June 07--CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. -- Through 3-inch-thick glass in a cinderblock room deep within the razor-wire-topped walls of the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Center where he awaits trial for allegedly setting the 2006 arson fire that killed young Branford mother Kathy Hardy, John Vailette has a message.
Vailette is excited -- intense, even; his black hair slicked back, his dark eyebrows bushy, his eyes wide. He's desperate to be heard. He says it over and over again -- in person Friday and, earlier, by phone Wednesday after placing a call from behind prison walls to the New Haven Register.
He wants Hardy's family, prosecutors and the world to know so badly that he decided to tell two Register reporters without talking to his lawyer first.
He says he didn't do it -- he didn't kill Hardy.
"I'm being accused of a crime I didn't do," said Vailette, 43, by no means the first federal inmate to say that.
"I'm innocent," he said.
"I'm innocent," he repeats. "I had nothing to do with the heinous crime that happened."
Vailette said he found out he was one of two people charged with Hardy's murder in a March 26 indictment when he heard it on the 10 o'clock radio news while lying in bed in his cell in Fairton, New Jersey, where he was serving time on drug charges. He said he wanted to tell his side of the story because what has come out so far "has only been one-sided.
"I'm sure I'm going to get in trouble with my lawyers" for talking, "but it is what it is," he said, resting his elbows on a long, stainless steel counter at which several other inmates, all sitting on stools fixed to the floor, talked on phones bolted to the glass divider.
Vailette, a former heroin addict, said he has been clean for the 7 1/2 years he has been in prison, first in New Jersey and now in Rhode Island. He says he did know Hardy, who was 39 when she died, leaving her three children to be raised by their father and his new wife.
"She was a friend of my mom's, my stepfather's. ... She was a family friend" who dated his uncle, Vailette said. "We got high together."
Vailette knows the names of Hardy's kids and said they used to come to his uncle's place to swim off the deck there.
He said he has done "horrible things" over the years, but setting the fire that trapped Hardy in the second-floor bedroom of her rented Little Bay Lane home in Branford's Short Beach section is not one of them.
A grand jury indictment returned in New Haven alleges that onetime East Havener Vailette, also known as "John John" and "Snagglepuss," and Steven Martone of North Branford, also known as "Crash," spread accelerants around Hardy's Short Beach home to start the blaze.
Reached by phone, Hardy's mother, Bette Barrett said that "what my family wants -- all of us want -- is for justice to be served and we will leave that in the hands of the court. I have to wait and see what the court decides."
The family had waited for years for an arrest in the case, which was basically a cold case.
Barrett asked about a detail that appeared in Vailette's indictment regarding possessions of Hardy's that prosecutors said they discovered in a pickup truck "registered to his girlfriend."
"The truck, which had been hidden in New Haven for a period of time in the aftermath of the fire, was found at the home of another close associate of Vailette's," the indictment states. "A silver serving platter and jewelry that belonged to the decedent, Kathy Hardy, was found inside the truck."
Confronted with this information, Vailette responded by saying that Hardy had given her the platter and jewelry so he could turn around and pawn it for cash to pay for more heroin.
"I needed a fix," he said. "At that point, I needed to score something every day."
Barrett, told about Vailette's response, said the truth should come out in court.
"My family wants justice. We have waited a long time for it and we see the light at the end of the tunnel," Barrett said. "We'll see what the court decides."
Barrett said federal prosecutor John Durham "doesn't prosecute a case he can't win."
Durham most recently was the federal prosecutor tasked with putting away notorious Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger. Durham won a conviction last August, nabbing Bulger on 31 of 32 counts, including his involvement in the murders of 11 people.
Prosecutors did not immediately return a call for comment. Neither did Branford police spokesman Capt. Geoffrey Morgan.
Vailette's lawyer, Craig A. Raabe, declined to comment.
Vailette said he knows Martone but has not spoken to him since his 2007 sentencing. He declined to elaborate on the nature of his relationship with Martone, adding that he did not want to speak on Martone's behalf.
Vailette added he initially contacted police after Hardy's death became public, "saying something is wrong. I went out of my way to contact them," he said.
But authorities later set him up, he claims, saying they manipulated him into selling drugs for the express purpose of getting him into jail so they could lean on him to try to get more information.
"I gave them everything I could" prior to that, Vailette said. "I tried to direct them every way that they could go."
Later, "they got me and my wife, who were struggling with addiction, on selling drugs," he said.
"I was never a drug dealer. I was a user," Vailette said. "They created this case ... to hold me, to try to get information."
A copy of Vailette's May 7, 2007, federal arrest affidavit states that a 23-year veteran FBI special agent assigned to the New Haven field office's domestic terrorism squad oversaw the drug investigation. The affidavit states that Vailette "sold, or brokered the sale," of approximately 48 grams of crack cocaine on six different occasions to the same FBI informant.
"During several of those transactions, (the informant) was accompanied by a law enforcement officer acting in an undercover capacity," the affidavit added.
Vailette also spoke about his past. He said his father died when he was 12 years old.
"Guy was 37 years old and dropped dead of a heart attack at the doctor's office," Vailette said about his father.
Vailette, who has four daughters, ages 9 through 20, added that if and when he is released, he wants to work with young people to help make sure they don't copy his decisions.
"I don't want them to be me," he said.
Had he not been indicted in connection with Hardy's killing, Vailette would still be staring at a cellblock wall in New Jersey. He noted, however, that he was due to enter a halfway house somewhere in Connecticut this summer.
With a wide-eyed glance from Vailette, the topic then turned to the discussion about who, if not him, actually set the fatal fire in 2006.
Vailette says that in his New Jersey prison "when I was going to church every week, I was putting in the prayer book that I want them to find the person who killed Kathy Hardy.
"I want it, too, because" what happened to Hardy "is wrong," he said.
But with regard to Hardy's family, Vailette said, "I'm saying that the government's lying to them and leading them in the wrong direction.
"But I have nothing to do with that," he said.
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