A wellness check reveals a brutal murder

It started as a typical December morning for Officer José Diaz of the Boston Police Department. Shortly after 10:00AM, the radio in Jose’s cruiser chirped and dispatch came on the line. They needed him to do a welfare check at 8 Wardman Road in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, and he was on it. He pulled up to his destination: a brick three-story apartment building. A resident on the second floor was the subject of the check—her friend had tried to get in contact with her multiple times, and he was concerned that she hadn’t responded. Officer Diaz knocked on the door and announced his presence, but was met with silence. After more failed attempts, he tried to open the door, but it was deadbolted shut. There was one other door to enter the apartment, but it, too was locked. Out of options, Jose forced his way in.

It appeared to be tidy and clean. None of the furniture seemed out of place. In fact, it looked as if it had been prepared for an open house. His gaze drifted over to the apartment’s kitchen and it was then he realized he had stepped into a crime scene.

The body of an older woman lay face-up on the tile. She was surrounded by dried blood that was no doubt her own. He knelt to take a closer look. It was evident that she had been brutally murdered. He called for backup. Several more police cruisers arrived at 8 Wardman Road, and additional officers joined Jose in processing the scene. There were no signs of a break-in or struggle. When the crime scene technician tried checking the countertops for fingerprints, they found absolutely nothing. The countertops, along with all of the other surfaces, were spotless. Investigators inferred that the murderer carefully cleaned the apartment.

The victim was Gail Miles, a 61-year-old woman, who lived in the apartment. Unbeknownst to the Boston police officers, Gail had shared the badge with them for seventeen years in the nearby city of Watertown, which meant that they were investigating the murder of their sister in blue.

Who is Gail Miles?

Gail Arlene Miles was born to Marilyn and Carroll Miles in 1950. She was the oldest of four children and had a younger brother, Robert, and two sisters, Ethel, and Gina. Gail was a lifelong resident of Roxbury, Massachusetts, and after graduating from Brighton High School in 1968, she was accepted to Lesley University in Cambridge where she studied dental hygiene and education. Although she wasn’t sure what she wanted to pursue as a career, she knew she wanted to take care of people.

Gail loved animals. She was passionate about them, and loved to take care of many different pets. Her hairstylist and friend, Jaqueline Gay called her a “zoologist” for the rotating cast of cats, dogs, ferrets, birds, and hamsters in her care that would often leave her with nips and scratches. One of her neighbors later recalled how she would see Gail on walks in Franklin Park with a colorful pet parrot on her shoulder. One day, the parrot flew off and never returned. Gail could never pass up an animal in need, which resulted in her sometimes taking in too many furry friends, but she would find homes for them when push came to shove, as long as she knew they would be loved.

Her friend Jaqueline said, "Gail was a riot. She was very outgoing and lively."

She also enjoyed finding the perfect pair of shoes, and going on cruises with her cousin. She was remembered as generous, fearless, and passionate, and that passion is what drove her. She was a fervent advocate; driven by raising awareness for tenant’s rights, and helping those in need within the Black communities of the greater Boston area.

Whether it was caring for animals or volunteering her time, Gail put her heart into everything she did.

She also held few reservations when it came to how she expressed her feelings. She could be brutally honest, and outspoken; something that made her a magnet for conflict. She was also known to be stubborn and extremely determined. But honest truth or not, not everyone wanted to hear what Gail had say, and this sometimes drove the people she loved away.

It created conflict within her family that lasted years, and even decades.

Her mother, Marilyn, told WBUR in 2015 that Gail refused to attend her aunt’s funeral because she didn’t want to be bothered with the family. She said, “When Gail got something on her mind, she kept it. If she didn't like something, she kept it. She wouldn’t let it go. And that’s the way it was with her whole life. In the last few years of her life, she didn’t have anything to do with the family. Nothing.”

That included her own sister, Gina, who had a falling out with Gail in 2001.

Gail never ended up having any children, but it was something she longed for. So, when Gail decided she wanted to adopt her sister’s grandchildren, Gina fought her. Gina later said in that same program for WBUR, “She wanted to love something other than the animals. But she thought that she could have something that didn't belong to her, though, because the kids could not be hers.”

“When she got ahold of [the idea of having] those children it was out of love, because she had a love [for them]. But she thought that she could get them when they weren’t mine to give her. It was like talking to a wall, because when you say something to my sister, she goes in her head and thinks that she can do things the way she wants to do ‘em.”

Gail and Gina didn’t speak the next decade, and sadly, they never made amends before Gail’s death in 2011.

Gail becomes a cop

In the years after graduating from Lesley University, Gail spent her time working various jobs trying to find the perfect fit. She wanted to find a workplace that felt like family, and settled on the idea of becoming a police officer.

She admired the perceived camaraderie the officers had amongst each other, and wanted to take care of people and help serve the public.

In 1984, at age 34, Gail Miles made history: she was the first Black woman ever to be hired by the Watertown Police Department. The city of Watertown, a suburb West of Boston, is a town of about 30,000 people, and it employed about 60 uniformed officers. 90% of the town’s population is white, and so was the police force.

Being a rookie, she was aware that the other officers could give her a hard time but the level of hostility from her colleagues far exceeded her expectations. Always a fighter, she defended herself and reciprocated the energy with similar insults and banter.

Gerard stayed by her side, and although the two occasionally clashed, they had a sibling-like bond, and he was Gail’s closest confidant.

The training itself was rough. Gail struggled in the beginning and even totaled a police cruiser while taking a driving test at Hanscom Air Force Base, crashing into a parked airplane. Later, she failed a firearm exam and another driving test. Gerard recalled, “She wanted to be a good cop. She really and truly did. She wanted to do things right.” Over time, her performance improved, but tensions between her and her fellow officers did not.

Gail faces sexual and racial harassment

She was singled out as the only woman on the force and her colleagues made sexist comments to her regularly. A fellow cop, Leroy Doctor, grabbed her butt in the booking area of the station. It was denied, but Gail later wrote that she had reviewed surveillance video that showed her reacting to being grabbed and contained audible laughter from other officers. She later wrote that she was referred to as a ‘bitch’ and a ‘prostitute’ and told to ‘lick me’ regularly. A fake news article with two photos of Gail was posted, and it read:

"Police officer Gail Miles of the Watertown Police Department is shown above receiving the news that she has been accepted to attend the International Bikini open contest to be held in Hawaii in October. Her only response was, `Man, I gotta find me some boobs in a hurry."

But the most overt sexual harassment she recalled was when Leroy put his hand on her breast, but in addition to this, she was also targeted because of her race.

In one incident, Leroy mocked her as “belonging to a line of ‘voodoo’ women”, a racial epithet that is a derogatory term for a Black woman. Officers made racist jokes around her that only intensified during the OJ Simpson trial. Other cops would tell her to her face that the only reason she was hired was because she was a Black woman and that it was because of affirmative action policy. Most shocking of all, Gerard later recalled,

“Right in front of the lieutenant, the dispatcher, [a white male officer], called her the n-word. And she turned to the lieutenant and said, ‘Did you hear that?’ And he wouldn’t do anything about it. These other guys on the job constantly giving her shit, and nobody ever backing her up, and she got more and more pissed off.”

She contended that she was punished more severely for infractions that white male officers had also committed.

She faced a hostile workplace recalling times that she was locked out of the communications room by other officers, and one incident that made her fear for her safety. She said that a sergeant, who was the department’s expert marksman, aimed his gun’s laser sight at her midsection. She was outraged and told him so. She wrote, “My hair is breaking off, and I’m pulling out the rest from stress.” Her medical records showed she went on antidepressants around the same time. Watertown PD later did an internal investigation of the gun incident and found, quote, “no wrongdoing”. But a surveillance audio recording made inside the police station told a different story.

Enough was enough

After enduring 12 years of sexism and racism, and realizing that the family in blue that she had hoped for would never materialize, she filed a formal complaint. But the person she submitted the complaint to was Ed Deveau, who was a Captain in 1996, and Gail alleged “fostered the environment of harassment.” Ed led the investigation into the incidents that she enumerated, and investigated himself, too, evidently.

Two officers were disciplined, and Gail’s transfer request to a different work-group was approved.

But the harassment continued, and some officers who were named in her complaint hadn’t been disciplined, so Gail confronted Ed about it in his office. He fired back at her, telling Gail how she was the subject of sexual misconduct allegations herself. Ed said that three officers—including Gerard Mullen—had approached him. She learned about the incident with Gerard, but he later signed an affidavit that dismissed the allegation as pure fiction. The two other mysterious complaints against Gail were never acted upon, and despite her repeated attempts to learn more about them, the names of the other two officers were never divulged.

Since Gail had exhausted her options within the police department, she decided to take her concerns to a higher level, and, with a lawyer named John Dalimonte, sent a formal complaint to the Massachusetts Coalition Against Discrimination, or MCAD for short.

Neither John nor Gail knew the amount of turbulence the complaint would cause and how much everything would change. By the late 1990s, the harassment had lessened, but she felt isolated; Gail was one of the most unpopular officers within the department. She remained on night patrol, where she had stayed since she joined in 1983. She continuously watched newer officers move up the ranks while she was stuck exactly where she had started.

Gerard later reflected on Gail’s motivation in becoming an officer:

“She was looking for more than a new profession when she joined the force. She really and truly believed that the police department was a great big family, that they're your brothers. [She expected] you're going to get shit from your family, shit from your brothers, but when something happens, they're going to be there for you. And I tried to tell her, ‘Gail, it's not like that. In the real world, you know, some of these guys are no damn good. Some of ‘em will help you, some of ‘em won’t. Some will care for you, some of ‘em won't.’ I said, ‘It's just people. This is not a family.’ And I don't think she ever really caught on to that until it was too late.”

Days before Gail’s murder

The fall of 2011 had been a difficult time for Gail. The building she owned at 8 Wardman Road was in foreclosure by the bank, and her housing plans were up in the air, causing stress about her living situation. But the building’s new owner (who’d bought it at auction) was helping Gail get by for the time being. He negotiated a rental agreement for her to continue to live in the 2nd floor apartment she called home, until she found a more permanent solution.

On either Thursday, December 1st, 2011, or Friday the 2nd, Gail went to the Watertown Police Station to pick up her new identification card for retirement benefits. It is unclear to me which day this actually happened. It was reported both ways, and the clarity of the timeline from the perspective of when Gail was believed to have been murdered is something investigators haven’t released. The details we do know are reported a few different ways.

After picking up her ID, she joined a group of former police colleagues at a local bar for drinks. The specific establishment, as well as who accompanied her, is unknown.

On Friday December 2nd, Gail had plans to meet with the new landlord inside her apartment. She called her cousin around 8:30pm, annoyed that they hadn’t yet come by. Her cousin told WBUR of their conversation, “Gail was very upset because she was waiting all day for the guy that bought the house to come by to finalize this contract. At 8:30 that night, when I talked to her, he hadn’t come by yet. He's the only person that I know that she was waiting to come by. I think she was murdered that night.”

It makes sense to me that Gail picked up her ID on Thursday, and, based on the cousin’s statement, waited around for the landlord a good portion of the day on Friday until their call at 8:30. Otherwise, her trip to the PD with an impromptu happy hour contradicts her waiting for him all day at home. But it was also reported that the cousin spoke with Gail 3 days before her body was found... like I said, the clarity of Gail’s final days remains a mystery.

Boston PD’s early investigation

Boston PD crime scene technicians gathered Gail’s belongings and bagged them to be processed for clues. They were tight-lipped about the crime scene, but did confirm that there were no signs of a break-in or a struggle. Investigators speculated that Gail knew her killer and had voluntarily let them into her apartment. The level of violence that they observed suggested a personal connection.

Police began to interview her family, but quickly learned that she had not spoken to many of them in years. Gail hadn’t spoken to her sister in nearly a decade, and her mother, Marilyn, too, was estranged.

Though not revealed until much later, Gail’s autopsy results were summarized on her death certificate. It read that she had died of “blunt force head trauma and sharp force neck injuries. [She was] beaten and cut by others.” According to WBUR, “sharp force neck injuries” meant that her throat was either slashed or stabbed. Additionally, she had several cuts and bruises that she likely sustained before her fatal injuries.

Police were unable to find objects in the apartment that could have been used as the murder weapons: the killer had either left with or disposed of them. She had not been sexually assaulted. They learned from friends that Gail always carried a small handgun with her, and they noticed that it was missing from the apartment. To this day, it has not been recovered.

Investigators theorized that Gail got into a dispute with her killer which escalated. But they were at a loss—Boston PD told Boston 25 News that “they couldn’t find anyone that was angry with Gail.”

There was evidence that the culprit had covered their tracks by performing a cleanup in the apartment, but they left Gail’s body in plain sight and uncovered on the kitchen floor.

Gail’s financial struggles and surprise marriage

When Gail was in her 20’s (back in the 1970’s), she wanted to own a home in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood where she had grown up—a predominantly Black community. And after scouting around, she found a large property that had been foreclosed upon—8 Wardman Road—and she bought it for just $500. It was red brick, 3.5 stories tall, and tastefully proportioned. The whole block was one long connected building and an intricate molding at the top unified the look of the street. It was built in 1912 by a prominent local architect and today it is included on the National Register of Historic Places along with the rest of the so-called Walnut Park Historic District.

Gail lived there for her entire adult life. It’s a large building, and I suspect that it was already divided, or she divided the building up into individual apartments.

In 2003, the year before she retired from the police, she took out a $175,000 mortgage on the apartment building. In 2006, she took out a new mortgage for $357,000, likely paying off the previous, and 2007, she increased it to $401,000.

In late 2006, she made a brief reappearance in her family circle with an important announcement: Gail was getting married to Adnilson Felix Cuencas, an undocumented immigrant from Brazil. She had met him months prior, but never introduced him to anyone before her engagement.

Gerard Mullen later said,

“I liked him. I only met him a few times. I was there at their wedding when they got married at Boston City Hall. He seemed like a nice guy, he really did. All his friends seemed nice. It was strictly a marriage of convenience. And they both went in there with their eyes wide open, they both had their agenda—what they wanted.”

Gail believed that being married would help strengthen her case with authorities to adopt her sister’s grandchildren—a fight she had not forgotten. Her husband simply wanted legal residency. Not long after they married, for reasons unknown, Adnilson moved back to Brazil. But before he left, he co-signed the final mortgage on the house.

WBUR reported that her home appraised for around $375,000, so it is strange that she obtained financing in excess of that amount. A Suffolk County Land Court later told WBUR that the loan was discharged just weeks after it was recorded in 2007, meaning that it was likely paid off somehow and the mortgage lender released their claims against the house. Perhaps Gail refinanced with someone else? The Land Court official thought it was bizarre that it happened so quickly.

Gail evidently still had plenty of debt because by 2011, her house had returned to the way she discovered it—foreclosed. She hadn’t made but one mortgage payment over 4 years, which begged the question: what happened to all that money?

The lawsuit (Miles v. Watertown)

Even after Gail filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Coalition Against Discrimination, she continued working for the Watertown police department, and Ed Deveau had been promoted to top brass. She said in her filing that “Ed fostered the harassment.”

The wheels of justice turn slowly, and although MCAD eventually found merit, or in their jargon, “probable cause”, it wasn’t until 2000 that her complaint was converted into a lawsuit against Watertown PD—requesting $1 million in damages.

The legal venue for her claim was Middlesex County Superior Court, about 30 minutes north of Watertown.

On January 16th, 2001, Watertown Town Manager Michael Driscoll appointed Ed as acting chief of the police, and the hunt was on to find a permanent chief. Ed threw his name in the hat, of course, and as a result of the public attention on his nomination, Gail’s lawsuit was thrust into the limelight. It was a dark cloud over him, and throughout 2000 and 2001, there were numerous news articles published in the Watertown TAB and Press, and in the Boston Globe.

Not only was Gail’s lawsuit a thorn in his side, there was another Black officer who had brought a complaint to MCAD. Leroy Doctor, the same Leroy who Gail named in her complaints, believed the department had discriminated against him when he was harshly punished for an infraction that happened in August of 2000. He was suspended without pay for 2 days and was prohibited from participating in details, a lucrative type of overtime for Watertown Police, for two weeks. Leroy admitted that he had lied to his chief (who was John Jackson at the time) when he was working a detail at Watertown Mall. He was away from his post for over an hour, and the chief found out and disciplined him. He said that other, white officers, received much lighter penalties and pointed to an incident where a white officer was off-post for over 2 hours and had only received a letter of reprimand. He said in his complaint,

"The only thing I want is that stupid suspension taken off my record, and I want to be paid the money they owe me for those two days. There has to be some type of uniform code where everyone is treated the same.”

John Dalimonte said, "the Police Department is sticking their head in the sand, ignoring Gail Miles's pleas for help. It demonstrates deliberate indifference toward rectifying the sexually charged environment and hostility toward women in the workplace." Watertown PD, in court filings, denied all allegations in Gail’s lawsuit and fired back, calling her claim, "wholly insubstantial, frivolous, and not advanced in good faith."

The court ruled that Gail’s team could conduct preliminary interviews with about twenty Watertown police officers “ex partner”, meaning without counsel present—the inquiry was far-reaching. In addition, by spring of 2001, ten Watertown officers had already been deposed, including Acting Chief Ed Deveau. Gail’s lawyer called it an "exercise in futility” because Ed refused to answer many pertinent questions, and so John appealed to the superior court to compel him to answer.

In June of 2001, a forum was held called “A Community Dialogue”, which was attended by two women and three minority representatives from the department. They told the audience that they never felt anything but support from their colleagues. Ed addressed the attendees, saying, though the upper ranks were devoid of diversity, women and minorities only recently began joining the department. He suggested that as they accumulated time, the race and sex of higher ranks could begin to change. But Gail, at that point, had 17 years in the department. One lieutenant and two sergeants had less time on the force than her. Ed said that the promotion process included a written exam based upon a lengthy reading list, which amounted to 80% of the total score of a candidate (the balance relating to education and experience). A captain who was present at the forum said, “As of yet, we’ve never had a minority sign up.”

In September of 2001, Town Manager Michael Driscoll appointed Ed Deveau as permanent chief at 45 years old, and said, quote, “Deveau is not implicated in Gail’s harassment allegations”. Gail was 51, and had been at the department for nearly the same tenure as Ed.

In December, Gail and Ed reached a settlement, and in January, Gail and her lawyer were paid $150,000.

Half of the settlement was paid by the town's insurance carrier, and the other half by the town. The settlement also called for a mandatory training program for officers, aimed at preventing sexual and racial harassment. An instructor, certified by MCAD, would conduct the four-hour class for all 65 officers, including Ed Deveau.

The information about the settlement was not released initially by Gail or the PD, so the Boston Globe sought it through a FOIA request. The request was eventually approved, and the town’s lawyer quipped in the cover letter of the response, "As I suspect you know, cases are often settled for business reasons, rather than because the merits of the case justify a settlement.”

Gail, incredibly, decided to continue with the Watertown Police through this entire mess, but Ed, in his powerful new position, told her in 2002 that he was filing an application for her “involuntary retirement,” saying that she was unstable and unfit to be a police officer any longer. Gail later wrote, “I was hired to be fired. The department was against me from day one.”

After using up all of her accrued time off, Gail finally retired on “disability” in 2004 at 54 years old and after 22 years on the force with a pension.

Gail’s sister handles the aftermath

A few days after the murder, authorities let family members into the apartment. When Gina walked in, she did some investigating of her own. She immediately noticed a broken chair with blood spatter in plain view. Was the chair damaged during the scuffle before the murder? Gina was puzzled as to why the police had not taken it as evidence. She asked Boston PD about the chair, but they said, quote, “it offered nothing of forensic value”.

Gina disagreed, but despite her protests, the chair and the blood were never processed. In interviews, Gina said it felt as if the investigation never advanced past the first week.

Everything of value that Gail had accumulated in her 61 years of living was in that apartment, and it weighed on Gina. She had the difficult job of sorting through her estranged sister’s things. She had no room to store them herself, so she got an 8 X 10 storage unit and consolidated everything. Gina told WBUR that she was ignorant of all of the strife between Gail and Watertown PD, and it wasn’t until she was going through her personal things that she discovered all the documentation of the conflict with them.

Gina later told WBUR that she was dissatisfied with the police investigation from the beginning: “I just wish the police asked me for any documentation that I might have had that would help them with the investigation. You know, anything that they needed to see from what we might have found in the house.”

Gina asked the Boston PD if they had found her lease after she had discovered that she was in the midst of a negotiation and anticipated meeting the landlord the night of her murder. The detectives said that they hadn’t come across it, but in 2013, two years after Gail’s murder, they returned some of her personal belongings to the family. Gina went through her pocketbook and she pulled out a piece of folded paper from a zippered compartment: it was the missing lease, and it had been sitting in police custody since day one.

Reflecting on Gail’s life

Two weeks after Gail’s murder, the Watertown Police Department issued a statement which read,

“The men and women of the Department are deeply saddened by the sudden and tragic death of retired Officer Gail Miles. Officer Miles served with the police department for twenty years, from 1984 to her retirement in 2004. We hope that whoever is responsible for her death is identified and brought to justice soon. We offer our deepest sympathies to the Miles family during this difficult time.”

The department sent an honor guard to pay their respects at her funeral. Several friends and family members attended the funeral services. As the mourners gathered outside, reporters approached them to ask for their thoughts. Although some were too upset to finish their sentences, each spoke highly of Gail's trademark passion and a booming laugh that could fill a room, and expressed hope that her killer would be brought to swift justice.

Charlene, who had known Miles for more than three decades, told reporters on the day of her funeral, "It has to be someone who knows her, because she was not going to open her door to anyone.”

Days after Gail’s death, the Boston Globe reached her mother, Marilyn. She said of Gail, "She was a wonderful girl. She had a lot of friends and she loved to travel and socialize."

Jacqueline Gay, Gail’s hairdresser and friend, tearfully recalled the last conversation she had with her. Two weeks before Gail’s death, Jacqueline had called and asked if she was giving away any of her pet cats. Gail said, “I’ve already given away one cat to a friend. If I gave away another, I’d only have three left!” She, at times, had as many as ten cats and was at an all-time low.

Gail had no children.

Pallbearers carried her casket from the funeral to a hearse which ferried her to Blue Hill Cemetery in Braintree.

The new owner of Gail’s building has been tight-lipped about the case. It’s unknown if the police interviewed him or not. In 2015, WBUR, a local radio station, reached out to him for a potential interview concerning the case. He declined.

It has been 10 years since someone killed Gail Miles in her own home. Gail's mother passed away in 2017 without getting an answer. Gina continues to advocate for her sister, and recently posted a tribute on her Facebook page. Last December, she posted a picture of Gail to commemorate the tenth anniversary of her death. “God knows what will happen in his time,” she wrote, “justice will be done.”

If you have any information about the murder of Gail Miles, I encourage you to contact Boston Police Crimestoppers, 1-800-494-TIPS

Connect with Murder, She Told on instagram @MurderSheToldPodcast

Click here to support Murder, She Told

Sources For This Episode

Newspaper articles

Various articles from Boston Globe, The California Advocate Newspaper, and the Watertown TAB & Press, here.

Written by various authors including Dan Atkinson, Daniel Wolfman, Emily Sweeney, Erin Clossey, Lisa Kocian, Matt Rocheleau, Meghan E. Irons, and Meir Rinda.

Photos

Photos from Google Maps, and various newspaper articles.

Credits

Writing support, vocal performance and audio editing by Kristen Seavey

Co-written, research support, photo editing by Byron Willis

Co-written, research by Corey Sobell

Murder, She Told is created by Kristen Seavey