The Murders of Kathy Perry and Rhonda Travers (Rhode Island) – Part 2

For years, the murders of Rhonda Travers and Kathy Perry sat stagnant without any promise of justice, but when an Informant surfaced with a story about a suspect who had never before been investigated, it changed everything. 

“There’s always names that come up in every case,” Sgt. Pierce explained, “You know, look at this one, look at that one, whatever. There’s always something though that just doesn’t fit, you know? And these people get ruled out for whatever reason. They had alibis, they had this or what have you. In these two cases, once his name surfaced everything fit, everything.”

This is part two of a two-part series. Find part one of the series here.

Where We Left Off

Warwick Police Detective Sergeant Fred Pierce was several years into the renewed investigation of the 1986 homicide of 20-year old Kathy Perry when he received a phone call from Robert “Bob” Catlow, the Chief Inspector of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections. Chief Catlow had seen the Facebook page that Fred had created for Kathy Perry’s case.

“Long story short,” Sgt. Pierce began, “He said I have a long time informant at the ACI who is willing to come forward with information. He knows who killed Kathy.”

When Chief Catlow relayed the name of the person this informant claimed killed Kathy Perry, it stopped Sgt. Pierce in his tracks. 

“And he told me, Stanley. We use the name Stanley. And was like, oh boy,” he said.

Stanley is not the suspect’s real name. Sgt. Pierce requested to use this fake name when referring to the suspect, and we’re honoring that request. 

Fred had first heard the name Stanley several years earlier when a West Warwick detective called him up following a local news article about the reopening of Kathy’s case. The West Warwick detective told him that Stanley had previously been convicted of manslaughter in another cold case, that of Cheryl Johnson, and thought he was worth checking out. Sgt. Pierce looked into the perpetrator Cheryl’s case at the time, but wasn’t convinced he was right for Kathy’s murder. 

“I wonder how much time I lost because of the fact that I did not pay all that attention to Stanley when he was brought up by the West Warwick detectives,” Sgt. Pierce reflected.

Now with an informant claiming that Stanley killed Kathy Perry, Sgt. Pierce intended to make up for that lost time and dove headfirst into learning everything there was to know about his suspect.

Cheryl Johnson Case

Stanley’s adult criminal history in the state of Rhode Island dates back to at least May of 1987 when he was arrested by Cranston Police on charges of assault with a dangerous substance. Court records show he pleaded no contest to simple assault and battery in that case. 

He was convicted of breaking and entering in 1988 and then throughout the 90s, he was charged and convicted of sexual assault in the first degree, robbery, another conviction for sexual assault in the first degree, conspiracy robbery, and escape. Also on his laundry list of crimes was stabbing someone with a screwdriver. A Stanley brand screwdriver, hence the fake name Sgt. Pierce chose. 

In 2001, Stanley was indicted for first-degree murder in the case of Cheryl Johnson. According to reporting by the Providence Journal, on December 29, 1990, the body of 22-year old Cheryl Johnson was found at the bottom of her apartment stairs. She’d been strangled. There was a VCR missing from her apartment. 

Zachary R. Mider reports that about three months later, Stanley called police and admitted he and a friend drove to Cheryl’s apartment together during the last week of December 1990. Stanley claimed he waited in the car while his friend went inside to steal Cheryl’s VCR. 

Stanley and his friend were arrested and charged with theft relating to the stolen VCR, but the charges were later dropped. The friend denied any involvement in the crimes. 

No doubt, Stanley’s admission that he had been at or near Cheryl’s apartment the week of her murder and the fact that he knew a VCR was missing from her place made him a strong suspect in her death. But Cheryl’s murder investigation went cold, and it wasn’t until 1998 when Detective Sergeant Richard Silva reopened the case alongside Detective Fernando Araujo…Who, of course, put Stanley’s name on Sgt. Pierce’s radar to begin with. 

The detectives interviewed witnesses, some ACI inmates among them, and learned that Stanley was going around talking about Cheryl’s murder saying that he did it. In 2001, after further investigation of these claims and other evidence in the case, Stanley was finally indicted for first-degree murder. 

However, in 2004, he took a deal, pleading no contest to a lesser charge of manslaughter in Cheryl’s death.

Stanley was already incarcerated at the time, and had been since 1991. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison, which would run concurrently with his other sentence, and it was retroactive to the date of his indictment back in 2001, so he was on schedule to complete the sentence in April of 2015, but was eligible to earn credit for good behavior, and he did.

Upon his release, Stanley reoffended. In April of 2013, he was arrested on charges of kidnapping, first degree robbery, and assault with intent to commit a specific felony. Those charges were dismissed, and instead in 2015, Stanley entered a plea of no contest on charges of assault with intent to commit specified felonies and he was sentenced as a habitual criminal to 20 years in prison with 8 years suspended and probation. 

Those are just Stanley’s convictions I was able to uncover. He is a violent individual with a history of sexual offenses, and was known to talk about his crimes with other inmates, some of whom went on to testify against him in the Cheryl Johnson case. According to the informant brought to Sgt. Pierce by Chief Catlow, Stanley had allegedly claimed responsibility for Kathy Perry’s murder, too.

The Informant Interview

I only have a vague background on the Informant, and that’s by design to protect his identity. Sgt. Pierce told me that the Informant had previously served time for homicide himself and had ties to organized crime. He met Stanley in prison by way of Stanley’s biological father, who was also incarcerated with them at the same time. The Informant was deemed trustworthy by Stanley’s father, who had a degree of respect among the prison population, and so Stanley had allegedly told the informant a lot of things, including details about the murder of Cheryl Johnson. The Informant cooperated with police and testified as part of the investigation into Cheryl’s case.

The Informant agreed to speak with Sgt. Pierce in the presence of Chief Catlow. And in early January of 2012, Sgt. Pierce finally sat down with the Informant.

During that interview, the Informant shared a long and extremely specific account of what Stanley had allegedly told him about the murder of a woman named Kathy Perry. According to the Informant, Stanley said he’d met Kathy through a friend and thought she was beautiful. He wanted her and intended to have her. When he saw her pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of the night on September 15, 1986, Stanley stopped to see if she needed help. He offered to give her a ride home, but she said no. 

The Informant said that Stanley was persistent, trying to get Kathy to leave with him, but she kept refusing. And then Stanley lunged at her. He allegedly put her in a chokehold which made her lose consciousness. According to the Informant’s recollection of what Stanley supposedly told him, Stanley got Kathy into his car and drove to the location where she was found. She regained consciousness while he was removing her clothing, and then he killed her.

The Informant told Sgt. Pierce something that he believes is the most critical of all details; it’s something only the real killer would have known. According to the Informant’s recollection, Stanley was adamant that he did not sexually assault Kathy. 

At the time Sgt. Pierce was sitting down with the Informant, the public assumption remained that Kathy was sexually assaulted based partly on the state of undress and autopsy findings of sexual activity within 72 hours of her death. But Sgt. Pierce knew otherwise. 

“Not until 2010 when I met with the Department of Health and we went through a lot of evidence. There was some indication, there may have been some sexual activity, but even then they could only say that maybe she was sexually active 72 hours before, which was three days. And she had a boyfriend and I interviewed her boyfriend and he said, yeah, we were active that weekend,” Sgt. Pierce explained.

Two big questions here that I’m sure have popped up in your mind already: If this Informant knows so much about the case, how do we know he didn’t kill Kathy? And why was the Informant so motivated to tell a detective this story?

The Informant was incarcerated at the time of Kathy’s murder, so he could not have done it. As far as his motivations: He already tried telling police in a different jurisdiction about Stanley’s alleged involvement in Kathy’s murder, but he wasn’t given the time of day. He wanted to try again because he felt that Stanley was a quote-unquote “sick” person. The prison population is commonly unfriendly to offenders who victimize women. 

To Fred, the informant seemed trustworthy. Chief Catlow also vouched for the guy’s integrity, criminal record be damned, but Sgt. Pierce obviously needed to vet all the information himself. In that process, he encountered a witness whose testimony helped surface a connection between Kathy’s case and the case of Rhonda Travers that had never before been investigated.

Sgt. Pierce broke it down, explaining, “At the time when I was investigating these, I was getting my master’s degree, and then one of my instructors told me about what they call routine activity theory, where everybody goes about their routine and that’s how crimes of opportunity come up. And then I realize it, it’s not about connecting Kathy to Rhonda, it’s about connecting both of them to their assailant and that kind of opened my eyes to what they call linkage blindness in law enforcement. It took away that linkage blindness and it had nothing to do with Kathy and Rhonda being linked together. It had to do with linking them to their assailant.”