It’s said that the perfect crime–from start to finish–can be committed by only one person. Get others involved, the reasoning goes, and sooner or later someone will crack. Perhaps Thomas Capano, in his privileged sphere, was unaware of that underworld wisdom. Perhaps his hubris got in the way. Perhaps he never thought his own family would turn on him.
Capano, 48, a once prominent attorney and power broker in the insular world of Delaware politics, was arrested last week in Wilmington and charged with first-degree murder, capping a 17-month investigation into the disappearance of Anne Marie Fahey, 30, the scheduling secretary for Governor Thomas Carper. Investigators have long asserted that Capano, the last to see Fahey when they dined together on June 27, 1996, killed her in a rage when she tried to end their secret three-year affair. But it was not until last week, when Capano’s younger brothers Louis and Gerard provided new information, that there was enough ammunition to level charges in the case.
Key to the developments is a 29-page police affidavit based largely on the interview of a witness–said to be Gerard Capano, 34–who told authorities that he used his boat to help Thomas dispose of a body at sea and also helped him toss a stained sofa into a dumpster. Thomas Capano had told Gerard that a couple was trying extortion against him, and that he would kill them if they went after his children. At about 6 a.m. on June 28, 1996–the morning after Fahey was last seen–Thomas went to Gerard’s house and asked if he could borrow his boat. Gerard asked him, “Did you do it?” and Thomas nodded yes. They then went to Thomas’ Grant Avenue house, where Gerard saw a large cooler locked with a chain and a large rolled-up rug in the garage. Thomas and Gerard then sailed out to sea. Some 75 miles off Stone Harbor, N.J., Thomas tied an anchor to the contents of the cooler and tossed them overboard. Gerard saw a “human foot and a part of a calf sinking into the water.” Investigators believe they were Anne Marie’s.
Brother Louis Capano Jr., 46, the millionaire owner of the family’s construction business, confirmed last week that Gerard had told him a year ago about the body-tossing boat outing. He also said he saw the sofa in a Dumpster. Louis had previously been under investigation when his company’s trash bins were emptied days ahead of schedule on the Monday after Fahey’s disappearance. His lawyer, Catherine Recker, said Louis “has no direct knowledge about what happened to Anne Marie,” but “admits he misled authorities…motivated by belief in his brother’s innocence.” She would not elaborate.
What led to Louis’ and Gerard’s change of heart? Mounting pressure. Last month federal agents raided Gerard’s home and seized weapons and small amounts of cocaine and marijuana. If charged, he faces 10 years in prison. For his part, Louis has signed an agreement pleading guilty to harassing an unidentified witness in the Fahey case.
Fahey’s family met last week’s news with a mixture of relief and “absolute horror.” Says her sister, Kathleen Fahey-Hosey, 37: “I’m numb. We always suspected that Anne Marie was disposed of at sea, but once you hear the details, it’s gruesome.”
The case has riveted the Philadelphia-Wilmington area for a year and a half, mostly because of the small-town renown of its central characters. Thomas Capano, the father of four daughters who separated from his wife Kay in 1995, is an unlikely murder suspect. A former deputy attorney general and legal counsel to ex-Governor Michael Castle, he was most recently employed at a prominent law firm as head of its bond department. “Tom was very much the consummate inside guy,” says Charlie Butler, also a former deputy attorney general. “He was always fixing things. He spent a long time making Castle look good.”
But the Capano family, credited with the rapid commercial development of Wilmington, has its share of dirty laundry. In the late 1980s, Louis admitted making illegal campaign contributions. He also participated in an FBI sting that led to the conviction of a county councilman. Another brother, Joseph, 43, was arrested and charged with kidnapping and raping a 27-year-old woman in 1991. He later pleaded guilty to assault, imprisonment and unlawful sexual contact.
Fahey came from a different world. The youngest of six children in a close-knit middle-class Irish family, Fahey lost her mother to lung cancer when she was nine. In 1986, when Fahey was 20, her father died of leukemia. About the same time, the psychotherapist she trusted and confided in was killed in an automobile accident.
Though her family was not as prominent as the Capanos, it was just as well known around Wilmington. Their worlds melded at O’Friel’s Irish Pub, where yellow ribbons and a “Friends of Anne Marie” banner now hang. Nicknamed “The Attorney General’s Annex Office,” O’Friel’s is also a place where all five of Fahey’s siblings have been employed. It is there that they congregated after Capano’s arrest, eating a quiet dinner upstairs. Says O’Friel’s owner Kevin Freel: “We sat and talked, and we cried.” Fahey, Freel says, left an indelible impression on everyone. “Annie had a quick line and a great laugh, which explains why we miss her so much.”
Fahey’s absence was felt just as strongly at Carper’s office, where she playfully called the Governor “T.C.” and meticulously arranged his appointments. Says Joan Donoho, a state accountant who lives across the street from the large brick home Thomas Capano rented on Grant Avenue: “When she disappeared, it seemed like the entire state office building was in shock.”
It was at the Governor’s office that Fahey came to know the other T.C. in her life. Capano’s bond work brought him there often, and during the summer of 1993 he and Fahey started having lunch together. But it was not until a search of Fahey’s apartment uncovered letters from Capano, as well as a diary chronicling their ups and downs, that their affair was out in the open. In one of her last diary entries, on April 7, 1996, Fahey wrote, “I have finally brought closure to Tom Capano. What a controlling, manipulative, insecure, jealous maniac.”
But closure wasn’t quite at hand. On Thursday, June 27, she and Capano had a $154 dinner at Ristorante Panorama, a posh Philadelphia waterfront eatery. A waitress described Fahey as “solemn” and wearing a “forced smile.” Fahey had reason to want to move on. According to friends, she had finally found happiness with a man her age, bank executive Mike Scanlan, now 33, whom she met through Carper. She had begun daydreaming about bridesmaid dresses and had got a grip on a long struggle with bulimia (the 5-ft. 10-in. Fahey reportedly once dropped to 117 lbs.).
According to an FBI affidavit, her hairdresser, Lisa D’Amico, said Fahey was “nervous and frightened that [Capano] might harm her.” D’Amico said Fahey once jumped out of Capano’s car after he grabbed her neck when she tried to end the affair. A close friend of Fahey’s, Kim Horstman, said that after another break-up attempt, Capano took back some of the gifts he had lavished on Fahey, saying, “No man is going to watch the TV that I gave you or see you in the dresses I gave you.” Fahey’s therapist at the time of her disappearance, Michele Sullivan, urged her to report Capano’s behavior.
It was Fahey’s new beau, Scanlan, and her sister Kathleen who on Saturday, June 29, went to Fahey’s modest third-floor walkup after Anne Marie failed to keep a dinner date. They were struck by strewn groceries and shoe boxes and a blinking answering machine, things the compulsive Fahey wouldn’t have tolerated. When grilled by police, Capano admitted to the affair and called Fahey unpredictable and “airheaded.” In other words, just the type to disappear without a trace.
Then why, on the weekend of June 29, did Capano buy a bottle of Carbona Blood and Milk remover and an inexpensive Oriental rug to replace beige wall-to-wall carpeting that his cleaning lady said was in good condition? On July 31 investigators found bloodstains in his home that were eventually matched to Fahey. Capano was then their sole suspect. But with no eyewitnesses, no murder weapon and no body, the blood evidence was not enough.
Capano last week was charged with state murder one, which permits authorities to seek the death penalty. Looking disheveled and disoriented after his arrest, he was held without bail in a 7-ft. by 10-ft. cell set apart from the other inmates at Gander Hill prison, awaiting a preliminary hearing. “You can bet every dollar in your pocket and every hair on your head that he’s going to plead not guilty,” said his lawyer, Joseph Hurley Jr., adding, “Gerard Capano is trying to get out of 10 years.”
Fahey’s body is likely never to be found, and without it, prosecutors will have to rely on the mountain of circumstantial evidence they have accumulated. Nevertheless, the state is confident. Says prosecutor Ferris Wharton: “You’d like to have a body, but it’s not an obstacle that can’t be overcome.”
Though they’d prefer a proper burial, Fahey’s siblings plan to hold a memorial service for her next month.
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