Kiss of the She-Devil
Page 27
Kaluzny started with dates. Then, as he got into the mechanics of the affair, an important point emerged: the pain Gail Fulton must have endured as she clung to this man as though her entire identity relied on staying married to him.
“Approximately when was it that your wife became aware of your relationship with Donna?”
“Probably September, October of ’97, after she found out I was living with [Donna].” Then George rethought his answer and added: “She suspected, but didn’t know.”
“And did you tell your wife it was just a relationship or it was more than that—that you loved Donna?”
Smart lawyering: Kaluzny was walking George—slowly—into his wife’s demeanor and emotional state during the affair, having him explain what he had put his wife through.
“It was more than that,” he answered. “I told her that.”
“That you loved her?”
Pause. “Yes.”
They spoke of how George found out about Donna’s pregnancy and how George realized the letter Donna had sent him was a forgery. This was not a subject Kaluzny wanted to harp on too much.
Kaluzny established when—“July fifth!”—the affair supposedly ended. He asked George to walk the court through it one more time.
“Was that a significant date,” Kaluzny asked, referring to July 5, 1999, “because that was the date that she was up here and met Gail?”
“Yes,” George answered. “That’s when I decided I really wanted my marriage. I needed to work on it, and that’s when I told her it’s over. It has to be over.”
“Now,” Kaluzny said, seeing an opening, “was that before or after you stayed with her at the inn?”
“After I stayed with her.”
“So you stayed with her at the inn. You had sexual relations that night?”
“Yes.”
“And then the next day you told her it was over?”
“Yes.” George coughed. “Yes.”
The next ten minutes was consumed with George talking about—after Kaluzny quizzed him incessantly about it—the type of work he had done for Donna and how their intimate relationship had allegedly ended. Still, after their breakup, George continued speaking with Donna, e-mailing her, and exchanging letters for the sake of Donna’s failing company. George painted this period of his life—July 5 through that day—as strictly business, but Kaluzny stealthily got George to admit there was plenty of personal talk inside that employee-employer dynamic. There was no indication where Kaluzny was heading with his line of questioning. It almost felt as if he wanted to ask George if he was involved in Gail’s murder.
But he never did.
“[Had] Donna ever told you she thought it was wrong that you were having this relationship with [her] while you were married to Gail?”
George had a strange look on his face. He stayed silent.
Kaluzny waited.
“The question again, please?” George asked.
The defense attorney obliged.
“No,” George responded.
“Did [Donna] ever indicate at all that it wasn’t fair to Gail what was going on?”
“She might’ve . . . but it was totally from a selfish perspective—her own perspective.”
In George’s opinion, that is.
No objection.
Kaluzny touched on the maps. George admitted he and Donna bought them during the Fourth of July weekend. And finally, George was asked why he was involved in purchasing these maps. What was the purpose? Why would George buy a set of Michigan maps for his lover, not long before his wife was murdered?
“At that point,” George said, looking down, then up, having a little trouble getting himself together for this one, “I thought Donna would move up here because she said she was dying, that she was going to have a baby. She needed a place to come, because she had nobody to take care of her.”
The woman owned a home health care business, but she had nobody to take care of her?
Odd.
Paul Walton never brought up this point as George continued, stating emphatically, “And the purpose of those circles”—referring to the markings on the map—“was to find areas in and around where I lived where she could try to find a place to live.”
Pause.
Then: “Apartment hunting.”
This was exactly what Kaluzny wanted to hear. Those maps might have looked—circumstantially—like some sort of murder-plotting device. However, in actuality they were nothing more than common apartment-hunting tools that Donna needed to find a place to live. She needed to be nearby so George could take care of her, and Gail could take care of the child. George was setting up his mistress with an apartment near his home.
But the situation, George explained further, wasn’t what it seemed. George made a point to talk about the fact that he believed Donna was terminally ill and his child was going to need a family. It was the only reason why he decided to set up Donna in her own apartment so close to his home.
To further bolster Kaluzny’s point, the lawyer asked George whose idea it was, in fact, to purchase the maps.
“It was my idea,” George answered.
“Okay. . . . Mr. Fulton,” Kaluzny said after looking at his notes, clearing his throat, “at any time did Donna discuss with you killing your wife or getting rid of her in any way?”
George leaned into the microphone: “No.”
Lawrence Kaluzny asked several more inconsequential questions and passed the witness to Kevin Ouellette’s lawyer, Michael McCarthy. Kevin, Patrick, Sybil, and Donna sat in front of the witness-box. The fearsome foursome. Beside each defendant was his or her lawyer. It was an extreme situation in many ways: Four defendants faced each witness.
For the most part McCarthy backtracked and had George reiterate several points he had made already. There was no silver lining here; there was no bombshell that would exonerate Kevin Ouellette. It almost felt forced, as if McCarthy was belaboring issues for no reason.
The next day, March 10, 2000, Paul Walton faced off once again with his four main suspects in Judge Nancy Tolwin Carniak’s courtroom. First up, Walton brought in two investigators to tell their stories of putting the case together and heading down to Florida to round up suspects. After they got each suspect into a room, it became a matter of shining a light in his or her eyes and asking if he or she did it. To bolster the conspiracy aspect of his case, Walton brought in Kevin Ouellette’s girlfriend, his former roommate from Akron, Ohio, as well as Sybil’s mother, Helen Padgett, who had a few interesting insights to offer.
Sybil, Patrick, Donna, and Kevin sat staring at Helen, who came across as nervous. Like many people called into court, she did not necessarily want to be there testifying, especially against her own daughter. This was definitely one of those I-told-you-so moments. Back when Gail was murdered—you know, that day—Helen knew in her gut that Sybil was up to no good. She even confronted her daughter about it.
One of the more interesting exchanges between the prosecutor and his witness came when Paul Walton asked, “Do you ever remember sitting down with your daughter and telling her, at one point, not to get involved in something?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember about when that was?” This was an important question.
“No,” Helen said.
“What were you telling your daughter not to get involved in?”
Gail was still alive then.
That day.
“Not to kill Gail,” Helen said with a stoic sense of not comprehending, truly, what she was admitting to: knowing about a murder before it happened.
“Why did you think your daughter would go and kill Gail?”
“Because I heard her talking at one time. . . .”
“I’m sorry, who was she talking to?”
“She told me about it . . . ,” Helen answered, not entirely sure of how to respond.
“What do you recall her saying about it?”
“That Donna wanted her to go kill Gail. I told her n
ot to do it.”
With that response Helen had admitted publicly that she—same as two previous witnesses before her—had known about Gail’s murder before it happened.
No one had gone to the police, however.
Concluding the hearing, the assistant prosecuting attorney Paul Walton brought in three more law enforcement witnesses. With George and the others, Walton had made a good argument for probable cause. All of these defendants were heading for trial, Walton was certain.
Then again, courts were finicky. Judges could come in on either side and surprise everyone. All one could do—as an attorney working the case, or a defendant waiting on the decision of his or her life—was wait and see.
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PAUL WALTON WAS happy with the outcome of the preliminary examination. His charges stuck. Four defendants were headed to trial to face a jury for the murder of an innocent woman. That said, the tenacious prosecutor knew he still had plenty of work ahead of him. The goal was to convict Donna Trapani, Sybil Padgett, and Kevin Ouellette. Nothing less would suffice.
Patrick Alexander came forward after the preliminary exam and wanted to deal. If the prosecuting attorney was willing to agree to charge him with a felony that included a non–life sentence, Patrick said through his lawyers, he would trade his testimony. Here was an eyewitness to the murder—and more important, the conspiracy—coming forward to give up the others.
Second-degree murder, it turned out, was what Patrick Alexander wanted. It was quite a step-down from first-degree murder. It meant Patrick would likely get out of prison one day.
“After reviewing all of the evidence in the case,” Paul Walton said later, “we decided to extend that offer to Mr. Alexander.”
Why not? There’s that whole “cut off your nose to spite your face” comparison. Bottom line: If one removes the loose leg of a table, it will topple over. If Patrick had never met Donna through Sybil, so goes the argument, he would not have been involved in this murder. Paul Walton had to think about cutting his losses and going after the mastermind to be certain justice was served. Paul Walton made it clear that Donna Trapani was never going to be offered such a deal.
On Tuesday, October 17, 2000, after a three-day trial, a jury of his peers convicted Kevin Ouellette of first-degree murder. It took jurors two hours to reject Kevin’s argument that he was “so mesmerized by accused murder plot mastermind Donna Trapani” that he “wasn’t acting of [his] own free will.”
Yes, ridiculous. Kevin was saying Donna had made him do it; and because of her expert manipulation skills, he had gone through with it.
Kevin was thirty-three on the day he was convicted. He faced a mandatory life sentence under Michigan law, but the judge held off sentencing the convicted murderer until Donna and Sybil’s cases were adjudicated. Kevin’s lawyer, Michael McCarthy, an attorney Paul Walton respected greatly, told the Detroit News shortly after the verdict, “It was clear that [Donna Trapani] had a hold on George Fulton.” McCarthy called George an “educated man,” who was, despite his intellect, under Donna’s spell. The fact remained that Donna, McCarthy continued, was able to “get him [George] to do things that a rational man wouldn’t normally do.”
There was no mention of the fact that George was also getting his feverish sexual needs met by Donna and was an equal contributor and partner in the affair.
“Likewise with Mr. Ouellette,” McCarthy added, “she pulled the strings. He didn’t really make a conscious, freewill choice.”
Perhaps driving to Donna’s house and demanding his money right after the murder, and then heading out to the local Walmart to purchase stereo equipment and deodorant, was somehow part of Donna’s wicked spell, too? And that taped confession Kevin gave police, which Walton had played for jurors—that must have been Donna still controlling the poor guy as well.
To say that Kevin Ouellette was being forced to do things by Donna Trapani was ignorant and patronizing to the jurors—not to mention laughable.
In response to Ouellette’s defense, Paul Walton put Kevin’s explanation in perfect context: “Each [defendant] was culpable,” the prosecutor noted, “in [his or her] own right.”
With two down, Paul Walton got back into trial mode as November dawned. November in Michigan is akin to the dead of winter anywhere else in the upper part of the country: cold, damp, bare-naked trees; the ground hard and suede-colored; the skies routinely threatening snow, which is measured by the foot.
Part of securing Donna Trapani’s and Sybil Padgett’s convictions was going to be asking Kevin Ouellette to testify. With his conviction on the books, and an absolute surety he was going to appeal the verdict, Walton didn’t think he had a chance of getting Kevin to agree to take the stand against Sybil and Donna. Why would he? There was nothing in it for him.
However, when asked through his lawyers, Kevin said, “Sure, I’ll do it.”
Part of the deal, a source later said, included a promise that if Kevin testified against both (Sybil and Donna were set to be tried together, simultaneously), he wanted the Assistant Prosecuting Attorney’s (APA) office to write a letter on his behalf to the Michigan Department of Corrections (DOC) indicating a desire to be moved to a prison closer to family and friends.
“It was highly unusual for him to want to testify, because anything he would ultimately say in either case would, ah, be used against him during his appellate process,” Paul Walton—a bit baffled by Kevin’s willingness to testify—said later.
It was a simple case from where Paul Walton prosecuted it. Donna’s defense, he later said, was weak, but basically it was all she had left if she hoped to stage a fight.
“It was twofold,” Walton commented, analyzing Donna’s strategy. “One, those witnesses who were testifying against her misunderstood her anger and took it upon themselves to kill Gail.” It was similar to the argument Donna had made during the preliminary exam. “This was a convoluted [stance] that seemed to lose its message a little bit as her trial proceeded. She kept trying to control which way the evidence came in. Her lawyer was trying to, in my opinion, mitigate all of this by trying to get her convicted of a lesser offense.” Walton called it a smart move, and the only ploy the attorney had available.
“Our second problem, if you will, was that we were trying a woman—Donna—with murder [who] wasn’t even in the state at the time.”
Donna was on the phone with George.
That day.
Her alibi, apparently.
Factual challenges, Walton viewed. To him, after studying the reports, looking deeply into Donna’s life, he could clearly see he was dealing with a “very manipulative, very single-minded, extremely egocentric, and narcissistic” female who believed that all she had to do was give an explanation and she was going to get out of it.
As far as murder trials went, Walton considered the case not to be as easy as it might have seemed from the outset.
“We had four cases,” he said. “Initially we were going to do two trials. It’s always a juggling match. You have to be on top of your game and watch as the evidence is presented because juries are ushered in and out of the courtroom depending on whose case is being talked about.” It can get maddeningly confusing for jurors. “You always want to make sure you’re giving a consistent version or that the evidence is coming into the cases consistently.”
How am I going to convince a jury that this woman was a murderer if she had not left the state of Florida? Walton pondered over and over again. How am I going to convince a jury that Sybil wasn’t some sort of undereducated, manipulated person who was easily led, and that maybe the jury should have some sympathy for her? These were the number one anomalies that kept playing in the APA’s mind.
The driving force Walton had going for him in that regard became, as he put it, that “the case was thoroughly investigated, and I was confident we had every piece of evidence we could squeeze out of it. It came down to making sure we presented a consistent and cohesive train of evidence.”
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“Someone once told me that, sometimes, when it rains, it is our loved ones from Heaven looking down at us and crying because they miss us,” Emily later reflected. “I think the same is true of the snow, because during this time I felt so much sadness and anger, and the snow seemed to be a physical manifestation of it all.”
Voir dire had begun on November 21, 2000. Those asked by mail to serve their community were ushered into the courtroom in groups, asked questions, and ultimately a jury of Donna’s and Sybil’s peers was chosen. Donna and Sybil were being tried together (and also sat together inside the courtroom). It was a smart move. Why go through this process twice?
Many in Gail’s family had come to Michigan for the trial. They all sat together and settled in for what was going to be a bumpy, emotional ride.
The jury was in place by Monday, November 27, and Judge Richard Kuhn gave Paul Walton the go ahead to address the men and women chosen to hear the case. Walton was a fair man who understood the subtle intricacies of a courtroom that only an experienced trial attorney could. More than that, Walton was a realist with matters of the court; he was not one of these prosecute-regardless-of-the-evidence types of hardnosed DAs looking to climb a political ladder. Walton wanted justice served, regardless of whether it tasted good to his palate. The case he had built against a woman who had been romantically burned, and had come back to seek revenge on the wife she saw as the sole source of all her anguish, was simple in terms of why: Donna Trapani viewed Gail Fulton as an obstacle in the way of her man.