...And Never Let HerGo

sampler is minute. It actually amplifies substances like saliva on the back of a stamp or a tiny stain of semen or blood. Starting with one DNA molecule, Giusti could chemically multiply it. “If you do that approximately thirty times, you’re increasing the starting amount of DNA by about a billion,” he explained.
    The resultant pattern of dots could be matched with dots from a known donor.
    Tom Capano had been forced to give blood, but he had refused to allow his daughters to give samples, indignant that the federal investigators should even ask. In August 1996, as he began his tests on the unknown blood specks retrieved on July 31, Giusti had Tom’s and Anne Marie’s blood, as well as other samples: Ruth Boylan’s, Susan Louth’s, and Debby MacIntyre’s—all people who had been in Tom’s house.
    Tom, Debby, Ruth Boylan, and Susan Louth were all excluded absolutely as the source of the blood in the great room. But Giusti found that there was only one chance in eleven thousand that anyone
other
than Anne Marie Fahey had lost that blood. “So we had that blood match in late August 1996,” Connolly said. “But we didn’t announce it. We waited six months to make it public.”
    There had not been enough blood, certainly, to prove that Anne Marie was dead. How much might have been on the missing carpet and couch, no one would ever know. But the FBI lab had found another match—not blood but fibers. The carpet samples that Bob Donovan had retrieved from the bed-and-breakfast owner matched beige carpet fibers vacuumed from Kay Capano’s Suburban. Under a scanning electron microscope that enlarged the samples exponentially, it was apparent that they had come from the same source. Someone had used Kay’s SUV to transport the missing carpet.
    Although they still had a long way to go, Colm Connolly was confident that he had enough evidence to move forward. He sent Tom’s lawyers a letter on August 5, notifying them that their client was under investigation by a federal grand jury.
    G RAND jury investigations are different from actual trials. What takes place there is secret, and witnesses may not have their attorneys with them, although they may leave the room after each question they are asked to consult with them. In Delaware, grand juries may sit for up to eighteen months. There are twenty-three jurors in all, and at least sixteen must be present at a session; twelve must agree in order to hand down an indictment. Grand juries start and stop, assembling whenever the prosecutor needs to elicit testimony. Unlike a regular jury, grand jurors are rarely required to be present day after day until a verdict is reached. Reporters can only watch the people who go in and out of the grand jury room, and speculate on why they were summoned.
    On August 29, 1996, Colm Connolly was the prosecutor in thefirst grand jury session in the Capano case, questioning a number of reluctant witnesses, who would appear only under a subpoena. The first six witnesses summoned included Louis Capano Jr.; his son, Louis Capano III; and employees of the family construction company. Louie stayed in the grand jury room for an hour and a half and left without making any comment to reporters.
    Even though they were compelled to testify, the witnesses had various ways to balk. They were able to invoke the Fifth Amendment, and their attorneys could demand to know if the witness has ever been intercepted by electronic communication. (Ironically, although the government wasn’t taping them, some of the principals had been taping one another.) This session marked only the beginning of what would seem like endless grand jury testimony.
    C OLM C ONNOLLY had grown up in Delaware, but he didn’t really know the Capano family. He remembered Gerry vaguely from his days at Archmere, and before this case, he had heard Tom’s name mentioned—but only once—when he was working on a political corruption case. He didn’t know the man. They were from different generations.
    Connolly encountered Tom for the first time on September 10, 1996, after he subpoenaed his sixteen-year-old daughter, Christy, to appear before the grand jury. Tom had been telling friends that the blood spots found in the great room could be traced to either Christy or his daughter Katie, but he was infuriated that Connolly had called Christy as a witness. For a moment, the two men faced each other in the hall, Connolly’s face bland and Tom’s suffused with rage. “He got