...And Never Let HerGo

Perillo’s credibility. He succeeded in showing Perillo as a prison snitch, a devout con artist, and a sometime liar, but few in the gallery perceived him as a man comfortable about blatant cruelty to women.
    T HANKSGIVING was over and suddenly it was winter. The trial was heading into December like a juggernaut. The state presented a number of witnesses who had talked with Debby throughout the day on Friday, June 28—at the Tatnall School and at the bank where she cashed a petty cash check. They all described her as having been completely normal in demeanor. Furthermore, their testimony proved she could not have been with Tom and Gerry in Stone Harbor that day. But the tiny tracks Tom had left behind were beginning to entrap him. By now the jurors had seen his false timeline, the notes designed to hide his real activities on June 28.
    There was more in that packet of paper that Special AgentKevin Shannon had found hidden in Tom’s law partner’s bookcase on November 6, 1996. Ten pages of notes described Tom’s recall of his contacts with Anne Marie in the last two months of her life—or more likely, they described the way he intended to characterize their relationship to the authorities if that should become necessary. He seemed a man obsessed with keeping notes as if he might lose control of himself if he didn’t have something to stabilize him.
    I was in Stone Harbor Easter Weekend! . . . Thursday, 5/23/ came to deliver book re: anorexia, retrieved from Robert previous evening . . . [She] cried in my arms. Shoulders so thin.
    . . . High maintenance? Materialistic? Showed me freckle on belly needing attention. Pulled up jumper. No modesty. Described trip to Cape to visit Jen, and spend weekend alone on Vineyard. Wanted time to think.
    Day by day, Tom had written notes about Anne Marie, right up until the last day of her life. As Kevin Shannon read them aloud, there was the sense of a massively smothering presence. “Same weekend as trip to Wildwood with Kathleen. Gave her a ‘care package’ and videos. Didn’t want to watch videos with Kathleen because she wouldn’t ‘get it.’ Disappointed that sister had detailed agenda because wanted no plans because of aversion to rigid schedule.”
    What must it have been like for Anne Marie to have this man monitoring virtually every breath she took, every thought she had, and then recording them? He was, indeed, a man obsessed.
    “6/27.” It was the last day of her life, and Tom had written, of that day, “Reservation for 7:00. Call at 6:25 from office to advise on way.
Very
depressed.”
    Was he speaking about Anne Marie—or about himself?
    B OB D ONOVAN , who gave testimony often in this seemingly endless trial, took the stand once more to say that a call had initiated from Tom’s cell phone near Miller’s gun shop on the day Debby bought the Beretta. Tom’s assertion that he had been nowhere near the gun shop was another lie revealed. Just as he hadn’t bought cigarettes the night Anne Marie died—Donovan had found that Getty’s wasn’t even open at that time. Tom’s little lies were like bits of string wound into a ball that became larger and larger until it threatened to roll over him.
    N OW another of the women Tom had counted on to do his bidding shocked him. Susan Louth, whom Jack O’Donnell described as “a great-looking blonde,”told the jurors that Tom had written her from Gander Hill and asked her to lie about his physical strength. And so she had written the letter confirming his contention that she had had to help him move the dining room table he lent her.
    “Is that true?” Connolly asked.
    “No.”
    “So, why did you write this?”
    “Because I knew that’s what he wanted to hear and I didn’t have the heart to say ‘You know, I see what you’re trying to get me to do here.’ I didn’t want to go that way because I still really cared about him. And I wanted to be able to write and stay close to him.”
    The woman Tom called “slutty little girl” read the letters that had passed between them. Here too, his manipulation dominated the words. Susan’s assignment had been to spread rumors about Debby MacIntyre.
    Of all of Tom’s women who had testified thus far, Susan Louth, the paralegal who had moved from Delaware to the Virgin Islands, seemed the least damaged; even though she admitted she had fallen in love with him, she had viewed their affair as a temporary fling.
    The FBI evidence gatherers, the criminalists,