by Ann Rule
And he hadn’t. Gerry wasn’t happy about dumping a body at sea—but he had gone along with Tom’s pleas. He’d kept his back turned while Tom removed the body from the cooler and weighted it down before dropping it overboard.
Now it seemed that Tom had drawn Debby into his crime, persuading her to be the goat who bought a weapon for him, but not just before he intended to kill Anne Marie—forty-five days in advance. It was one more indication that Anne Marie’s murder was premeditated.
The investigators looked again at Tom’s E-mail from May through June 1996 and found it full of his dogged insistence that Anne Marie have dinner with him—that she keep him informed of her plans. “Hey,” Tom E-mailed her on May 3. “It’s 2:30 and I ain’t heard from ya so I was wondering what was up. Please give me a call or e-mail me when you get a chance. Is there a good time to call you? Hope you’re having a good day, but my guess is you’re not. Think mussels . . . in a white sauce.” There were many like that, apparent attempts to lure Anne Marie into a meeting that might be their last.
They looked at the statement from Siobhan Sullivan, Anne Marie’s state trooper friend. Anne Marie had told her that Tom was “a fucking stalker” in May 1996. Anne Marie was afraid of Tom, but the prosecution team realized that she had had no idea of how dangerous he might be; she never knew that he had asked another woman to buy a gun for him—that he had made plans to get rid of a body. And none of them believed for a moment that Debby MacIntyre had bought that gun for herself.
But where was it now?
ON January 8, 1998, Tom Capano pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder. His bail hearing—the proof positive hearing—was set to begin in the first week of February. He and his lawyers concurred that Debby MacIntyre would be one of the best witnesses they could present. Tom knew she was scared to death to testify for him; he also knew she would do it. She would do anything for him.
On January 28, Tom wrote a letter to the woman he purportedly loved and planned to marry. In earlier letters, he had persuaded her to accept a date with another man, urging her to have sex with him, which she could not do. Now he wrote a letter that would haunt her, although it was clearly a picture of who he was, rather than a portrait of her.
Dear Deb,
It’s 11:57 p.m. and with any luck, you’re naked right now on all fours with your dinner date making you come like crazy, doggy style. Actually, you say something in your Monday night letter—which arrived tonight—about having your period. Okay, so maybe you’re naked anyway, so he can admire your magnificent body on your knees with his dick in your mouth while he sits in a living room chair—giving him the best blow job he’s ever had. The thought of these things made me have two relaxation sessions since I found out about your date . . . and one of them was in the middle of the day today while I was standing up in a corner of my cell!
Tom’s pornographic musings about Debby’s date took him a page and a half, and then he told her he had bad news. His three attorneys—Charlie Oberly, Joe Hurley, and the new addition, Gene Maurer—felt that it was essential that she testify at his bail hearing.
Please forgive me, but I agree with them, as I will explain, and I freely admit that it’s purely selfish. . . . [He allegedly quotes his attorneys:] “Debby MacIntyre is an important witness for us, but maybe more importantly, she’s an impressive witness. We want Judge Lee to see and hear this very credible and honest woman because she will make a very positive impression. . . . She comes across not just as honest, but also as level-headed and mature.”
Since Tom referred continually in his letters to “dumb” mistakes that Debby had made, this was a new approach for him. He pleaded with her to overcome her fear of publicity and reminded her that she would surely have to testify when his case came to trial, so she might as well testify at the proof positive.
He warned her that Bob Donovan would be on the stand reading both roles in interviews she had given and it would be so much better if she spoke for herself. “[My team says:] ‘She will help our case,’ ” Tom wrote. “‘And Judge Lee will observe her demeanor and listen to her tell her own story in her own words with inflection, animation and emotion. . . .’ Deb, darling, they are right and I have to agree with them. I know how important your privacy is to you. I don’t want you to have cameras surrounding you either.”
And then Tom added some information that he wanted her to impart to the judge. “The [newspaper] reports will be done even if it’s just Donovan giving his version of what you said. (And leaving out the parts that do me the most good. For example, about the pulls in the carpet and the dislike I always felt for it.)”
Tom had names for Connolly and Wharton. Connolly was his least favorite and had earned three epithets: “the Nazi,” “the snake,” and “the weasel.” Wharton was “the hangman.”
“I’m pissed,” Tom wrote, “that the Nazi got to interview you today, but I understand how it happened.”
Tom ended his letter by appealing to Debby’s sympathy, something that had always worked. He told her that Lee Ramunno wasn’t being allowed to visit him as his lawyer, because he was considered only a family member by the state, that Marian was hesitant to “talk trash” about Gerry in court, that he hadn’t had time to ask his mother to testify for him (something that Marian was against, too), that his daughters were depressed, his wife had fought with him, and his showers were ice cold. He signed the letter, “I love you, Tom.”
BY the time she got Tom’s ingeniously crafted letter, Debby had something else on her mind. On the date he wrote—January 28, 1998—she had a meeting with the prosecution team and it hadn’t gone well. Tom had told her what she must say about buying the gun—about her fear of the “crime wave” in Wilmington and being alone with children, and how he had frowned on her having a gun. It was all a lie, but she had agreed to do it to protect him.
With the attorney that Tom had recommended beside her, Debby waited nervously for Connolly to ask her questions. She was not a practiced liar; even an amateur interrogator could have seen her telegraphing which answers weren’t true. But she began with the truth, correcting the lie she had told the grand jury. “My relationship with Tom Capano extends many more years than September 1995,” she admitted. “We did not become romantically involved until that time, but over a period of years prior to that, we did have sexual encounters.”
Debby was also truthful when she said she was completely unaware of Anne Marie Fahey’s existence until Tom told her on July 2, 1996, about his relationship with her.
“Has he ever said anything to you about whether the government located Anne Marie Fahey’s blood in his Grant Avenue home?” Connolly asked.
“Yes. Something about DNA. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Has he ever told you an explanation as to why government agents would have found Anne Marie Fahey’s blood in his house?”
“No, no—he said it was a small, pinprick size. . . . We never talked about Anne Marie Fahey and what his involvement was with her. We never did.”
She was believable. Some women might have screamed at their lovers and nagged them for more details about another woman in their lives. Not this woman.
When asked about the Carbona milk and bloodstain remover, Debby recalled giving Tom a bottle many months before June 27. She denied seeing guns or ammunition in Tom’s house or knives—beyond the block of kitchen knives she had given him as a housewarming present. She said she didn’t know if Tom’s close friends owned guns.
“Do you own any hunting knives?”
“I do not.”
“Do you own any handguns?”
“I did.” Debby tried to appear casual, but every nerve was quivering. Her short answers suddenly became long, stuttering explanations. She admitted buying a gun, but she said it was in the winter or spring of 1994 or 1995. And she offered the explanation that Tom had scripted for her, her fear of being burglarized or having a break-in. She was all alone with two teenagers.
Debby added that a cowo
rker at Tatnall who taught a course in gun safety had offered to teach her how to use a firearm. She said she had never used the gun at all; her words tumbled out all wrong. “I remember coming home on the very last day of school in June,” she lied. “My son was in my room. It [the gun] was locked in a suitcase, but I was really nervous about him finding it—so I got rid of it. And I updated my alarm system instead.”
Connolly had a way of asking, “Are you certain?” about the dates she gave and the things she said about the gun. She stumbled over whether it had been January or June, or 1994, 1995 . . . 1996.
“I got rid of it June—say the tenth—because that was the last day of school,” she said through numb lips. “And I took it apart. There’s a piece that comes out of the bottom of it and I took it apart and I put them [the two pieces] in separate bags. Trash bags.”
Debby said she’d thrown the gun parts and the bullets into the garbage can on Friday, June 10. (That would have been two and a half weeks before Anne Marie vanished.) She didn’t know what kind of gun it was, but she told Connolly about the gun store out on Route 13. “I just asked for a small gun that would be easy and comfortable and not intimidating.”
With every lie she told, Connolly came back with another question that she couldn’t really answer. “When you bought the gun,” he asked, “had you ever discussed your intention to buy a gun?”
“I had talked about it with Tom.”
“Was he with—”
“He thought it was a bad idea,” she said quickly.
She said she couldn’t remember what color the gun was—maybe silver, maybe black—or how much it cost, how she’d paid for it, or exactly how long she’d had it.
“How long do you think you owned this gun?” Connolly pressed.
“Three to five months.”
“When you bought it, what season was it?”
“Winter . . . spring . . .”
“You’re very certain [you got rid of it] on the second Friday in June?”
Debby got in deeper and deeper. No, Tom had never seen the gun. He didn’t know she’d thrown it away in the garbage. Not until the next day, “Say Sunday,” she said.
“And what was his reaction?”
“‘Good. Update your security system.’ ”
“Did you ever lend him the gun?”
“No.”
At that point, Eric Alpert quietly set a .22 caliber Beretta on the table in front of Debby, and she froze. Had they found her gun someplace?
“Was that the type of gun?”
“Uhhhh . . . I don’t think it was that big.”
Now Connolly showed her a copy of the receipt for the gun she’d purchased. “Does this help refresh your recollection of when you bought the gun?”
Debby could see the date. “In May,” she said, her own voice echoing in her head. “I thought I bought it well before that.”
Connolly wanted to know the time of day and the day of the week that she had bought the gun. And she kept remembering Tom taking her to the gun shop—even as she lied to protect him, and didn’t know why. Tom was innocent. She knew he was innocent . . .
“And you’re certain the only person with whom you discussed your intention to buy the gun, prior to the date you purchased it, was Tom Capano?” Connolly had a way of asking the same question three different ways.
“Yes . . . yes.”
“But you’re also certain that Tom Capano never touched the gun?”
“To the best of my knowledge.”
“Well, if the gun was in your exclusive custody from the date you purchased it up to the day you got rid of it, how could Tom Capano touch the gun?”
“I put it in the trash.” Why had she said it that way?
“So he didn’t,” Connolly said. “So if his fingerprints are on the gun with the serial number that you purchased . . . how would you account for that?”
Connolly hadn’t said Tom’s prints were on the gun. He had said if, but Debby was floundering.
“He took it out of the trash?” she asked.
“So, did he know ahead of time when you were throwing it out?”
“No, I told him after I put it in the trash.”
“Well, how soon after?”
“Saturday or Sunday. The trash is picked up on Tuesday.”
“Are you certain of that?”
Debby wondered if they thought she had done something to Anne Marie. Her head was spinning with all the questions about the gun. Connolly kept asking her if she was certain about when she had put the gun parts and the bullets in the trash. And she wasn’t because it was all a lie. She had seen that gun for only five minutes after she bought it. Then she had given it to Tom.
“So you could have told him before the trash was picked up by the city?”
“Yes . . . yes.”
Apparently satisfied, Connolly then asked her if Tom had ever told her about somebody who was trying to extort money from him.
“Yes . . . He told me that somebody was trying to get money from him. That’s it. I can’t even tell you the guy’s name.”
“Has he ever discussed with you anything about someone trying to extort money from him after Anne Marie Fahey’s disappearance?”
“No.”
“Has he told you whether or not he’s ever given money to somebody who tried to extort money from him?”
“No.”
“Have you ever had any conversation with Tom Capano since June 27, 1996, about the gun you purchased on May 13, 1996?”
“No,” Debby said. And then she reversed her answer. “That’s probably not true. I probably alluded to the fact that ‘I got it and I don’t know what I was thinking—I’m glad I got this new security system or I’m getting this new security system . . .’ ”
The interview was over. Of course, the .22 caliber Beretta they showed Debby wasn’t the gun she had purchased. Nobody knew where that gun was. But Debby had the impression that they knew more about the gun than she did, and that Tom knew a lot more than he was telling her.
“THE volcano erupted on January twenty-eighth,” Debby said. “There was a flash in my head halfway through that interview. That’s the only way I can describe how I felt. The Tom that I knew wasn’t this man who could kill this woman. But once I betrayed him or rejected him—so to speak—I woke up and I realized the position I was in because I loved him and believed him and trusted him. I was compromising myself, my safety, and that of my children. It was like a volcano erupting.”
Adam Balick, Debby’s attorney, wasted no time in calling Charlie Oberly to tell him what had happened. When Tom heard about it, he immediately attempted damage control in a letter to Debby. First, he pointed out how incredibly stupid she had been to suggest he might have taken the gun out of her trash can. How could she have said such a thing? He criticized the lawyer he’d chosen for her for not telling Colm Connolly to “go to hell,” and said Balick should have filed a motion to quash.
“I keep saying they cannot be trusted,” Tom wrote, as he virtually spelled out what Debby should have said. Too late now. He wrote as if he hoped a prison censor would read the letter and report to the state.
And, unfortunately, I’m always right. I told Charlie that I knew you had bought it, why you got rid of it—because of Steve and his friends. Hey, that’s not the first time nor will it be the last time you made an impulsive purchase—just remember the house fiasco last year—and then [you] realized it was a mistake. Apparently, you used your credit card so it’s not like you were trying to hide anything. And, as for having the actual gun—which we doubt—so what? They’ve got to connect it somehow and Charlie doesn’t think—and I agree—they can’t, even if it does have my print on it someplace. So what if I touched it when you showed it to me?
It was clear that Tom wasn’t going to admit in writing that he was the one who had insisted that she buy the gun for him. He was putting it all in Debby’s ballpark. The gun was her problem.
Tom was even more intent on Debby’s
testimony for the defense in his upcoming bail hearing. He reminded her that she was not under his “spell.” And he was emphatic that she search her memory about a cooler. “As for that damn cooler, you couldn’t have forgotten it,” he wrote forcefully. “It was in the crawl space behind the mirrored, louvered doors and we opened them to look for screens in late April. Or right after I bought it, you came over and couldn’t pull all the way in the garage because it took up too much room and the garage was tight anyway. Maybe you didn’t pay attention, but when you said, ‘What the hell is that?’ I told you what it was—a fish cooler for Gerry’s new boat.”
Debby had absolutely no recollection of seeing a fish cooler either in Tom’s garage or in the crawl space. But she knew he expected her to repeat what he’d told her about it in the proof positive hearing.
Tom also set down a blueprint of exactly what she was to do on that day in court. First of all, he wanted her to march in with her head held high, with her attorney on one side of her and Stan, a male friend from Tatnall, on the other. He warned her that she would be overwhelmed if she didn’t have two strong men to cling to. She was not to drive herself to the courthouse; she would be too nervous.
“Be sure you swim the day you testify,” Tom ordered. “You will wait in an airport-like line to go through a metal detector. Adam will decide whether you will wait just outside the courtroom or go to the witness room.”
Tom described the courtroom to Debby, cautioning her that it would be intimidating because it was so big. “Yes, I will be there at the table with my guys,” he wrote. “A bailiff will escort you to the witness box where you will be sworn in. The Judge will be next to you. Whichever side calls you asks questions first; then the other side gets to ask questions. When the questioning is over, Judge Lee will tell you you’re excused.”
