...And Never Let HerGo

discussion of something as simple as the problem of the Capanos’ bringing bags of candy to pass around to lawyers and paralegals. Judge Lee commented dryly that he would not allow the attorneys to speak with candy in their mouths. More important was Lee’s disapproval of Tom’s demeanor.
    “Tom’s turning around and talking to his family all the time,” Lee said, “and they’ve [Department of Correction guards] asked him to stop, and he’s told them he’s not going to stop. This trial is not a visiting period with his family.”
    Brian Fahey was the first witness for the prosecution. Anne Marie’s family had waited for twenty-eight months to tell her story, but it must have been difficult for him, her closest sibling in age, to remember the good and the bad times. As one reporter said, “Brian had his heart in his eyes. Looking at him, you felt that he had known Anne Marie so well and generally understood people on a spiritual level—as if he somehow knew things without having to ask.”
    Brian answered Wharton’s questions carefully and without emotion.He recalled the day they all lost their mother and Anne Marie’s struggle to grow up amidst chaos. She had, indeed, grown up, working hard for her education as they all had. He remembered the last time he had seen her, sitting in O’Friel’s and holding Mike Scanlan’s hand.
    “She asked if she could pick me up at the airport [when he came back from Ecuador]. I said yes, and then I told her I would call her and give the time and flight and all that.”
    But when he came back, Anne Marie was not there. He had never seen her again.
    Joe Oteri’s cross-examination continued his attempt to disparage Anne Marie. Brian would not go along with Oteri’s characterization of his dead sister as having an “Irish temper.” When Oteri tried to paint her as neurotic and promiscuous, it fell flat; Brian simply gazed at him with a calm but resolute expression.
    Yes, it was true that the Fahey family had filed a civil suit against Tom Capano and members of his family. Yes, they had hired an attorney, David Weiss. Once Oteri had brought the matter up, Wharton asked Brian on redirect why he and his siblings had filed such a suit.
    “Basically, we believed that Tom Capano had murdered my sister,” he replied. “We believed that he got his brothers to help him cover it up. And so we decided that we needed to do something—to take action.”
    “Why?” Wharton asked.
    “We were very mad and believed that they were responsible for causing my family a great deal of pain, for killing my sister, and being perfectly content to [let us] live out the rest of our lives without ever knowing what happened to our sister. And I didn’t think that they should be able to get away with that without us putting up some kind of fight.”
    The animosity between the Fahey and Capano families was palpable and dramatic. The Capano side of the gallery stared stonily at Brian. But there was more drama in the courtroom than most people there realized. At 2 P.M. , Judge Lee received a phone call that said, “Capano is going down in an hour.”
    Lee called a sidebar conference to inform the attorneys about the death threat against the defendant. Joe Oteri’s witty response was, “May Mr. Capano be moved up to the prosecution table, please?”
    Wharton smiled. “Well, if you trust him up there with us.”
    Lee pointed out the extra guards he had stationed in the courtroom and the consensus was that it was a crackpot call. An hourpassed and nothing happened. The trial went on, and no one—not even the media—knew about the death threat.
    The next day, Colm Connolly began questioning Kathleen Fahey-Hosey. She was very pretty and looked a little like the pictures of Anne Marie, but she was blond, more petite, and wore glasses. Kathleen recalled her dread when her sister had not been home waiting for Mike Scanlan to take her to Robert and Susan’s house for dinner on the night of June 29. Connolly showed her a picture of the small settee in Anne Marie’s apartment. “Do you recognize any of the clothing on this couch as being there when you went to the apartment on June twenty-ninth?”
    “Yes. The robe and the blue-and-white striped shirt and blue pants.”
    “How about this item right here?”
    “That’s a floral dress that Anne Marie bought to wear to the Point-to-Point with Mike Scanlan.”
    “Were there any noticeable stains or tears in the dress when you saw