Final Vows

by Karen Kingsbury

  “We’ll be okay, honey,” he whispered. “The Lord will take care of us.”

  “Oh, Dan,” Carol said, allowing tears to spill from her eyes. “I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too, sweetheart. I really love you.”

  Despite the hundreds of lies Dan had told her in the past, Carol believed him with all her heart.

  Later, Dan would write, “Carol never got angry. . . . Disappointed at times, but never angry. She would say, ‘We must pray for these people.’ . . . She was the perfect balance for me, and I could only thank God for the gift of her, a most precious and cherished gift.”

  Chapter 24

  Brian Arnspiger was still not satisfied with all he knew about the relationship between Dan and Carol. When had things turned sour? And why had Carol agreed to purchase so many life insurance policies? It was now late January 1990, and in the days after Dan was arrested in Glendale and released on bail, Brian continued to collect answers. He was determined to solve this case and he knew he would never be satisfied until he understood the desperation which in his opinion might have driven Dan Montecalvo to kill his wife.

  Brian learned that although Carol had appreciated Dan’s telephoning General Telephone and informing them that she would not return, this decision resulted in a financial nightmare for the Montecalvos. Before quitting, Carol had eight years of seniority and—despite her plunging sales—had earned nearly $35,000 a year not including her stock options and bonus plan. Without her job, the couple’s money problems started almost immediately.

  True to her nature Carol confidently attacked the challenge of job hunting. However, despite the bravado he had showed in calling Carol’s employer, Dan instantly began to panic about how the couple would handle their bills.

  Less than a month later, in late January 1986, Carol accepted a job with the Donnelly Company, a much smaller competitor of General Telephone’s. Unfortunately, the Donnelly Company was only able to pay Carol half of her previous salary and the couple’s financial situation continued to worsen.

  Carol handled their financial woes by praying, calmly taking her concerns to a God she knew was in control of their lives. But Dan let the worries—about their increasing debt and about escalating crime problems at the Strand Hotel—eat away at him. Finally, on April 10, 1986, he passed out at work. He was rushed to the hospital where doctors diagnosed him with a bleeding ulcer and high blood pressure at a near fatal level. In their opinion, Dan was the victim of mental abuse—his own.

  Dan was ordered by doctors to spend a month or more resting at home to reduce his job anxiety. Instead, when Dan awoke his first morning out of the hospital with nothing to do and only a meager disability check to look forward to, his previous panic doubled.

  At the same time Dan’s increasingly precarious faith in God came under direct attack. A pastor friend suddenly left his ministry, his wife, and his two small children. Then, another friend, who had lost her sight to diabetes, met someone she thought was a faith healer and, believing she was healed, stopped taking her insulin. She died days later. Dan blamed both events on God.

  Carol would plead with Dan to remember how God had helped him get released from prison more than a decade before he should have been. She also reminded him that God had provided him with the hotel job and with their home in Burbank.

  “You need to trust in God; everything will work out okay,” Carol would tell him. But Dan would only shake his head.

  “Listen, sweetheart, God hasn’t been coming through lately and I’m tired of waiting. I have you; I don’t need God.”

  Dan’s attitude pushed Carol to pray more often, but his problems only seemed to worsen. Carol’s faith, though, remained unshaken because she knew God could only work in Dan’s life if Dan was willing to let Him. And by 1987 Dan was clearly not including God in any of his plans.

  By that time Dan had long since stopped praying and instead started thinking of ways to make money. He considered his earlier days when he had robbed banks to make ends meet, but he knew he was no longer healthy enough to do that. He had no formal education, no trade experience, and a criminal record that made most jobs out of the question. There was just one other way he knew to make a living. That year Dan began gambling.

  Whether he was in prison or in Las Vegas, Dan never gambled with small change. That month he was given a $4,000 line of credit at the Mint Casino, where he played blackjack at a $100-minimum-bet table. At first, Dan did so well that the pit bosses raised Dan’s credit limit to $25,000. Despite his success, Carol saw Dan’s gambling as a desperate problem. She prayed constantly and solicited the prayers of her church friends Cathy Hines and Pastor Strong.

  “I feel like a failure, Pastor,” she would say. “Dan doesn’t need to gamble. We have the Lord and He will help us through this time!”

  “Hard times test a person’s faith, Carol,” Strong would respond. “We must continue to pray for Dan. If he survives this time and returns to God he will be stronger than before.”

  Instead of getting stronger Dan began to frequent Burbank bars, staying out until well after midnight several nights a week. Thus began a very dark period for Carol, who finally had begun to wonder if Dan would ever permanently become the man she wanted him to be. Still she was determined not to give up. She believed a woman’s job was to stand behind her man in good times and bad. If she spent her lonely nights crying and feeling frustrated, she never told anyone. She might ask Cathy and Pastor Strong to pray for Dan but she would never complain about him.

  Despite her disappointment and the hours she spent encouraging Dan to quit gambling, his efforts at Las Vegas paid off. For the next year he was successful both with his money and the money he’d received from an acquaintance of his. This man was a wealthy high roller who liked to gamble, but didn’t have time for trips to Vegas. Twice this man provided Dan with as much as $30,000 as part of an arrangement in which Dan would receive a hefty 50 percent of the winnings. Of course, he would also be responsible for 50 percent of the losses.

  But like all good things in Dan Montecalvo’s life, his hot gambling streak eventually ended by the New Year. Because he had been a high-stakes gambler, the casinos were more than willing to give Dan loan markers to gamble with when he ran out of cash. By February 1987 Dan found himself owing $25,000 to the Mint Casino. After that he borrowed and lost $12,000 from the Golden Nugget, and another $30,000 from his gambling friend. Gasping for air in a sea of debt, Dan waited until April to tell Carol of their truly dire financial situation. She was saddened by Dan’s trouble, but she was not surprised. In her opinion, nothing good ever came from gambling, even when the gambler was winning.

  “I finally had to share this dilemma with Carol,” Dan wrote later. “Up to that point, she had never questioned me about income; I was too ashamed of what I was doing (to talk about it with her).”

  Again Carol was Dan’s only glimmer of hope. By then she had left the Donnelly Company for a similar job at Pacific Bell. Her new job provided an excellent salary, valuable stock options, and a retirement plan. So they were able to slowly erase their consumer debt and catch up on their mortgage payments. But even Carol had no idea how Dan was going to dig himself out of the $67,000 hole he’d gambled himself into.

  Once he had come clean with Carol about the extent of his gambling debts, some interesting events unfolded. That spring, in a six-week period, the Montecalvos began setting up life insurance policies on Carol. These included a $130,000 policy intended to cover the mortgage on their home and a $50,000 policy taken on their Montgomery Ward credit card. Next they applied for and received a $220,000 policy through Pacific Bell. Then, later that summer, they took out another policy from Liberty Life Insurance Company of Boston for $150,000.

  Dan and Carol never shared this information with their friends. Carol probably knew that if she died, Dan’s health and prison records would leave him completely helpless. For that reason, $600,000 didn’t seem like too much life insur
ance, especially in the wake of Dan’s overwhelmingly bad run in Las Vegas. After all, Dan might outlive her for twenty years or more and if that happened, $30,000 a year would be just enough for him to live comfortably while paying back his debts.

  During that same period Dan began setting up payment schedules with the various casinos to which he owed money. These arrangements included an agreement with a man named White Mitchell at the Golden Nugget Casino. On August 24, 1987, Dan wrote Mitchell a letter agreeing to pay the casino $500 on the first of every month until the debt was paid off. If it hadn’t been for this arrangement with the casino, Mitchell would have been entitled to deposit the markers—or I.O.U.s—at Dan’s bank, where they would be treated like checks. If then there were insufficient funds to cover the markers, Dan could be prosecuted for having written bad checks.

  “Carol thought Dan was being responsible, that he was trying to take care of whatever trouble he had with Las Vegas,” Cathy Hines would later say of their discussion. “She thought he was totally in love with her and that everything was going to work out.”

  Chances are Carol would have been shocked and completely devastated had she ever read the letter Dan sent to Mitchell:

  Dear Mr. Mitchell: Regarding our conversation as to my outstanding markers totalling $11,500, I welcome the opportunity [to satisfy] this debt. Namely, a monthly payment schedule of a minimum of $500 on the first of each month, certainly more if possible—with the perceived goal of satisfaction of my debt within twelve to eighteen months.

  However, to be totally frank, there are present circumstances that I really have very little control over. The greatest is my health, having recently suffered a serious heart attack which placed me in a hospital for three weeks and precluded me from many activities. There is also my situation with the IRS, which looks very bleak and I will not know the outcome for some time.

  That much alone would have upset Carol. After all, she knew Dan had not suffered a heart attack—he had been in the hospital for a bleeding ulcer and high blood pressure. But if that information would have bothered her, she would have been utterly crushed by the rest of the letter. Dan wrote:

  Along with the above, there are domestic problems with my wife, and a divorce is possible—but not without a serious depletion of whatever I may have left after the IRS is satisfied.

  This is not a good time for me. I do hope that you can convince management to maintain my markers in-house and not submit them to my bank—which would only cause deeper embarrassment and more pressure, for I simply do not have the funds at my disposal.

  In closing, let me say that I am a person who has done and will certainly do everything in my power to maintain my reputation.

  After blaming his financial troubles on a nonexistent heart attack and on divorce plans he hadn’t even shared with his wife, and after assuring Mitchell he would do whatever necessary to maintain his credibility and repay his loans, Dan focused again on matters closer to home. That meant, at Carol’s insistence, of course, continuing to arrange for her life insurance policies.

  Chapter 25

  The picture was becoming clearer each day. Through the end of January 1990 Brian continued to collect information about Carol’s last year, and about the degree of Dan’s desperation.

  Brian’s information told him that at first Dan made fairly steady payments to the casinos, even keeping up with his promised $500 monthly to White Mitchell at the Golden Nugget. But by the first part of 1988 Dan had apparently decided to pay off his gambling debts more quickly. He spent his money meant for the casinos betting on horses instead.

  Of course, instead of improving his financial problems, the racetrack made things worse. Dan was unable to make his January payments and on January 18 he was contacted by a debt collector at the Mint. Afterward this message was written on the log detailing Dan’s account with the Mint:

  “Talked with Dan. Things are better. Will be able to pay in full by April, 88.”

  The idea that things were looking up for Dan midway through January would have come as a complete surprise to Carol, who helped balance their bank accounts and knew the gravity of their situation. Dan had lost faith in God; he had also returned to drinking, barhopping, and gambling. Things were definitely not better.

  Perhaps Dan was referring to the decision he and Carol had made to take a loan out on their house. It was quite possible that by then Dan had looked into this procedure and knew he would not receive funds until several months after applying for the loan. Say around April 1988. If that was the case, then his promise to pay off his $9,900 debt to the Mint by April would have made perfect sense.

  But if Dan had been considering the home loan in January, there is no record of his having acted on it either that month or the next. Records do show, however, that Mitchell made two attempts to talk with Dan about his account at the Golden Nugget during that time, including a lengthy discussion which took place on February 6.

  That February afternoon Mitchell calmly informed Dan that they had waited long enough without receiving a payment. The time had come to deposit the markers. Sounding truly desperate, Dan told Mitchell that he did not yet have sufficient funds to cover the markers. He then begged Mitchell to hold off for one more month while he tried to get a home loan to pay the debt off completely. Mitchell examined Dan’s past record, noting his consistent payments through the end of 1987, and agreed.

  If Carol had always been the picture of inner strength and peace, by that February she was finally beginning to fall apart. There was nothing obvious about this process, nothing anyone at church could point to as a sign that things were not well. But her close friends noticed a change in Carol’s personality. She became quieter, more withdrawn. Although she continued to teach Sunday School and attend church regularly, Dan was present less and less often. Finally, one Sunday a month before Carol’s murder, Cathy Hines pulled her aside after the service to ask her if something was wrong.

  During that conversation Carol confided in her longtime friend that things were not well with Dan. Tearfully she told Cathy that she was worried about Dan because he had begun drinking again. Almost shamefully she asked her to pray for him.

  Cathy felt that Carol was more depressed than she had ever seen her. Yet even then, Cathy noted, Carol never complained about her relationship with Dan. In fact, when the subject came up, Carol was always the first to say how very happily married she and Dan were. She seemed only concerned for Dan’s health and salvation. After years of making decisions against the better judgment of her father and family, Carol had learned to hide her dirty laundry well. She would handle her problems by herself.

  A few weeks later Cathy and Carol again had a chance to talk and eventually the conversation turned to Dan. This time a happier Carol informed Cathy that her prayers were working. Dan seemed to be drinking less, he was happier around the home, and he had even talked about returning to church. Most of all, Carol was thrilled about the trip to Hawaii they were planning for the first part of April.

  True to Carol’s words, Dan’s depression did lift significantly in March. Carol attributed this to many reasons, not the least of which was her constant habit of remembering Dan in her prayers. But that month Dan learned from one of the collectors that in hardship cases casinos often accepted a mere twenty-five cents on the dollar as payment in full. This information combined with the loan application they had finally filled out and turned in that month seemed to bring new life to Dan. As their trip to Hawaii drew closer, Dan and Carol agreed that they were on the verge of a great turnaround, a new beginning in their marriage. If something else was contributing to Dan’s improved spirits, Carol was unaware of it.

  While the Montecalvos were busy working out the last-minute details of their trip, officers at the Burbank police station were having a rather slow week. Two of the more significant crimes that week were home burglaries—the first on March 27 and the second on March 30, when a teenage gang member stole three guns
from his father’s Burbank home.

  Certain details about those incidents seemed unimportant at the time. These included the fact that the March 27 burglary, for which no suspect was ever arrested, occurred less than a mile from the Montecalvo home, as did the second burglary. Another interesting detail was that two of the guns stolen by the teenage gang member—who had a reputation for participating in gang shootings—were a .357 caliber hand gun and a .25 revolver. After Carol’s murder, investigators could not tell whether Carol had been killed with a .357 or a .38. Dan was shot with a .25.

  If these incidents received local media coverage, Dan and Carol were too busy planning their vacation to notice. Dan had errands to run and Carol busied herself with packing and making lists of friends to whom she’d send postcards. It was during this time that Suzan Brown visited the Montecalvo home with Carol’s Avon order.

  Dan spent the last days before their trip continuing to pacify casino collectors. Particularly bothersome to Dan was the call from White Mitchell on March 28. Although the collectors at the Mint Casino had agreed to wait for a complete payment sometime in April, Mitchell at the Golden Nugget had made no such arrangement. He told Dan that since they had not received a payment since December 6, they would have to deposit the markers immediately. Somehow Dan managed to buy three days time.

  On the morning of March 31, fourteen hours before Carol’s murder, Dan called Mitchell and told him a $500 payment was on its way. Dan immediately drove to his local Federal Express office and wired the money along with this note:

  Dear Mr. Mitchell: Enclosed please find a money order for $500 towards payment of my account. It is my hope that a negotiation for a loan will be finalized by April 21, 1988, and at that time I shall be able to honor my outstanding balance of $9,000.