At some point while Chris was at the state’s attorney’s office, he demanded to see his father.
“He felt horrible about what he was about to do,” Margaret Long later remembered. “He wanted to hear from his father that it was okay to talk.”
So detectives allowed Chris to talk to Mark—but only through the doorway.
“What should I do, Dad?” Chris asked.
“Tell them the whole story…. Tell them the truth.”
Margaret recalled later that Diana Trevethan, Chris’s mother, told him not to talk unless the state was prepared to grant Chris immunity.
Within a few hours of being at the state’s attorney’s office, Chris had his lawyer on a speaker phone monitoring the interview. By then, Chris’s attorney had already secured a deal for immunity; he was free to talk about anything without worrying about being prosecuted for his role later on.
A few days after the ED-MCS obtained signed statements from Joe Fremut and Mark and Chris Despres, a cellmate of Mark’s came forward with a note he claimed Mark had written to Clein. Mark, in a last act of desperation, was trying to smuggle the letter out of prison through his cellmate, who had just been released.
“Now I don’t care what it takes,” Despres opened the brief letter to Clein, “you have to get me out of here, or you will be here with me.”
Then he demanded that Clein “get the money together” for his bail. If not, “my friends will do anything I say…your family, your girlfriend, and her brother.” Despres said he was “not fucking around.” He threatened that if Clein didn’t bail him out, he would begin talking. As a postscript, Mark added: “They (his friends) will keep an eye on you till you pay—one week!”
Threatening letter or not, for Clein, the entire infrastructure of a murder-for-hire plot he had constructed from the start with Beth Ann was collapsing. Thus, there was only one thing left for Clein to do.
On December 13, John Turner finished writing Clein’s ten-page arrest warrant, along with a search warrant for Clein’s Old Saybrook law office. That night, Connecticut State’s attorney Kevin Kane signed off on both. The arrest warrant was as detailed and meticulous as an instruction manual for an Apache helicopter. Turner left nothing out. The evidence he and his colleagues had amassed was remarkable. They had bank records, statements and a ton of circumstantial evidence that placed Clein at the forefront of what was looking like one of the most sensational murder-for-hire cases they had ever seen.
Thirty-four-year-old Sharon Brockaway was, she later admitted, Clein’s “girl Friday.” She was listed as a real estate assistant at Clein’s law firm, but her job consisted of much more.
Brockaway looked up to Clein as a father figure. She had been a battered wife. Once, when her husband beat her, it was Clein who called the police and later “encouraged” her to have her husband arrested. Like many of her colleagues in the office, she liked Clein.
At about 11:30 A.M., on December 15, members of the state police and ED-MCS showed up at Clein’s Old Saybrook office and were given permission to make entry. Clein hadn’t been seen for a day or so and had been keeping a low profile since Fremut and Despres had been caught. He had been holing up in motel rooms throughout the area, hopping from one to the next to avoid contact with anyone. Brockaway, when state police asked her, said she hadn’t seen him since December 14.
As the state police, detectives from the ED-MCS, and members of the Old Saybrook Police Department began rummaging through Clein’s office—taking photographs, bagging items, looking through files—the phone rang. Laura Rowland, the bookkeeper, picked it up and, after speaking briefly to the caller, tracked down Sharon Brockaway.
“It’s Haiman,” she said, handing her the phone.
“Hello?” Brockaway said.
“Hi,” Clein said.
“Hi.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Not exactly.”
“Are you having problems with your husband?”
“No.”
“Let me speak to Marilyn.”
Marilyn Rubitski had been Clein’s most trusted confidante in the office. She had worked for Clein as his personal secretary for the past fifteen years. Despite her contempt for Beth Ann and the affair between her and Clein, Rubitski believed wholeheartedly in Clein. Some later said she protected him any way she could. As for Clein, he knew Rubitski would be straight with him, no matter what was going on.
“She’s not available,” Brockaway said of Rubitski.
“Is the office closed?”
“No.”
“Is it because of snow?” Clein said, undoubtedly referring to cocaine.
“No.”
“Call Axelrod.”
By noon, Bob Axelrod had received a page. So he called Clein’s office and spoke briefly to Brockaway.
Halfway through the phone call, a detective got on the phone and told Axelrod what was going on, adding, “We have an arrest warrant for Mr. Clein. He can surrender if he wants to.”
“I’ll let him know.”
Dara Clein, Haiman Clein’s daughter from his first marriage, had been in Chicago attending Illinois College of Optometry since 1992. Clein was proud of his daughter. She was smart beyond her years and not afraid of hard work.
The day before Clein’s Old Saybrook office had been searched, Clein called Dara with what, at first, seemed like some good news.
“I’m coming to Chicago.”
This wasn’t necessarily an odd thing for Clein to do. In the four years Dara had been away at school, Clein had visited her on numerous occasions. The only difference this time was that it was on short notice. Whenever Clein had visited in the past, he’d always planned the trip, giving her plenty of notice about when he was coming.
On December 15, hours after the search had been concluded, Clein phoned Dara again. She wasn’t home, so he left a message.
“I put some money in your bank account. Ten thousand dollars. I want you to take out ninety-five hundred. I’ll be there tomorrow. I want you to give it to me then.”
On Saturday morning, December 16, Clein called again. This time, he told Dara to put the $9,500 back into her account and then take out $3,000 in cash—which she later did. During the same phone call, Clein also explained that he wouldn’t be coming to Chicago after all—he now wanted her to meet him at a hotel in South Bend, Indiana, which was about ninety minutes away.
When Dara arrived and gave Clein the $3,000, she noticed right away how “upset” he looked.
“What about the rest of the money?” Dara asked. “What am I supposed to do with the seven thousand?”
“Keep a little bit for yourself, but send your stepmother fifty-five hundred.”
“How?”
“Call and set it up with her. She’ll give you instructions.”
The next morning, they took off to another hotel in a different Indiana town about forty-five minutes away from South Bend. As they drove, Dara couldn’t keep to herself what had been bothering her ever since she arrived the previous night and saw how distressed Clein had appeared.
“What’s going on, Daddy?”
“I am going to be charged with murder for hire,” Clein admitted.
“How…What happened? Tell me what’s going on?”
“Someone is pointing the finger at me. His name is Mark.”
“Mark?”
“The person who was murdered was hurting a child….”
When they arrived at the next location, Clein told Dara it was time to split up. He had to keep on the move. She had to go back to school.
The following Monday, Dara sent a cashier’s check for $5,500 to Bonnie Clein’s brother’s house in Massachusetts with instructions to forward it to Bonnie.
By December 17, 1995, Clein was officially a fugitive from justice, his photograph plastered all over newspapers, television stations, airports and border crossings.
As soon as the news broke, Clein’s friends, family, relatives, coworkers and employees began plead
ing for him to give himself up. Dara worried that if her father didn’t come forward soon, he would be hurt, maybe even shot. Bob Axelrod, proclaiming Clein’s innocence, said that the “thought” of his client killing a “total stranger” was “ludicrous.” Many were saying Haiman Clein—loving father, respected member of the Jewish community, lawyer, friend, husband, adulterer, cokehead, alcoholic, embezzler, alleged conspirator in a murder for hire—could not have been involved in such a thing.
Chapter 39
With her former lover on the run, Beth Ann had no other choice but to wait for him to call her when he reached a certain destination. Almost daily, Clein later said, he phoned Beth Ann in London. But whenever Clein began to talk about the murders, Beth Ann would hang up on him.
Christmas, 1995, was fast approaching. Penniless, Beth Ann went to Ali Bagherzadeh and asked if she could borrow some money. “I want to visit my family,” she proclaimed.
Ali felt bad for her. He was a compassionate man. He had given her a place to stay. Food to eat. A job. This was it. Maybe she was making plans to leave? Thinking about it for a moment, Ali decided to lend her the money.
“I’m flying into Boston,” she added.
Sometime later, Beth Ann left. Ali assumed she had gone back to the States to see her family for the holidays. With Beth Ann gone, Ali took off on a business trip.
“I wasn’t sure she was coming back.”
When Ali returned, he was shocked to see Beth Ann’s things in the back office as though she had just returned. It had only been a few days. She was supposed to be gone for a week or two.
Confused, Ali called British Airways and Virgin Airlines to see if either airline had flights that had come in from Boston within the past two days. Neither did. Right there, he knew she hadn’t gone home.
When Ali confronted Beth Ann with the information, she began crying.
“I went to Spain. I am so stressed out. I went to the Canary Islands.”
“I want my money back because you lied to me.”
John Turner, Marty Graham and Reggie Wardell, three ED-MCS detectives who had formed a coalition to bring down those responsible for Buzz Clinton’s murder, now encountered a major snag in their investigation, which had been building momentum ever since they had obtained statements from Joe Fremut and Mark Despres. Fifty-four-year-old Haiman Clein was gone. Reports were that he had fled to his boyhood home of Florida. But no one knew for sure.
On December 21, 1995, Graham went to Robert Clein, Haiman’s brother, and asked him where he thought Haiman had run to. Robert said he didn’t have the slightest idea.
“Has he tried contacting you?” Graham asked.
“Nope.”
But Graham had information that Robert Clein had just recently returned from Florida himself. He wanted to know why he took the trip.
“I last spoke with Haiman,” he then admitted, “on December twelfth, but it had nothing to do with the case. I didn’t know he had run until I read it in the newspapers. My brother never mentioned anything about the murder to me. Only that his lawyer instructed him not to talk to the police. He did, however, mention that he was a suspect.”
“Do you know Mark Despres?”
“I met him a few times at Haiman’s office. Haiman said he was good at fixing cars.”
“What’s up with Haiman and Beth Ann Carpenter?” Graham asked. “Did you know they were—”
“I will not discuss that,” Robert said. Then, “Am I a suspect in this case?”
“No. We’re looking for your brother.”
It was a short interview. Graham could easily tell from Robert’s mannerisms and careful choice of words that he was hiding something. Graham had been a cop for nearly two decades. He knew when a witness was holding something back. A good sign was when the witness would, like Robert had done, stop talking and start again all in the same breath. It meant he was thinking about what he was saying.
“He did not appear to be fully cooperative and was careful…about what he would discuss with me,” Graham later reported.
Jose Argarim was not yet through with Beth Ann. There was something about her that kept Jose going back even after he knew she would probably let him down. While she was in London, Beth Ann and Jose had talked a few times a month to keep in touch. But that was about the extent of their relationship.
When Jose read about Clein’s flight from justice and the possibility that he was somehow involved in the murder of Beth Ann’s brother-in-law, he began to find out through various sources that there was a bitter family custody battle going on between the Carpenters and Clintons regarding Rebecca. So he asked Beth Ann around Christmastime what she knew about it, knowing she’d had a relationship with Clein for so long.
Beth Ann fell silent.
So Jose asked again.
She then changed the subject and refused to talk about anything having to do with Clein, Rebecca or Buzz’s murder.
When he hung up, Jose had an “uneasy feeling about Beth’s response,” he later said. He knew something was up. “I felt that [she] knew something about Clinton’s death and Haiman’s involvement that she wasn’t telling me.”
Accountant Michael Krissell had been friends with Clein since they were kids in school. Clein had always looked to Krissell as someone to whom he could turn in a time of need. Here it was, the beginning of a new year, 1996, and Clein had been on the run for about two weeks. He had bought a car in Indiana with the money Dara had gotten for him, and after leaving Indiana, he drove directly to Miami to see Michael. Living on the run was not only a difficult, twenty-four-hour-a-day job, but it was expensive. Clein was just about tapped out of the money he’d had, his options running out.
“I’m in Miami,” Clein told Krissell over the phone when he arrived in town. “I need to meet with you.”
They agreed to meet across the street from Krissell’s office in downtown Miami. Within moments of seeing each other, Clein told Michael everything.
“I’m on the run and wanted in Connecticut for the murder of Beth’s brother-in-law….”
“What?”
“Beth fled, too,” Clein added.
“What are you doing, Haiman?”
“I have no money or credit cards, Mike. I’m living horribly.”
“How have you survived?”
“Doing odd jobs.”
Clein looked dirty, beaten down. He had not shaved or changed clothes in some time.
Mike Krissell was shell-shocked. He knew Clein and Beth Ann had been having an affair, and he also knew there were problems with her brother-in-law. He never believed, however, that Clein actually was going to do anything about it. The last time Krissell had seen Clein was back in 1994, shortly after the murder. Krissell had come to Connecticut to help Clein with an audit the IRS was conducting. It was then that Clein told Krissell that Beth Ann was calling him eight to ten times per day. Clein said it was “driving him nuts.” Krissell even met Beth Ann several times while he was in town. Clein explained the custody battle and how he had gotten involved in the middle of it all. He told Krissell it was Beth Ann’s idea to have Buzz “roughed up, beat up or taken care of.” Clein said she wanted him to hire someone to do it. He was reluctant at first, he admitted, but as Beth Ann kept insisting on it, he began to think about it more seriously. As they spoke, Clein also admitted that he and Beth Ann had gotten together with the man he’d eventually hired to do it. When Mike Krissell asked what happened next, Clein told him that “the client he hired took it too far and killed [Buzz].”
When Clein met with Krissell for lunch in Miami, he reiterated what he had said almost two years earlier.
“It was Beth’s idea,” Clein said as he and Mike talked. “I only did it because Beth was so insistent….”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I need some money.”
Krissell later said he felt obligated to help Clein. Everything at that time was moving so fast for Krissell that he really didn’t know what to do or say. O
ne minute, he was sitting in his office working; the next moment, Clein was telling him he was on the run from the law along with Beth Ann because he’d hired someone to murder Buzz.
After lunch, Michael Krissell went with Clein to a local bank and withdrew $1,000.
“I’ll pay you back,” Clein promised before leaving.
With money in his pocket, Clein headed west for California. On his way, he was stopped in Arizona by a trooper who had spotted a headlight that was out on the car he was driving. Nervous and twitchy, Clein took a written warning and was on his way only moments after being stopped.
When Reggie Wardell reached the FBI, which had since become involved because Clein had crossed state lines, he was told that Dara Clein had admitted to meeting with her father in Indiana. The last time Dara had spoken to Clein was on December 27, 1995, she said.
With Dara’s information, on January 6, 1996, the FBI tracked one Ron Coleman, from New York, who had registered at a Holiday Inn in Plymouth, Indiana, and South Bend, Indiana.
It was Clein, Detective Wardell knew as soon as he saw the name. Clein had used the same name to register at hotels in Connecticut before he took off.
Scotland Yard, in London, had been notified back in December 1995 that Beth Ann Carpenter was being investigated for the murder of Buzz Clinton. The state’s attorney’s office, however, didn’t have enough evidence just yet to begin thinking about an arrest warrant. But Kevin Kane, Assistant State’s Attorney (ASA) Peter McShane and Paul Murray, the three state prosecutors who had been working on the case with the ED-MCS all along, had an ample amount of evidence that placed Beth Ann under the same light as Clein. Still, they needed Clein to implicate her. Without his statement, they didn’t have much on her at this point.
Interestingly, the state’s attorney’s office needed to get Beth Ann involved in the apprehension of Clein. It was no secret he was probably calling her from wherever he was hiding out. If McShane and Kane could convince her to help out, they could probably find Clein and then nail her later.
After discussing it with Hugh Keefe, Beth Ann’s attorney back home, the next step was to get Scotland Yard to locate Beth Ann and talk to her.
Lethal Guardian Page 31