by Ann Rule
Manelski suggested that Tom talk to Lieutenant Mike Maggitti, who was head of the Wilmington Detective Division, and he offered to arrange a meeting. That meeting never took place. Tom was still adamant that he would not talk to the police about his family or his personal life. He would set the conditions of any police interview. Meanwhile, Anne Marie was still missing and the Wilmington Police were at an impasse. It was obvious that Tom was never going to submit willingly to questions about her disappearance.
Anne Marie’s siblings kept their lonely vigil at her apartment, often sitting on the front porch, as if watching to see who came up and down Washington Street and might help them find their sister. Someone had wound yellow ribbons around the porch’s thick white columns. Everyone in town knew that Annie was gone, and her family members were approached with all manner of words of sympathy and concern, suggestions, and theories. The case was like gold to psychics and would-be psychics, who called or wrote with their otherworldly messages about where Anne Marie might be found. A missing persons case with so much publicity attracted pseudoscientists, the definitely peculiar, and the just plain crazies. And still, the Faheys were polite to them all, always hoping that someone might provide the shred of information that would lead them to their sister.
Through Robert’s connections, Revere Outdoor Advertising offered to donate a billboard along Interstate 95 at the Delaware 141 interchange, with an 800 number that anyone with information could call. Now, forty thousand motorists a day read, HELP US FIND ANNE MARIE FAHEY: 1-800-TIP-3333, as they drove the interstate.
It was so hard for any of the Faheys to sleep at night. Their days took on a grim routine, a marathon of hope, anxiety, and mourning. By mid-July, Kathleen, Kevin, Mark, Robert, and Brian probably knew in their hearts that Annie wasn’t coming back. If she was alive, she would not have stayed away for more than a month; she would have found some way to come home or to get word to them.
If Anne Marie had left of her own accord, as Tom Capano suggested, how was she surviving? None of her clothing was gone; she didn’t have her purse or her wallet. The only things missing were her keys and her favorite ring, and maybe her Walkman. She didn’t have her car, and there had been no activity on her credit cards, no checks written or withdrawals from her bank account.
And so her family was still caught in that no-man’s-land of not knowing. They could not, however, accept that she was gone forever; in the best of moments—which were fewer and fewer—they believed that she would come home. They had to believe that; they did not even have the bleak cleanness of knowing she was dead, or the closure of a funeral mass and a grave to visit. And so they were caught on a seesaw of hope and despair.
Mike Scanlan was officially on vacation, but he was really looking for Anne Marie. He was with her family every day, and they all took some comfort from one another. Wakeful, Mike sometimes wandered out into his garden at dawn and pulled weeds. The images that kept popping unbidden into all of their minds could sometimes be blotted out with physical activity.
None of them knew that the federal government was investigating Anne Marie’s disappearance. It might have made her family and friends feel more hopeful, but it was vital at the moment to keep the participation of the U.S. Attorney’s office under wraps.
Tom didn’t know either. And until an actual federal grand jury investigation might begin, Ferris Wharton knew only that it was a possibility. As interested as he was in working on the baffling case, he was willing to step out of it completely if it meant that all the power of the federal government could be channeled toward finding Anne Marie. He finally told the press that Tom Capano and his attorneys would not submit to any further talks with the police. “We can’t talk to Capano unless he agrees to talk,” Wharton said.
Like almost everyone else along the Eastern seaboard, Governor Tom Carper wondered if Anne Marie was still alive. In his office, her desk sat empty, and as the month of July inched by, one hot, humid day after another with no word at all, he commented that he usually saw a glass as half full, “but we’re being realistic,” he said. “We realize the glass is half empty.”
The rumor mills, always active, worked overtime. One persistent thread of gossip held that Anne Marie was dead and her body buried under the new Home Depot store. Nearly finished, the sprawling home supply store was being built under the supervision of Joey Capano and the commercial division of Capano & Sons. Wilmington detectives came out to the site, asked questions, and looked around. If Anne Marie’s body was buried somewhere under the concrete of the huge store, they realized, they might never find her. They didn’t have any evidence to get a court order to jackhammer the whole floor. And such a project would have cost millions of dollars.
The Home Depot went into advertising and publicity overdrive to avoid tremendous revenue loss, as Wilmingtonians shivered with the thought that Anne Marie might lie buried beneath the aisles where they shopped.
The Wilmington investigators traveled to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., to confer with special agents expert in solving missing persons and homicide cases.
“There’s not going to be any miracle revelation, no divining rod to say where she is,” Ferris Wharton said. “But they might say, ‘Have you considered this?’ or, ‘From our experience, you might want to look over here.’ ”
ON July 18, Colm Connolly and Eric Alpert, representing the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI, invited the Wilmington Police to join them in a grand jury investigation of Anne Marie’s disappearance. Once the Wilmington Police signed letters signifying that they wanted to participate, the police were no longer allowed to share information with anyone. The letters were signed, and now the police had, indeed, made a “federal case” out of it.
On July 19, Eric Alpert and Bob Donovan traveled to the inner sanctum of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia. There they sat down with a half dozen agents skilled in studying the patterns of a vast array of antisocial killers. The profilers of the Behavioral Science Unit are not as all-knowing as they are sometimes portrayed in movies or on television—no human could be—but they have an intuitive sense, honed by scores of interviews with murderers and by studying hundreds of cases. Given descriptions of a group of suspects in a particular case, they can usually point investigators in the right direction by identifying the most likely suspect.
Alpert and Donovan didn’t have a handful of suspects in the disappearance of Anne Marie; they had only one—and that was Tom Capano. They laid the circumstances of the case out for the profilers, and together they explored many scenarios and possibilities. No one at Quantico suggested they were on the wrong path.
ON July 24, Robert Fahey wrote a letter to Tom and had it hand delivered to Saul, Ewing. The Faheys had had no contact with Tom, save for the one message he left on Robert’s answering machine earlier—that disjointed explanation of why he could not speak with the police.
“Dear Mr. Capano,” Robert wrote.
We are writing to request your assistance in locating our sister, Anne Marie Fahey. Four weeks have passed since she was last seen alive. She was with you the last time her whereabouts can be independently verified. As the last person to be seen with Anne Marie, one would hope that you would do the right thing, come forward and share all you know about Anne Marie’s disappearance.
The authorities have invested significant effort into interviewing anyone thought to have any information which may help our cause. Everyone in the community has been very helpful and forthcoming with information. Other than two brief conversations with the police in your home immediately following Anne Marie’s disappearance, you have been unwilling to submit to an unrestricted police interview. Your team of lawyers has been very effective at communicating for you but very ineffective at helping us find our sister. Do what your father, Louis, would expect of one of his sons. Come forward and share all you know about Anne Marie’s disappearance.
Imagine, if you will, that this case involved one of your four daughters, n
ot our sister. We know you would expect the last person to be seen with your children to come forward and be helpful. You would want that person to do the right thing and provide assistance. It has been four weeks and you have yet to come forward to assist the authorities without conditions.
We urge you to put our interests in finding our sister ahead of all other personal concerns. We are talking about someone’s life. Please help us today.
The Fahey Family.
Tom did not respond.
Chapter Twenty-five
ON JULY 25, Connolly, Donovan, and Alpert had not one particle of physical evidence. But they suspected it was not a kidnapping case but a murder case they were striving to build against Tom Capano. They believed they had a motive, the oldest motive in the world: jealousy, possessiveness, maybe revenge. But they had no body. They had no eyewitnesses. They had no blood. They had no weapon. They had no crime scene. They didn’t even have signs of a struggle. Indeed, they were faced with an almost impossible task. Suspicion and innuendo and all the gut feelings in the world were not enough to get an arrest warrant—much less a conviction.
The three investigators had little money and less manpower; they were it. And they were motivated by the picture of a young woman whose absence had broken a lot of hearts and the challenge presented by an arrogant and powerful suspect who was thumbing his nose in the face of the law.
A searingly invasive look into Tom Capano’s private life was about to accelerate. The last week of July was very busy for the investigators—but they were discreetly busy. Donovan and Alpert continued their interviews with Anne Marie’s friends and associates. They were hearing the same elements over and over, although each person they interviewed remembered different anecdotes that illustrated the growing schism between Anne Marie and Tom.
Bob Donovan talked again to Lisa D’Amico, who told him that Tom Capano had once grabbed Anne Marie by the neck and called her a “slut” and a “bitch.” He interviewed Jill Morrison and heard the horrific details of Anne Marie’s struggle to escape from Tom over a period of almost a year, leading up to the night she vanished. The government team learned that Anne Marie had been desperate, frightened—but resolute—about extricating herself from Tom’s grip. And what they were hearing in their interviews sounded nothing at all like the relationship that Tom had described to them. Was Anne Marie as ditsy and spacey as he maintained, or was he only painting a picture he wanted them to believe?
Al Franke, whom Anne Marie had once dated and who had become a good friend, told Donovan about the time—only six to eight weeks before she vanished—when Tom climbed up the fire escape to Anne Marie’s building and made a forced entry into her apartment. At that time, she told Franke, he had been in a towering, bellowing rage, and once more he had started taking back various gifts he had given her.
On July 26, Connolly and Alpert were poring over copies of Tom’s credit card bills when one in particular caught their attention. On June 29, two days after Anne Marie disappeared, Tom had made a purchase totaling $308.99 at the Wallpaper Warehouse. That struck them as a little odd. Why would a man who was only renting a house buy wallpaper? They asked a few questions and learned that the Wallpaper Warehouse also did business as Air Base Carpets.
Alpert drove to the warehouse on Route 13 in New Castle County and talked to Michael Longwill, the general manager. When asked to check his records, Longwill found that Tom Capano was a repeat customer. On September 30, 1995, he had used his MasterCard to buy several Oriental rugs and a room-sized remnant. The bill at that time had come to $2,349.92. Longwill could determine the type of carpets by codes noted on the bill, and he told Alpert that the large remnant Tom had purchased was a looped-weave beige Berber carpet. It was all that was left on a roll sold three months earlier. Longwill was even able to give Alpert the name of the man who had purchased most of that roll.
“Now, on June 29, 1996,” Alpert asked, “did Mr. Capano buy another carpet from your store?”
“Yes,” Longwill said. “I sold him an Oriental rug and pad. He came in—let’s see—at 1:36 in the afternoon.”
It was not an expensive rug, more of a knockoff of the real thing, dark green with various colors in the design. Longwill said there had been nothing unusual about Capano’s manner. He had carried the pad, and an employee carried the rug to his car.
Alpert contained his enthusiasm, although later he and Connolly would agree that this was the first break they had in trying to solve the puzzle of Anne Marie’s disappearance.
Bob Donovan contacted the man who had purchased the bulk of the roll of carpet that Tom had bought the previous September. That would have been at the time he moved into the North Grant Avenue house. The other buyer, the owner of a bed-and-breakfast, showed Donovan the thick-looped beige carpeting that covered most of the downstairs of his house. Longwill had assured Alpert that this carpet was exactly the same as the carpet Tom had purchased. Same lot number. Same color. Same roll.
“You have any extra?” Donovan asked.
“Sure,” the innkeeper said. “You can take a hunk of what’s left over.”
Whether the fibers in that beige carpet would be needed for comparison, no one knew, but it was bagged into evidence, just in case.
They were getting a little lucky. They were now able to put two pieces of their investigative puzzle side by side. Donovan had also spoken with Ruth Boylan, the woman who cleaned Tom’s house every other Monday.
“When did you clean his house last?” Donovan asked.
“July twenty-second,” she said.
“And before that?”
“June twenty-fourth,” she replied. “You see, I was supposed to clean it on July eighth next—but Mr. Capano called me on maybe the fifth or sixth, and he said I didn’t need to clean it because they’d all been away for the Fourth of July, so it was still clean.”
She knew the whole house well, but she told Donovan that she was concerned about something that seemed a little peculiar. She said she’d let herself in as usual on the twenty-second and begun to clean. But when she moved into the great room off the kitchen, she was surprised. The room was changed.
“How?” Donovan asked.
“Well, for one thing, the sofa was missing—and the carpet had been taken up and there was an area rug there.”
This had puzzled her because the carpet was practically brand new and in perfect condition. So was the sofa. It had been sitting right there four weeks ago, kind of crosswise in the room, facing the TV set, and now it was gone.
“What color was that sofa?”
“Kind of a deep rose, with a pineapple print or motif, all the same color.”
Mrs. Boylan said she had stood looking at the room, shaking her head. Neither the couch nor the rug had had a worn spot or a stain on them. Now, she said, the room was rearranged, with the TV flat against one wall and two reclining chairs facing it. The rug didn’t cover nearly what the carpet had. She wondered whose idea it was to change the room, because it had been nicer the way it was before.
The three-man investigative team had a feeling that something had happened in that room off Tom’s kitchen that he wanted to conceal. The couch that had been there was gone, and he had replaced the carpet with a cheap rug. Why?
Alpert talked once more with Michelle Sullivan, Anne Marie’s counselor, who told him she could not imagine that Anne Marie would have gone willingly to Tom’s house on the night of June 27. “The only reason I can think of that Anne Marie even went to dinner with him that night would have been to break off their relationship.”
On July 29, FBI special agents Kevin Shannon, Gordon Cobb, and Kathy Canning again interviewed Jacqueline Dansak, the waitress at the Panorama. Shannon showed her a lay-down of photographs and she chose those of Anne Marie Fahey and Tom Capano. That, in itself, wasn’t startling—their pictures had been in the Philadelphia papers—but Dansak’s recall of the couple was. She said that the woman in the picture was healthier looking than the woman she had served. “
It was the Fahey girl, all right—but she was very frail, sallow, sad,” the waitress said. “She appeared disheveled and uncomfortable.”
Dansak told Agent Shannon that she got the impression that Capano had wanted her to leave them alone. After she served cocktails, he had ordered a bottle of wine and said he would pour it himself. He had ordered chicken or veal, and Anne Marie Fahey had ordered fish. But neither of them ate their entrées.
When she was told about the waitress’s description of Anne Marie’s glum demeanor during her meal with Tom at the Panorama, Michelle Sullivan nodded sadly. It all fit. During their last session, just the night before she disappeared, they had been working toward giving Anne Marie enough confidence to cut Tom completely out of her life. And Anne Marie was frightened of Tom, so frightened that Sullivan had encouraged her more strongly this time to report his behavior toward her to the Delaware Attorney General’s Office.
She still didn’t want to do that—not yet. But she had been making great progress toward standing up for what she wanted out of life. “And she was not suicidal,” Sullivan said. “Not at all.”
There had been no physical evidence in Anne Marie’s Washington Street apartment that would remotely indicate that she had been injured or killed there. Connie Blake had told the investigators that the glass door that closed off the stairs to her second-floor apartment and Anne Marie’s third-floor dwelling was always locked, although the two women often left the doors to their own apartments unlocked until they went to bed. They felt secure because no one could reach the stairway without a key to the door off the foyer.
Oddly, the combination had been reversed on Thursday night when Blake came home. The dead bolt on the glass door was unlocked, something that rarely happened. And of course, Anne Marie’s door was locked, with the dead bolt thrown, which Theresa Oliver had opened with her key the following Saturday night.
Connie Blake (who had once been Mayor Dan Frawley’s secretary) and Anne Marie were friends. In fact, she had once lived in Anne Marie’s apartment. When she moved downstairs, she had told Annie about the vacancy. Blake knew both Mike Scanlan and Tom Capano, and from time to time had seen each of them picking Anne Marie up. She had seen Anne Marie for the last time at about 6 P.M. on the Thursday night she had dinner with Tom. “I was in my living room and she pulled up across the street and parked her car. She was wearing a white blouse—that’s all I noticed.”