...And Never Let HerGo

defendant’s premeditation and planning was a contingency that perhaps he hoped would never happen—but did—on the evening of June 27, 1996. He chose to destroy a possession rather than lose it;
to execute an escaping human chattel.
    “Considering and weighing all the evidence, the verdict and the recommendation of the jury was just. Mr. Capano, would you rise for sentencing, please.”
    And there, in that hushed courtroom, Judge William Swain Lee sentenced Tom Capano to die by lethal injection in the presence of ten witnesses. His execution date was to be June 28, 1999, threeyears to the day from the time he threw Anne Marie’s body into the Atlantic Ocean.
    T HERE was an automatic appeal, and Tom Capano did not die on June 28. He is in “max max,” in prison in Smyrna, Delaware. Tom was in every sense of the phrase a man who had everything. But he wanted more than that. He wanted everything
his
way. And when he took a young woman’s life because she would not submit to his will, he destroyed them both.

Afterword
    W HEN I RETURNED to Wilmington it was full summer, 1999, the kind of weather that always colors my memories of living in the Philadelphia-Wilmington area when I was a teenager. All the wind, snow, and rain that seemed part of Tom Capano’s trial had evaporated in the drought of 1999. Only the heartiest plants kept their heads up when the city forbade watering lawns and gardens, but the honeysuckle perfumed the night as it probably has since the first settlers arrived in New Castle.
    After three years of an investigation and trial that seem to have touched almost everyone in the city with sorrow for a promising life lost too soon and for families blighted with dissension and shame, I somehow expected to find that at least some of the people involved had moved away from Wilmington to start over. But no one has. The years ahead may change their decisions; more likely, they may only soften the edges of raw pain and bright memory. It is not a city one leaves; family structures reach too deeply into the earth there, and for everything that is ugly, three or four beautiful new things appear. More and more of the old row houses are being renovated, and there are traditions all around Wilmington that newer cities cannot duplicate. Joe Oteri might have figuratively waved the American flag a bit too much in his arguments to defend Tom Capano, but if hedid, he picked the right city, a city integral to all our histories no matter where we live in this country.
    T OM C APANO went out of his way to refer to the Faheys as “white trash” and to suggest that Anne Marie had told him deep, dark secrets about them. But that characterization was only one of the many cruelties he practiced. Because the Faheys committed themselves to using the media to find out what happened to Anne Marie, their tough, early years—unlike those of most families—were exposed for the world to see. And that still hurts. In actual fact, the Faheys are a family of professionals now, with very comfortable lives. Kathleen believes—as they all do—that the loss of Anne Marie strengthened the bonds of their family—and they remain strong.
    Kathleen and Patrick Fahey-Hosey had two sons before Anne Marie died, and they have since had a little girl. “My daughter fills an empty place in my heart,” Kathleen said. “She’s even got curly hair.” But she sighs as she reflects on the fact that her sister never got to be a mother herself. “Anne Marie was pure sweetness,” she said. “She would have been married by now. But I was lucky to have had my sister for as long as I did.” Kathleen, who got her B.A. from Newman College, is now working toward her master’s degree in education there.
    Robert and Susan Fahey, Kevin and Linda Fahey, Brian and Rebeca Fahey all have growing families. They have worked hard to protect their children from any further publicity and they have been fairly successful. What is harder to explain, when their children ask, is what happened to their aunt.
    On July 7, 1999, the Faheys at last had a memorial service for Anne Marie. “It took us,” Robert said, “as long to get over the weeks of trial as it lasted—and then we had Anne Marie’s funeral service.”
    “The service was more for the other people who loved Anne Marie,” Kathleen said, “people who hadn’t been through the whole process of the trial. For me, at least, the trial did bring some closure.”
    The Fahey family
is
suing the Capano