And Never Let Her Go: Thomas Capano: The Deadly Seducer

by Ann Rule

  NICK PERILLO had received $25 for making his call to Debby; following Tom’s orders and without asking why, Kay Capano had deposited the money into Nick’s commissary account. He accepted it, but Nick had made another move the day before. He’d written a letter to Ferris Wharton. In it, he explained that Tom Capano had asked him to phone a person called Debby, who was going to blow the case wide open if she didn’t stop talking to the prosecutors. “He asked me to call Debby to remind her to fight the hypocritic bastards and not change her story about where she disposed of the gun in the trash can.”

  Four days later, Perillo told his attorney, Tom Foley, about what Tom Capano was planning, and Foley agreed to talk with the prosecutors about it. Perillo confided to Wharton that Tom had told him he always got involved “with head cases like Fahey” and that he had called Debby a “stupid dumb bitch.”

  While Perillo was not averse to being rewarded for information, he was also uneasy about what Tom seemed capable of doing. Perillo was a con man and an admitted drug addict, but he would no more have plotted to hurt someone physically than the guards in the bubble would. He told Wharton that Tom was very angry at Debby. “Very angry.”

  Perillo had been in the system a long time and he knew that information could be traded for a possible reduction in sentence. Wharton took him up on his offer to provide information about Tom, albeit without making any promises. Perillo also had a private backup plan he didn’t share with the prosecutors. This was a big story, and he thought he might just contact Inside Edition or one of the other tabloid shows and see if he could sell some information. Nobody accepted his collect calls.

  On March 4, Perillo had some fairly startling news for the prosecutors and got a message out to them via a guard. Tom had asked him if he knew anyone who might want to burglarize Debby’s house. “He told me it would be easy picking. He has the key and will give the alarm code to me—to send her a message.” Perillo said that he did know people who could commit a burglary for him, although it would take some time to find them.

  Tom had finally realized that Debby was not only unwilling to lie on the witness stand for him, she was going to stay with that “loathsome lawyer” Tom Bergstrom. As an attorney himself, he knew any lawyer worth his salt would advise her to look after herself, and that might lead her to cooperate with the “the Nazi” and “the hangman.”

  Debby had told Tom she would be leaving on St. Patrick’s Day for Sanibel Island in Florida for her children’s spring vacation trip and would be gone until March 28. In the second week of March, pursuing his burglary plans, Tom told Perillo that Debby’s home was full of valuable possessions, in both a monetary and a sentimental sense. He wanted her to be so afraid and, at the same time, so aware of who was behind the burglary that she would never even think of cooperating with the prosecutors.

  Tom’s plan to have Perillo find a burglar to send Debby a very frightening message was not a momentary aberrance. He had a perfect visual memory, an ability that many people don’t possess. He could close his eyes and picture every room in Debby’s house, and in those rooms, the places where she kept jewelry, art, antiques, silver, china, stereos, television sets, VCRs—all those things that burglars delight in.

  With utmost care, he drew five maps: of Delaware Avenue and the side streets near the little white house, of the three floors of Debby’s house, and of an exterior view showing entrances and the direction doors opened.

  For each room, Tom noted the valuables to be found there and pointed out hiding places. He had meticulous orders for the second floor, where Debby’s bedroom and office were. He wanted to be sure she knew who had sent the men who ravaged her home. “Must remove plastic bag with sex toys and videos,” he instructed. “In either: • office closet; • closet opposite Master Bath on right side; • Built-in cabinets in Master Bedroom outside wall; • Inside luggage in either closet.” He added that the floor-to-ceiling mirror in the bedroom MUST BE SHATTERED, and that all the artwork must be removed from Debby’s bedroom or slashed to ribbons.

  Other than Debby herself, there was only one person who knew what the mirror meant or where the sex toys were—her lover, Tom Capano. It would be like writing his name on her bedroom wall; she would get the message loud and clear.

  To be sure that the burglars Perillo contacted would be well prepared, Tom added a sixth page with thirteen instructions. Giving orders was almost a fetish with him, and this mission had to be accomplished perfectly.

  MARCH 18–MARCH 28

  EARLIER IS BETTER

  1. SHOULD ENTER AND EXIT BACK DOOR.

  2. ALARM PANEL ON SHORT WALL TO LEFT GOING FROM KITCHEN INTO DEN.

  3. UPON ENTRY ALARM WILL EMIT QUIET, STEADY TONE. 60 SECOND DELAY TO ENTER CODE. MUST FLIP DOWN COVER ON PANEL. RED LIGHT—ARMED AND GREEN LIGHT—DISARMED. ENTER 43391.

  4. HOUSE IS HEAVILY SHRUBBED ON THREE SIDES. NO OBSTRUCTED VIEW FOR/FROM HOUSE BEHIND GARAGE SO ONLY VIEW. PARK ON STREET.

  5. RESET ALARM WHEN LEAVING. (ALL DOORS MUST BE SHUT TO RESET). ENTER 43392.

  6. NO MOTION DETECTORS ANYWHERE SO COULD ENTER THROUGH SLIDERS GLASS.

  7. DIAGRAMS FAIRLY ACCURATE AND IDENTIFY POTENTIAL VALUABLES.

  8. CAR KEYS SHOULD BE ON RACK IN KITCHEN OR IN PANTRY CLOSET WITH OPENER.

  9. TOTAL OF 5 TVS. BEST ONE IN MASTER BEDROOM.

  10. MUST SHATTER FLOOR TO CEILING MIRROR ON WALL IN MASTER BEDROOM. ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED.

  11. MUST LOCATE AND REMOVE PLASTIC BAG WITH SEX TOYS AND VIDEOS IN A CLOSET IN MASTER BEDROOM SUITE OR UNDER BED.

  12. ALL ART IS VALUABLE. MUST REMOVE ALL OR SLASH AND DESTROY.

  13. JEWELRY IN TOP DRAWERS OF FURNITURE IN DRESSING ROOM OF M.B.R. BUT MAY BE HIDDEN IN CLOSETS OR BUILT-INS.

  Only ten days earlier, Tom had written Debby a stack of love letters. “Never ever forget that I love you now and forever,” he said. “My silly fantasy was to believe your promise that you’d be waiting for me whenever I got out and we’d have the rest of our lives together.” Maybe it was a silly fantasy; or maybe it was a fatally misguided smugness that Debby would believe anything he told her.

  At this point, Tom didn’t insist that Debby be physically hurt; he wanted Perillo to find burglars who would destroy those possessions she loved the most and that were reminders of their lovemaking. And he wanted her to be so frightened that she would never consider giving the slightest degree of comfort or information to the enemy camp.

  Perillo turned Tom’s maps and instructions over to the prosecutors.

  On March 13, Debby and Tom Bergstrom met with the state’s team in Ron Poplos’s office in the IRS building. Poplos was helping them investigate the Capano brothers’ tax records. The media seemed to know whenever something momentous was about to happen in the Capano case, and the prosecutors were now taking special pains to avoid reporters. One thing that seemed to work was to vary their meeting spots from Connolly’s office to Wharton’s to Poplos’s.

  They had to tell Debby about the diagrams that showed every room of her house and Tom’s plan to find someone to burglarize it. As Connolly set down the pages in front of her, she stared at them uncomprehendingly at first, and then felt a sense of chilling recognition. “Everything was there,” she recalled. “I could not have told you where the words and the numbers were on my alarm system, but Tom had remembered them all. It was obvious he had worked for a long time on those drawings. And I knew that I couldn’t stay in the house that meant so much to me. I would never feel safe there again.”

  Every interview with the prosecuting team peeled away another layer that had been private for Debby. Sitting in a room full of men, she admitted that Tom was a voyeur who frequently urged her to date other men and tell him about any sexual encounters that might occur. She told them of the night she had gone to her twentieth high- school reunion, where she had met an old boyfriend and they talked about how they had never consummated their relationship when they were teenagers. They were both single now. Tom had been excited about the prospect t
hat that might happen. “He called when he knew we were home,” she said with embarrassment. “He watched us through the windows.”

  She told them then about Keith Brady and what had happened the day Tom brought him to her house. That could prove to be sticky; Brady was Ferris Wharton’s boss in the Delaware Attorney General’s office. It seemed that Tom Capano’s excesses were going to bring down half the state before the investigation was over.

  If it had to be, it had to be. What mattered was bringing some justice to Anne Marie Fahey, the girl who had written about Tom in her diary four years earlier, “We have built an everlasting friendship. I feel free around him, and like he says, he ‘makes my heart smile’! He deserves some happiness in his life, and it makes me feel good to know that I can provide him with such happiness.”

  It was obvious now to all of the men who were about to prosecute Tom that he had always sought happiness for himself and never worried how he degraded other people in his headlong pursuit of pleasure.

  When asked about Tom’s sexual practices, Debby said, “He was never rough during sex. He was very gentle—loving.”

  But denied sexual satisfaction and complete control over the women in his life, Tom appeared capable of extreme violence. If that trait had been part of his lovemaking, his prosecutors would have recognized the man they were dealing with sooner.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  TOM DIDN’T REALLY KNOW why nothing came of his plan to have Debby’s house burglarized. Perillo wasn’t in the cell next to him any longer, and Tom could talk to him only if Perillo was out in the yard for a smoke during his rec hour and came close enough to Tom’s window, or if Perillo sidled over the red line on the floor when the guards weren’t looking.

  When the burglary didn’t happen, Tom began a number of other plans on many fronts. And oddly—or perhaps not oddly—he continued to look to the women in his life to provide alibis for him.

  Susan Louth had written back to him and seemed to be totally in his corner. In his reply to her letter, he said that his cousin Loretta Farkas had been surprisingly supportive. “She also told me,” he wrote, “that she saw Debby MacIntyre’s picture in the paper and that she looks like a shrew and a backstabber. Pretty perceptive.”

  Tom added a paragraph of ugly descriptions of Debby’s sexual proclivities. And then he asked Susan to drum up some “word of mouth support” for him, suggesting that she start rumors about Debby that would reach his “jury pool.”

  But he had a more specific request. In thinking about his case, he had realized that it would be necessary to show that he didn’t have the physical strength to carry a cooler with a body in it down the back stairs at the North Grant Avenue house and lift it into the back of the Suburban. Gerry had already told prosecutors that he hadn’t helped Tom do that, so he needed a witness who would testify that he wasn’t a strong man.

  Toward that end, he suggested a “memory” to Susan about the day he had lent her a dining room table and chairs. He reminded her that she had to help him carry the table because he was too weak to handle it alone.

  “I do remember how heavy the dining room table was,” she wrote back. “I remember coming to your house and helping you move the table and chairs. . . . I was sore for a week.”

  Tom’s letters to Susan were rife with sexual references, reminding her of how intimate their relationship had been. For the moment, she was a member of his team.

  There were Tom’s daughters, too. They adored their father, and he told everyone what a hard time they were having with him locked up. He had tried to claim that the blood found in his house had come from them—and then raged when the prosecutors attempted to get blood samples. Some closely tied to the case believed that Tom might call his girls as alibi witnesses if he had to.

  Indeed, Tom, who often bragged about what an overprotective father he was, had given his daughters’ address and phone number to a fellow inmate. Harry Fusco didn’t have anyone to call and he had traded his phone time to Tom for commissary money and certain favors. Harry, a sex offender, called the girls with messages from Tom, wrote to them, and treasured the letters they wrote back. He had pictures of some of the beautiful teenagers in his cell.

  EVEN as he seethed over Debby’s defection, Tom suspected that he might never be acquitted of murder without her. And he still could not believe that there wasn’t some way to summon her back. He had cajoled, promised, threatened, and groveled, but Debby hadn’t responded as he fully expected she would. He had always believed that he fulfilled her sexual needs completely. He suspected that she might be suffering from a kind of sexual starvation. If he could provide a solution—albeit once removed—she might be more pliable.

  Tom considered his choices of a surrogate lover and thought of Tom Shopa. A longtime friend, Shopa was tall and handsome, and he was divorced. The two Toms had gone to school together at Archmere. Shopa was a C.P.A., and he had written to him soon after he was arrested, a kind and concerned letter. On the last Sunday in March, Shopa and another old friend accompanied Tom’s daughter Katie to Gander Hill for visiting hours.

  Tom knew that Shopa lived only a few houses down Delaware Avenue from Debby, and he asked him to intercede with her. “He wanted me to find out if she still loved him, and why she wasn’t writing to him,” Shopa would recall. “And if she wasn’t going to continue writing to him, would she return the letters that he sent her?”

  Following Tom’s instructions, Shopa called Debby and asked her if she still loved Tom. “She said, ‘I love him very much,’ and used the word ‘soulmate’ in describing their relationship,” Shopa recounted.

  Shopa reported that information in another visit to Tom, and explained that Debby could not write to him because of an addendum to an agreement with the state. Nor could she return his letters, because they had been turned over to the state as evidence.

  Tom said that he was concerned about Debby—she needed a shoulder to cry on, and he wasn’t able to be there for her. And then he asked his old friend for a bizarre favor. “He felt,” Shopa said with embarrassment, “that she was needy, and he wanted me to take care of her, to kind of be there to help her, to be strong for her . . . and—and—also to have—a physical relationship with her, to sleep with her.”

  Shopa was shocked. Never in a million years had he expected his old friend to suggest something like that. He was too appalled, in fact, to say much at the time. But the idea was upsetting and inappropriate. Why would Tom ask him to do such a thing?

  Tom apparently didn’t hear the shock in Shopa’s voice. Two days later, on March 31, he reached out from his cell with his pen once more. This time his target was, perhaps, the most vulnerable of all. He wrote an eight-page letter to fifteen-year-old Steve Williams, Debby’s son.

  Ever since September 1995, Steve had come to think a lot of Tom. Tom had been a great pal. His arrest and the publicity surrounding it had been hard for Steve. Tom’s letter to him was written in a warm, man-to-man style and it was totally confusing, designed to open barely healed emotional wounds. Tom assured Steve he would be out of prison by Thanksgiving, “for sure,” and that he planned to take Debby to Provence and Tuscany for a month or two. He spoke of his daughters, Christy, Katie, Jenny, and Alex, mentioned the boys they were dating and the trips they were taking—to Jamaica, Boca Raton, and Disney World.

  And then Tom moved smoothly into what his life in Gander Hill was like. “Besides the pain of being separated from my kids,” he wrote, “I suffer from being held in solitary confinement—supposedly for my own protection, although I know that’s bullshit and it’s part of a plan to break me.”

  From there, Tom went on to an intimate discussion of his long affair with Steve’s mother. “I should have listened to your mother many years ago when she urged me to follow my heart and not hide our relationship or limit it to certain times. . . . At the very least, I would not now be in this predicament.”

  Writing, still, to a fifteen-year-old boy, Tom held back little. “Your Mom has
made nothing but bad decisions since January 28th which have hurt me more than anything I’ve ever experienced. I’ll let her tell you if you want to know and she wants to tell you. Despite the tragic choices she has made—which I mostly blame on others—I cannot stop loving her.”

  Tom told Steve he blamed his father and his mother’s “unethical lawyer” for frightening and confusing Debby. He assured Steve that he loved him like a son, and had since he was a baby for a “special reason.”

  (Tom was not Steve’s father, it that’s what he was implying, and there was absolute scientific proof of that fact, but perhaps he thought such a suggestion would strengthen his hold over Debby.)

  He asked the boy to be stronger than his mother had been and to keep his letter private. And then Tom got around to what probably was the main reason for the letter.

  First, give your mom a long, hard hug, tell her it’s from me and that I love her, miss her, and need her very much. Second, tell her I am 1000% certain your phones are not tapped unless she gave them permission, and that I’d still like to call on your line. I need the number. Third, tell her to be extremely nice to Tom Shopa because he has what she needs and can be trusted to be very private and is definitely interested in helping her take care of it but is too shy to ask—so she’ll have to ask him.

  Tom ended his letter to Steve by wishing him a true love and soul mate, “as I found your mom.”

  Fortunately, Steve didn’t read the letter, beyond scanning it and seeing that it looked very long and complicated. Nor did Debby. It ended up in the growing stack of Tom’s correspondence in the prosecutors’ file.

  FOR all of his fascination, obsession, and fixation on the psychology of women, Tom saw their world through weirdly slanted lenses. He loved to talk about the private parts of their lives and their bodies; he remembered the details of their menstrual cycles, their problems with PMS and even their ovulation patterns in a way that was faintly creepy. And yet he had not a clue about how a woman’s mind worked. But how could he have thought that supplying Debby with a surrogate sexual partner—a man with whom she had no emotional connection beyond friendship—would make her contented and serene, and grateful to him? His bland assumptions had horrified Shopa, but Capano had taken his silence for assent.