...And Never Let HerGo

him. He was thirty-five years old, but Gerry had never really grown up. Whatever their faults, the three older Capano brothers were hard workers. Gerry still played most of the time, fueled by cocaine and alcohol. He hung out at drag strips with his customized Corvettes and, of course, hunted and fished for dangerous prey. Probably none of them really needed to work, but all but Gerry had the work ethic bred into them. Gerry knew he didn’t even have to show up at his landscaping business; the money kept flowing in from the firm that his long-dead father had built.
    On the morning of November 9, the time had come for Gerry to testify. His golden curls had long since given way to incipient baldness, but he still had his round baby face. He wore a very expensive suit and a tie that had probably cost $100, but he also had two gold earrings in his left ear. He was clearly nervous as a cat as he took the stand. Now he could look directly at Tom and, beyond Tom, into the faces of his extended family, who filled the benches on the left side of the courtroom.
    His eyes already glistening, Gerry waited nervously for Colm Connolly’s first question. After Gerry verified that the statements he had given to the grand jury a year earlier were true, Connolly began with February 8, 1996, when Tom asked Gerry for a loan of $8,000. “I wrote a check and went to the bank,” Gerry said.
    “Why didn’t you give him a check?”
    “He wanted cash.”
    “Did he pay you back?”
    “Within a week or so.”
    Connolly showed Gerry the deposit slip from his own bankwhen he returned the $8,000. It was dated February 13, 1996. Tom’s check for repayment was number 1666.
    Gerry testified that Tom had been frightened by someone who was threatening him. “He said he was scared that the guy was going to hurt him. He was afraid the guy was going to beat him up or hurt him—come to his house and hurt him.”
    “What did you tell him?”
    “I originally told him, ‘You should call the police.’ ”
    But when Tom didn’t want to do that, Gerry had offered him a shotgun “because it was better home protection.”
    “Is a shotgun easier,” Connolly asked, “for somebody who is not familiar with guns in terms of hitting their target?”
    “Yes—he didn’t want it. He wanted a handgun.” Gerry had then given Tom the ten-millimeter Colt, and he had returned it sometime before Gerry moved to Stone Harbor in mid-May.
    “What did you do with this gun?”
    “I gave it to a guide friend of mine that I went hunting with,” Gerry said, “as a tip—I’ve gone grizzly-bear hunting with him and moose hunting.”
    Gerry could not remember exactly when Tom had told him that someone was threatening to hurt his children, but he did recall Tom’s words. “He said that if either one of these persons that was threatening to hurt his kids were to hurt one of the kids and he had to do something to them, could he use the boat?”
    And that day had come. Gerry had good recall of the Friday morning that Tom showed up in his driveway. Three hours later, he was helping his brother load the huge cooler into the back of Kay Capano’s Suburban. Gerry said the cooler was heavy enough so that it took two men to lift it.
    “Were there any noises coming from the cooler?” Connolly asked. Several people in the gallery gasped.
    “Sounded like ice was inside the cooler,” Gerry replied. Apparently, Tom had prepared for any eventuality; he had packed cubes from his refrigerator’s ice maker around the body in the cooler. If there was an unforeseen delay, the contents of the cooler would not begin to decay.
    Connolly asked Gerry to describe what happened after he and Tom drove to Stone Harbor.
    “He backed up in the driveway and I believe we both went inside,” Gerry said. “And I think I went to the bathroom first and he used the phone.” Tom glowered at Gerry as he testified. “And then I got a couple of fishing rods and put them in the boat and started it up.We both carried the cooler down to the boat and then put the chain and the lock in a plastic bag and carried it down to the boat.”
    “Now, why did you take fishing rods with you in the boat?”
    “So it would look like we were going fishing.”
    “Were you worried that this cooler looked unusual on a boat?”
    Gerry shook his head. “No—it’s your typical fishing cooler.”
    Hours later, they were far out in the ocean. Gerry said his LORAN was in its depth-finder mode, and it