And Never Let Her Go: Thomas Capano: The Deadly Seducer

by Ann Rule

  On the second sheet of paper, Tom had made notes to refresh his memory. It seemed very important that he be able to recall whom he had spoken to on June 28 and what their knowledge of his private life was.

  He had called someone (whom they later determined was attorney David McBride) to decline a golf date that afternoon.

  He had called Deputy Attorney General Keith Brady “to make plans to meet for happy hour that evening so had pleasant conversation with Laura Kobosko and asked her to convey message to Keith.”

  Under the Brady notes, Tom wrote, “knew of relationship with Anne Marie; knew I had concluded she was a ‘head case.’ ” He also noted that Brady had helped him move carpets into his house “in October.”

  The rest of the notes Tom had hidden were chilling remembrances of Anne Marie. His reminders to himself focused on several elements: her instability, her incompetence at handling money, her family problems, and how she told him her innermost thoughts. It was clear he also wanted to have an explanation ready if her blood was ever found in his house.

  “On Tuesday, June 18,” Tom wrote,

  called for AMF and Ginny said she had gone home because of a “problem” . . . AMF later same day advised that trip home was necessitated by blood stains on clothing from heavy menstrual flow.

  AMF came to my house for dinner—got salmon from Toscana: irrational; fear of pregnancy; sexual contact.

  Dinner at Dilworthtown Inn on 6/20; lobster tail . . . discussed second job (waitress at fine dining establishment); showed me check register (writes on every line; take home pay of $844;) returned to Grant Avenue.

  There were more pages, details of dates, discussions, and phone calls with Anne Marie. Tom had obviously been totally obsessed with her and all the minutiae of her life. But he denigrated her and her family. His perception was that her siblings were not treating her well. Indeed, he jotted down negative comments about how almost everyone in Anne Marie’s life was treating her badly and “driving her crazy.”

  Everyone but Tom.

  For June 27, Tom had written: “Appointment with Dr.; don’t like him; expensive ($55 for 20 minutes.); offer ticket to Hare event (I had 12) She chooses Panorama instead; reservation for 7:00; call at 6:25 from office to advise on way; very depressed.”

  From Jacqueline Dansak’s description of the unhappy woman she waited on, Anne Marie hadn’t wanted to be at the Panorama with Tom. She hadn’t eaten anything and had seemed miserable. When had she told him she no longer wanted to see him, not as a lover and not even as a friend? In his Jeep Cherokee going home? At her own apartment? Or during what the three investigators believed were the very last moments of her life, in the great room off Tom’s kitchen?

  Some kind providence had given them a timeline. All they had to do was follow it back, decipher what Tom’s abbreviations meant, and find the evidence that might be connected to the entries he had hidden so carefully. They had worked long hours of overtime and they had been lucky. Would fortune continue to smile upon them?

  Life and work didn’t stop for any of them. They all had other cases to work, in between their investigations of Anne Marie’s case. When it began, Connolly had a one-year-old son. (He would have two more sons before it was over.) Donovan and Alpert both had very young children at home, but there wasn’t much family time. “Christmas came and went for two years,” Alpert would recall, “and we hardly knew it.”

  THE Christmas season of 1996–97 was the second holiday season Debby had spent with Tom, and things seemed to her, at least, to be normal. They were talking about marriage and the future. For the most part, Tom was very good with her children, and her son, Steve, idolized him. A year ago, Tom had been so moody, but she understood that. It was his first Christmas away from his daughters.

  Victoria was not as fond of Tom. He humiliated her as she came downstairs to meet her date for the Holiday Dance. She looked beautiful in a little black, sleeveless dress, and she was so excited; her date and all of their friends were watching her entrance.

  “You look like a slut,” Tom said, but he was smiling, “just like a little slut.”

  Victoria burst into tears, sobbing in front of her friends. When Debby looked at him, horrified, he was surprised. “What? What?” he asked. “I didn’t mean that as an insult. I say that to my girls all the time. They think it’s funny.”

  “I never liked him after that night,” Victoria would recall, although Tom left an apology on her answering machine and he assured Debby he hadn’t meant anything negative.

  They smoothed it over, but Victoria viewed Tom cautiously after that. But her mother was going to marry him and she was so happy. In all the years before, Debby had waited at the edge of Tom’s holidays. She had helped him choose presents for his girls, and one year she had even gone with him downstate to pick up the puppy he was giving them. Kay never knew that the dog she loved so much had ridden home from the kennel cuddled in Debby’s arms.

  Tom had never bought Debby sentimental or impractical presents, and again he ran true to form. For Christmas 1996, he gave her a cobalt blue KitchenAid mixer. It had all the bells and whistles, cost over $300, and was something she had wanted, but it wasn’t exactly what a man in love might pick out.

  Tom sensed that Debby was disappointed. “He asked me, ‘What would you really like?’ ” she recalled, “and I said, ‘You’ve never bought me anything nice—any jewelry.’ So two days later, he came walking into my house with this ‘guilt’ gift, a solid gold necklace. I told him I’d wear it all the time, and I did—for a long time. I still believed I was the only one in his life.”

  She was very touched. It wasn’t an engagement ring, but the chunky solid gold necklace felt warm around her neck, reminding her that Tom loved her. Debby was forty-seven years old and she had never believed that anyone had truly loved her. Now she did.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  ON JANUARY 3, 1997, the affidavit that Eric Alpert had prepared five months before as he sought a search warrant for Tom’s house was released to the public. Dozens of facts and theories filled the News-Journal’s pages, and few of them burnished Tom’s reputation as a devoted family man and a kind and concerned friend. Nor did the headline, Evidence Points to Capano.

  As, of course, the evidence did. The explicit coverage caught Tom’s attorneys off guard and they asked for time to respond. U.S. Attorney Greg Sleet, Connolly’s boss, refused to comment on one of the few aspects of the case that the public didn’t know: the test results on the blood spots found in Tom’s house. The investigators had known for months that they matched Anne Marie’s DNA, but that information wasn’t in the affidavit and they were under no obligation to reveal it.

  “I think Tom realized for the first time,” Connolly said, “that he was playing out of his league. He had expected all along that he would be dealing with the Wilmington Police Department. It wasn’t that we had loads and loads of money. This was basically an investigation run by three people—Donovan, Eric, and myself—who, on occasion, would bring in others like Ron Poplos.

  “I believe that the shorter the loop, the better,” he continued. “We didn’t talk to anyone, except for Greg Sleet. No one really knew what was happening on the case.”

  Now, for the first time, Debby MacIntyre’s name appeared in conjunction with Tom’s. It was only a two-sentence notation, almost hidden in the column after column of details: “On June 28, 1996, at 12:30 a.m., *69 was also dialed from Capano’s phone. This retrieved a call from 47-year-old Debby MacIntyre, a Tatnall School director and Capano friend who lives on Delaware Avenue.”

  Tom had assured Debby that there was nothing to worry about, that things were almost back to normal. But in fact, the investigation was just beginning to move into high gear. And the News-Journal’s January 3 coverage of the Fahey-Capano case rekindled public interest.

  Like most law enforcement professionals, all three of the men who were investigating the case had private telephone listings. But at 3 A.M. the next morning, Colm Con
nolly’s phone rang. When he answered it, there was no voice on the other end of the line.

  At 3 A.M. the morning after that, Eric Alpert’s phone rang. When he answered, there was only silence.

  At 3 A.M. on Saturday morning, Bob Donovan’s phone rang. When he answered, it was the same.

  While they could not be certain, they had little doubt who was making the calls. If it was a silent threat telling them to back off, it didn’t work. They had all known going in that their investigation would be unpopular with any number of people. And there was no way to be anonymous in Wilmington. The Connollys had bought their home from a good friend of Tom Capano. One of their sons was scheduled to be in a preschool class taught by a woman who supported Tom loyally; they were asked to withdraw their child. Indeed, Kay Capano was the Connollys’ pediatrician’s nurse-practitioner. Although they knew she was excellent at her job, it would be awkward. They arranged to see the pediatrician alone.

  It seemed that all the lives involved in this complicated case were woven together in some bizarre cross-stitched tapestry. Initially there were as many people who backed Tom loyally as there were those who grieved for Anne Marie and her family. In Wilmington, seventy thousand people were like two thousand—all of whom knew one another in some capacity. And everyone had an opinion.

  For Kathleen, Robert, Kevin, Mark, and Brian Fahey, the release of the affidavit brought no good news. They understood now the whys of the July search of Tom’s house, but it confirmed their fears that Anne Marie was dead. When Charlie Oberly denounced the FBI as running an investigation “fueled by innuendo and rumor” and said that the Capano family’s right to privacy had been “totally destroyed,” the Faheys were angry. Their sister had lost her privacy—and so much more—months ago.

  Tom’s attorneys released four notes that further obliterated Anne Marie’s confidentiality. Written on the governor’s stationery in May and June of 1996, they were short notes to “Tommy.” To someone who didn’t understand how hard she had struggled to leave Tom without setting off an emotional explosion, they sounded friendly.

  “Tommy,” said one of the notes,

  Hola Amigo! I wanted to drop you a wee note to let you know how much I appreciate all you have done and continue to do for me. You’re a very genuine person.

  We’ve been through a lot the past couple of years, and have managed (through hard work, determination and perhaps a bit of stubborn Irishness and Italian tempers!) to prevail. You’ll always own a special piece of my heart.

  Love you—

  Annie (Me)

  The note was a prime example of Anne Marie’s gentle way of saying good-bye. Tom could have a piece of her heart, but he could no longer own all of her. Connolly, Alpert, and Donovan understood too well what Anne Marie was saying in her deliberately cheerful notes; they knew that her blood had stained Tom’s walls. They also knew they were still a long way from building an airtight case against him.

  When Charlie Oberly said that Tom hoped that Anne Marie would be found safe, David Weiss spoke to the press on behalf of the Faheys. “My clients’ initial reaction is that if Mr. Capano cared for Anne Marie—as the notes offered by his attorney are intended to suggest—we ask him to come in and talk to the authorities.”

  Tom did not.

  Robert Fahey found Oberly’s statements “beyond reckless” and deplored his comparing Tom Capano to Richard Jewell, the security guard who was falsely accused of planting a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics, only to be vindicated later. For the moment, headlines about the case were built on rhetoric rather than fact.

  “The Faheys were an amazing family,” Connolly recalled. “When we got frustrated during the investigation, we’d meet with them, and we couldn’t tell them anything—and then they’d get frustrated. You could see the pain on their faces, and yet they were so eloquent and so classy. That gave us more motivation than anything to keep on going.”

  TOM CAPANO hired a second high-profile attorney. Joseph A. Hurley had recently made news in another sensational case. He represented eighteen-year-old Brian Peterson, the wealthy teenager who, with his girlfriend, Amy Grossberg, pleaded guilty in Wilmington to killing their newborn son and disposing of his body in a Comfort Inn motel Dumpster in Newark, Delaware. Joe Hurley was of the Melvin Belli–Gerry Spence school of lawyers, whose confidence knew no bounds. At his first press conference on the Fahey-Capano case, he announced, “I have arrived!” Despite his penchant for dramatic moments, Hurley was an excellent criminal defense attorney.

  THE grand jury probe continued, and the investigation swept in wider and wider circles. Caught in the dust churned up were the private thoughts and deeds of people who had never known Anne Marie. On January 11, 1997, sixteen-year-old Christy Capano was found in contempt of court for her September refusal to answer questions about her father. The Third District U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals opinion was a landmark decision, which decreed that, unlike spouses, children and parents could be forced to testify against each other in criminal proceedings.

  Louie Capano’s marriage to champion golfer Lauri Merton had occasionally hit rocky shoals; like the other Capano brothers, Louie was said to have a roving eye. But were it not for Tom’s grand jury investigation, Louie and Lauri’s problems would probably have gone unnoticed by everyone but their close friends. However, Lauri had become suspicious of what her husband might be up to when she was away, and she had bugged Louie’s phone. Now the investigators wanted to know what conversations between Tom and Louie she might have inadvertently recorded. She refused to surrender the tapes, citing the marital privilege, and was held in contempt of court.

  On March 26, Lauri’s attorneys asked to have her citation overturned. On April 24, the Third District Court of Appeals declared that Lauri did not have to give the grand jury her tapes but said she would remain in contempt until she testified. What Lauri testified to, if anything, could not be revealed. There was no privacy for anyone involved with Tom; reporters noted that Louie’s blond friend, Kristi Pepper, drove away from the hearings in a car that was registered to him.

  Tom’s health deteriorated as the grand jury investigation lumbered on. He had a cervical laminectomy to stabilize the vertebrae in his neck in January 1997, but he complained of residual pain. And the stress of the investigation aggravated his colitis. He had been seeing Dr. Joseph Bryer, a psychiatrist, for a feeling of impending disaster since August and was prescribed various antianxiety medications—Wellbutrin, Paxil, and Xanax—in an effort to calm his nerves.

  PROVING the crime of murder when there is no body is probably the toughest assignment a prosecution team can take on. It was essential that Colm Connolly build a seamless case. He could not cave in to public pressure to make an arrest. If he should go into court prematurely and a defendant was acquitted, double jeopardy would attach and he could never be tried again. Any defense attorney worth his salt would suggest to a jury that Anne Marie could well be alive. Two flecks of blood that matched her DNA profile would not prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that she was dead. And although Tom Capano might be a complete tyrant who treated women like objects, that didn’t prove he was a killer.

  There were still myriad elements of Anne Marie’s disappearance that the investigators didn’t know. Her body might be buried somewhere and could be retrieved and an autopsy performed. There might even be eyewitnesses to what had happened to her. There almost certainly were people who knew more than they were saying. Thus, the probe continued, its pace sometimes maddeningly slow to those who waited for some watershed moment. It had to be that way.

  IN early September 1997, Eric Alpert filed another affidavit. Included in the information set forth was the story of Tom’s obsessive revenge against Linda Marandola, which had been reported to the FBI by an informant in 1980. Now the public knew that Anne Marie Fahey was not the first woman Tom had stalked. Members of the Delaware Supreme Court’s Censure Committee hastened to say that they had never been informed of the Marandola matter. But one member had been,
and he happened to have been one of Tom’s bosses at Morris, James, Hitchens & Williams at the time of the complaint. Seventeen years later, he had no comment about the matter.

  The FBI seized Tom’s E-mail. In doing so the investigators talked to the woman in charge of the computers at Saul, Ewing and learned that Tom had asked her a few days after Anne Marie vanished if his E-mail had been destroyed. He had been somewhat dismayed, according to the witness, to learn that it had not.

  The balance of public opinion in Wilmington was tipping. Tom resigned from Saul, Ewing without giving a reason.

  WHATEVER Tom had done during the day after Anne Marie vanished, he apparently spent much of it with Gerry. In their strategy sessions, Connolly, Donovan, and Alpert had come to believe that the missing components of the case probably rested deep in the bosom of the Capano family. They had learned the Capano credo: Family was family. Louie, Joey, and Gerry had good reason to revere their older brother—none more than Gerry; Tom had bailed them all out of trouble, and now, perhaps, it had been their turn.

  Gerry Capano’s name had stood out in the time line Tom wrote for Friday, June 28, 1996. His name appeared opposite five items: 6:30, 10:30–11:00, 12:30+, 12:30–1:30, and 3:00. And for 9:15–10:30, Tom had written, “drive to SH.” “SH” had to be Stone Harbor. Gerry had a house and a boat there. Of all the Capano family, he was the one who spent the most time at Stone Harbor.

  Gerry still had the cherubic features that had once made him such a cute little kid, but his avocations were all so macho that one wondered if he was still trying to prove himself to his older brothers. When he wasn’t hunting grizzly bears and moose in the great Northwest in the winter, he competed in shark-fishing derbies in the Atlantic Ocean off Stone Harbor. He had neither his brothers’ business acumen nor their cleverness.