Last Dance, Last Chance

can’t help out? She always used to…She definitely doesn’t care about Mom because that’s what you’re putting into her head, and I can tell by the way she talks about her.
    “Well, write me back, but I don’t want to hear just excuses.” Ralph sounded more like the father than the son. “This letter is sincerely between you and me…I would absolutely love it if you stopped telling Grandma some things to make her feel otherwise and give me back the relationship I used to have with her. I feel like I lost all of that now. Please help out Dad; I know you want to in your heart! None of us ever wanted any of this to happen.”
     
    But all Ralph got from his father were excuses. He had no money. He couldn’t help them.
    “I will always love you, too & and don’t you forget that,” Anthony wrote to Ralph. “I’m sorry for what grandma says. It’s not my fault. She is very stubborn. I never told her it was mom’s fault for my probation violation. I also told her to stop saying anything about mom!!
    “Your letter said, ‘Please help out, Dad.’ I do want to & I could as soon as this is over and I go back to work. Take care of mom. Hold onto the house till I get back to work. I’m sure you remember I told you I could help with the house as soon as I get out. I promise you.”
    Ralph had just turned 13. How was he going to pay the mortgage? But his father brushed that off. On May 10, 2000, Anthony wrote and reminded his children that his birthday was in two days and he would like a card.
    “Please do not believe what you hear. A son and a daughter need their [ sic ] father. And I will be there for both of you. I’ll never stop fighting till I prove my innocence…
    “Grandma has to get rid of Polo. He’s too much for her. I want to know if you both could take him for me till I get home. I don’t want to lose him. Please help!!”
    A week later, Pignataro wrote to Ralph with complicated instructions on how to start the hot tub, but then suggested he wait until he got home from jail, which would be soon.
    Officially, Ralph and Lauren weren’t even living at home yet, although caseworkers looked the other way as the family court hearings dragged on and on. Anyone who saw the children sob as they had to be pulled away from the mother they loved and forced to leave their own home would have understood their tears. It was an open secret that they were virtually living at home in West Seneca.
    In late May, Anthony wrote to Ralph to explain who the real culprit was in the breakup of their family.
    “Apparently, it is the District Attorney—D.A. Frank Sedita—who tore our family apart in September. The D.A.’s investigators talked to and scared Tami. She gave them the last card I had given her in late June or early July [1999]. The D.A. gave the card to Denis and told him I had given it to Tami while mom was in the hospital. Then Denis gave it to mom. I swear on both grandpas’ graves that I never sent the card when they said I did & and I wasn’t seeing Tami. All this will come out in the trial anyway because Tami will say so!! Besides she’s married to someone else now.”
    It never occurred to Anthony, apparently, that bringing up his mistress wasn’t the sort of thing most men would discuss with a thirteen-year-old son. He was too intent on putting the blame on Sedita. And, of course, he was still lying: Tami Maxell had admitted to Frank Sedita that Anthony had sent her the romantic card begging her to come back to him in August 1999—exactly when Debbie lay in the hospital fighting to live.
    Anthony continued to insist that Sedita was the cause of all their troubles. “Then in February D.A. Frank Sedita got Judge Tills to sign an order preventing me from talking to mom without mom asking me to.”
    “After breaking up our family & putting me in jail, Sedita now seeks to put me away for 25 years. We won’t let that happen!! I still love mom. I love you & I still love Lauren and I always will. I will never stop fighting for my family. I don’t blame mom for what the D.A. did. She couldn’t have known what they were up to…Please try to keep Polo for me. Take care of mom and Lauren.
    “I love you so much,
    “DAD”
     
    Anthony wasn’t far off when he characterized Frank Sedita as his enemy, but not for the reasons he gave his son. Sedita had seen the devastation of Dan and Sarah Smith’s family, and the struggles of Debbie Pignataro, and he did want to prosecute the former doctor.