LAST DANCE, LAST CHANCE - and Other True Cases

by Ann Rule

  “I asked him how Debbie was doing, and he said, ‘Aww—she’ll be all right.’ That same lack of concern he always had.”

  Rose asked if she could see Debbie, and Anthony said he’d see what he could do.

  “And he did. He called and said I could go and see her the next day—Friday. My husband came home early so I could go visit her.”

  In retrospect, Anthony’s odd request of Rose Gardner may have been one of his initial steps to create a defense if suspicion should fall upon him. He knew what Debbie’s diagnosis was; most people didn’t—not yet. After that, without fail, his top suspect in Debbie’s poisoning was Dan Smith. Wasn’t it ironic, he would ask, that Debbie had gone to the hospital in August—the same month Sarah Smith died?

  Rose prayed for Debbie, and she prayed for Anthony, too. But there was a niggling, stabbing doubt in her mind. “I did pray for him—I still do,” she recalled. “But there was something…my gut feeling about him was that he was evil. I’ve never been aware of evil like that before. I’ve known people with psychiatric problems, but it wasn’t that; it was almost that he was diabolical.”

  Rose went with Anthony on Friday, August 13, to see Debbie. He went ahead of her and pointed to the room in the intensive care unit where Debbie was. Rose was surprised to see the guard at the door. She wondered why. They had to wait, and she tried to make small talk with Anthony. She asked him how things were going.

  “It was all ‘woe is me,’” Rose said. “Nothing about Debbie, but his difficulties in finding a job and all the bad luck he was having. And then I went into the room after the guard cleared me, and I talked to Debbie, and she said, ‘Rose, I’ve been poisoned.’”

  “Poisoned?” Rose echoed, her voice full of shock. “Oh, Debbie…poisoned?”

  All Rose could think was that Anthony had done it, but she couldn’t say that to Debbie. It was clear that that possibility had never occurred to Debbie.

  “It was very difficult for me,” Rose said. “I knew Debbie, I knew the kids, and we were so connected. What do you say? It wasn’t something I ever thought would happen to someone I knew so well.”

  Like several of their other neighbors, Rose noticed that Anthony seemed to be “on something.” She didn’t know if it was alcohol or some kind of drug, but he seemed so disconnected, and his affect was all wrong.

  Caroline Rago was staying with Ralph and Lauren. She would remember the moment her daughter called to tell her she’d been poisoned. “I was in the basement, and Anthony was doing something with his fax machine. Debbie told me what they found out—about her being poisoned, and I go ‘What?’ and when I got off the phone, I said to Anthony, ‘She’s been poisoned. She’s actually been poisoned,’ and he says, ‘Now, don’t go telling everybody. Don’t tell the family, because they’re gonna be pointing the finger at me.’”

  But Caroline told Carmine, her son. They had both been so frightened for Debbie.

  “Anthony would take my hand,” Debbie remembered, “and he kept telling me, ‘You know I didn’t do this, and I know you didn’t do it, so we’ll get through this—we just have to stick together. Remember that, Debbie, we have to stick together.’”

  Anthony moved out of their duplex in West Seneca while Debbie was in the hospital, saying that he couldn’t bear to be there without her. He and Polo went to live with his mother, leaving his children to be cared for by Caroline Rago or Carmine and his wife. Lena welcomed him with open arms and was once again completely supportive. Except for her fury over Tami, she had always given him whatever he wanted. Apparently, he had managed to explain that to her satisfaction, somehow managing to blame Debbie for all their marital problems.

  Everyone in Debbie’s neighborhood knew that she was very ill, but no one beyond her own family and, of course, Anthony’s family knew about the poisoning diagnosis. Shelly Palombaro lived around the corner from the Pignataros’ house. Although she and Debbie had never known each other very well, Shelly felt an urgent sense of needing to visit Debbie. Her son, D.J., had always been welcome in Debbie’s house and was friendly with Ralph. Her daughter, Aly, was Lauren’s age, and both girls were avid gymnasts.

  “I kept calling and calling Anthony,” Shelly said, “and asking him if I could go see Debbie, but he kept putting me off. I asked him what was wrong with her, and he told me this complicated medical thing and then said she had a rare virus infection of her nervous system.”

  For all Shelly knew about diagnoses, maybe Debbie did have that, but she was still determined to visit her. She left messages on Carmine Rago’s phone and on Caroline’s phone for Debbie. Finally, she went to the hospital, although Anthony obviously didn’t want her there.

  “I talked to the guard, and he let me in,” Shelly said, “and I finally got to see Deb—and I couldn’t believe how she looked.”

  Shelly was a hairdresser, and she had cut Anthony’s hair before, but she didn’t particularly like him—there was such an arrogance about him. Now, Debbie was telling her how good he’d been about coming to see her and standing by her, and it made Shelly’s stomach go flip-flop. Like Rose, she had her suspicions.

  One day Lena Pignataro came along with Anthony to visit Debbie. Caroline and Carmine Rago were there, too. They had planned to discuss what would be best for the children: who would take care of them until Debbie recovered.

  It was the first time that Lena had come to visit Debbie since her hospitalization, and she swept into the room with an angry look on her face.

  “What’s wrong, Lena?” Debbie asked, puzzled.

  “You know what’s wrong,” Lena said. “You did this to yourself, and you’re trying to frame my son.”

  “If you believe that,” Debbie said weakly, “get out of here.”

  Lena turned to Caroline and shouted, “You can have the kids!”

  “Well, I’ll gladly take the kids,” Caroline said.

  Lena left, with Anthony scampering along behind her. Caroline just stood there, stunned, but Carmine’s hands gripped the arms of the chair he sat in. Carmine Rago was a huge man, a man that Chuck Craven described as “someone Pat and I never wanted to have mad at us…never.”

  Carmine’s hands alone would dwarf a football, but like many big men he was rarely angry at anybody. Now his face flushed dark red, and the veins stood out in his forehead.

  Anthony had coaxed his mother to come back into the room and she stood with a pinched look around her mouth, staring at her paralyzed daughter-in-law with disapproval.

  “My brother will take care of the kids,” Debbie said quietly to Lena.

  Whatever Anthony might have told Lena, she seemed completely brainwashed. “You know what you did—you liar,” she spat at Debbie, who was completely confused by her attitude. “Liar!”

  On this day, however, Lena Pignataro went too far. Carmine erupted before either Debbie or Caroline could respond. He picked up a table and threw it across the room as easily as if it were a pillow. His language was not polite as he ordered Lena to get out. It wasn’t something that anyone ever expected Carmine to do, but he was worried sick about his sister.

  “She left,” Debbie said, “and Anthony just trailed after her. He had to stay on her good side.”

  A phalanx of nurses came running down the hall at the sound of the shouting and the clackety-clack of the table hitting the wall.

  It was as if all their family relationships were turning inside out. It was unbelievable, and Debbie felt as though she were living inside a soap opera.

  Lena didn’t come back, but Anthony came back—again and again. He kept reminding Debbie that they were a team and that they must not let anyone on the outside try to split them up. As long as we stick together became his mantra to her.

  Once Anthony had no choice but to accept Debbie’s diagnosis as arsenic poisoning, he insisted on getting tests done on himself. He reported back to Debbie that he, too, had arsenic in his system. It wasn’t true. He had no more poison in him than the average person. But it fit with Anthony’
s theory. He hinted that someone was trying to wreak revenge on him, and that would mean his family was a target, too.

  Debbie was far more worried about her children than she was about Anthony. If someone had poisoned her, they might also try to hurt Ralph and Lauren. On August 12, as sick as she was, she insisted on having a nurse hold the phone for her so she could call their pediatrician and ask that they be tested to be sure they didn’t have arsenic in their systems, too.

  Debbie was not allowed to eat anything that wasn’t prepared in the hospital. But Anthony brought her Snickers bars when he visited. They were still factory-wrapped, and she had no concern about eating them. But then, she had no concern about Anthony. Despite her family’s and friends’ worries that he had something to do with her poisoning, she never let such a thought approach her conscious mind. That would be too horrible even to contemplate.

  She didn’t tell anyone about the candy bars, however.

  17

  As the chelation therapy began to drain the arsenic from her system, Debbie’s doctors started her on very gradual rehabilitation. By the time she left the ICU on August 27, the numbness in her arms and legs had become excruciating pain—a positive sign that her nerves weren’t dead but represented an ordeal she would live through. “I couldn’t stand up on my own or even with the help of three nurses.”

  Her physical therapists and doctors doubted that Debbie would walk again, so they concentrated on trying to bring back her arms and hands so that she might be able to feed herself, talk on the phone, and perhaps hold a pen again.

  Debbie was gaining mobility by tiny increments when she suddenly had great trouble breathing and experienced pains in her chest. She was quickly transferred to the cardiac care unit. Tests showed that she had a small “whoosh” of blood into the pericardium, the tough, fibrous sac that surrounds the heart. Fortunately, it did no permanent damage.

  Debbie longed to be home with her children, with her husband. Oddly, she asked no questions about the details of what had happened to her or why or even who was responsible. She was strangely passive and accepting of her condition.

  In reality, she was fighting very hard not to ask herself any questions at all. She didn’t dare focus on the huge, lurking possibility in her subconscious.

  If Debbie was avoiding the obvious, D.A. Frank Sedita and his investigators Chuck Craven and Pat Finnerty were focusing intently on it, turning their suspicions like a many-sided puzzle and examining it, along with the forensic techniques they might use to prove what they suspected.

  Less than three weeks after her massive dose of arsenic, Sedita, Craven, and Finnerty were all convinced they had found enough motives to convince a jury that Debbie Pignataro’s husband had meant to kill her. But they were still a long way from arresting Anthony.

  Not the least of their problems was the attitude of the victim. With Debbie Pignataro’s complete denial that Anthony could have hurt her, they were at an impasse. At the moment, there was no chance she would testify against him. There was every chance that she, the loyal wife, would stick by him, just as she had in his previous court appearances. The three men knew they wouldn’t be able to make a dent in Debbie’s firewall of denial.

  “We need Sharon,” Craven said.

  The other two men nodded their heads. If Debbie Pignataro was going to trust anyone from the District Attorney’s Office, it would be Sharon Simon, their victim/ witness advocate. Sharon had a fine, kind touch with people in crisis and too much empathy for her own good.

  On August 26, Pat Finnerty and Chuck Craven visited Debbie in the hospital. They wanted two things: permission to search her home in West Seneca, and a lock of her hair. She gave them her O.K. to search, and she allowed them to snip hair from several spots on her head. She didn’t ask why they wanted it. The dark brown hair would be sent to the National Medical Services Laboratory in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, for hair segmentation analysis.

  Debbie knew that she had been poisoned. She had known since two days after her admission to the hospital, but she was as baffled as anyone else about the source. They asked her again if she used any pesticides or gardening products, and all she could remember was Miracle-Gro fertilizer. “Last year, we had an ant problem,” she said, “and Anthony sprayed the house.”

  “Have you eaten in any restaurants recently?” Finnerty asked.

  “About three weeks before I went to the hospital,” she said, “we stopped on Route 5, but I can’t recall the name of the restaurant. But I was sick before that—I was so weak that I had to have help walking, and Anthony had to cut up my food for me. I’d started having the tingling in my arms and legs a few days before we ate there.”

  Debbie told them that she and her husband had been having marital problems earlier in the year, but she didn’t elaborate beyond saying she had asked him to move out in February. She said she let him come back later in early summer, but she couldn’t remember which month. Her memory was coming back in some areas, but she still had some difficulty putting events of the last few months in sequence.

  Debbie was frank with them about taking too many Xanax in February, but she said that as soon as she took them, she called a friend for help. “I didn’t want to hurt myself—I just was trying to relax and go to sleep. I was so tired.”

  She said they’d been having a difficult time financially. Her husband couldn’t find a job he felt was suitable for him. “The only income we had was my salary from the pediatrician’s office, so we were living on our savings, with help from Anthony’s mother.”

  There were any number of things Debbie did not tell the two investigators, things they would find out later: She didn’t mention the checks that Anthony wrote for “cash” almost every day—checks for $100. She hadn’t known where that money was going, but she had an idea. Anthony seemed drowsy all the time. She wasn’t ready to get into that whole discussion—not yet.

  Debbie was pleasant enough to the two detectives from the Erie County D.A.’s office, but then they hadn’t pressed her about whom she might suspect.

  Later that day, Debbie called Chuck Craven and said she had told her husband that he and Finnerty had come to see her. “He wanted to know what I told you,” she said, “and I told him only what I wanted you to know.”

  Craven wasn’t sure what she meant by that. While Debbie had given them no information that would make her husband seem guilty of harming her, she might be unconsciously giving them a hint.

  Anthony was loudly espousing his own suspect. The revenge theory became his cry. He wanted Dan Smith located and investigated. He was convinced, he said, that Dan had poisoned Debbie—and that he might even be behind all the vandalism around their house that spring. Somebody was clearly out to get his whole family.

  Frank Sedita had kept track of Dan Smith, mostly because he admired his strength in adversity and wanted to be sure that Dan was doing all right. He learned that Dan had left the Buffalo area after Sarah died.

  But shortly after Debbie became critically ill, Frank phoned Dan in the Midwest town where he currently lived. He wanted him to know that Tony Pignataro was a suspect in another medically connected crime. “This time it’s his wife,” Sedita said.

  * * *

  Chuck Craven learned that Debbie had asked to have her children tested to be sure they were safe. On August 27, he and Pat Finnerty found Anthony Pignataro at Children’s Hospital. He explained that he was having his children admitted because the arsenic in their system was elevated.

  He had come there with both grandmothers, Lena Pignataro and Caroline Rago, and was standing by to be sure his children were safe. He seemed anxious to get them home.

  Later, Frank Sedita talked to the pediatric toxicologist working in the Poison Control Center. That doctor commented that Anthony was concerned when Ralph and Lauren had to stay in the hospital for further tests—but only because he wanted to be sure Ralph could play in a football game that Saturday.

  Craven and Finnerty made an appointment to talk with Antho
ny the next day. He said he would meet with them at Buffalo Mercy Hospital.

  The three men met in an office in the hospital, where Anthony was visiting Debbie. Asked about any chemicals that they might have in their home, Anthony said that they had the usual things for killing weeds and for pest control. All of those items were kept in a box in the garage.

  “Do you know who might have brought arsenic into your home?” Craven asked.

  Anthony looked baffled. “I have no idea.”

  “Who did the cooking?”

  Anthony explained that Debbie did the majority of the cooking, although he occasionally cooked meat on the barbecue grill. The only thing he could recall fixing was some packaged soup for Debbie after she became ill. He said he didn’t do the grocery shopping, and the only person who brought food into the house would be his mother-in-law, Caroline Rago.

  When the two D.A.’s investigators asked him about any troubles in his marriage, Anthony admitted to moving out in February. His wife had gotten very angry with him and changed the locks on him after she caught him with another woman. “But that’s over now,” he said earnestly. “Debbie and I have been working on our marriage.”

  Anthony told them he was very concerned because Child Protective Services in Erie County were apparently involved in the situation with his children. “Why would that be?”

  Finnerty shrugged. “By law, the hospital had to notify them.”

  Anthony told them that he felt his family was being victimized. He wondered if the county water system had been tested. Perhaps some terrorist had poisoned the county water?

  That was a long shot. No one else in their neighborhood had become ill. Indeed, there weren’t any reports of mysterious viruses or unexplained gastrointestinal upsets anywhere in West Seneca. If the public water system were contaminated, surely many people would be affected.