Beyond Obsession

by Hammer, Richard;

  Norris sent Dennis to Faris because he wanted to know what, if anything, was wrong with Dennis and because he was convinced that if Dennis were to survive this horror and the nightmare years that lay ahead, he was going to need a lot of help. Faris was not a forensic specialist, a man used to dealing with people charged with crimes and looking for reasons that might be used in court, either for or against the defense, depending on who did the hiring. He had never even appeared in court as a witness before. He was simply a therapist who tried to deal with the problems afflicting his patients.

  Faris saw Dennis for the first time a few weeks after his arrest, and he continued to see him at least once a week, usually more often, for the next two years and more. When Dennis arrived for his first session, Faris saw a pleasant, friendly, articulate, calm, matter-of-fact all-American boy. Yet, Faris said, he had the immediate feeling, which grew stronger session after session, that this was all surface and that the expressions of turmoil, intense feelings of rage, betrayal, guilt, self-hatred that began to emerge were only an inch beneath that surface, if not on the surface itself. Something was missing. It was all intellectualizing. And then, Faris said, he understood that inside, there was a blank. “Dennis was not blocking his feelings. Inside, he is empty and dead. His inner world is a dead and empty one.” All that surface friendliness, everything that he revealed to the world “is an unconscious procedure he has learned from us. He hides. He almost has to appear typical.”

  They talked. “His whole mind,” Faris said, “was on Karin. He talked about her constantly. No matter what the subject was, everything came around to Karin.” Faris gave Dennis a battery of psychological tests. “Can you imagine taking an ink blot test and coming up with Karin no matter what? It’s very difficult to do.” But, then, Dennis told Faris, “Karin was more meaning than I was.”

  Karin might betray him, Karin might lie to him, but still, he came back to her. He needed her desperately, Faris said, “to fill in the blanks, to take away his sense of being dead. Are we talking about a mature concept of love? No, because mature love requires an integrated personality, and Dennis was anything but.” That was as apparent in his attachments to girls before Karin as it was with Karin, apparent in the fact that he never had crushes but always developed intense, clinging relationships from which he could not free himself without agony. “It is very clear that Dennis lost himself in this relationship, and that was very easy for him to do. He was totally compliant and vulnerable because of the inner terror that gripped him.” Thus a mere suggestion from Karin was enough to compel him to act in order not to lose her. “She told him to enroll in college, and he did. If she had told him to go to Montana and raise sheep, he would have. If Karin had asked him to kill himself, there is no doubt in my mind that he would have done it.”

  Faris was fascinated enough by what was unfolding in his treatment room to discuss the case and his diagnosis and to seek some advice from another expert. He called Dr. Rima Brauer, a psychoanalyst who often serves as a control and consultant to other analysts. It was not an unusual step, especially when one therapist is confronted by a difficult or an unusual situation. They talked often, Faris going over his notes in detail. Brauer confirmed his feelings.

  Finally, both concluded that while Dennis knew what he was doing when he murdered Joyce Aparo, that while he was aware of the consequences, he had little choice. “As summer wore on,” Faris said, “and it became clear to him that she would leave him if he didn’t commit murder, it was do it or die. His will was subjugated to her. He lost any capacity to act of his own free will.” He was, at the end, Faris said, “the vehicle and not the driver” or, as Brauer said, “the gun and Karin pulled the trigger.”

  It was not for more than a year, not until September 1988, that Reese Norris learned what the psychiatrists were thinking. It was then that Faris called to say that while he had agreed to take on this case only for the purpose of treating Dennis, he now thought it appropriate to tell the lawyer what he and Brauer had diagnosed. Dennis Coleman, they said, had a borderline personality disorder, he was an “as if” personality, as defined by Helene Deutsch.

  Norris read up, thought a lot and then told the state’s attorney and the court that he was amending Dennis’s plea. He was now going to offer a psychological defense of his client, though he didn’t tell John Bailey or James Thomas, who was handling the prosecution, that he still had no intention of going to trial. What he was hoping was that with such a defense the state might agree to a better deal. He was praying it would agree to a plea of manslaughter, which would mean a maximum of a twenty-year sentence, with Dennis out in ten. He hoped, but he knew that wasn’t a very realistic hope. Still, maybe he could win the state to agree to something less than forty-two years.

  28

  In Hartford Hubert Santos was trying to frame a defense for his client, Karin Aparo. It was not an easy job. The public perception of her had hardened; she was, in the phrase repeated widely, a girl with no heart, a vicious, unfeeling, sexually promiscuous teenager who for some unknown reason had manipulated a nice, popular, all American boy into murdering her mother and then had turned on him.

  Reese Norris had done a good job in swaying opinion toward sympathy for Dennis and antipathy toward Karin. Norris, with nothing to lose, since there was no argument over his client’s guilt or that Dennis was going to prison for what he had done, and fond of publicity anyway, gave interviews, on and off the record, articulating Dennis’s story and reasons.

  Santos kept his silence, as was his way. A onetime public defender, once corporation counsel for the city of Hartford, in private practice since 1974, he was widely considered one of the best and most expensive criminal lawyers in Connecticut, his retainers in important cases ranging upward of a hundred thousand dollars. He is an unprepossessing, rather ungainly man in his mid-forties, about six feet tall, though his perpetual slouch, sometimes with shoulders hunched, sometimes with stomach thrust forward, makes him appear shorter. His trousers are usually a little too long and baggy; his jackets, rumpled and just a trifle ill-fitting. It appears to be a deliberate costume, designed to enhance an image of the common man little concerned with clothes or other material things. His graying, thinning hair is close-cropped in a manner more appropriate to another era. He wears his spectacles low on his nose and often takes them off when he reads, takes them off and waves them to make a point. On his round, pleasant face there is invariably a slightly whimsical or sometimes a skeptical expression, and that can be heard in his orator’s voice. He tends to be overdramatic, can be rambling, sometimes seems indecisive and uncertain, occasionally looks toward judge, jury, spectators for what seems to be help, as though he had lost himself. It is all a piece of the manner in which he has garbed himself, as is his willingness to try the unorthodox, if he thinks there is a chance it might work. What stands out as much as anything is a passionate devotion to the defense of his clients, and in that defense he will risk the anger of a judge by overstepping the bounds of courtroom propriety, doing so as if by accident, as if the heat of the moment had caused the slip, though again one senses that he does so with a certain calculation and deliberateness. In the courtroom all his devices and techniques come together, and by the end of a trial he emerges as the most commanding and dominating figure on the scene. He has won victories when causes seemed hopeless. People said that for what Santos did, his fees, no matter how high, were low. If you could afford him, he was the man to get.

  Karin Aparo got him. Meeting his fee was not much of a problem. Her mother’s estate, more than three hundred thousand dollars, to which she was the sole heir, remained in limbo as long as she was under indictment for her mother’s murder, and she would lose all rights to it if she were convicted since under the law one cannot profit by a crime. But there was a way around this. Karin waived all rights to her mother’s estate. It then devolved on the next of kin, Joyce’s mother, Karin’s grandmother. An arrangement was made whereby once the grandmother, Rose Cantone, had co
me into the proceeds, she agreed to simply send the money to pay Karin’s legal costs and other expenses. It might be shading the intent of the law, but it was strictly legal. Ironically, Joyce Aparo’s money was going to pay for the defense of the daughter charged with her murder.

  That defense was not without its problems. For one thing, there was that public perception of Karin, so masterfully orchestrated by Norris. Nothing could be done about that. Even if Karin decided to tell her side, it might have little effect; it was too late, and the damage was already done. Besides, telling it could well dissipate the impact it might have when and if she came to trial. And it seemed certain that one day she would stand trial. Santos made a calculated decision. It was time to stop all the leaks, all the rumors, all the distortions. He asked the court to institute a gag order, preventing anyone involved in the case—the prosecution and its witnesses, the defense and its—from saying anything in public, to the press or anyone. The court agreed. The gag order went into effect. It didn’t stop the rumors and speculations, didn’t stop the press from recapitulating what was already on the record, but it sealed the lips of those who had once been so free with anyone who approached.

  In private Karin was insisting to Santos and to those close to her that she was innocent. She had never asked, or begged, Dennis Coleman to murder her mother. She had not even been in or near the condo when the murder was committed; she had been far away, in Rowayton.

  As the evidence in its possession grew to what seemed ever more damaging proportions, the state made a decision. It was sure that if the case went to trial, it would win a conviction on all the counts of the indictment: accessory to murder and a two-pronged conspiracy to murder, one conspiracy beginning in the summer of 1986 and extending to August 5, 1987, and the second and overlapping one beginning on or about July 15, 1987, and extending to the day of the murder. But trials are expensive and time-consuming. The state dropped hints that it might be willing to offer a deal if Santos were ready to listen. Any good lawyer is always ready to hear what the other side has to offer, so Santos asked just what the state had in mind. If Karin pleaded guilty, he was told, she would be sentenced to fourteen years. That meant she would be out of prison in about seven; she would still be young, in her twenties, and would have most of her life ahead of her.

  On its face it seemed an irresistible offer. Santos urged her to accept. Santos’s law partner urged her to accept. Others urged her to accept. They argued with her, implored her, tried to convince her it was the best way. Karin adamantly refused. She was innocent, she proclaimed, so why should she have to go to prison? She would stand trial, and she would be acquitted.

  So that was out; there would be no deal. Santos had to maneuver in other directions. He explored a dozen. Because the first prong of the alleged conspiracy had begun when she was fifteen, she should be tried as a youthful offender, not as an adult. It was an argument that on its face had considerable merit. But the court thought not enough, that the nature of the crime, murder, overrode the fact that one part of the conspiracy had begun when she was, under law, a juvenile. Besides, there was the second part of the indictment, accessory to murder. She had been sixteen, an adult for purposes of the law, when the murder took place. Therefore, she was not entitled to be treated as a youthful offender. Santos appealed and appealed, and lost and lost.

  He asked that she be granted accelerated rehabilitation and put on probation, citing the example of Christopher Wheatley, and in a hearing he brought her aunt and uncle and teachers and others who knew her, and had known Joyce, to ask that his petition be granted. The court listened and then said no.

  He asked for a change of venue, claiming, with some justification, that because of all the publicity, so much of it adverse to his client, it would be impossible to pick an unbiased jury and give her a fair trial in Hartford. His motion was denied.

  He took other tacks, every one he could think of, every precedent he could find in the lawbooks. He lost them all.

  So there would be a trial, and he would have to prepare. And he would have to formulate a defense when that day came. Like Norris, he turned to the psychiatrists for help. Only, unlike Norris, he did not seek shrinks who specialized in treatment and were strangers to the courts. Santos went to men who knew their way around the legal system and whose opinions he could use when the day came that he needed them. He went to forensic specialists.

  Those two experts were the psychologist John Cigalis and the psychiatrist Walter Borden. They interviewed her, talked with her, listened to her and gave her a battery of psychological tests. And then they reported their findings.

  Though Karin, in Cigalis’s opinion, was “cold, unemotional, stand-offish, anxious, hypervigilant, mildly paranoid, overly controlled in feelings, very difficult to relate to on a personal level,” though “she was extremely angry, to the point of homicidal wishes toward her mother” and though she suffered from a variety of borderline personality disorders, she was telling the truth when she said, “I did not assist Dennis Coleman in the murder of my mother,” and was in no way involved in the murder.

  Borden agreed. All her actions, all those letters before and after the murder, even her sleeping with Dennis twice following the murder, all of which to the layman might seem consistent with involvement and guilt, were actually consistent with her psychological profile as a battered child. She slept with Dennis, wrote to him, called him after the murder, Borden said, and Cigalis seconded, not because she was part of the plot but because she felt a certain degree of responsibility: Joyce and Dennis would never have met had it not been for her, and if they had not met, there would have been no murder. But, Borden insisted, she had actually played no role in the murder.

  Neither Cigalis nor Borden, though, made any mention, if they even knew, of the crises that were overwhelming mother and daughter in July 1987—the imminent departure of Joyce’s favored Alex Markov and the more important departure of Karin’s violin—and what effect those crises may have had on the events that ensued. But they both were uncompromising in their view that on the basis of everything they had learned about her, through interviews and psychological tests, Karin had told them the truth and she was not guilty.

  Before the trial was to begin, with those reports in hand, Santos filed notice that he might, just might, rely on a psychiatric defense. He wasn’t sure, but he wanted to be on record that he was holding that option open.

  With that notice the state had the right to bring in its own psychiatric experts to examine Karin and offer their opinions, to counter Cigalis and Borden. It decided not to exercise that right.

  Psychiatry, of course, is an inexact science. Nowhere is it more inexact than in dealing with criminal cases. There the psychiatrists are ubiquitous. Some are employed by the state and some for the defense, and invariably they come up with conflicting opinions, reflecting the positions their employers hold. The state’s experts say the defendant knew precisely what he or she was doing and was completely sane and responsible for the act. The defense’s experts say, not so. The defendant didn’t do the deed and played no part in its doing, or suffered from such severe mental defects or emotional disturbance as to be unaware of what was being done and of the consequences, or was unable to control himself or herself from doing the deed and so was not responsible for it.

  Nowhere was this dichotomy more clearly evident than in this case. Dr. Faris and Dr. Brauer said Dennis acted only because of Karin’s manipulation of and control over him. Dr. Cigalis and Dr. Borden said, nonsense, Dennis did it on his own, and Karin played no part. A state-appointed psychiatrist concluded after examining Dennis briefly that he was perfectly sane and normal and knew precisely what he was doing. He offered no opinion about Karin’s role. But then neither he nor any expert on the state’s side talked to her.

  One was left to wish only that somehow Cigalis and Borden had spent time with Dennis Coleman, that Faris and Brauer had spent time with Karin Aparo and then that Cigalis, Borden, Faris and Brauer had spent t
ime together, comparing notes, arguing, listening—an idle and futile dream, on a par, perhaps, with Joyce Aparo’s fantasies.

  29

  Trial dates came, and trials were postponed, and so trial dates passed, and the cases against Dennis Coleman and Karin Aparo dragged on inconclusively for more than two years. It was as though no one wanted to bring either of them to final judgment, as though no one wanted to write a finish to this tragedy.

  Dennis remained free on bond. He did not go to college as he had once planned. He got a motorcycle, and he roared around Glastonbury, his red hair flying, a sight to be recognized and pitied. He kept his appointments with Dr. Faris. He was in and out of Reese Norris’s office. He worked on his model house, carefully shaving shingles, adding to it slowly. He wandered often through the woods behind his father’s home, creating campsites, carving trails, spending long hours in loneliness. He spent time with old friends, who had returned to him in this time of trouble. He played a few gigs with his rock group. He took a trip now and then just to get away for a few days. John Bailey remembers a summer evening when he and his wife were vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard. They were in a bistro when he felt someone staring at him. He looked up. On a balcony, eyes focused on him, was Dennis Coleman. Dennis tried drugs, smoking marijuana, taking cocaine, LSD, more, was stoned every day, trying to blot out the memories of what had happened and what would happen. And he waited.

  One day late in the fall of 1987 he took a large box and went to his room and slowly took from his walls all the photographs and all the memorabilia of his time with Karin Aparo. He put everything into that box, which he took and stored in the attic. His room suddenly looked a lot larger and a lot barer.