Last Dance, Last Chance

by Ann Rule

  And still, Anthony continued to write his manipulative letters from prison. His sentencing was two months away, and he was afraid. He begged Debbie not to cut him off from his children: “You [once] said that jail is not the answer, that I should get therapy. They are my therapy, especially during the holidays. Please reconsider. I’m sorry. Love, Anthony.”

  To Ralph and Lauren (November 18, 2000): “Ralph and Lauren, Sometimes I just need to talk. Do not block the calls. I need you both, especially now at the holidays. Please!! Love, Dad.”

  “…I know I made a mistake, and I’m so sorry. It hurts me every day. I need my children…May be you can visit me at the holidays…I’m so sorry I messed everything up.

  “I feel so sorry for all the hurt I’ve caused. Please talk to me…I am so thankful you could forgive me, but please do not forget about me…

  “Please forgive me. It was a very hard time for me back then & and I made a very bad mistake…Please try to talk to me…I’m so sorry.”

  As Christmas 2000 approached the litany in the letters Anthony scrawled to his children was repeated on and on and on. Sometimes Ralph accepted his phone calls. Sometimes he and Lauren sent a photograph or two. But they didn’t really believe in him any more.

  They hadn’t been able to take Polo back into their home, despite their father’s entreaties. But Debbie promised them they would find a dog. She had no money to buy a puppy, but she would find a way.

  “We went to a football game at school, and some kids were giving away yellow Labrador retrievers,” Debbie said. “There was only one left, but she was perfect for us—meant for us, I think. We call her Gabby.”

  In December 2000, Anthony sent a card to Debbie:

  To My Wife, With Love at Christmas

  It’s Love that makes Christmas so special…

  Merry Christmas with Love

  He added his own sentiment:

  My heart aches so, Baby, and I don’t know what

  to say to you right now. Except I’m sorry.

  Anthony… You know my heart.

  Indeed she did. Debbie opened the Christmas card with hands that could no longer feel, her nerves deadened as if they’d been injected with Novocain. She couldn’t decorate their Christmas tree because she no longer had small muscle control. She couldn’t kneel. She directed from her chair as Ralph and Lauren scrambled to hang the familiar ornaments. Ralph put up the Christmas lights.

  Anthony’s romantic card was shamelessly obvious. He meant to swing Debbie back over to his side. A supportive letter from the victim herself would surely have an impact on his sentence length.

  Perhaps it didn’t occur to him that because he had tried to plot murder for hire in jail, his mail was censored. Oblivious to this, he wrote to his mother, imploring her to intervene with Debbie:

  12–6–00

  Mom

  Hi, it’s snowing pretty good down here now.

  Please think about what I asked you. Even if it’s all phoney & you don’t truly mean it, you could do it for me.

  You will never have to see her again anyway.

  What she tells Judge Rossetti will determine how much time he gives me.

  Every Day that you save me is worth it.

  You wouldn’t have to see her, you could just call on the phone and be nice.

  I know it would kill you but it will help me.

  If you have any doubts, ask Joel. I’m sure it didn’t help for her to hear that you called Carmine fat again and that you told [a mutual friend] that you’ll never get along with her again. Especially now in these critical days when she will speak to The Judge.

  I know she would accept your call & it will surely help me (& the sooner the better.)

  Please, Please, Please reconsider.

  Thanks, Anthony

  P.S., I know it will kill you. But please try.

  That’s all I want for Christmas.

  It was too late. Whatever Anthony had told his mother about his wife to turn Lena totally against Debbie and to make her give up any relationship with her grandchildren, he had done a remarkably effective job. He wasn’t able to undo his own handiwork. Even to save him years in prison, Lena could not lower herself to be nice to Debbie.

  It is extremely doubtful that it would have made a difference. Debbie did write a letter to Judge Rossetti, but it wasn’t what Anthony had in mind. It was seven pages long, typed single-space.

  “For the last 20 years,” Debbie began, “I have loved this man, Anthony Pignataro, unconditionally. No matter what has come our way, stood by him and supported him 100%.”

  Debbie didn’t have to exaggerate as she simply recalled the events in her life and in her marriage since Anthony’s release from his first prison term. Judge Rossetti already knew the details of her mysterious illness and her steady progression toward entering the Mercy Hospital ER.

  “I am completely convinced my husband was waiting for me to die and I didn’t. He probably couldn’t understand why I was still living with the amount of arsenic I ingested. He knew exactly what he was doing. His only explanation to me so far as to why he did this is that he was terribly confused. He was in so much pain emotionally and he didn’t know which way to turn.

  “My response to him was then, ‘Why didn’t you take your own life?’ His response was, ‘I did [try]—but it didn’t work.’”

  Debbie’s letter to the judge didn’t leave one horrific incident out. In a sense, this was her first time to speak. She recalled Anthony’s infidelities:

  “He always told me how lucky I was to have him. He degraded me in front of people. He often said to me, ‘Look at yourself, who would want you?’ He made me cry all the time…I thought, as he got older and matured, he would come to his senses and realize how lucky he was to have a wife that adored him unconditionally and two beautiful children…How could he ever take a chance of losing that forever? He didn’t care. He knew I would keep forgiving him. He would promise it would never happen again. Say how sorry he was, and buy me a piece of expensive jewelry and life would go on again until the next time.”

  For Debbie, the fact that her life had gone on was almost a miracle. She tried to put into her written statement the extent of her physical handicap.

  “I have come a long way this past year, but my fight isn’t over yet. I am now able to walk without braces on my legs or any other means of assistance. I can feed myself, bathe myself, and dress myself. Once again, taking care of my kids is a pleasure. I can also drive.

  “My legs, from the knees down, are constantly numb and painful. I can only wear sneakers because I have severe foot drop as a result of the arsenic. I can no longer walk a mall with my children or do many things that we did.

  “My hands are numb and painful. I have lost all the fine motor skill such as taking money out of my wallet…My hands still look like they are in a palsy state…ButIam here. I am still alive. I can watch my beautiful children grow up into fine adults. I can enjoy their teen years with them…my job will never be done with them. Even when they are married with families of their own, they will always need their mother. Thank God, I am still here for them.”

  She told Judge Rossetti that she didn’t want revenge; she wanted only to protect Ralph and Lauren. “When [Anthony] finally did the right thing and confessed this heinous crime, he said to our son, Ralph, ‘I stood up like a man and told the truth—and look what they’re doing to me now.’

  “Once again, ‘poor Anthony,’” Debbie wrote, “I don’t think so. The kids and I are the victims here, not you.”

  Debbie had put a block on her phone because there were too many wheedling calls from Anthony, and then she removed it because Ralph thought he might want to speak to his father once in a while.

  “I do not seek revenge. Someday he will have to answer to God why he did this unspeakable act…I ask you to determine, however, please let the punishment fit the crime. I do not feel safe with this man on the streets, nor will I ever trust him again with my children. Please help us
to get on with our lives without him…I don’t know how they will feel in the future regarding their dad, but the choice is theirs—he’s still their father…”

  There were dozens of letters to Judge Rossetti about the sentencing to come. Aside from Anthony’s mother and some of his siblings, they all came from neighbors and friends who had no sympathy at all for his plight.

  26

  Anthony Pignataro��s sentencing was delayed for three weeks, but on Friday, February 9, 2001, he finally faced Judge Mario Rossetti. As with so many convicted felons who have awaited sentencing in a jail cell for months, his skin was the greenish-white shade of jail pallor. He wore his own invention, his snap-on toupee, but it looked bizarre because his head was shaved beneath it, and it didn’t blend smoothly with his own hair as it had been designed to do. Although he was still close to six feet in height, he seemed much diminished, a shadow of the super-confident persona he’d always affected.

  He didn’t look dangerous, but perhaps that was the image he wished to project on this cold morning in Buffalo. As Donn Esmonde of the Buffalo News observed, Pignataro had missed his calling. “[He] should have taken a few acting classes and headed for Hollywood. Instead of a felon, he could have been a star.”

  Frank Sedita and Carol Bridge were present to represent the People, and Joel Daniels sat beside Pignataro.

  “There has been a presentence report,” Frank Sedita said. “In my thirteen years as a prosecutor, it’s probably the most comprehensive and detailed presentencing report I’ve ever seen.”

  And it was. It was all there: a written survey of a man’s life, a word picture eerily similar to the painting of Dorian Grey that festered and streaked and aged in a locked room while the human form of the character remained youthful and unlined. Anthony’s sins against his patients, his fellow physicians, and his family had piled up year after year, and now most of them had been found out. All the plastic surgery and workouts that had been designed to keep him looking young for his age had been erased by alcohol, heroin, failure, and long confinement.

  Frank Sedita said he had nothing further to add to what was already on the record. He did, however, wish to speak to a last-minute letter Anthony had given Judge Rossetti—a letter the prosecutor had just read.

  “The defendant claims that he has had several ‘heartfelt discussions with Mrs. Pignataro’—that’s a quote—regarding her expressed desire for the leniency of this Court towards Mr. Pignataro. I showed her the letter, and she denied the claim by Mr. Pignataro.”

  Continuing his custom of whittling a fine edge off the truth, Anthony had tried a final foolish deception. He had written a letter in his own handwriting to Judge Rossetti to explain that he and Debbie had reconciled. That was not true, Debbie said firmly. There was not a wisp of truth in the letter. In the past year, Debbie had never discussed a reconciliation with Anthony, and she shook her head faintly as she realized he was trying to convince Judge Rossetti of that.

  Indeed, Debbie was within a week of receiving her final divorce decree.

  Even though she had been vindicated, this was a difficult day for Debbie. She had had such hope for Anthony—for them both. Now it had all turned to ashes, and she was sitting in yet another courtroom. At least she was walking under her own power, and everyone who had supported her was there with her: Denis Scinta, her mother, her brother, her cousins, Sharon Simon, Shelly Palombaro. They were all there beside her in the front row of the gallery as the man she had once loved waited to hear his sentence.

  Sedita reminded the judge that Pignataro had promised in his plea bargain to admit to being a second felony offender at the time of sentencing. He added that Debbie had asked that there be a restraining order of protection against Anthony for three years after he served his maximum sentence. No one knew yet what that would be, but she feared that whenever Anthony got out of prison he would head for her door.

  As for Anthony’s two sentences, it was to be expected that Frank Sedita preferred that they run consecutively—one right after the other—while Joel Daniels wanted them to be concurrent. If Daniels got his way, Anthony would get two prison sentences for the price of one.

  Debbie had asked to testify before Anthony was sentenced. She had always been fearful on the witness stand before, but this time she needed to speak. She didn’t talk for very long, but her words were powerful as she described the few years just past.

  “He has taken away part of me that I will never get back,” she said softly, looking down at Anthony. “He put his own children and me through a living hell.”

  Anthony seemed stunned that Debbie could speak so well in front of a crowded courtroom, and that she would speak against him. She was his last and best hope for mercy.

  Judge Rossetti explained that he had read the presentence report, the letters attached, the victim impact statement, a presentence memorandum that Joel Daniels had submitted, the letter from Anthony, and one from a minister writing on Anthony’s behalf.

  Joel Daniels spoke to what he had seen as prejudice against his client by the probation department. “First of all, he’s paid a price for the Sarah Smith case—he went to jail for four months in the Erie County pen. He got out; his probation was revoked by Judge Tills. Judge Tills gave him another whack—he maxed him, gave him one and-a-third to four…The point is, he’s paid his price to society for whatever he owes on the Sarah Smith case.”

  Four months for the life of a young wife and mother. If Daniels’s reasoning hadn’t reverberated so tragically, it might have been laughable. Four months was a slap on the hand, and for Anthony it had been almost a vacation as he read books, took illegal drugs, and jogged around the exercise yard.

  Daniels characterized Pignataro as being “victimized by word processors…regurgitating everything up about the Sarah Smith case from the old report.” That was old news, Daniels implied, and had nothing to do with the current conviction.

  Joel Daniels pulled out all the stops for his client, suggesting that the District Attorney’s office was wrong when they insisted that Debbie had received more than one dose of arsenic. His was a scatter-shot technique, and he was a very good orator. He commiserated with the judge over how tough his job was.

  “But look at the defendant, his family, everything about him…You know Anthony Pignataro—he has a wonderful family. His mother is here today. I didn’t realize it, but she just had a birthday on February 1. She’s seventy-one years old now. His two brothers are here from Florida; Ralph is here. Steven is here. His sister, Antoinette, I talked to her—but she couldn’t get up here. As the Court knows, she’s a doctor, and she’s very, very busy.”

  Daniels began to wander, but Judge Rossetti let him talk. He spoke of how wonderful Dr. Ralph had been, of Anthony’s schooldays, his boxing career, his years of training to be a physician, his children. “He was a devoted father to those children. Those children came first with him.”

  Now, incredibly, Daniels visualized a time in the future when Ralph might throw a 40-yard football pass, if he should get into St. Francis. “If he [throws that pass], I hope he pauses for a minute and says to himself, ‘Thank you dad. Without your help, your confidence, I don’t think I would have been able to do that.’”

  Lena Pignataro’s emotional pain had clearly gotten through to Joel Daniels. “She’s a very, very nice lady. She’s a fine human being…a good solid mother. She would come up to my office and she would cry…and say, ‘Joel, when can I bring him home?…Joel, do you think he’s going to be out before I die?’ And I said, ‘I hope so.’”

  Daniels admitted that Anthony had just gone downhill, but he had no explanation for it.

  Finally, the time had come for Anthony to speak, if he chose to. Most felons don’t say a word at sentencing; some blurt out a paragraph or two. But Anthony held several sheets from a yellow legal tablet. His words weren’t new to Debbie or to anyone who had seen the snowstorm of letters and cards that had come to her and her children since his guilty plea in November. But he
turned them now into a dramatic soliloquy. His hands trembled, and his usually deep voice lost its timbre as he began to speak. Tears wet his face, and he choked as if he couldn’t bear to go on.

  Perhaps he was having trouble; he faced what, for him, was unthinkable. He certainly had the full attention of the courtroom onlookers, including reporters with their pens raised, waiting.

  “What does one say?” Anthony began. “Where do I begin? How do I tell my family and this Court how very, very sorry I am for what has happened? First and foremost, I want to apologize to my wife and my children. I want to apologize to the Rago family, and my family. I failed you all—not only my wife and children but my profession and my family legacy. Mostly, I failed myself. I was once so strong, both mentally and physically, and anybody can attest to that.”

  Within a paragraph, the prisoner was back to himself, lips quivering as he looked for someone to blame. He didn’t blame his father, but marked his decline from his father’s death.

  “My professional career failed and I went to jail, after which an attempt in a private business venture with my wife failed, and in the process, consumed the majority of our remaining cash reserve.

  “My pride was eating me up inside…The pressure of no income, being unemployable, the confusion, the pride, the frustration, consumed me. After years of dedicated study, I became a twenty-four-hour prisoner of my own demise.”

  Jail had been tough for him, he said. “I hit bottom.”

  He said he could not reach out to his wife because it would confirm his failure. “I lost sight of everything but bitterness.”

  He reached back to his dead baby girl, mentioned his children’s athletic accomplishments, and asked only that the Court would allow him to help his family, to provide for their emotional and physical needs. “I truly am not a harmful man. I want to prove that. I am a good man…My soul aches with profound shame, sorrow, disgrace and loss…Please allow me a second chance.”