...And Never Let HerGo
into Wilmington. Bob Donovan and his partner had been called to assist the DEA in an arrest. Still fuming, Connolly went down to the Wilmington Police Department later that night and gave Donovan a piece of his mind.
“He wasn’t happy,” Donovan recalled laconically.
“Monday,” Connolly laughed, “I got a call from ATF [Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] and they said they wanted to talk to me on a case. I go over—and who’s sitting there? Bob Donovan. They wanted me to prosecute some guy he’d pulled out of the train station—with drugs on him.”
This time, Donovan had the real drug runners. Connolly did prosecute the case, and he and Donovan were friends from then on.
N OW Connolly and Donovan, along with Eric Alpert, were entering into an investigation that would consume them, not for weeks or months but for years. It wasn’t going to be easy, and they had an idea going in that it might take a while, but they were determined to find out where Anne Marie had gone.
Connolly had never operated as a boss, which was particularly important when a number of agencies were involved in a case. In this probe, Alpert would represent the FBI and Donovan the Wilmington Police. “I think it’s important to lead by consensus,” Connolly would explain later. “There was never a situation where I came in and said, ‘We’re doing this—and that’s it.’ We all made suggestions, and it never got to a place where I had to make the final call.”
Connolly and Donovan would talk to each other every single day, and on many days with Alpert as well. Their personalities and styles were completely different but they complemented one another perfectly.
The pen registers would be their first strategy. To protect the privacy of citizens, the U.S. Attorney’s office has to participate in deciding if it is imperative to attach a pen register to a phone. At Alpert’s request, Connolly filed papers with the U.S. District Court outlining why his office believed there was reason to monitor TomCapano’s phones. There was good reason to think that Anne Marie might have been taken across a state line against her will. Her psychologist, Michelle Sullivan, and some of her friends believed she might well have been kidnapped. Both of these actions were federal transgressions.
It was enough. Pen registers were connected to Tom Capano’s phones. Connolly also asked for a toll back edit—which would allow the government investigators to scan back to see whom Tom Capano might have called for the last fifteen days—during the vital time period between June 27 and June 30 and thereafter. Pen registers would show both local and long distance calls.
Still, at this point there wasn’t a full-scale federal investigation. Connolly and Alpert discussed whether it might not be helpful to the Fahey case if they were to look into financial records—credit card billings, gas receipts, and other records that would reveal the comings and goings of Tom Capano. Obtaining such documents was routine in federal investigations, but they would need subpoenas. And if they found enough in Capano’s financial records to warrant it, Connolly could ask for a federal grand jury investigation.
But once such a probe began, federal law would forbid them from sharing what they found with anyone but each other and the Wilmington Police Department. That would mean that Ferris Wharton would be out of the loop, and so would the Fahey family and Anne Marie’s friends. As much as they might want to discuss the case, Connolly and Alpert—and Donovan, who would be the point man from the Wilmington Police Department—could not.
O N July 9, 1996, with Tom’s input, Brian Murphy drafted a statement meant to be published in the papers and read on television and radio:
The disappearance of Anne Marie Fahey remains as much a mystery to me as it does to her family and friends. I can only say I share the gut-wrenching emotions of Anne Marie’s family and pray for her safe return.
While I can do nothing to end the speculation of the public and press, I can state for the record the pertinent facts of my last meeting with Anne Marie.
I did have dinner with Anne Marie in Philadelphia on the evening of Thursday, June 27th. We returned to Wilmington. We drove to her apartment at approximately 10 pm. I walked AnneMarie into her apartment, stayed a few moments, said good night and left. I noticed nothing unusual as I left. That was the last time I saw or spoke to
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