Kiss of the She-Devil

by M. William Phelps

  As they worked through their relationship difficulties, despite what George later said about juggling that “moral dilemma,” a letter he wrote to Donna on June 13, 1999, spoke of a man who had not withdrawn—or claimed not to have withdrawn—any of the feelings he once had. George was indeed coming back around. Perhaps all the begging and threatening and constant badgering on Donna’s part had paid off.

  Opening the letter, George apologized for the way he had talked to her yesterday. . . . They had fought. George had sent Donna another round of what he called “mixed messages” and “inconsistent words.” He said he “felt so bad” and wanted to know what he could say to “make up” for his behavior. Saying he loved and admired and adored Donna “sounds so empty and inconsequential.” He begged Donna to believe him.

  George talked about the “life growing inside” her and how much he loved the idea of Donna having his child. He called the baby a “product of our . . . love.” He suggested that if the child turned out to be a girl, they name her after Donna, so that Donna “will continue to live on.” He was going to do everything in his power to spend Donna’s “last days” with her.

  He mentioned he was at home praying for her and the “Little Kahuna.” He knew there was a God and that God was “watching over” Donna and his child when he wasn’t in Florida to take care of them himself. He warned Donna that she had ruined his future with women because after having her, he could never be with another woman.

  Concluding, George reconciled how he hoped Donna would “return” his page that night so they could talk: I will love you forever, My Donna!!

  38

  EMILY FULTON WAS preparing for college enrollment. As summer approached, she could not ignore that her mother was once again suffering from bouts of depression and anxiety brought on by a father who had been taking the entire family on an emotional roller-coaster ride.

  “She was losing weight again and also losing her hair,” Emily said. “She was getting these headaches . . . terrible migraines.”

  From Emily’s position she never believed her father and Donna broke up.

  “He said that,” Emily observed, speaking of her father quitting CCHH and ending the affair, “but he was still doing claims for her.”

  To Emily’s way of thinking, if the guy was still working for his mistress, he was still interested in keeping a connection open between them.

  Emily would come home and there was her mother: sitting in the kitchen or alone in her room, absolutely destroyed.

  “Crying all the time.”

  Emily and Andrew got together and took Gail out for what Emily later called “dates.” The movies. Dinner. Shopping. Anything to keep Gail’s mind off herself and the utter life-sucking situation at home.

  “You kids shouldn’t have to do this,” Gail said one night. “You kids should be out with your friends. You shouldn’t be hanging out with your mother because her husband left her.”

  Gail was once again talking about killing herself. This obviously upset Andrew and Emily, who would turn to her school mentor and vent.

  “Generally,” Emily’s mentor said, “people who talk about committing suicide don’t ever do it.” Still, Emily and Andrew routinely told their mother that they loved her, she was desperately needed in their lives, and suicide could never be an option. They depended on their mother to be around for their entire lives, and they let her know this any chance they got.

  “How could we not spend time with her?” Emily said later. “She needed us. My mom couldn’t hide it anymore, like she had in the past.”

  The kids were older. They could tell when their mother suffered. Plus, it was all out in the open: Gail’s coworkers knew; her mother knew; even some of the neighbors knew.

  Donna played off this. On June 20, 1999, she sent George a card, imbuing it with the idea that there was a strong “probability” that she wouldn’t be around next Father’s Day. She wanted George to receive something special from “‘us.’”

  The card went on about how Donna had become so comfortable in her role as the soon-to-be mother of George’s child and couldn’t wait to give this gift from God to her lover and then depart from the world herself. Her life was complete.

  She signed the card, your Little Kahuna, soon to be your princess one day.

  A week later, as the first of July came, George made a calculated decision that the best thing for him to do was have Donna and Gail meet. Why not have them get together and talk this thing through? If Donna was going to die, George and Gail would have to raise his child. Thus, Gail needed to get to know the mother of her husband’s child.

  “[I wanted them to talk] about what to do and what needed to happen,” George later said. “What was going to happen with the baby and see if we could get along, because I didn’t know what to do at that time. I felt responsible for my wife and kids and also for Miss Trapani and her condition.”

  George suggested Donna come up to Michigan for the Fourth of July weekend and stay at a nearby hotel. For some bizarre reason George thought it seemed like a good idea to drive Gail over to meet Donna, leaving the two women to chat for as long as they needed to hammer out any difficulties.

  First he asked Gail.

  According to Donna, it was George who invited her not only to visit him and Gail in Michigan, but to live there, too.

  “Well, the main reason I came was because George had changed his mind again and had wanted us . . . to move . . . so he could be with me and the baby. . . . He had always wanted Gail and I to meet,” Donna stated, “and he also thought that maybe I could try to talk to Gail and she would be able to meet me. We would become friends, maybe, and that because of her emotional trauma that she was going through . . . maybe I could try to talk to her, because she had had some attempted suicide threats, verbally, that she had talked about.”

  After George confided in Donna about Gail, Donna thought about it. Maybe she could convince Gail to go and “talk to someone.”

  “I had a friend that owned [a health care company] in Troy, Michigan . . . and I had already talked to him. He had psychiatric nurses, and he had social workers, and he was willing to provide it for free for me.”

  Donna called Dora Garza and explained to Gail’s mother that she should go up to Michigan immediately to be with her daughter, relating this gem of compassion: “George is leaving her to come back to me and be with me and the baby.”

  Inside her hotel room, waiting for George and Gail, Donna made notes on hotel stationery. This was, obviously, her “argument” to win Gail over and make her understand that Donna deserved George. Of course, the entire fourteen-page document was directed at Gail, and each page grew in anger as Donna worked herself up into a whirlwind of hate.

  She accused Gail of “limiting” George’s “dreams, ambitions, desires, wants.” She noted how Gail was turning their children against George, how selfish Gail had been throughout all of this, and how she wasn’t giving George the opportunity to be a real person or lover. She ranted about how George kept most of his anger and resentment and hate for Gail “inside,” and it would eventually kill him. How he “hurt for so long now” and how Donna had to help George through all that pain. How George felt his entire life was dedicated to “pleasing Gail.” Donna blamed Gail for George leaving a company that Donna considered “him part owner,” mentioning how it would ultimately “kill him” because he had left. She planned to tell Gail how George had given her “his entire adult life.” George was an “honorable, strong” man who had “never put his needs first.” She accused Gail of questioning him “to death” about “every little thing.” Any anger George had displayed in Donna’s presence, Donna claimed, was brought on by Gail. And on and on, it went....

  So, in Donna’s twisted view of the relationship, she wanted Gail to understand that any difficulties she and George had were because of Gail. She ended by telling Gail that although George wanted to be with his lover, not his wife, it did not mean he didn’t care about Gail or her “welfa
re.” She wrote: He does care, just not how you want him to.

  Donna was ready for the showdown.

  39

  “YOU READY?”

  Gail did not want to go. How could she do this? It might have sounded like a favorable plan a few days ago, but now Gail did not want to be in the same room with the woman who had caused her so much pain.

  “I insist,” George said (according to what Gail later said).

  Gail thought about it. “Okay.”

  Little did Gail know then that the plan Donna and George had concocted was to sit Gail down and ask her if it was okay if George moved back down to Florida to stay with Donna until she had the baby and then died. After that, George could move back to Michigan to be with Gail and either raise the child, or give it up for adoption.

  “I felt responsible for both women,” George later told police, “and did not know what to do at that point. I was unable to make a choice between Gail and Donna.”

  They drove to the ConCorde Inn in Rochester Hills, a twenty-five-minute ride south of Lake Orion. Gail likely stared out into the open spaces passing by, tears in her eyes, wondering how the hell her life of praying nightly rosaries and helping people and going to mass had come down to this.

  Donna was waiting inside her hotel room.

  George knocked. Gail stood in back of him.

  According to George, Donna had a slightly noticeable bump, indicating that she was pregnant. If a person didn’t know Donna was carrying a child, however, that individual would have had no idea by looking at her. George had even asked Donna why she wasn’t showing more. After all, he had seen her naked. She was supposedly six months pregnant by then.

  “Since I had that stomach surgery,” Donna told him, “I am not able to eat much—you know that! I’m not really able to gain much weight, so the baby is undersize.”

  George responded later: “She looked a little bit thicker, but I don’t know if that was from fluid or tension, or what it was. But, no, I—I thought . . . [she was pregnant], but don’t know if I was one hundred percent on that. [She] looked like [she] might have been. . . .”

  The three of them stood and stared at one another for a moment: the wife, the husband, and the mistress.

  One of the reasons why George told Gail that Donna was carrying his child, he later explained, was that “I learned in the army that bad news doesn’t get better with age. I told my wife because she would find out one way or the other. . . . I had cheated on her. I had deceived her. I had lied to her. Now this woman says she’s pregnant and dying. It just gets more and more complicated. . . .”

  “I want to talk to him alone first,” Donna said, looking at Gail.

  “No,” Gail sassed back, walking into the room behind George. “You will not be alone with my husband.” Gail was on the verge of tears. (“Very, very upset,” George explained.)

  “This is Gail, Donna,” George said, making the introductions.

  The two women locked eyes.

  They stood for a time and talked. Not about much. Then George suggested lunch. “Olive Garden?” It was nearby.

  “Sure,” Donna said.

  Gail agreed.

  So they piled into George’s car and went to the local Olive Garden for endless breadsticks and salad.

  After lunch George drove them back to the hotel.

  “George, you wait outside the room while Gail and I speak for a moment,” Donna suggested.

  George looked at Gail to make sure she was okay with this.

  “George . . . go,” Donna ordered.

  George stepped out of the room and went down to the lobby as Donna closed the door behind him. Then she walked toward the bed. Gail had tears in her eyes.

  “You see this,” Donna said, rubbing her belly, “this is your husband’s love child! I love George, Gail! You cannot stop this.”

  Gail was bawling.

  “You cannot stop us! Why won’t you let this man go?”

  According to Donna (and yet this would be extremely out of character for Gail), Gail snapped, “I hope you lose your baby!”

  “Why is it that you have to always get what you want?” Donna said. “You’ve had George for twenty-five years, bitch. Now it’s my turn! You got that?”

  Gail didn’t respond. Donna wasn’t allowing her a word in edgewise.

  “After I’m dead, you can feel free to have him back,” Donna said.

  From where George sat in the lobby downstairs, he could see the door into Donna’s room. He looked up about ten minutes after sitting down and saw Gail barge out of the room. Donna was running behind her, trying to stop her, tugging at Gail’s blouse. (“Physically stop her,” George remembered later. “By holding her. Grabbing her.”)

  Gail found George. “I want to go home! I’m very upset.”

  The torment Gail had been through.

  Unimaginable.

  Unbelievable.

  Unforgivable.

  Donna ran down the stairs while holding her stomach. “I need to talk to you, George.”

  George said, “You know I love her, Donna.” Then he turned to Gail, “Can you wait a few minutes? She wants to talk to me for five minutes.” George’s demeanor changed. He sounded sincere when addressing Gail, angry when speaking to Donna.

  “What!” Donna shouted. Things were getting out of hand.

  “Gail, please wait here,” George said kindly. “I need to talk to Donna alone.”

  Donna and George went into the pool area of the hotel. Donna slid her key card to open the door.

  Gail waited for what she later told her mother was “over an hour.” (George claimed “five minutes turned into forty-five minutes.” He and Donna “talked about everything.”)

  When Donna and George emerged from the pool area, Gail was gone.

  40

  UP UNTIL THE moment she received the call, it had been a beautiful summer day on the water for Emily and a few close friends. They were enjoying the long holiday weekend aboard a boat on the lake.

  Sun and fun.

  “Come home, come home!” Gail shouted over the phone to her daughter. Gail was hysterical. George and Donna had left her there alone at the hotel. The day had been a mistake. She went to meet Donna and talk things through, but it all went terribly wrong.

  Emily was startled by the call. “Mom . . . where are you?”

  “Your dad is going to leave us again.... She’s pregnant.. . .”

  Emily couldn’t understand what her mother was saying because Gail was so frantic, crying and talking in quick breaths. Before she left to go out with friends earlier that morning, Emily had heard Donna was in town and that her mother and father were going to meet Donna. But Emily was under the impression “that my father was going there to tell Donna it was over.” Emily had even suggested that her father take her with him instead of her mother. “Mom’s been through enough, Dad. I will tell Donna to leave us alone,” Emily had suggested.

  “Mom, what’s going on? Slow down,” Emily said, trying to calm Gail. It sounded like Gail was outside somewhere.

  Gail mentioned the hotel. She said she was walking home. Emily realized then that they had gone through with the meeting and something terrible had happened.

  “I’ll be right there, Mom.”

  Emily got her things together and took off.

  “But I decided,” Emily said later, “right then and there, I was going to go to the hotel and have a confrontation in person with Donna.”

  Emily was tired of this. Now her father and Donna were involving her mother. It was time, Emily figured, to get in Donna’s face and tell her to back the hell off.

  From a pay phone near the hotel, Gail called her mother next. She was walking home, she explained. She had heard and seen enough. They left her in the lobby and took off together. How low. How pathetic. How mean. It appeared George and Donna had brought Gail to the hotel to humiliate her.

  “I looked around the hotel grounds,” Gail explained, “but couldn’t find them. I’m walking
home.”

  “Honey . . . don’t. . . .” Dora was upset, unable to understand how George could do such a thing to a woman with whom he had spent his entire life.

  Gail said she’d call later.

  As she walked down the street away from the hotel, Gail heard a car pull up behind her.

  And then another.

  It was George in one; Donna was behind him.

  “Gail . . . get in,” George said. He had driven all the way home, searched the house, and then backtracked. Donna followed in her car the entire way, not letting George out of her sight.

  “Why?” Gail asked. She was visibly upset. She was hugging herself, a balled-up tissue in her hand, tears streaming down her face. “Why, George?”

  “Just get in. Let’s talk.”

  George convinced Gail to get in the car.

  Gail sat. “I’ll be right back. Don’t leave.” George walked over to Donna, who was parked in back of his car, waiting.

  He returned a moment later: “We have to follow Donna back so she gets there safely,” George explained to his wife.

  Donna drove away. George followed. Gail didn’t say much during the ride. At one point George looked into the rearview mirror and noticed Donna’s car veering off the side of the road, stopping sharply as though she had crashed.

  George pulled up alongside Donna’s car. He stopped and quickly got out.

  Donna was slumped over.

  “Hey,” George said, “you okay?”

  “I must have passed out,” Donna said.

  “Come with us,” George said. He helped Donna into his car and drove Gail home.

  “What are you doing?” Gail asked as George packed an overnight bag inside the house. Donna waited outside in the car.

  “I have to go stay with Donna tonight,” George said.

  41

  WHILE EMILY WAS home earlier that day, before this fiasco started, Donna called. Emily made note of the hotel name on the caller ID. Now back from what was supposed to be a quiet day with friends, upset that her mother sounded so in despair, Emily walked in and was met with a “crying and very upset” mother. Her father was “just sitting on the couch in ‘his own world,’” Emily said.