was standard practice to hold processing during a new hire’s probationary period due to high turnover and a small budget, but I never found proof to back that up. If it was true, it doesn’t explain why nobody ran the prints when Lucero crossed the thirty-day mark.

Many would say Lucero kept his head down, managed to control his appetite for young girls, and stayed out of trouble. Again, on paper, that’s how it looked. Following the death of Maggie Marshall, the police raided Ruben Lucero’s apartment and found a number of books that appeared to have been stolen from young girls, frequent visitors to the park. They were souvenirs; there is no denying that. He kept the books of girls who interested him and whom he fixated on. Along with stealing the books, he took photographs of many girls. Some of those photos were shot at a distance; others were taken by hidden cameras (attached to the undersides of brooms and rakes to capture up-skirt shots). A few appeared to have been taken with the subjects’ consent: Girls in various stages of undress. Some pleasuring themselves. All underage.

Ruben Lucero was—is—a bad man.

He had a problem that didn’t go away, only evolved. He simply got better at hiding it.

Here’s the thing, though: The police didn’t accuse Lucero of harming a single person other than Maggie Marshall. Not one.

They found all those books, those souvenirs, the photographs—damning evidence, for sure, but not a single victim. They did manage to track down three of the girls in those photographs, all of whom were alive and well. Two of them had no idea Lucero had stolen books from their bags, nor did they know he’d taken pictures of them. The third recognized Lucero from the park and said they’d spoken once or twice, but only in passing.

No other victims.

Not one.

Only Maggie Marshall.

Like I said, he got better at hiding. Maybe those skills extended to hiding bodies, but there is no proof of that.

There’s only Maggie Marshall.

A girl found dead in the park. Strangled. Raped. With Lucero’s footprints nearby, his lost watch, his cigarette butts.

During his initial interview, Lucero admitted to finding her body and telling no one. Given his past, do you blame him? He admitted to smoking a cigarette as he looked down on her. He said he prayed for her. He said there was nothing else he could do. He wanted to tell someone but couldn’t. He feared what they would do to him.

I asked why he didn’t phone it in anonymously. He said he was worried they’d find him.

I have spoken to Ruben Lucero multiple times. To the best of my knowledge, the man has never lied to me.

He told me the ugly stuff when nobody else would listen.

He also told me he didn’t hurt Maggie Marshall.

And I believe him.

He claims he was framed.

And I believe that too.

Why?

When Detective Declan Shaw initially walked the Maggie Marshall crime scene, he made an audio recording. Without mentioning titles, he stated three textbooks were found in her backpack. Her backpack, currently sitting in the NYPD evidence locker, contains only two textbooks.

Detective Declan Shaw made a similar audio recording when he walked Lucero’s apartment. He found Lucero’s “souvenir” books and read off many of the titles. He made no mention of one called Understanding Anatomy and Physiology , a book police later said they found in Lucero’s apartment with the others. A book they claimed had belonged to Maggie Marshall.

Why do I believe Lucero is innocent?

Maggie Marshall’s prints are on that book.

Lucero’s are not.

Only the police had access to Maggie’s backpack when it was found by her body.

Only Detective Declan Shaw.