...And Never Let HerGo

Tom had given Anne Marie. “And there was, I guess,” the defense attorney said, “continuing discussions . . . concerns on your part, maybe some friction between the two of you, that you felt Anne Marie did not manage her money well?”
    “Yes.”
    “Anne Marie told you she had won the TV?”
    “Yes. She told me Mrs. Columbus bought a chance for her and she won.”
    “Your characterization of Anne Marie’s response when you would talk about this money issue was that she was ‘snippy.’ Is that right?”
    “It was a source of contention.”
    The thrust of Maurer’s questioning was clear; he wanted to suggest that Anne Marie and Kathleen were not really close, that Anne Marie had lied to her big sister and been snippy. Anyone who ever had a sister knew that was often the way even loving sisters interacted.
    Maurer brought up a red herring when he asked, “Did Anne Marie have a red-and-white striped shirt?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing it in her laundry basket.”
    “Now, when you did your inventory of her apartment,” he persisted, “did you find a red-and-white striped shirt?”
    “No.”
    “Nowhere?”
    “No.”
    “How many pairs of sneaks did she have?”
    “I may be off by a pair or two, but she had a number of pairs of sneakers.”
    “I take it she also had more than one jogging outfit?”
    “I know of a purple one. She may have had a blue one, too.”
    “Do you know if she had a black one?”
    “I’d have to look at my list.”
    If Maurer could establish that some of Anne Marie’s clothes were missing from her apartment, the defense might be able to bolster its scenario. He questioned Kathleen exhaustively on every detail of what she had found in Anne Marie’s apartment, and she admitted that the shoes that Annie usually wore with the blue floral dress were there. How this line of questioning meshed with the accident theory remained to be seen.
    And now Maurer put Kathleen through an ordeal. She had felt guilty enough about reading her sister’s diary for the prosecution. Maurer asked her to read the rest, the sections written in the beginning of her relationship with Tom—when Anne Marie had been besotted with him.
    On Friday, February 24, 1995, Anne Marie had written,
    I have shared my soul with T. I gave him my whole world, body and love. What I have not shared with T. is my fear of abandonment. I will withhold thoughts, info, etc., about myself if I think it may steer someone away from me. If I ever have the opportunity to speak to T. again, I will share everything, even my soul, and let him know exactly the way I feel. If I am rejected, at least I know that I told him about me, and let him into my world.
    I love you T.
    There were other entries, written by a young woman who seemed virtually defenseless in dealing with a man she thought she knew—a man whom she perceived to be gentle, kind, and as vulnerable and sad and lonely as she was. In those entries, Anne Marie seemed nothing at all like the savvy, opportunistic woman Joe Oteri had described. She sounded as gullible as any eighteen-year-old. Inasking Kathleen to read the diary, it was possible that Maurer had given the prosecution a two-edged sword.
    On re-cross, Connolly asked, “All of the diary entries you just read with Mr. Maurer were from the year 1994 and before March 1995?”
    “That’s correct.”
    At last, Kathleen could step down. All the while she had testified, Tom had glared at her with unmistakable hatred, “as if daring me to say what I needed to say.” Now, as she walked between the lectern and the defense table, he hissed, “You fucking bitch.”
    Remembering it months later, Kathleen said, “I used to like Tom Capano, just like everyone else did. He actually said that to me when I stepped down from the witness stand. And the jurors heard him.”
    T HAT was the way this long-awaited legal contest would continue. And between tearful memories and complicated testimony on police procedure and forensic evidence, there would be occasional smiles. But there would also be—despite all of the pretrial media coverage—startling revelations.
    Tom Capano had long suffered from colitis, his particular response to stress. On the second day of trial, Oteri signaled Judge Lee urgently. Tom was having an attack of colitis, and he was rushed from the courtroom, something that would happen more than once. Medicine was prescribed for him but it had to be taken with food. Judge Lee then had to