by Ann Rule
On Tom’s advice, Louie agreed to cooperate with the sting and set it up in his own office. The FBI special agents witnessed Ron Aiello accepting $25,000 in marked bills from Louie Capano. That was enough.
Louie was never charged with any crimes in connection with the situation. “I think he [Tom] straightened out Louis, who was in kind of a jam,” former Wilmington mayor Thomas Maloney remarked. “Tom worked carefully with the Justice Department to solve a problem and alleviate a situation.”
Everyone but the man arrested seemed content with the outcome of something that could have been really sticky. Louie moved easily back into doing what he did best, but Tom was chafing at Capano & Sons, waiting eagerly for the year he’d promised his mother to pass. “It wasn’t the work,” he explained later. “I had a different way of looking at things than my brothers. [They] had been in business together for a long time. . . . They had both started working when they were in college, and it was tough—even though I was the older brother—to impose the order that needed to be imposed.”
In plain terms, neither Louie nor Joey would take orders from Tom, not about the business. The last months of Tom’s year of servitude to his mother were tense.
Louie Capano’s reputation was scarcely tarnished by the unpleasantness of 1989; he was a dashing figure, far more than his soft-spoken brother. Over the next decade, the family interests burgeoned exponentially. With Louie at the helm, the Capanos would soon own hundreds of prime acres around Wilmington and several more shopping centers. They continued to build high-end housing developments. “I don’t think we’ve seen half of what he’s going to do,” the banker who funded Louie’s father said. “It’s almost as though he was born for it.”
Many builders faced ruin when the real estate market took another dive in the early nineties, but the Capanos flourished. Other developers were poleaxed by Louie’s cliff-hanger deals. Harry Levin, whose chain of Happy Harry’s Drug Stores was ubiquitous on the Eastern seaboard, marveled at Louie. “Louie does so many things wrong,” he laughed in the 1980s, “and they all turn out right.”
Louie was by far the richest of Lou’s sons. He and his first wife, Deborah, who had borne him a son, divorced amid rumors of Louie’s roving eye. Deborah Capano went on with her life and became a state senator. All four Capano brothers had an appreciation for beautiful women, and they were not known for their faithfulness to their marriage vows—although even his own brothers didn’t know about Tom’s affair with Debby MacIntyre.
Louie’s second wife was a nationally known athlete. Lauri Merton was a leading contender in the Ladies’ Professional Golfing Association, winner of the national trophy in the early nineties, and a pretty blonde with light blue eyes and a deep tan. Louie got a big kick out of being Lauri’s caddy in championship rounds; he was probably the wealthiest caddy ever to shoulder a golf bag, but he was more than self-confident enough to follow Lauri around the links. He enjoyed the pictures in the papers of himself and Lauri.
Louie and Lauri moved into a huge mansion in the Greenville section that had once belonged to one of the du Ponts. Greenville was the address to have in the Wilmington area, and the gray-stone house with its garden paths, swimming pool, and parklike grounds was an estate any millionaire could be proud of.
IN January 1990, Tom heaved a sigh of relief as he finished out the 365th day of his servitude at Capano & Sons. It had taken a toll on him, but he had kept his promise to his mother, and he was more than ready to go back into government service. And what heady service it would be. Delaware governor Michael Castle had made Tom an offer that rather surprised him because he was a lifelong Democrat and Castle was a Republican. It was the position as Castle’s chief counsel. The job paid about half of what Tom could have made at the law firms that had tendered job offers, but it was an honor to be asked to advise a governor on complicated legal issues. And it was an excellent way for him to move back into public service.
Tom Capano, not yet forty, now had an enviable reputation not only in Wilmington but in the whole state of Delaware. The Attorney General’s Office was responsible for defending the state in all matters, but as Castle’s chief counsel, Tom would be called upon to advise the governor on the constitutionality of all pending legislation. The prestige factor alone was more than enough to make up for any diminution of his salary. And of course, Tom shared in the legacy his father had left for his sons; he would never hurt for money. He could well afford to accept Castle’s offer.
For some reason, Tom always played down his wealth, although he was probably worth $4 million or more by the early nineties. He and Kay still lived in their sprawling bishop’s residence, but they didn’t have a beach house as his brothers and sister did. “When I go to the shore,” he said, “I mooch off my mother.” He and Kay drove utilitarian vehicles rather than high-priced trophy cars, but of course, their daughters all went to private schools and money was not a problem.
While Tom was advising Governor Castle on legal issues, another of his brothers embarrassed the family. It seemed that Tom was always having to put out little fires set by his siblings. Joey was a handsome devil, and he had a beautiful wife, Joanne, and four children. But he also had a woman he had been seeing on the side for at least nine years. She had once been the baby-sitter for Joey’s children, and she was a decade younger than he was. When they began as lovers, the girl was so young that Joey often had to dash out the back door of her house just as her parents were coming in the front entrance. Infatuated with him when she was a teenager, the girl had grown up and come to understand that there was no future in their relationship, as passionate and volatile as it was, and she broke off with Joey.
Joey couldn’t stand the idea of her being with anyone else. He had finally separated from his long-suffering wife in an attempt to win back his paramour. Then on Halloween night 1991, Joey was in the grip of a sexual obsession that took him way across the line, both in terms of rekindling his affair and with regard to the law.
While her horrified sister looked on, he crashed into the young woman’s home, literally carried her away, and held her captive while he forced her to have sex with him. When she was finally able to escape, she went to the police and Joey was charged with kidnapping and rape. Once more, Tom had to walk a fragile tightrope between the authorities and a brother. In the end, with Tom’s coaching, Joey pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of assault, unlawful sexual contact, and criminal mischief. His ex-lover had relented and asked that the felony charges be dropped. It was a plea bargain that let Joey walk away from prison time for the very serious charges and gave him a promise from the state that he would not be charged with assaulting his girlfriend in two earlier incidents.
Eventually, Joey and his wife reconciled, and the rest of the family could sigh with relief. It was just one more thing for Tom to deal with in 1991, which had already been a difficult year. His job was very demanding and he was quickly in the middle of a crushing deadline to complete the construction of a women’s prison and an addition to Gander Hill, the prison in Wilmington. He helped bring the projects in on time, giving credit to his connections with the city. But it was probably predictable that he would develop some physical manifestation of the stress he lived under. He was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. His gut bled.
And yet there was no doubt at all that Tom relished his role as the governor’s adviser, his family’s cleanup man and shining example, the father of four lovely girls, and husband to Kay—and lover-adviser to Debby—just as he appeared almost to enjoy being the put-upon martyr, the man who had every right in the world to occasionally demonstrate a mercurial temperament with his women. People expected too goddamned much of him, often treated him badly—at least in his eyes—and didn’t give him the allowances he deserved with the heavy load he carried.
Tom stayed with Governor Castle until 1992. He had always wanted to run for political office himself; he thought he would make a good attorney general for the state of Delaware. But he talked it over with so
me of the stronger Democrats, among them the Freels. Kevin Freel, who always said what he thought, while his brother Bud tended to be more enigmatic, told Tom to forget it. He was carrying too much family baggage on his back. His brothers’ shenanigans would surely come back to haunt him if he ran for the highest law enforcement office in Delaware. Between his three brothers, the Republicans could dredge up everything from graft to drugs to rape and kidnapping, and he shouldn’t think they wouldn’t. Kevin warned him he would just be inviting a smear campaign. A Republican wag told Tom his campaign slogan would have to be “Tom Capano: The OTHER Capano.”
Moreover, despite his success in public office, Tom was not a natural politician. He had little talent for glad-handing and working a crowd. The thought of shaking hands with strangers and kissing babies actually scared him a little. Rather, his forte was in quiet behind-the-scenes mediation. People loved Tom in private; he seemed to lose color and verve in the spotlight. He was just a little too plodding, a little prissy on details and regulations.
Tom decided not to run for office after all, and then he accepted a partnership at the law firm of Saul, Ewing, Remick and Saul, the bond counsel for the state of Delaware and the city of Wilmington. He would run the public finance department. It was a plum job, but he hastened to point out to anyone who raised eyebrows that he wasn’t hired because he would bring government bond clients to Saul, Ewing. “They already had it all,” he said. Both the city and the state did business with Saul, Ewing.
There were only two firms in the Delaware Valley that had large public finance departments, and Saul, Ewing (with principal offices in Philadelphia) was one of them. Tom would work in the Wilmington office, and as managing partner, he doubled the office staff, bringing in six partner-level attorneys. He was back in the private sector and in a position to make a very substantial salary. Setting the city and state bonds was very detailed work, but they were mostly multimillion-dollar deals, and the meticulous work paid well.
Tom’s community service now filled many pages of his curriculum vitae. He was on the board of trustees at St. Mark’s High School and Ursuline, Padua, and Archmere academies. He was a board member of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, chairman of the Wilmington Parking Authority, in charge of the Bench and Bar Committee and the Delaware Supreme Court’s Long Range Planning Committee, and of course, still a stalwart at St. Anthony’s.
His devotion to Catholic education and good works in no way slowed his affair with Debby MacIntyre or, seemingly, caused him any conflict of interests. He felt he gave so much to everyone that he deserved the—for him—unguilty pleasures of adultery. He was, he believed, a very special man, a man who shouldn’t be fettered by the rules that governed lesser men.
Tom Capano had over the years polished his knack for friendship and for drawing people to him. He was a highly skilled negotiator and mediator; he knew people so well, knew what they wanted and what they needed. He knew the law and the law’s weaknesses. He had used his charm and his intelligence—buoyed by his political connections—to get all three of his brothers out of tight spots. And he had boundless confidence in his own ability to make things happen the way he wanted them to happen.
Chapter Nine
ANNE MARIE FAHEY started her new job with Governor Tom Carper right after he was inaugurated in January of 1993. Her desk would be on the twelfth floor of the Carvel state building, just past the elevators. She and Sue Campbell Mast, Carper’s executive assistant, would be the lions at the gate that all visitors would have to pass before they reached the inner sanctum of Carper’s private offices. The two women had desks five feet apart. Sue would answer the governor’s direct phone line, and Anne Marie would field all the other calls. She was now at the very center of what was happening in Delaware, an essential part of the government of her state.
Anne Marie would make a number of women friends in this new job, including Sue, Jill Morrison, and Siobhan Sullivan. Jill worked in Constituent Services, directing Delawareans with problems to the proper agencies, and Siobhan was a Delaware State Police officer who worked in the Executive Security Unit, which protected Governor Carper and his family. She had come on board in a transfer from Troop 9 in Odessa, Delaware, and started guarding Governor Carper in December of 1992. Anne Marie and Jill began work at the same time, in January.
The Wilmington staff wasn’t that big and they all knew one another well. When the legislature was in session, most of Carper’s staff of around twenty-five was in Dover, leaving only four or five people in Wilmington. They were young and exuberant, although they contained their hilarity and kept their voices down on the twelfth floor, where the governor’s office demanded respect. They tended to be a little loud and boisterous on the eleventh floor, where the interns’ and Constituent Services offices were located. And Anne Marie’s voice, speaking rapid and fluent Spanish to a Hispanic woman, became a familiar counterpoint to activities on the eleventh floor. She loved the language and practiced it often, against the day she would return to Spain.
Anne Marie and Jill rapidly became particularly good friends; they were both in their mid-twenties, and Jill had moved to an apartment a block from the house Anne Marie shared with Jackie and Bronwyn, so it was easy for them all to get together. Anne Marie introduced Jill to Ginny Columbus and her other close friends, and helped Ginny get a job in the governor’s office.
Anne Marie and Jill got in the habit of having lunch together almost every day, and they went shopping together at the malls, walked when the weather was good, and often worked out on the machines at the Y. They also shared some of the perks that came with working in the governor’s office—lots of free tickets to events or fund-raisers. While some of the functions turned out to be deadly boring, they weren’t put off, and they were game to try almost anything they had tickets for. Neither was seriously involved romantically, and they never knew whom they might meet.
Jill was with Anne Marie on April 26, 1993, the night she first met Tom Capano. It was at Jim and Mary Alice Thomas’s house on Red Oak Road in the Rockford Park section of Wilmington. The Thomases had a lovely home, which they opened up for a fund-raiser for the Women’s Democratic Club. Kathy Jamison, who was the scheduler for Lieutenant Governor Ruth Ann Minner, had arranged for the guest speakers—Lynn Yakel and Governor Jim Florio. The turnout wasn’t as good as Kathy had hoped, but there were about 150 people there, many of them attorneys. Kay Capano had bought a ticket in her own name, but she wasn’t able to attend, so she sent Tom to represent their family. He moved easily through the crowd, chatting with old friends and others he had worked with in city and state government. He was forty-three, handsome in a subdued way with his expressive eyes and perfectly trimmed beard. As a younger man, when his hair was very dark, he had had a smoldering look about him, but now he looked much more benevolent, even though he didn’t smile much.
Jill and Anne Marie didn’t know a lot of people there, but it was a good party with interesting speakers and a great buffet. They chatted with each other and tried to mingle with the crowd in as unself-conscious a way as possible. “It was at the end of the evening,” Jill remembered. “She spotted Mr. Capano and recognized him and Anne Marie approached him and introduced herself and said she thought that he might know her sister, Kathleen. Then she introduced me, and we had a little chitchat, a friendly first-time-meeting-someone conversation.”
Tom was clearly a lot older than the two young women, at least fifteen years older. But he was very pleasant as he and Anne Marie found that they knew many of the same people. Of course, they had both been close to the Freel family for more than twenty years—Tom through politics and Anne Marie because the Freels had always been good to her family. And they were both staunch Democrats. Tom talked to Anne Marie and Jill as if they were the only people there, giving them his full attention, and that was flattering because he was an important figure in the Democratic Party in Wilmington and they were virtual newcomers.
Tom’s position at Saul, Ewing br
ought him to the governor’s office in the Carvel state building occasionally, and after that night he often paused at Anne Marie’s desk to exchange a few words. Jill Morrison was aware that Anne Marie had lunch with him once in a while over the late spring and summer of 1993. Since Jill and Anne Marie usually had lunch together, when Ann Marie begged off and said she had other plans, Jill would ask, “Who with?” and sometimes it was Tom Capano. Jill didn’t think anything of it.
“Anne Marie was just a very friendly person, and she explained that she was friends with him,” Jill recalled, “and [said] they would have good conversations, and he relied on her advice. That’s the way she was, so I found nothing odd at that point.”
Sometime in the autumn of that year, Anne Marie told Jill that she was going out to dinner with Tom. She mentioned it offhandedly, as if it was a last-minute invitation. She asked to borrow a raincoat since the night had turned chilly, the wind was whipping fallen leaves around, and she hadn’t worn a coat to work that day.
Somehow, going out to dinner with a man seemed more like a date than just having lunch during a workday. The next day, Jill’s curiosity got the better of her and she asked Anne Marie how her dinner date had gone. “She told me about the restaurant, and that it was a nice evening—that Mr. Capano had ordered the food for her. I asked her, ‘Did he kiss you?’ and she said, ‘Yes.’ ”
Women who are close friends ask each other things like that, although Jill was a little surprised at Anne Marie’s answer. She didn’t question her, but she wondered what kind of a relationship Anne Marie had, or contemplated having, with a married man so much older. Anne Marie had confided that Tom was about to have his forty-fourth birthday. She and Jill were only twenty-seven. Even so, she referred to him as Tommy, a name he apparently preferred. She always called him that.