Kiss of the She-Devil

by M. William Phelps

  Sybil Padgett and the others were the means to that end. Their motive was monetary. Donna’s was more cerebral and psychologically deep-seated.

  After explaining how Gail walked out of the library unknowingly into the hands of her murderers, this straitlaced, loving, charming, devout, and caring woman had no idea she was going to be the “victim of a contract killing. A murder,” Walton said loudly, “that was masterminded and put into motion by this woman”—he pointed at Donna, who looked down and away—“Donna Kaye Trapani!”

  Walton listed the reasons why Gail was murdered. One of which turned out to be the “dedication to her family,” he said.

  He called Donna the “rebuffed and aging lover to George.” And when George decided to return home and rekindle his relationship and marriage, watch out! Donna took that as Gail Fulton crossing a line in the hot Florida sand.

  “Failing in her bid to win back George,” Walton said, shaking his head, reacting to how silly it all sounded, yet how evil and spurious, “immediately I think of a quote when talking about this case . . . and it goes something like this: ‘Heaven has no rage like a woman—a woman’s love turned to hatred. Nor hell knows no fury like a woman scorned.’ Failing in her manipulation to win George back, she decided she was going to kill Mrs. Fulton. A plan [that] was executed with deadly precision. . . .”

  Walton talked about how the murder went down, step by step. He mentioned details. He spoke of those chilling moments when Gail looked down the barrel of a gun and into the eyes of her killer—but undoubtedly saw Donna’s face. He mentioned how Sybil and Patrick and Kevin tore out of the parking lot after mowing Gail down in a hail of gunfire and quickly drove back home to seek their monetary reward. He called Donna the mastermind several times to implant that image in the minds of jurors. He called Gail’s death a “contract killing”—maybe more times than he should have—but he made the point that this murder was the plot of one woman.

  When they returned to Florida from Michigan, Walton explained, pausing first to allow the jury and gallery to focus on what he was going to say next, the well-spoken prosecutor lowered his voice and described how Sybil, Kevin, and Patrick went directly to Donna to “collect their money for a job well done.”

  His point was made: These were vile creatures that killed an innocent woman who had done more good for more people within twenty-four hours of her life than they had likely done combined throughout all their lives. These killers, Walton implied, were selfish people who took it upon themselves to judge and condemn a woman for nothing more than loving her husband. And even among those who had admitted to the crime already, remorse or sympathy was hard to find. Kevin said he’d killed Gail in cold blood. Patrick said he’d planned and watched. Neither said it had made him feel bad or that he was the least bit sorry for committing such a violent act. It was as if by admitting to the crime, each should be rewarded.

  Walton took a moment to go through the charges and make sure jurors understood each count and how his office had legally reached those charges. This was where Walton broke down that one bothersome aspect of the case he felt he faced going in: making sure jurors knew exactly how a woman could commit a murder and yet be in another state when the act took place. He used words like “aided” and “abetted.” He explained the legalese behind “intent to kill.” He outlined the cool contemplation, scheming, and measured acts of violence Donna had planned methodically, making a solemn point, giving everyone in the courtroom a closer look into Donna’s mind-set and thought process as she began planning Gail’s death: “The intent to kill was premeditated and deliberate. This simply means that the defendant considered the pros and cons of the killing and thought about her actions before choosing.”

  Donna Trapani had gone up to Michigan and proclaimed her pregnancy to Gail. She said she was dying. That didn’t work. Then she drove home. She sent George e-mails begging him to come back to her. That didn’t work, either. So she carefully and evilly decided Gail would have to pay for George’s decision to diss her. And maybe, when George finally woke up, he would come crawling back to her.

  Ending his opening statement, Walton went through the day-to-day mechanics of the affair and how Donna became a marginalized woman hell-bent on revenge. Most were probably sitting, listening to how this relationship unfolded and then fell apart—and how George brought Donna (who claimed to be pregnant and dying) up to meet his wife—and thought why in the world did Donna kill Gail if she had felt so betrayed? Why not put a cap in the back of George’s ear? If Donna was truly a woman belittled by a man she had devoted her heart to, why had she taken revenge on his innocent wife?

  Simple: Donna Trapani hated Gail. That argument was made by the recurring criticisms and hasty gestures and mean-spirited remarks Donna had made about Gail whenever she mentioned her in a letter, fax, or e-mail. Donna got off on the idea that Gail would suffer. Donna felt fuzzy inside thinking about Gail being taken out of the picture so she could then move in and pick up the pieces of George’s shattered life.

  Larry Kaluzny began by asking the jury why they were in the courtroom, pointing down at the table he stood near.

  Kaluzny answered his own question by paying respects—as infinitesimal as they were—to the one person who is generally forgotten once a murder trial gets under way: the victim.

  “We are here,” the highly regarded attorney said, “obviously because Gail Fulton was killed.” But also, he added decisively, “Because Donna says, ‘I’m not guilty.’ Make no mistake about that. Whether she testifies or not, she tells you,” he said, pausing, looking at each juror, “‘I am not guilty.’”

  As many defense attorneys will do during opening arguments, Kaluzny broke into a canned speech about the facts of the case and how jurors should judge a defendant on those facts alone.

  The problem with this argument is that most juries judge a defendant by her appearance, demeanor—if a defendant smiles, if she laughs, if she scratches herself the wrong way, if she whispers to her lawyer too many times, if she testifies, if she closes her eyes when she’s not supposed to, if she cries or doesn’t cry, and so on. Juries do this first. And then, maybe, when they begin deliberations, only then do they talk about facts and evidence. But judgments are made first, no doubt about it. No matter what any potential juror says during the voir dire process, he or she is judging a defendant the moment that defendant sits down. Jurors are human beings, obviously, and people like to judge other people. Everyone draws conclusions about others based on a list of personal hang-ups, reservations, insecurities, self-esteem issues, and makes immediate decisions. This does not change because a person has sworn an oath. Yet defense attorneys—many of them—refuse to address this concern in their openings. Instead, like Larry Kaluzny, they belabor this idea of sticking to the facts of a case and basing the verdict on those facts.

  “We ask that you be conscientious,” Kaluzny told jurors, “as you listen to the facts of this case—of credible evidence”—and here came the defense hammer walloping the prosecutor—“not of just theory. Of believable facts. Not anger. Of reliable facts. Not vengeance. A precious life is gone, other lives have been touched by that, and another life is at stake here as well.”

  Then came a little preachy rhetoric all defense attorneys spew when speaking about how juries should never, ever presume guilt (yet they all do). Leave that to the cops and prosecutors, Kaluzny jabbed, almost laughing. They, he added, always presume guilt. They have to whenever they step into a case.

  “Juries presume innocence,” he said, slowing down. “That presumption is strong, and it exists as we sit here now.”

  Thanks for pointing that out, there, Mr. Defense Attorney.

  Kaluzny went on and on, trying to stay as far away from those facts as he could. Because, when anyone studied the bare bones of this case, it was inside those facts that Donna was going to meet the iron lock of the steel door closing in on her freedom.

  67

  SYBIL PADGETT’S ATTORNEY, Raymond Correll, m
imicked Larry Kaluzny’s arguments. There was not much difference between the two cases—albeit one defendant was now accusing the other of acting on her own, while the other was saying she had been programmed to kill because of the threats and manipulation of the other. Donna Trapani manipulated Sybil Padgett. She hung things over her head. She dug up rotten things about Sybil at work, threatened to go to the authorities and report Sybil for falsifying records, and forced the weaker woman in the friendship into finding her a killer. One could argue all day why Sybil did not go to the police, but it would not solve the situation of bringing Gail back to her family and her killers to justice.

  Walton started with Barbara Butkis, the library worker who first spotted Gail lying in the parking lot, bleeding to death. This image of a librarian gunned down in the parking lot of what is a solemn, peaceful, nonthreatening public space was disturbing and chilling. It brought tears to Barbara’s eyes as she recalled those violent memories now embedded in her psyche. Those in the gallery swallowed lumps, twisting and turning in their seats, as Barbara described Gail’s final moments and the panic Barbara developed as she realized Gail had been shot.

  “You said you noticed an injury to her head?” Walton asked several questions into the testimony.

  “Yes,” Barbara replied, “because I kept looking all over to see if there was something I could do for her. And noticed”—she paused, caught her breath—“and noticed . . . there was a hole at the top of her forehead.”

  Many in the courtroom gasped.

  “About how big was the hole?”

  “It was just a . . . Well, I guess it was just a small one that I could tell.”

  And so Barbara set the stage, giving jurors a clear picture of the end result: Gail Fulton lying in a pool of her own blood, wheezing for her last breaths, undoubtedly praying to God. But even more, Barbara was also able to interject Gail’s working schedule into the trial, which proved it was not a normal nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday, working-class routine. For someone to know when Gail was at work, he or she would have had to know Gail or have stalked her.

  OCSD sheriff ’s deputy Guy Hubble was next. Hubble, a fourteen-year veteran of the police force, walked jurors through the crime scene as he came upon it. The most damaging piece of testimony here was, again, those images of a dying woman. However, Hubble brought something else to the table before stepping down: that videotape of the murder and scores of photographs depicting Gail dead in the parking lot, a pool of blood the size of a garbage can lid around her head.

  Then OCSD sergeant Alan Whitefield took the stand. Whitefield talked the jury through the phone conversation he’d had with Donna early the next morning.

  On cross-examination Lawrence Kaluzny questioned Alan Whitefield about the call, not adding anything to the “facts” of the case other than belaboring an issue that was truly not something the prosecutor had put all that much thought in, to begin with.

  End result: Whitefield had called Donna and she never asked why; she never wondered what might bring the OCSD to phone her in the middle of the night; she had not asked if anything had happened to George.

  Why? Whitefield’s testimony made clear: Donna knew. There, in that subliminal part of her brain, she knew. Donna never asked certain questions to the investigator because she already knew the answers.

  Donna’s lawyer got into a Q&A with Whitefield regarding personal checks and the fact that the OCSD had not found a paper trail linking Donna to paying off Kevin, Sybil, or Patrick.

  No, they did not. Because Donna had made sure to cover her tracks in that regard by having others cash the checks and also paying Kevin with cash she had pilfered from her company.

  Sybil Padgett’s lawyer, Raymond Correll, took a crack at Alan Whitefield by harping on how long that phone call he’d had with Donna lasted. Correll, however, realized he was getting nowhere, and sat down.

  It was closing in on the end of the day, so the judge suspended proceedings until the following morning, giving jurors the usual don’t-listen-to-radio-or-TV speech and don’t-talk-among-yourselves dictum.

  Gavel.

  68

  THE NEXT DAY, November 28, everyone was back in court, now ready to hear from one of the state’s chief witnesses.

  George Fulton.

  Mostly, Paul Walton had George stick to the same testimony he gave during the preliminary examination. Here, though, George was asked to go into greater detail regarding certain matters, and Walton introduced several tape-recorded voice mail messages that Donna and Sybil had left on George’s voice mail. One depicted the rage and hatred Donna had for Gail; jurors heard Donna call Gail a “bitch” several times during the message, warning George not to bring her down to Florida. It was that same “Florida is my state, Michigan is her state” voice mail that Donna had left after she heard Gail had insisted on going to Florida with George if he went for business. The jury heard straight from Donna’s mouth how nasty, vile, and vulgar she could get when she felt the least bit slighted.

  George did not hold back, although his answers border-lined on being snobbish and intentionally patronizing at times. For example, after being asked when his and Donna’s relationship “changed” between the first night they had met and the second, when they ended up inside Donna’s Lincoln Town Car necking like teenagers, George said, “We engaged in sexual intercourse.” Leaving it there.

  Hour after hour went by as George talked about every aspect of his life with Donna while he was in Florida and his world slowly crumbling back home in Michigan. Time and again, Paul Walton asked if Gail knew what was going on, and George Fulton said no, “not then,” meaning the first year he and Donna were together. What became clear was that George was living two separate lives for a long period of time, and it didn’t seem to matter to him (morally speaking). It was stressful. Sure. It was wrong. Most definitely. But George had no qualms about continuing for as long as he could get away with it. Not until Donna started acting a little wacky and possessive did George take a step back and review the relationship. The more Donna pushed George into making a choice, the more he backed off. This was something Donna never realized: All she had to do to keep George was, essentially, cut him off sexually and tell him not to call until he left Gail. Yet, by the time that lightbulb went off for Donna, George had been emotionally cooked and had made the call to leave Donna already.

  Walking away, according to George’s testimony, had made Donna furious. She grew angrier by the day.

  What was respectable about Walton’s questioning of George early on was how the prosecutor asked questions about Gail and her life, in effect, humanizing her. Having George talk about Gail—her dreams and loves and dislikes—drew a connection between Gail and the jury. She became a person, not just a murder victim or a headline. This was smart trial lawyering on Walton’s part and explained the type of person Paul Walton was inside a courtroom. Giving jurors a reason to love Gail would help them to draw the same conclusion as Walton had: Gail Fulton, truly, was an innocent victim, who had been killed by a lying and conniving female obsessed with the idea of doing whatever it took to get back her man.

  For a time Walton had George describe the relationship between Donna and Sybil, and how George had gotten to know Sybil. He talked about the problems Sybil often got herself into at work, and how Donna covered for and gave Sybil second chances, even when the integrity of the business was at stake.

  Another important fact George brought out was how Donna had not made it common practice at CCHH to rent Enterprise rental cars for employees other than Sybil. The way Donna made it sound to police was that she had rented cars routinely for her employees because they traveled so much for care visits.

  Interestingly enough, George told jurors, when he first received that letter from Donna’s doctor indicating she was pregnant and dying of stage-four lymphoma, he had a sense he recognized the handwriting on the envelope as Donna’s.

  “I thought it was hers,” he said.

  Lawrence Kaluzny obje
cted.

  A brief argument ensued.

  But again, a bell had been rung. It didn’t matter now.

  When asked why George thought it would be a good idea for his mistress to come up to Michigan to meet his wife, George responded, “At that time I thought, if my wife met her, she would see she was a person like she was. If, in fact, she was dying, and if, in fact, she was pregnant, what would happen to the baby and what would happen to her?”

  “Did you discuss with your wife some plans about this?”

  “Yeah . . . we had talked about it, what to do. And I was not sure what to do.”

  Walton had George talk about the maps he and Donna had purchased while she was in town. George had unknowingly helped Donna plot his wife’s murder. He felt disgusted by the thought of it.

  He talked about his life with Donna, how Gail found out George was planning a trip to Florida, how Donna began to badger George (after the breakup) about work, and how he had gotten to a point where he didn’t want to work for her any longer.

  As the noon hour approached, the judge stopped the questioning, explaining that the court had “things” (unrelated to the case) to do, and recessed until Thursday, November 30, 2000.

  Emily Fulton sat and listened to her father testify, not really hearing what he was saying. “I don’t remember what my dad said as much as his tone of voice and how he looked,” she recalled. “My dad has been more of an emotional person over the years . . . but at this time he was not, and so his voice was more monotone and devoid of emotion. . . .”

  George alternated crosses he wore during his days in the courtroom.