by Ann Rule
O’Friel’s Irish Pub in Wilmington became the unofficial headquarters for the search for Anne Marie. The banner stayed up for almost three years, reminding people that she was still missing.
One of Wilmington’s most important and respected men, Tom Capano seemed above suspicion in Anne Marie’s disappearance. Even so, investigators wondered why he had removed a couch and replaced a brand new carpet with this cheap area rug in one room of his house.
FBI agents and Wilmington police searched the backyard of Capano’s house on North Grant Avenue on July 31, 1996. He was now the chief suspect in Anne Marie’s disappearance and probable murder. But the federal grand jury investigation was kept under wraps for a year and a half.
An FBI search warrant served on Kay Capano on July 31, 1996, included processing the SUV she had recently lent to her estranged husband. Had it been used to transport Anne Marie’s body?
Another piece of potential evidence against Capano was a large Igloo cooler that was found floating in the Atlantic off the Delaware shore.
A final piece of the puzzle was the boat that Gerry Capano often used for shark-fishing competitions in the Atlantic Ocean.
The back of Gerry Capano’s house on the Jersey shore, which led to the dock where his boat was moored.
A security camera took a picture of Tom Capano at 8:41 A.M. on June 28, 1996, as he waited for his cash at an ATM in Wilmington’s Trolley Square neighborhood. He needed the money for a chilling mission.
Miller’s Gun Center outside Wilmington, where investigators learned that someone close to Tom Capano had purchased a gun for him in May 1996.
The three members of the team that demonstrated they could make a solid case against a man who considered himself above the law. Left to right: Assistant U.S. Attorney Colm Connolly, Detective Robert Donovan of the Wilmington Police, and Delaware’s Assistant Attorney General Ferris Wharton.
Special Agent Eric Alpert of the FBI, the fourth member of the team, was the Bureau’s chief investigator in solving the mystery of Anne Marie’s fate and bringing her killer to trial.
Attorney Tom Bergstrom from Malvern, Pennsylvania, stepped in to represent Debby MacIntyre after she began to doubt Tom Capano.
Attorney David Weiss (with Robert Fahey and Kathleen Fahey-Hosey behind him) represented the Fahey family during Anne Marie’s disappearance and in a civil suit against the Capano family. He was elated in January 1999 when Tom Capano was found guilty of Anne Marie’s murder.
Judge William Swain Lee presided over Capano’s stormy and widely publicized trial. Sandwiched between his husky bailiffs, the judge left the Daniel Herrmann Courthouse in March 1999 after delivering a withering denunciation of the defendant and passing the stiffest possible sentence.
Defense attorneys Joseph Oteri (center), Eugene Maurer, Charlie Oberly, and Jack O’Donnell (latter two partially hidden) had been unsuccessful in preventing their arrogant client from taking the stand in his own defense.
Marguerite Capano was devastated by the verdict against her golden son, Tommy, and a sentence that would shatter her once proud and prosperous family. She grasped the hand of the family’s longtime priest, Father Roberto Balducelli, while her son Joey pushed her wheelchair away from the courthouse.
After hearing their father’s sentence, Tom Capano’s three younger daughters (the first two in short skirts and the girl just emerging from the doorway) were rushed to a waiting car by relatives and friends.
Kathleen Fahey-Hosey and Brian Fahey spoke to the press after sentence was passed on Tom Capano. Still in mourning, they found justice in the verdict, although little consolation for their great loss.
Debby MacIntyre escaped Tom Capano’s jealous rage, perhaps only because she had never tried to leave him. After eighteen years in a relationship that ended with another woman’s murder, she at last found the confidence to face the future on her own.
A haggard and humbled Tom Capano was led in chains from the Daniel Herrmann Courthouse in Wilmington on March 16, 1999, almost three years after Anne Marie Fahey’s disappearance and murder. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection.