Kiss of the She-Devil

by M. William Phelps

  “I used to have to force him to call home,” she said, explaining how George never wanted to talk to his kids or Gail while he was in Florida. “He even said to me once, ‘It’s almost as if they don’t exist up there [in Michigan].’ He said the whole time he was in Florida, he didn’t even think too much about up there. He said being down in Florida was almost like a dream . . . that it was like a fantasy.”

  “Did Gail ever find out about you two?”

  “Sure. George called his oldest daughter and she checked on the number, as it showed up on her caller ID. [Melissa] didn’t waste any time calling her momma!” Donna laughed at that. “Gail called almost immediately and asked George if he was living with somebody. I gave him his privacy while they talked. Then he came to the back of the house and told me, ‘Gail knows.... She knows that I am living with you. . . . She’s crying, talking about ending her life, talking about leaving, talking about me coming home right now.... She wants to know what I want to do. I’m moving out. I knew she would someday find out. Gail is devastated.’ So I began to cry—but I was, you know, not crying for me. I was crying for Gail.”

  Donna said the entire Fourth of July fiasco was George’s idea. The version of what happened inside the hotel room Donna gave police was incredible. Donna said that after George left the room, she and Gail talked, but Gail “went into a rage.”

  Donna blocked the door so Gail couldn’t get out of the room and “hurt herself.” Donna said she put her arms “around Gail tenderly and calmed her. Gail was crying, and I was trying to soothe her by stroking her hair. I then told Gail, ‘George has had other affairs,’ and she ran from the room.”

  The next morning, July 5, George showed up at the hotel with his bags and claimed, “‘Gail threw me out,’” Donna told officers.

  She told the investigators that she said to him, “‘I don’t want you—get out of here.’” And so George left the hotel and went back to Gail.

  At one point during the interview, Donna said she realized a while later that she was going to have to break off the relationship for good—it was just too chaotic. Gail and George Fulton were too crazy for her.

  Then Donna brought Sybil into the scenario. She came across as Sybil Padgett’s mentor and savior, telling detectives Sybil had been abused by her husband and kicked out of her home. She said that Sybil had trouble taking care of her children. But Donna was there for her, loaning her money, giving her and the kids a place to stay, bringing her to a women’s shelter for counseling.

  “I gave her a job, and she always had a job with me. And then I started telling her about my problems with George and our relationship,” Donna stated.

  Over the due course of time, Donna said, she turned to Sybil because she was there: a person to confide in. They were two girlfriends helping each other through life’s bumps. As she talked with Sybil about George, Donna told investigators, and involved Sybil in the day-to-day problems and arguments more, Sybil became another person—someone who was full of revenge and wanted to help her friend make the man who had hurt her pay for it.

  Donna returned once more to the subject of George Fulton and his family. “George loved his kids,” Donna said, “but he never said, he never loved Gail. He said some bad things, but never said that he didn’t love her.”

  Donna said that when cops called her on the night Gail was murdered, she “thought he said shootings” (with an s on the end), and assumed that there was more than one. “I just figured it must have been drugs or something. I wondered what had happened.”

  Eventually, while talking to police that night, she considered it “might have been a prank.... I asked how George and the kids were doing. I wasn’t really concerned with George so much that I was more concerned with the kids.”

  They asked her when she next heard from George.

  “After Gail’s death I never heard from him. I would have liked to have offered my condolences to Emily. I did call George a few weeks ago about business, and I realized what I said must sound like, and I asked him how he was doing. We e-mailed things back and forth,” she said, “but it was all business-related material. I could detect anger in George’s e-mails directed at me or my company. I sent George some roses and told him that roses represented beauty and that I hoped that the flowers and the card would bring a smile to his face and brighten his day.”

  60

  DETECTIVE JOHN MEIERS popped in “tape #4” as Donna continued talking. They could not shut her up, actually. She wanted to talk about everything and anything, including her sex life with George, which she described as “wonderful.” Yet, Donna added for no obvious reason, that “the sexual relationship George had with Gail was not good. I hope this doesn’t come out in court because it will embarrass him, but he told me that in twenty-five years of marriage to Gail . . . [she] would not touch him. We had dated only a month or two, and George said that I had touched him more in that time than Gail had in twenty-five years.”

  Donna was proud of that badge, telling her tales with a smile.

  “Can you give us a list of the problems in the Fulton marriage, as you saw them?” Pearson asked.

  “Sure,” Donna said. “The main problem was that Gail should have gone back to school and gotten herself a job. She needed a job. She needed to get out and socialize and meet people. Then there were the kids. Gail always seemed to have time for her kids, but never [for] George. Her whole life was as a mother, not a wife.”

  “Did you ever tell George you were pregnant?” Meiers asked.

  “Um-hm.”

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “Um-hm.”

  They assumed she meant yes.

  “How far along are you?”

  Donna hesitated. Then: “Almost there . . . almost there! To be perfectly honest, though, they don’t think I am going to make it. I was in the ER last Monday night. I’m probably going to lose the baby. I should have had an abortion, according to my doctor. I’m bleeding a lot. They’ve been packing me.”

  “When was the last time you went to the doctor and had an ultrasound, Miss Trapani?”

  “I saw my doctor this morning. I’ve had many ultrasounds.”

  The interview had crossed a threshold. Donna shifted in her seat and became progressively more uncomfortable. There was an accusatory tone to some of the questions and Donna picked up on it.

  “What did your doctor say about the baby this morning—is the baby okay?”

  “I don’t think so,” Donna answered, drooping her shoulders, dropping her head, lowering her voice. “I don’t think she has a left kidney.”

  “How does George feel?”

  “Huh! He doesn’t believe me and hasn’t done anything for the baby.”

  “What’s your due date?” Meiers asked.

  “Three weeks,” Donna said, holding up three fingers. “December thirteenth. I’m in that phase right now . . . and they’re trying to get me to hang on.”

  Meiers and Pearson carefully observed Donna as she spoke, later noting, It did not appear . . . that Donna was pregnant. Certainly not since she indicated that she got pregnant in January or February.

  The math alone didn’t add up. As she sat there, Donna would have been ten or even eleven months into her pregnancy.

  As they talked, Donna’s cat jumped up on the couch and walked across her midsection. Both detectives noticed the cat had left footprints, as if walking on sand, on Donna’s stomach.

  Indentations were left by the cat, said Meiers’s report, as if the animal had walked across a Posturepedic mattress.

  The detectives looked at each other.

  Donna had packed something underneath her clothing to make it appear that she had a bump. And even then, she wasn’t showing the same way a woman about to give birth any day would have been. Plus, her face was not puffy. She had not appeared to have gained any weight, and she had no trouble moving around easily.

  “Do you know anyone who would want to kill Gail?” Meiers asked.

  “I don�
�t know anyone that would want to have her killed,” Donna said.

  Pearson and Meiers thought this to be an odd response.

  “What type of person would kill a woman like that?” Donna said next. She paused for a moment and then answered her own question, as if thinking out loud: “I don’t know.... Somebody that . . . I don’t know. . . . A drug addict, alcoholic, criminal? . . . I think she was killed by mistake or something. Or she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or something was going on.”

  But that first reply: “want to have her killed.” Donna had let out a Freudian slip without realizing it. She had said, “want to have her killed,” both detectives realized. They had asked about someone killing Gail.

  Donna opened a door.

  So they asked about rental cars and if Donna had rented a car for one of her employees.

  “Sybil Padgett, yes, but I took the fees out of her paycheck. The last time Sybil worked for me was October, but she still has the car. . . . In fact, I wanted to ask you, why [was] the car recently impounded and taken to Pensacola? I got a call from the rental company.”

  There was a bowl of pretzels on the table in front of them, which Donna had not touched since they sat down, almost three hours before. It had been a long conversation. Donna had weathered it well, stood up to each question, and had an answer for everything.

  Or so it seemed.

  “We believe that reason for Gail’s murder was a love triangle,” Meiers tossed out, looking to see how Donna reacted.

  Donna became subdued. She turned “quiet and soft-spoken and began to eat pretzels,” Meiers later explained. She became anxious.

  They struck a nerve.

  Meiers continued, “We think you went to a group of people to have Gail killed.”

  “That’s not true!” Donna said sharply. “I’ve never said that!”

  Meiers took out a photo of the redbrick LAKE ORION TOWNSHIP LIBRARY sign positioned at the parking lot entrance. He showed it to Donna. Then he took out a newspaper clipping, with a photo of Gail and George sitting on their front porch, smiling. Above the photo was a headline indicating Gail’s murder had been caught on video surveillance, capturing Gail’s final few moments of life. After that, Meiers showed Donna a photograph of the green Malibu that Sybil had been driving around (which Donna herself had admitted to)—the same car, he noted, captured on the video of Gail being shot to death. Then he showed Donna a picture of Gail lying in a pool of blood by her van. The next photo was a close-up of Gail. Meiers’s report stated: [There were] massive amounts of blood on the ground around her head and an air tube down her throat.... The victim’s eyes and mouth were open and the gunshot to the forehead was very evident.

  There in front of Donna was a photo array of the crime she had masterminded.

  Donna sat up. She stared at the pictures, but she would not—at first—look at any photos of Gail.

  Meiers held up the photos of Gail. Donna indicated she wanted to look at them closer. She held them, one in each hand, and studied each snapshot, close to her eyes.

  As Donna peered into these gruesome images, Detective Meiers said, “Look, Miss Trapani, we have arrested Patrick Alexander and Sybil Padgett, and both have confessed to the murder of Gail Fulton.”

  Donna didn’t say anything; instead, she stared at the photos and continued to munch on pretzels. It was entertainment to Donna, like a movie she had not only scripted and starred in, but one she was taking pleasure in watching.

  “We know about the two trips to Michigan and how you gave Sybil one thousand dollars for the first trip.”

  Donna again said nothing, said Meiers’s report, but continued to eat pretzels.

  There was a long pause. Donna put the photos down. Then: “If this is all true,” she said, using a finger to point to the photos and what detectives had accused her of, “why did I have to sit here and talk into this recorder for the past four hours?”

  It was a good question: If they had the proof to make an arrest, why would they waste time interviewing Donna at her home and not inside the confinement of a police station?

  Meiers stuck to the focus of the interrogation, saying, “We know about the meetings in your bedroom.... It’s time for you to tell the truth, Miss Trapani.”

  “It’s not like how you’re sayin’,” Donna said, shaking her head.

  “Then how did it happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Meiers’s report explained how Donna reacted next: She continued to eat pretzels.

  Meiers looked down and noticed the tape running low. They had Donna against the ropes. Maybe she was going to cop to the crime and make things easy on everyone. Forgo a long, drawn-out trial and cut a deal.

  He put in the fifth tape of the day and quickly hit RECORD.

  “You don’t have any remorse, do you?” Meiers asked. “You don’t have one ounce of remorse—do you, Miss Trapani?”

  Donna didn’t respond.

  Pearson said, “You can tell us the truth.”

  “I just can’t,” she said. “I don’t know all the truth.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “I just can’t. . . . I have never really said that I wanted her dead or out of the picture. I know one thing—”

  “This is your opportunity to tell us the truth.”

  “And then what?” Donna asked.

  Meiers brought his tone down a notch, to give the impression they were not there to quarrel or play good cop/bad cop. There was common ground among the three of them. “Listen,” he said, “I tell you what, you are going to feel a hell of a lot better.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ll be able to sleep at night, and it’s the right thing to do!” Pearson said. “Because I really don’t think—” Pearson tried to say as Donna interrupted.

  “But what’s going to happen to me? What would happen to me?” Donna took on that all-too-familiar role of the narcissist, worrying about herself and how it would affect her. She’d had an opportunity to show some compassion for the victim, but she had waived that direction long ago. She was concerned only for her well-being.

  “What’s going to happen to you?” Meiers uttered.

  “Um-hm. I mean, if I did do this, I mean, if I am guilty and I did do this, then why can’t I just be killed and put under, too? If I did it, then I need to give my life if I did it! I cannot say what you want me to say. If I sat here for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t be able to explain it to you. I don’t know how to say it.”

  If this was a confession, it had to be one of the most unique and obscure these two cops had heard. What was Donna Trapani saying?

  Accusations were made by us detectives, Meiers’s report explained, and little response was given. It appeared that she was experiencing some guilt but she continued to eat pretzels.

  Donna finally said, “I don’t want to talk here. I don’t want to talk into this machine. I want to call my attorney, and I am not sure if I can do that or not.”

  The conversation had become, by Meiers’s observation, “frozen.” So he said, “I understand it’s hard for you to say something that would put you in prison for the rest of your life.”

  “It would put me in prison for the rest of my life?” Donna asked as if shocked by the revelation. “I’m having a hard time because some of that . . . like if I say anything like what I want to say, what I’m trying to say, ’cause I don’t know what I’m trying to say, it will make me sound . . . It’s nothing like what was supposed to ever happen.” Donna took a breath.

  Was she ready to come clean?

  “I got duped,” Donna said, implying she’d been burned by her co-conspirators. “But not by the people you think. It was never supposed to happen.”

  Was she admitting her involvement?

  Donna started and then stopped. She was finished talking. She had invoked her right to an attorney moments before and meant it. She was done.

  So Meiers and Pearson stopped the interview and told Donna they were g
oing to have to take her down to the Okaloosa County Sheriff ’s Office to be booked on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

  Donna did not balk at the proclamation, almost as though she had expected it.

  Steve Pearson and John Meiers handed Donna Trapani to Detective Larry Ashley as soon as they got back to the OCSO. In the meantime they’d have to file the paperwork to transport Donna to Michigan so she could be booked there, where the murder had taken place.

  Ashley took Donna into the processing area to fingerprint and formally charge her.

  “I need to pat you down,” the detective explained, “and check you for weapons.”

  Donna looked at the tile floor nervously.

  Ashley felt something soft stuffed into Donna front pants as he patted her down.

  “What the . . . ?”

  Ashley asked Donna to lift up the front of her sweater.

  There, stuffed down her pants and around her waistline, Donna had placed several place mats to make it appear as if her belly and midsection had been growing. There was another place mat deeper down into her pants.

  “I have another in my pubic area,” Donna admitted.

  “Go into the bathroom and take it out,” Ashley ordered.

  61

  KEVIN OUELLETTE WAS taken into custody without incident in Branford, Connecticut, on December 2, 1999, as detectives from the OCSD headed north, from Florida, back to Michigan with Donna Trapani and the others.

  Kevin sat inside a cell at Troop G in Bridgeport, Connecticut, awaiting Lieutenant Joseph Quisenberry and Sergeant Michael Elliott, of the OCSD, along with Special Agent Rich Teahan, of the FBI, to question him. Kevin had been arrested at a rest stop along Interstate 95. For all investigators knew, he could have additional information. Were others involved?