Under the Knife

by Diane Fanning

  COMPOSER STEPHEN SCHWARTZ STEPPED INTO DEAN’S LIFE that spring. Stephen was a New York City native, born there in 1948. He studied at the Juilliard School of Music while in high school and graduated with a B.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1968.

  A true Broadway luminary, Schwartz started his career as a producer for RCA Records and earned his first major Broadway credit when he wrote the title song for Butterflies Are Free. In 1971, he won two Grammys for the music and lyrics to Godspell. He also won acclaim as a director, capturing the Drama Desk Award for a musical version of Studs Terkel’s Working, which he also co-directed for television. He composed scores for full-length animated features as well, racking up three Academy Awards and another Grammy.

  When he started seeing Dean Faiello, Stephen was working on the music for a Broadway production. Wicked, a musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz, was a tale about the college years of the wicked witch Elphaba and the good witch Glinda. It was scheduled to open in the fall of that year.

  Greg was aware of Stephen and knew that he and Dean were friends. He even had dinner with them one evening. Dean was clearly impressed with Stephen and chattered to Greg about their social encounters, describing a dinner where other guests included Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline.

  That Dean would have a friendship with someone of Stephen’s prominence did not surprise Greg. Dean had always attracted smart, successful people. But Greg was shocked when Patty Rosado told him the truth: Dean and Stephen were involved in what one gossip columnist called “a torrid affair.”

  Before Dean’s arrest in October 2002, Patty worked part-time on Saturdays as Dean’s receptionist. Dean eventually had to produce a massive amount of documentation to the attorney general’s office to satisfy the conditions of his plea bargain, and Patty volunteered to get his financial records and client files in order.

  Sometimes she worked late into the night—occasionally all night—to meet the deadlines. Patty had a natural knack for this kind of work, and incredible organizational skills. Without her help, Dean might have blown the whole deal.

  Unbeknownst to Dean, Patty was taking advantage of her access to Dean’s computers to hack into his email and spy on him. It was how she learned of Dean’s arrangements to use Carl James’ apartment, in late 2002. And it was how she stumbled across a passionate declaration of love from Stephen Schwartz that spring.

  Patty forwarded that email to Greg. She said that as a friend, she felt obligated to let Greg know what was happening. At the time, Greg accepted that explanation of her good intentions. Nonetheless, he chastised her for violating Dean’s privacy.

  NOT LONG AFTER HER BIRTHDAY, MARIA CRUZ EMAILED DEAN Faiello. She complained of nausea and dizziness in the aftermath of her last laser treatment. Dean recommended over-the-counter remedies. Her next appointment was scheduled for Friday, April 11, though obligations at the office forced her to postpone. Dean agreed to see her on Sunday evening, April 13. It pleased the work-centric Maria that Dean could accommodate her outside of regular business hours. Her position at Barclays was demanding, and she was trusted with multi-million-dollar decisions. Although beguiled and duped by Dean’s false credentials and smooth bedside manner, Maria was, ironically, a specialist in researching health care companies.

  Dean emailed her before that Sunday visit. “I have to pick up lidocaine and syringes. Could you please pay in cash instead of a check?”

  Maria did not express any concern about this unorthodox request. With her intelligence and business savvy, Maria was one of the last people anyone would suspect of being vulnerable to a quack’s con. But she accepted everything as unvarnished truth from this man she believed to be a physician.

  After a day of attending mass, doing prep work for a meeting the next day, running errands—including the withdrawal of $400 cash from an ATM—Maria traveled down to the Chelsea area of Manhattan. She stopped to shop at Loehmann’s, then entered the building at 151 West 16th Street for her appointment with Dean Faiello.

  The condition requiring treatment, black tongue, was minor and temporary—often brought on by diet or medication. Usually, a doctor would give patients like Maria a series of tongue scrapings in his office and recommend vigorous toothbrushing on the surface of the tongue at home, in between visits.

  Maria had opted for laser treatment because she found it less painful than scraping. But in choosing Dean Faiello, she ran a grave risk. The problem with her tongue was mild, and a true physician would have recognized the difference between the minor black tongue ailment she suffered and the far more serious one of hairy leukoplakia—a precancerous overgrowth of the cilia. Had she suffered the latter, Dean’s treatment might have only concealed the symptoms, as the cancer continued to flourish undetected.

  On April 13, nothing seemed out of the ordinary until Maria’s body began rocking with convulsions, following an injection of lidocaine into her tongue. Dean consulted a physician but did not get the advice he wanted. Dr. Goldschmitt told him that the only hope Maria had for survival would be her immediate transport to the emergency room.

  Dean decided not to take this advice. He knew his plea bargain and his freedom would disappear if it was discovered that he was still treating patients. There would be an immediate arrest and incarceration without bail for the maximum sentence of 4 years.

  Not willing to make that sacrifice, Dean gambled with Maria’s life. He waited, hoping that she would pull out of the convulsions on her own. It was a selfish wager—one destined for failure. Maria Cruz died at 8 P.M. on April 13, 2003.

  Again, Dean Faiello faced a decision. Should he do the right thing and call the police? Or should he, once more, seek a solution to protect himself?

  Dean chose the latter. He allowed his anxiety about life in prison to outweigh the value of decency toward another human being. If he thought about the worry he would cause Maria’s family and friends if she disappeared into thin air, he pushed that concern out of his head. Foremost in his mind was his desire to save himself.

  After years of pushing closer and closer to the edge—of blurring the legal and ethical distinctions between right and wrong—he fell off the precipice, past the point of no return. His arrogance, lust for control and sense of being above the law drove his every choice. And when it came down to a decision between what was best for him and what was best for Maria—whether it was worth risking an innocent person to save himself—he acted in his own best interests.

  Compounding the horror of what he had already done, he treated Maria like soiled laundry, stuffing her into a suitcase and lugging her home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  TES LARA AND JUN CRUZ, FAR FROM THEIR HOMES IN THE Philippines, staggered under the weight of their sister Maria’s disappearance. Her New York and New Jersey family members rallied around them to help find Maria and bring her home. They reported her missing, enlisting the investigative skills of Detective Joe Della Rocca.

  They called television, radio and newspaper journalists, trying stir up interest in Maria’s story and inform the public. They posted 200 fliers a day in Manhattan, Queens, Jersey City and elsewhere. The poster read:

  Her disappearance is a complete mystery, baffling us all. If anyone has seen [Maria Cruz] or has any information about her whereabouts, the police and the family would like to hear from you.

  —Jun Cruz, a brother of Maria.

  Uncle Jose picked a different avenue of New York each time he went out. He walked its length from Upper Manhattan to deep into downtown, putting up posters on every block.

  They launched a website, www.mariacruzmissing.com, and posted letters about her disappearance all over the Internet. Sheila Samonte-Pescayo, cousin and columnist in the Philippines and in California, used her media access to issue a personal appeal on the one-month anniversary of Maria’s disappearance, pleading for help and prayers:

  Maria, whom we fondly call “Ate Pipay,” was on the top of her career, being the senior financial analyst at Barclays Bank, one of the biggest in
the Big Apple, which pays her a salary of $180,000 a year. Her baffling case has drawn the interest of Wall Street and many New Yorkers. In one telecast, Fox News television station regarded her disappearing act more important than Madonna’s performance in a West End play.

  Her sister Tes told 48 Hours: “My sister was six years younger than I, but she was like a big sister. My sister was very gutsy. She was a big dreamer. When she told me she wanted to go to the U.S., there was no other way for me but to encourage her to go on and fulfill her dreams.” Her disappearance, she said, “left this big gaping hole in my heart. From the very start, I knew something very wrong had happened to her. It was terrible. It felt like the world had just caved in on me.”

  All across the country, devastated families understood her pain. They retained a sliver of hope that Maria would return unharmed. They hung in agonizing limbo. Until the discovery of a body, their minds raced with endless, trepidatious questions.

  Maria’s family maintained a command center for the search. Every day, someone picked up the phone and called the police. The NYPD was not idle—they devoted significant resources to the search. Wally Zeins, commanding officer of the Manhattan Detectives Nightwatch in 2003, told 48 Hours that investigators were suspicious from the start: “Maria Cruz had a very normal life. We knew she was religious. We knew she would work on her day off. And then everything changed. She was here today, vanished tomorrow. A lot of things led detectives to believe there was foul play somewhere along the line.”

  In June, authorities in New Jersey discovered a small-statured Asian woman who’d been beaten, mugged and left for dead. The New Jersey medical center called the Cruz family to come view the body for identification.

  Jun stood outside the hospital, unable to cross the threshold. His limbs shook, his breath was shortened. He shivered in the street, even in the pounding heat of the Jersey sun. Uncle Jose took the lead, and to his great relief, it was not the body of his missing niece. Hope flared bright, the nightmares suppressed for one more day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  IMMEDIATELY AFTER MARIA’S DEATH, DEAN ENLISTED THE help of his friends Patty Rosado and Mark Ritchey to change the locks on the doors of his home and on the wrought-iron gates surrounding it. Dean told Mark that he wanted to discourage trespassers and to keep Greg out of the house—Dean was tired of all his whining.

  Mark and Patty claim they did not know about the more urgent, darker reason Dean wanted to keep Greg and others out. Greg, too, had no clue about the macabre truth that was now hidden at 212 Elwood. He was also unaware of his own banishment. Arriving at Dean’s house to help with the cleanup and repair chores, he pulled on the gate. It was locked. He pulled out his key. It didn’t fit.

  Greg was enraged.

  He climbed up a tree next to the fence and eased himself down into the yard. The fencing cut into his hands, scraped up his arms, ripped his pants and scratched his legs. He approached the house and discovered, again, that the doors were locked and the locks were changed.

  After all Greg had done for Dean, after all of Dean’s professions of love, Greg was furious and hurt that Dean would play these passive-aggressive games with him. He grabbed a ladder from the yard and propped it up against a balcony. Climbing into the house, he headed straight for Dean’s bedroom. That door was locked, too. Greg flipped. He lifted his leg waist-high and slammed it into the knob of the shut door. It flew open.

  A drowsy Dean sat in stunned silence as Greg stood at the foot of the bed ranting. Still fuming, Greg walked out of the room and picked up the telephone. He called Patty at work and told her about the locks. “Did you know he was going to do this?” Greg asked.

  “I did know about it, Greg, but I told Dean and Mark that they needed to tell you before you came all the way out here and couldn’t get in.”

  “Well, actually, I could and I did get in,” Greg said.

  “Are you there now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, technically, you are trespassing,” Patty said, leaving an unspoken threat hanging in the air.

  “Okay, fine. I’m trespassing. Call the police. I’ll sit on the front porch and read a magazine and wait until they get here. I know where Dean hid all the drugs and I’ll be glad to show them,” Greg said.

  Greg didn’t sit and wait, though. He had a serious need for empathy. He walked down the street to the home of a neighbor he knew well. The man’s partner was out of the country on an extended trip and, in all likelihood, would welcome some company. The visit was just what Greg needed. A couple of hours later, in a far calmer state, he returned to Dean’s house, but Dean was nowhere to be found. Greg made himself comfortable and awaited his return.

  Greg was deeply hurt by Dean’s behavior and a bit perturbed at Mark and Patty’s willingness to participate in the conspiracy to lock him out of the house. He hoped that he and Dean could talk out the problem that evening.

  But Dean did not come home alone. He arrived with Mark and Patty, who were markedly hostile. Greg had noticed that the attitudes of those two toward him had deteriorated in recent weeks. It took the conversation that night to help him understand why. Dean had systematically poisoned their well of sympathy by vilifying Greg—Patty was even convinced that Greg was taking advantage of Dean’s financial difficulties to turn a profit for himself.

  There was one more reason for Patty’s growing antipathy, one that would remain hidden from him for three more months.

  But Greg assumed there was only one reason for Dean to make him look bad. Dean planned to break up with him and wanted to justify that action to himself and to his friends. As far as Greg knew, there was only one thing to hide—the drugs. He had no suspicion that Dean had a dead body in his possession. Looking back, he now believes that night must have been the night Dean moved the body from the carriage house to Mark’s garage.

  Mark claimed he had no knowledge of Maria’s death, but in hindsight, he suspected that Dean had kept the body of Maria Cruz in his garage on Highland Street along with other possessions, stored in preparation for his move. There was a foul odor in May, but Mark thought his Great Dane had dragged in a dead squirrel. It sounded implausible, but with one glance into Mark’s garage—packed so tight, it was impossible to enter—the idea suddenly seemed credible.

  Even after Dean’s conspiring, Greg did not abandon him. He’d made a promise to see Dean’s problems through to the end, and he intended to keep his commitment, continuing to play an active role in readying the home for sale.

  On Saturday, May 24, Greg planned a garage sale of everything that had not been sold at the estate sale or on eBay. A number of articles of value remained, including a large Chinese vase. One neighbor brought over a few things of his own to sell. He and his little dog Lulu spent the whole day with Greg, rather than leave him minding the makeshift store alone.

  Greg expected Dean to help out with the sale, and again, Dean disappointed him. Not only did he stay in the house, he wouldn’t even get out of bed. Not once during that long day did Greg notice any unusual odors in the garage. Even Lulu, with her sharpened sense of smell, never expressed any interest in the garage’s contents.

  At midnight that night, Patty called Greg, accusing him of stealing Dean’s grandmother’s parfait glasses. She claimed that Dean promised them to her. Greg couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The glasses had little value. “If I were going to steal something,” he told her, “I would have taken something of value, like his grandmother’s sterling flatware.”

  “So, did you steal that, too?”

  Greg hung up the phone, exasperated. He’d gone to great pains to make sure that flatware got to Debra. The more he thought about it the angrier he got. He fired off a nasty email to Patty, a cruel, insensitive message he regretted seconds after he hit “send.”

  Greg was still sitting at Dean’s desk when an email popped up in the mailbox. It was from Patty. She had forwarded Greg’s ranting, hate-filled email to Dean and Debra. “See, I told you Greg was nuts,�
�� she wrote. Greg deleted the message from Dean’s computer, but there was nothing he could do about Debra. He knew he’d blown it. His relationship with her was destroyed.

  BUT GREG WAS STILL THERE FOR DEAN, STICKING IT OUT TO THE bitter end. He still planned on letting Dean stay at his apartment until he had to go off to jail, even though Greg knew their relationship was over. On May 27, the day before the house closing, Patty hinted that Dean had a different plan—he was moving into Mark’s place. Greg confronted Mark about it.

  “I have no idea,” Mark claimed. “You’ll have to ask Dean.”

  But Greg didn’t bother—he no longer cared. Mark’s house was in the neighborhood. The move there would be less disruptive. Living at Mark’s house might be the best solution after all.

  TUESDAY WHIRLED BY, AND THE ACTIVITY AT 212 ELWOOD grew frenzied. Greg hauled trash and loaded his belongings into a rented Jeep. Inside the garage and out, he thought he smelled something rotting; but, like Mark before him, he assumed it was a squirrel, rat or raccoon lying dead in a remote corner. He didn’t give it much thought. He also paid little attention to Dean’s project in the garage—until he’d been at it for quite a while. Greg finally asked Dean what he was doing with all that cement, but he didn’t get a straight answer. Greg shrugged it off, unaware that he was witnessing the burial of Maria Cruz in a sloppy, cold concrete vault.

  Greg’s original plan was to go home to Manhattan that evening. He wanted to return the Jeep first thing in the morning to avoid additional rental charges. Looking around at all that remained to do, he decided to stay longer—overnight if necessary. Besides, he’d been so busy taking care of chores for Dean, he hadn’t had a chance to pack up his own clothing.

  Greg was occupied in the kitchen fixing dinner when Mark and Patty showed up. The pistachioes he’d snacked on all day were now just a bag of shells. Dean snatched it up off the counter by the wrong end and sent shells clattering across the floor. “Pick them up,” Dean yelled at Greg.