...And Never Let HerGo

been called before the grand jury. Now, when Connolly quoted a passage from a letter to Debby that mentioned the four girls, Tom was instantly furious. “Do not ask me questions about my children,” he spat out.
    Connolly ignored the order and continued to read from Tom’s letter, in which he wrote how much his daughters missed him and how unfair it was that they should be upset. “Now this idea of invoking your kids,” Connolly said, “is the same thing you did with Anne Marie Fahey, right?”
    “You’re way out of line here.”
    Tom had exaggerated his daughter Katie’s illness to elicit Anne Marie’s sympathy and get her to resume their exchange of E-mail. “And with Debby MacIntyre,” Connolly continued, aware that Tom was seething, “when things got really bad and you needed her to cooperate, you would reference your kids?”
    “Don’t go there.”
    Connolly moved on to the other people in Tom’s life who had trusted him, believed in him, depended on him—and whom he had betrayed. The list was a long one: his psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Bryer, who had once been prepared to testify that Tom was telling the truth; Tom Shopa; Debby’s son, Steven; Adam Balick, the attorney he chose for Debby. Connolly had only to read Tom’s own words in the endless letters he wrote, so perfectly crafted to manipulate and control. He had used his words like so many staples to pin the people in his life precisely in the position that would satisfy his needs.

Chapter Forty-five
    O N M ONDAY , J ANUARY 4, 1999, Tom was back on the witness stand, still under cross-examination. He made no attempt at all to hide the hatred in his eyes whenever he looked at Connolly.
    Tom admitted that he had learned on March 17, 1998, that Debby knew about the burglary plan and had seen the maps he had drawn of her house. “At which time,” Connolly said, “you wrote her a letter. You explained your version of the Perillo incident, correct?”
    “I attempted to, yes.”
    “OK, and here again you hit on the theme of your adoration for Debby. You write: ‘I wept then and I’m weeping now and trying to do it silently. Oh, God, Debby, how could you leave me like this and hurt me so? . . . Oh God, why can’t I stop loving you?’ That’s your writing?”
    “Absolutely,” Tom said.
    “OK,” Connolly said. “Now, let’s look at the letter you wrote to Susan Louth on the same day, March seventeenth: ‘Dear Slutty Little Girl, My oldest cousin on my mom’s side has been writing me. . . . She told me she believes I’m guilty of only two things—extreme stupidity and taking my pants down too often. . . . She also told me. . . she thinks Debby looks like a shrew and a backstabber. Pretty perceptive. Do you think I should tell her that she swallows and loves it?’
    “So on the same day you’re writing how much you totally love Debby MacIntyre, you’re describing to Susan Louth she’s a shrew and backstabber, she swallows and she loves it. Right?”
    “I was a mess during the entire month of March and my emotions went the whole gamut,” Tom said. “I mean, I was depressed, I was sad, I was angry, I was vindictive. I was funny.”
    It was Tom’s fallback position. Whenever he was faced with his dichotomous ploys, he explained that his brain had turned to “mush.” And yet, he seemed completely in control of his faculties now. He fenced with Connolly, bristling whenever his daughters were mentioned. He was enraged that the police had involved them by coming to their house on Greenhill Avenue.
    “Children were involved? Did they stop your children?” Connolly asked.
    “No, they were obviously waiting right outside. . . . They can interview me, but they can do it in a proper manner—how did they know I wasn’t coming out of the garage with a car full of kids?”
    Tom’s daughters had often been in the courtroom, listening to the testimony, hearing the most intimate details of their father’s other life. Kay hated to have them go to court, but Tom encouraged them to be there, cheering him on.
    Connolly submitted that Tom had lied to his own attorney Charlie Oberly and provided him with an anchor—one that he knew was a red herring. “You knew that Mr. Oberly spoke with members of the press, went on national TV in May of 1997—and showed the anchor to make people believe that Gerry’s boat was not missing an anchor?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “You hadn’t even told your attorneys that Debby MacIntyre was involved in