...And Never Let HerGo

Morrison, and Siobhan Sullivan. Jill worked in Constituent Services, directing Delawareans with problems to the proper agencies, and Siobhan was a Delaware State Police officer who worked in the Executive Security Unit, which protected Governor Carper and his family. She had come on board in a transfer from Troop 9 in Odessa, Delaware, and started guarding Governor Carper in December of 1992. Anne Marie and Jill began work at the same time, in January.
    The Wilmington staff wasn’t that big and they all knew one another well. When the legislature was in session, most of Carper’s staff of around twenty-five was in Dover, leaving only four or fivepeople in Wilmington. They were young and exuberant, although they contained their hilarity and kept their voices down on the twelfth floor, where the governor’s office demanded respect. They tended to be a little loud and boisterous on the eleventh floor, where the interns’ and Constituent Services offices were located. And Anne Marie’s voice, speaking rapid and fluent Spanish to a Hispanic woman, became a familiar counterpoint to activities on the eleventh floor. She loved the language and practiced it often, against the day she would return to Spain.
    Anne Marie and Jill rapidly became particularly good friends; they were both in their mid-twenties, and Jill had moved to an apartment a block from the house Anne Marie shared with Jackie and Bronwyn, so it was easy for them all to get together. Anne Marie introduced Jill to Ginny Columbus and her other close friends, and helped Ginny get a job in the governor’s office.
    Anne Marie and Jill got in the habit of having lunch together almost every day, and they went shopping together at the malls, walked when the weather was good, and often worked out on the machines at the Y. They also shared some of the perks that came with working in the governor’s office—lots of free tickets to events or fund-raisers. While some of the functions turned out to be deadly boring, they weren’t put off, and they were game to try almost anything they had tickets for. Neither was seriously involved romantically, and they never knew whom they might meet.
    Jill was with Anne Marie on April 26, 1993, the night she first met Tom Capano. It was at Jim and Mary Alice Thomas’s house on Red Oak Road in the Rockford Park section of Wilmington. The Thomases had a lovely home, which they opened up for a fund-raiser for the Women’s Democratic Club. Kathy Jamison, who was the scheduler for Lieutenant Governor Ruth Ann Minner, had arranged for the guest speakers—Lynn Yakel and Governor Jim Florio. The turnout wasn’t as good as Kathy had hoped, but there were about 150 people there, many of them attorneys. Kay Capano had bought a ticket in her own name, but she wasn’t able to attend, so she sent Tom to represent their family. He moved easily through the crowd, chatting with old friends and others he had worked with in city and state government. He was forty-three, handsome in a subdued way with his expressive eyes and perfectly trimmed beard. As a younger man, when his hair was very dark, he had had a smoldering look about him, but now he looked much more benevolent, even though he didn’t smile much.
    Jill and Anne Marie didn’t know a lot of people there, but itwas a good party with interesting speakers and a great buffet. They chatted with each other and tried to mingle with the crowd in as unself-conscious a way as possible. “It was at the end of the evening,” Jill remembered. “She spotted Mr. Capano and recognized him and Anne Marie approached him and introduced herself and said she thought that he might know her sister, Kathleen. Then she introduced me, and we had a little chitchat, a friendly first-time-meeting-someone conversation.”
    Tom was clearly a lot older than the two young women, at least fifteen years older. But he was very pleasant as he and Anne Marie found that they knew many of the same people. Of course, they had both been close to the Freel family for more than twenty years—Tom through politics and Anne Marie because the Freels had always been good to her family. And they were both staunch Democrats. Tom talked to Anne Marie and Jill as if they were the only people there, giving them his full attention, and that was flattering because he was an important figure in the Democratic Party in Wilmington and they were virtual newcomers.
    Tom’s position at Saul, Ewing brought him to the governor’s office in