Murder in Woodstock

Cry Baby

Scott Deojay was thumping around in his cell when Plainfield police officers decided to take him to the hospital. He had tried to kill himself. His mind obviously wasn't firing on all cylinders. "An Emergency Examination Request was completed," one of the officers later wrote in his report, "... [w]hile he was still under arrest, he was transported to Day Kimball Hospital in Putnam ... for evaluation."

At about 3:15 that afternoon, Detectives David Lamoureux and Pricilla Vining showed up at Day Kimball to speak with Deojay. The state police had heard about his so-called suicide attempt and wanted to ask him about his possible role in Judy's death. In truth, they knew Deojay was involved in some way. They just needed him to admit it. The evidence was clear: If Deojay wasn't involved, he certainly knew who was.

Upon meeting with Deojay, the detectives read him his Miranda rights. Deojay quickly declined speaking to a lawyer and signed a waiver, which allowed the state police to photograph several injuries he had on his hands.

Scott Deojay

Then they re-interviewed him.

Detective Vining, under Deojay's request, left the room. When she exited, Plainfield Police Department Sergeant Bart Ramos, who had been waiting with Deojay for the detectives to arrive, sat in on the interview. Lamoureux began by letting Deojay know that they had found Judy's body on the Spinney property. Then Lamoureux explained that the state police were well aware that he had been working at the property as an employee of Carroll Spinney's for some time now.

As Lamoureux talked about the discovery of Judy's body, Deojay began to cry, folding into himself, weeping like an infant.

Lamoureux wondered if there was something Deojay wanted to talk about. What was it weighing on his conscious? There had to be a good reason why he wanted to commit suicide. "While I was driving on Redhead Hill Road ... I struck her," Deojay explained. He implied that it was an accident—that he didn't mean to hit Judy. It just happened. He said he was driving his 1997 Ford Escort. "It was an accident. I believe she died at the scene."

If that were true, the obvious question became: Why not call police and report the accident? Why try to cover up the crime? It's no secret that ninety-five percent of these types of hit and run "accidents" involve a driver leaving the scene quickly, getting out of the location as fast as he or she can. It was almost unheard of that a hit and run driver would actually leave the scene with the victim's body.

"I panicked," Deojay said, trying to explain why he removed Judy's body from the scene.

Still, why was she hog-tied? What was the purpose of tying her up?

"I tried unsuccessfully to carry her up the folding ladder staircase, after carrying her from my car to the pagoda," he said. Apparently, he couldn't get her up the stairs without tying her up. "So I went back to my car to retrieve a rope and tied it around her," adding that he used the rope to hoist Judy up the staircase.

It seemed awfully strange to Lamoureux that Deojay would go through all that trouble, tying the body in such a way, taping her up, placing the rope around her body—her neck!—in such a methodical manner, to simply carry Judy up those stairs. Why not just dump her body in the woods somewhere nearby? Was Deojay to assume that no one in the Spinney household would ever go up into that pagoda storage area again?

Deojay couldn't give him an answer.

"On the way out of the driveway," Deojay continued, "I found one of her shoes in my car and threw it behind a tree in the snow near the end of the driveway." (The sneaker was later found exactly where Deojay said he tossed it.)

Scott Deojay was released that night from the hospital and immediately arrested on kidnapping charges—the only crime the state police could prove at the moment—and held on a $1,000,000 bond.