Frank Eltman / AP

Katie Beers, whose kidnapping attracted nationwide headlines in 1992, poses for a photo on Monday.

OLD WESTBURY, N.Y. — Being chained as a 10-year-old for more than two weeks in a coffin-size box in a suburban New York dungeon was, Katie Beers says 20 years later, "the best thing that happened to me" because it allowed her to escape a life of abuse.

On the 20th anniversary of her ordeal, Beers has co-written a book with a television reporter who covered her kidnapping. "Buried Memories: Katie Beers' Story" (Title Town Publishing) has a happy ending.

Beers is now a 30-year-old married mother of two who earned a degree in business management and works in insurance sales near her home in rural Pennsylvania.

Her kidnapping attracted nationwide attention in early 1993, when revelations surfaced while she was still missing that she had suffered years of neglect from her mother and had been repeatedly sexually assaulted by her godmother's husband since she was a toddler.

Beers was described in Dickensian terms back then — a louse-infested, filthy waif who had no friends and often was forced to lug the family's laundry down the block or fetch cigarettes and junk food for her elders.

After kidnapper John Esposito, a family acquaintance, admitted to detectives on Jan. 13, 1993, that he had kidnapped Beers and showed them the dungeon where she was hidden for 17 days under his Bay Shore, N.Y., home, the little girl was placed in foster care and raised in a comfortable East Hampton home with four siblings.

Life after abduction
Her foster parents not only imposed newfound discipline into her life, making her go to school regularly and do small chores around the house, but they also shielded Beers from intense media interest. And reporters largely complied with a parent-like plea from a prosecutor to leave her alone.

"We as a society must protect this child, or our professed love for own children is just a fraud, and our so-called compassion for each other is just a mockery," said James Catterson, at the time the Suffolk County district attorney.

So Beers had barely been seen or heard from since until this week in a media blitz to promote the book. She appeared Monday on the "Dr. Phil" show and is the focus of a People magazine feature this week.

The abduction and subsequent rescue saved her life, Beers said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"The best thing that happened to me," she said. "I would have never gotten out of the abuse situation I was in."

She went on to play volleyball at East Hampton High, participated in drama productions and went to college in Pennsylvania, where she earned a degree and met the man who would become her husband and the father of their two children.

"There's no point really in me right now being sad or wondering what if," she told the AP.

"I try not to be sad about what happened, because ultimately it made me who I am today, and I'm very satisfied and happy with my life," she said.

Beers agreed about four years ago to co-write the book with WCBS-TV reporter Carolyn Gusoff, although she had thought about writing a book for many years.

"I want to be able to help people who might not know where to turn," she explained. "To see that there is a road to recovery."

She has declined to disclose her exact hometown, married surname or college alma mater, citing privacy concerns for her family.

New details on past nightmares
In the book, Beers writes that she had been molested and raped by Sal Inghilleri — her godmother's husband — from the time she was a toddler. Inghilleri, who served 12 years in prison for molesting Beers, died in jail in 2009 following his arrest on a parole violation.

Michael Alexander / AP file

In this Jan. 18, 1993 file photo, a crane raises a bunker out of the earth from the property of John Esposito in Bay Shore, N.Y. where he kept Beers imprisoned for 17 days in the cement and wood bunker, which contains a trap door.

Beers also writes that Esposito raped her in the dungeon, explaining that she repressed her memory of the sexual assault for many years as a defense mechanism.

Esposito, who pleaded guilty to kidnapping, was never charged with rape. He is serving 15 years to life and has been denied parole several times; his next parole hearing is later this year. At a 2007 parole hearing, Esposito described himself as asexual and said while he kissed the child, he never engaged in sexual relations.

He told Gusoff in a letter published in the book that he believes he deserves to be released.

"I think Katie knows I will always wish her well," Esposito writes. "I'm sorry for what I've done. I'm sorry I even thought it up. It was a mistake."

During her time in the dungeon, Beers writes, she rarely slept, fearing abuse from Esposito. She said she was afraid Esposito might molest her while she slept, but also was concerned that he would photograph her sleeping and send the image to police. She feared if police thought she was dead, they might end their search for her.

She "celebrated" her 10th birthday while a prisoner of Esposito's and was heard on an audiotape found in the dungeon after her release singing "Happy Birthday" to herself, although she says today she has no recollection of that.

Esposito, she writes, fed her primarily junk food and soda; to this day she is repulsed by chocolate after-dinner mints because they were a staple in captivity. She did have access to a small television, but says she can no longer listen to Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" because it played incessantly on MTV and VH1 while she in the dungeon.

She didn't realize it until many years later, but says now that she frequently watched Gusoff — then a reporter for Long Island's News12 cable station — filing reports on the police search for her while she was missing.

"It was like I had known her for 16 years" when they met in 2008 to begin work on the book, she said.

Silver linings
Gusoff notes that as abhorrent as Beers' sexual abuse and neglect was at the hands of her elders before the kidnapping, it may have steeled her into a survival mode.

Dominick Varrone, the Suffolk County detective who led the investigation, agreed, telling Gusoff in the book that "because of her upbringing, the sexual experiences, the abuse, and street smarts and toughness, she was much more advanced than the normal 9-year-old, and we believe that contributed to her survival."

Marilyn Beers, who is described in the book as a hard-working but largely absentee mother who ceded responsibility for raising Katie and her older brother to Inghilleri's wife and others, did not return a telephone message seeking comment about the book.

"I hope that more does come out of the book," Katie Beers said. "I would love to be able to help other kids or adults or to be an inspirational or motivational speaker, something like that. But if I go back to my life in rural Pennsylvania and go back to my insurance sales job I would love that, too.

"I'm very happy with where I'm at."

The book "Most Wanted" was published Tuesday.

We have an excerpt from a book published Tuesday about the hunt for a Boston organized crime boss, "Most Wanted: Pursuing Whitey Bulger, the Murderous Mob Chief the FBI Secretly Protected," by Thomas J. Foley, Col. [Ret.], Massachusetts State Police, and John Sedgwick.

"Most Wanted" is the account of the former head of the Massachusetts State Police, Thomas J. Foley, and his 20-year pursuit of murderous Boston gangster Whitey Bulger, and of Foley's role in exposing the FBI's protection of Bulger's criminal empire. 

James "Whitey" Bulger led the Winter Hill Gang, an Irish American crime family based in South Boston from around 1979 to 1994. He was often hailed as a local hero and modern day Robin Hood, dedicated to protecting the neighborhood and its residents. But he was a hardened criminal who created an empire based on extortion and intimidation and murdered over fifty people. On June 23, 2011, Whitey Bulger, No. 1 on the FBI's Most Wanted list, was arrested after sixteen years on the run.  The Whitey Bulger trial is scheduled to begin November 5, 2012.

An excerpt from Chapter 2 of "Most Wanted":

At Christmas in 1991, we were about a year into the Bulger investigation.  I was with a few guys from my team at Joe Tecce’s, the big, splashy restaurant in the North End.  Big John Tutungian, Sly Scanlan, our hookup guy Chuck Hanko and a few others.  It was the annual Christmas party of the Boston office of the FBI for a lot of law enforcement people around New England.

FBI special agent John Connolly, one of the bigger showboats, always played the host.   Remember, this was when the local FBI and State Police were supposedly working night and day to get Whitey Bulger arrested and sent away.  Guess where the booze came from?  A liquor store called the Rotary Variety in South Boston that was owned by Whitey Bulger himself.  That was the rumor back then, that Connolly picked it up there himself, and it turned out to be the truth: We were drinking Whitey’s booze.

My guys were bothered by the idea, needless to say.  We drank, sure, but the beer did not go down easy.  But, starting with Connolly, a lot of FBI agents seemed to think it was a matter for a few jokes, some hearty claps on the back, and maybe another round on Whitey.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston also had some law enforcement people in from around New England for a little get-together from time to time.  A bunch of FBI agents swung by for one of them that year, 1991, and some “Staties,” including me.  By then, we’d started to make some serious progress on the Bulger investigation, and I was feeling good about how things were coming along.  A couple of agents clanged beer bottles together and yelled for quiet and then they announced they wanted to make a presentation.  They did it up big, asked all to crowd around, and got all solemn.  When everyone was quiet, one of the FBI agents called out:  “Everyone, this is a very special occasion for all of us here, and we’d like to present an award to a distinguished trooper from the State Police.   Would Corporal Tom Foley please step forward?”

There was a little too much tittering in the crowd.   My friend Fred Wyshak, the assistant United States Attorney, had been given an “award” from the feds just the year before, and he didn’t appreciate his very much.  So I stayed right where I was.

“Tom Foley, please?” one of them repeated.  .

By now, the room was dead silent.   I still didn’t move, so the feds came toward me, and drew many of the attendees, many of them my superiors in the State Police, in a ring around us.   One of the agents made a little unfunny speech about my investigative zeal in the Bulger case.  That got some laughs, but not many.

Then the two agents handed me my award, which was wrapped up in tissue paper.  “Go ahead, Tom, open it up,” one of them told me.

I pulled the tissue paper away, and scanned the plaque.  It read: “THE MOST HATED MAN IN LAW ENFORCEMENT.”  It had a picture of me with my name underneath.

They wanted me to read it out to the crowd, but no way.  So one of them did the honors, while I just glared at him.

The FBI agents in the crowd got a chuckle out of it, but not too many other people did, and I certainly didn’t.  Still, the agents shook my hand, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “Congratulations, Trooper, you’ve earned it.”

I still have that trophy someplace, and whenever I want to remember what it was really like to work that case, I take it down and look at it.  Then everything comes rushing back.

The most hated man in law enforcement.  I’m proud of that, prouder of that than I have been of any other award I have ever received.  This book is about how I earned that honor.  It’s the story of my twenty year quest to bring Whitey Bulger to justice when hardly anyone outside my little band of overworked state police investigators like Tutungian, Scanlan, and Hanko, and a dogged agent from the DEA named Dan Doherty and a few others who came later, gave a @!$%#, quite frankly, and the FBI did about everything in its power to stop us.

In 1990, when our investigation kicked in, Whitey Bulger was by far the most dominant figure in the Irish mob.  The Mafia had started to flame out, leaving the Irish mob about the only mob of any impact in Boston.  Steve Flemmi, or Steve “The Rifleman” Flemmi as the newspapers always put it (so named for his lethal shooting skills as a paratrooper during the Korean War), came in second to Whitey, Flemmi was up there largely because he was tight with Bulger; Whitey would have ranked regardless.   Still, Flemmi was the only mobster Whitey trusted, had ever trusted, or even spoke to on any kind of regular basis.  Third was probably “Cadillac Frank” Salemme, so named for his favorite car, who had recently emerged from prison to claim control of what was left of the New England Mafia.  He’d relied on Flemmi for help in getting established, which meant that he was drawing on Whitey’s reputation, too.  In the Boston mob scene, Whitey had all the power—others simply borrowed it.  But all three of these men were woven in tightly to our case.

By 1990, Bulger was sitting on a criminal empire the newspapers pegged at $50 million.   It came from his marijuana smuggling, cocaine dealing, extortion, illegal liquor distribution, pilferage, racketeering, gaming, and loansharking, but he’d do about anything if enough money was on the table.  Although he was rarely seen around town, even in South Boston, his presence was everywhere.  If there was a crime anywhere in the city that involved scaring the crap out of someone, it was probably Whitey’s doing.  If there was a legitimate business to be muscled in on, Whitey again.  If someone needed to be made an example of, Whitey.

Whitey was just plain smarter than the other mobsters, better connected, with keener instincts.  But most important of all he was utterly ruthless.  More than most gangsters, Whitey could always think several steps ahead, sure.  But it was his ability to scare the @!$%# out of people that made the difference.  Terror was his business.  It wasn’t just killing people.  All mobsters killed people.  By now, Whitey’s official tally is up to nineteen, but the real count is probably twice that, if you add up all the virtual unknowns from the gangland wars earlier on when he was making a name for himself as a killer.  Those victims weren’t widely missed after their bodies dropped into the trunk of a car, or dumped in some alley.  But more than the numbers, it was the way he killed, at extremely close range, the tip of the gun right up in the soon-to-be dead’s face, so that last thing they saw on this earth was Whitey Bulger hovering over them, relishing it, before he blew them away, the blood splattering on him, as if that brought him the greatest satisfaction there was.  People who were there told us that Whitey liked to lie down afterward, and a weird calm would descend over him.  “Like he’d taken a Valium,” one of them said.  And the whole scene was so grotesque, so horrible, he knew that word would get out about what he’d done, and that would be good for him too.  Do that enough, and you have to do it less.  Whitey Bulger has to be the most cold-blooded killer in Boston’s history.  If he isn’t, I wouldn’t want to know the guy who is.

None of this was a big secret in Boston.  Most people knew the basics of what Whitey was about.    But, until we came along, no one in law enforcement had been able to do what law enforcement is supposed to do—namely get a bastard like that off the street before he kills somebody else.  Whitey had been at large since 1965, when he emerged from his only prison stint, served mostly in Leavenworth and Alcatraz for a string of bank robberies, the last one in the Midwest.  Since then, he hadn’t been touched by law enforcement.  Never questioned, never indicted, never arrested.  Not once.  It was like Whitey Bulger was a model citizen.

To the FBI, it was like Bulger didn’t matter.  Despite his fearsome reputation, he had nothing to do with anything.  Well, we thought differently. There are plenty of things to say about the FBI, but I’ll save most of them for later.  For now, I’ll just say that I have never known any organization, or any individual, where what they said, and what they did, had so little to do with each other.  But the funny part is, the FBI thinks that’s fine, even now.  Since I got that Most Hated award, federal judges, Congressional Committees, and countless newspaper accounts have all agreed that the FBI’s problems go very deep.  They did here.  The feds stymied our investigation of Whitey, got us investigated on bogus claims, tried to push me off the case, got me banished to a distant barracks, phonied up charges against other members of the State Police, lied to reporters, misled Congress, drew in the President of the United States to save themselves, nearly got me and my investigators killed, and—well, I’ll tell you and.

The Most Hated Man in Law Enforcement, indeed.

---

This is an excerpt from "Most Wanted: Pursuing Whitey Bulger, the Murderous Mob Chief the FBI Secretly Protected," by Thomas J. Foley, Col. [Ret.], Massachusetts State Police, and John Sedgwick. Printed courtesy of Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

About the authors
In 2004, Thomas J. Foley was awarded the United States Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service for his role in the Whitey Bulger/John Connolly investigation. A career officer with the Massachusetts State Police, Col. Thomas J. Foley rose to become its highest ranking officer in 2001. Since retiring in 2004, Foley teaches criminology at the University of New Hampshire.

John Sedgwick is the author of ten books, including two celebrated novels and the family memoir In My Blood. A longtime contributor to GQ, Newsweek, and the Atlantic, he wrote the first national expose of the exploits of Whitey Bulger in GQ in 1992.