Last Dance, Last Chance

by Ann Rule

  In May, Anthony asked Debbie if he could stay overnight. Debbie felt protected when he was there, and she hadn’t been sleeping well at all with the stealthy attacks on their property during the night. She asked him if he was still seeing Tami, and he assured her that that was completely over. Debbie and Anthony slept together in their own bedroom, and to her it seemed right.

  Anthony reported the vandalism and threatening phone calls to the police. Although they failed to identify any suspects, they kept an open file on it.

  Oddly, the suspect the West Seneca police kept coming back to made no sense. Polo barked at any stranger who approached the Pignataro house, but there was one person the big dog adored and trusted even when it was pitch-dark out, even if that someone came upon him unexpectedly.

  And that was Anthony Pignataro himself.

  15

  On May 9, Debbie suffered such excruciating stomach pains that she had to go into the ER. The doctors felt that she was having an attack of acute pancreatitis. Her symptoms subsided, and she was allowed to return home.

  It wasn’t unusual for her to vomit and suffer from stomach pains; she had had bouts of nausea and pain since the first of the year, and she assumed that was just her way of responding to extreme stress.

  But the stress and worry went on and on. Debbie’s children were the most precious people in her world; she would walk over hot coals for them. Perhaps because she had lost two babies, she was understandably protective of Ralph and Lauren. She worried about their safety.

  First there were the vandals and the phone threats, and then the most terrifying thing of all occurred. A disturbed student at Ralph’s school had apparently harbored deep hatred for several of his fellow students. A note, allegedly written by this boy, outlined his plan to smuggle a gun into school in his violin case. He wanted to eliminate his enemies and then kill himself. He had a list of the students he had targeted. Ralph’s name was fourth on that list.

  The note describing the planned attack had been intercepted in time, and the student was referred to counseling. But adding this aborted horror scene to the injustices he believed had been done to him and his family, Anthony blamed it all on the media and somehow on the justice system. He told everyone who would listen that he and his family were being harassed and threatened continually. He vowed to protect them.

  In steady increments, Anthony had moved all the way back in with Debbie, Ralph, and Lauren. By July 1999, he had all of his clothes and belongings out of his apartment and into the duplex in West Seneca.

  Debbie’s expectations were nowhere near as high as they had been six months earlier when she and Anthony had their second wedding ceremony. “His mother made him move back, I think,” she said. “If he hadn’t come home, she was going to cut off his money, and he couldn’t have that happen.”

  Anthony seemed to be trying to be nice to them, but it was hard to believe in him.

  As for Anthony, he said he still felt edgy, believing that someone stalked them constantly—someone who watched their windows after the sun set. He blamed the planned student massacre, the event that was more than he could stand.

  “This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We resolved that if there was any chance for reconciliation and healing that we needed to get out of the area.”

  All of Anthony’s siblings now lived in Florida. His sister, Antoinette, was a physician there, and his brothers owned several Dairy Queen franchises. Anthony told Debbie that they would create a good job for him if only he could get the judge to grant him permission to leave the State of New York.

  He was on felony probation, and if they were going to move to another state, his probation would have to be transferred. He hadn’t bothered to consult Judge Tills about the job he sought in Pennsylvania; that was close enough to Buffalo that he might have been able to pull it off and still see his probation officer for his scheduled visits.

  Now, he consulted an attorney who told him there should be no problem at all obtaining permission for him to move from New York State. But New York State said no. Judge Tills declined his request. The Department of Corrections and the District Attorney’s office believed it would be too easy for Pignataro to disappear from the probation system if he moved so far away. Perhaps they all realized that Anthony was very familiar with Puerto Rico and that he might be planning to slip across the water from Florida. Indeed, if he got to Puerto Rico, he might even reestablish himself as a physician.

  Debbie would have gone with him if Anthony had received a nod from the judge to move, but she dreaded the thought of leaving her mother and her brother’s family behind. She was relieved when Anthony didn’t get permission to go.

  “What I didn’t know then,” Debbie would recall, “was that if we had moved to Florida, I would be dead now. There’s no question in my mind that I wouldn’t be here.”

  It is almost impossible for anyone who has not been the target of domestic violence—either physical or emotional—to understand just how many breakups and reconciliations have to take place in combative marriages before the battered party finally manages to separate for good. One support group for victims of domestic violence points out that it takes an average of eleven separations before a final split occurs. And it doesn’t matter how intelligent or well-educated the victim is. Domestic abuse crosses all demographic boundaries. Friends and relatives often throw up their hands in frustration and disgust when they see one spouse, usually the wife, forgive and forgive and forgive. Why can’t she see what’s right in front of her eyes? Why can’t she show a little backbone? She’s too good for him.

  But they haven’t been there.

  Tragically, some abused husbands or wives don’t leave the relationship alive. Plans were already in place for Debbie Pignataro to become one of those casualties. But in the spring of 1999, no one could have convinced her of that. She had been systematically programmed over too many years to stay. As long as Anthony could persuade her—even a little bit—that he was sincere, it was still impossible for her to walk away from her marriage, even though it had become only a brittle shell of what she had once believed it was.

  The comfortable living she and Anthony had finally achieved had long since been shattered. Debbie worked that spring as a receptionist in a pediatrician’s office. It was the only income they had beyond help from Lena Pignataro, who seemed to have forgiven Anthony for his fall from grace with Tami. Like Debbie, she believed that her son was no longer seeing his mistress.

  Anthony had failed to find a job. He complained that he could have worked for Dairy Queen if only Judge Tills had allowed him to go to Florida. He would be working with his brothers, and there was dignity in that. No one should expect him to apply for just any job. No one could ask a man who had trained to be a medical doctor to work in a bank or deliver pizzas.

  By the time Anthony moved back home in July, their financial situation was desperate. Debbie couldn’t work any longer. She was ill. It wasn’t her neck; she had worked right through constant neck pain for years. At first she thought she had a really bad case of stomach flu, but her symptoms went on and on.

  After her visit to the ER and her very tentative diagnosis of pancreatitis, she never felt really well. Throughout June, Debbie continued to feel sick to her stomach. She could no longer blame it on the flu; her illness had gone on too long. She didn’t think it was psychosomatic, either, because on the surface, things were far better than they had been a few months earlier. Anthony hadn’t left her after all. He had been virtually living with the family for weeks before moving back for good. No, she couldn’t attribute her queasiness to sorrow over a broken marriage.

  But she felt worse all the time. Debbie had severe pains in her abdomen, and it was bloated and distended. She vomited a lot. It became difficult for her to hold down any nourishment at all.

  Over the years, Caroline Rago had usually come to visit her daughter and grandchildren on weekends. Debbie and Caroline had made it a habit to shop for groceries together at
Tops or Wegmans supermarkets. Now, most of the time, Debbie was too sick to go. Caroline went alone, and Anthony would run to the store for a few things, although he didn’t really like to shop for groceries.

  He didn’t like to cook much, either—unless it was something special that he could make into a big production. And they couldn’t afford special foods any longer.

  When Debbie was able to cook, she didn’t prepare anything very exotic. At the time she first became ill, in May 1999—when she started having serious digestion problems—Debbie was the cook. “Then we had pasta, chicken, steak, hamburgers, salads.” She cooked her own pasta sauce most of the time. Anthony didn’t always like what Debbie served, and he often made an omelette for himself.

  Debbie rarely drank alcohol. She occasionally had a wine cooler. Actually, she preferred Kool-Aid or juice. Anthony, however, was still a heavy drinker. “He drank tequila every day in May,” she recalled.

  In June, Debbie began to feel worse. Some days she lay in bed and could barely lift her head off the pillow. “I had good days and bad days,” she said. But she couldn’t come up with any common denominator that might explain why her sickness came and went. The fact was that she never felt really well any more.

  On the days when she couldn’t get up, Anthony cooked, or at least he made sandwiches for Ralph and Lauren and brought her Kool-Aid or some ice cream or sherbet. Debbie decided there had to be something the matter with her taste buds. Food just didn’t taste right any more—sherbet in particular. She had always liked it, especially on hot days, but now it had a weird kind of metallic taste that stayed on her tongue as if she had licked a tarnished silver spoon.

  Ralph and Lauren ate the sherbet, too, but they didn’t find anything wrong with it. Debbie complained to Anthony that hers tasted like tin or iron or something like that, and she pushed it away half-eaten.

  He stared at her oddly as if she might be losing her mind, but he didn’t comment.

  Some time in June, Debbie realized that she was having trouble remembering things. It was difficult for her to tell one day from another; they all blended into one endless blur of feeling sick. When she was able to get out of bed, she would walk into a room in her house and then forget what it was she wanted to do there.

  One day, something happened that really frightened her. She left the house, walked half a block away, and entered the home of a neighbor she barely knew. The woman was in her kitchen and looked up to see Debbie standing there. She was startled, and Debbie was completely baffled. She had no idea at all why she was there, and she was embarrassed.

  She didn’t know what was the matter with her. She tried to figure out why she was forgetting so much and why she felt so sick all the time. Maybe that was what pancreatitis did to you. But if she really had an inflamed pancreas, surely Anthony would know. After all, he was still a doctor—at least in her eyes. If she had something really wrong with her, Anthony should be able to figure it out. But he didn’t seem to have any answers either.

  Anthony had moved the last of his belongings back to the Pignataro home in West Seneca as Buffalo baked in early summer. Debbie had marked the date—June 30—on her calendar. Then, she had expected everything to get better. But her condition had only deteriorated. She had worked just three or four days during the first week of July and then become far too sick to go in.

  Although she was having trouble walking, Debbie sometimes managed to fix a light breakfast for Lauren and Ralph, but only dry cereal and orange juice. The thought of anything heavier made her nauseated. Most of the time, Debbie ate nothing for breakfast, but sometimes she tried to drink orange juice. It tasted like metal, too, and she spat it out.

  She looked at the carton, and it wasn’t outdated. It was the same orange juice she always bought at Tops or Wegmans. But it tasted so odd. Once again, Debbie complained to Anthony that everything tasted funny to her.

  And once again, he stared back at her, saying nothing, as if she wasn’t making sense. Maybe she wasn’t.

  When doctors or attorneys asked her later about what happened in July and August 1999, Debbie looked at them blankly. She simply could not access many of those memories. She didn’t remember what happened. Again and again, her answer was “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember.”

  Fortunately, other records existed. Her physicians’ files showed that on July 21, Debbie was back in the hospital. This time, the diagnosis of pancreatitis was firm. She had all the symptoms: nausea, severe stomach pain, and noticeable bloating of her abdomen. She was very, very ill.

  But Debbie shook her head when doctors asked her what she had eaten. She couldn’t remember. The month of July was one long gray mystery to her. She didn’t know what she had eaten, or what Anthony, Lauren, and Ralph had eaten. Her mother came on weekends and cooked, and Anthony cooked every night.

  When asked if she cooked supper, Debbie said no. She didn’t know if the family had pasta or fish or meat, or if Anthony made the children sandwiches for lunch. She had no idea what she herself had eaten. “I was not at the dinner table…I was upstairs in bed.”

  Pressed, Debbie thought she might have eaten soup or perhaps crackers. She thought it might have been Lipton’s chicken noodle soup, the dehydrated kind that came in a package to be added to boiling water. She liked that brand, and it was easy to fix. How many times had she eaten it? “I don’t know,” she said wanly. “I don’t remember.”

  Debbie did recall one day in July because Anthony was nicer to her than he had been in months. “I came downstairs to make myself some soup, and he said, ‘No, no—I’ll do it,’ and I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘No, you go lie down. I’ll do that for you.’ I asked him, ‘What’s the change? Why are you doing this?’ And he said, ‘I can’t be an asshole my whole life.’

  “He must have brought most of the pan of soup to me in this huge bowl, and I told him I couldn’t eat it, and he said, ‘No, eat it. Eat it. It’s good for you.’”

  Debbie tried. She ate some of the chicken noodle soup that he made for her, but she couldn’t keep it down long. Later, when Debbie came downstairs, she saw that Lauren was eating the soup that was left in the pan.

  Anthony had gone to play baseball, so Debbie drove Lauren to gymnastic practice. She could still do that if she drove slowly and very carefully.

  Debbie’s biggest concern was for her children, and she did remember that Lauren had dished up a little bowl of the same soup for herself. That was the only kind of soup Lauren liked. A few hours later, when she was at the gymnastic meet, Lauren got sick, too, and threw up. She had to come home. Debbie managed to drive there and pick her up.

  Later in July, there was no longer any question of Debbie looking after her family, driving, or visiting neighbors. She didn’t know what her family was eating. Debbie was upstairs in bed most of the time, or on the couch. She no longer ate with her family, or ate much of anything. Sometimes she had a few spoonfuls of soup or just a few crackers. Everything tasted peculiar to her.

  During Debbie’s hospital visit on July 21, when her stomach pains were so bad that she could barely sit up, she didn’t come home right away. She was admitted for tests and remained at South Buffalo Mercy Hospital until July 25. Her diagnosis of pancreatitis of “unknown etiology” meant that the doctors didn’t know what had caused her pancreas to become inflamed. There could be numerous causes, and one of them was drinking too much alcohol. But Debbie hadn’t touched liquor for months. If that was the cause, Anthony was the one who should have been in the hospital; he was drinking enough tequila to pass out most nights.

  Debbie was home from July 25 until August 10, but she had no memory of that time. Her neighbors did. Her mother did. Caroline Rago was worried sick about her daughter, but she was not a confrontational woman—she never had been. If she asked Anthony too many questions, he might tell her she couldn’t come into his home on the weekends, and she wanted to be there as often as she could to take care of Debbie and oversee the children.

  Anthony had a
way of dismissing questions from other people. After all, he was the doctor. If he thought Debbie needed medical attention, he would certainly see to it.

  Debbie had a lot of friends along their street, although Anthony wasn’t very convivial with the neighbors. His personality grated on a lot of them, particularly after a neighborhood meeting to discuss the construction of a Wilson Farms Store. The 24-hour convenience store would change the ambience of the area, and the neighbors gathered to discuss the pros and cons.

  “Anthony got up and took over the meeting,” one resident recalled. “Yes, his dad built our street, but he acted so superior, and he actually accused the people who didn’t side with his views of being ‘hired actors.’ That didn’t sit well with a lot of people.”

  Another neighbor was annoyed when he came into her kitchen as she cooked dinner. “I was making souvlaki, and he reached into the pan with his bare fingers and started eating slices of beef. It was so rude, not to mention unsanitary.”

  One of Debbie’s close friends was a woman who had lived a few houses down the block for eight years: Rose Gardner*. Rose invited her to attend a Tupperware party on Friday, August 6. Debbie had promised Rose she would be there, but she didn’t show up. This was so unusual for Debbie that Rose came by to check on her the next day, concerned because Debbie had been sick for so long and seemed to be getting worse. She could see that her friend was very sick.

  When Debbie was hospitalized on July 21, Rose had asked Anthony how she was. “He was very nonchalant,” she recalled. “He said, ‘Oh, she’ll be all right—she just has a little virus.’ I didn’t question him because he was a doctor, but it seemed like he was always blaming Debbie’s illness on one virus or another.”

  Rose was a petite woman whose slender figure belied the fact that she had borne six children. She took care of her home and flower garden and homeschooled her children, too, while managing to look as spic and span as her home. Rose was a devout Catholic and a very compassionate woman, but she wasn’t afraid to speak up when something bothered her. There came what she called “a defining moment” when she had to say something.