Last Dance, Last Chance

Debbie to stick by him, no matter what. And Debbie promised that she would. Somehow, they would get through this—for their children’s sake. Somehow, they would make a life again, even if Anthony couldn’t be a doctor any more.
    Anthony’s mother invested money in a business Anthony thought might help restore their finances. He and Debbie would sell workout clothes through the mail. That venture never really got off the ground.
    It seemed to Debbie that nothing else could go wrong. What had taken them so many years to build had collapsed in such a short time. All they had left was each other and their children. She counted on Anthony’s strength to save them all.

13
    F or Frank Sedita, the turning point in the case against Anthony Pignataro in the death of Sarah Smith came when he met Dan Smith. “We were very hesitant about this case at first,” he recalled. “We thought that maybe it was just a malpractice suit. When a doctor kills a patient, it’s usually a civil suit that follows. But when we got into the investigation, we found out that his conduct was so incredibly egregious that it became a criminal case.”
    Hearing Dan Smith’s story solidified Sedita’s feelings. That the young husband had literally been shooed out of Pignataro’s office by the doctor himself, believing that his wife was in good hands, only to return to find that she was comatose, was far more than a civil matter. Clearly, both Dan and Sarah Smith had been deluded and deceived, and they had been ultimately trusting. Now, their life together was gone.
    Anthony had started with a malpractice attorney, Carmen Tarantino, representing him, but Tarantino soon saw that the case was far more than that and brought in another lawyer to help. Terry Cotters was a high-powered criminal defense attorney and had also advised Tom Watkins, the Nichols student.
    The grand jury hearings continued. Sedita admitted later that he “raked Debbie Pignataro over the coals” as he sought to find out what her part, if any, had been in Anthony’s operational procedures.
    A long time later, Debbie said, “I’ll tell you this. I’d much rather have Frank Sedita for me than have Frank Sedita against me!” She frowned as she remembered the assistant D.A.’s relentless questioning.
    But grand jury hearings are secret. Buffalonians interested in the outcome would have to wait to see whether the infamous plastic surgeon would be indicted.
    It was reported that a woman named Connie Vinetti was seen entering the grand jury room, but few knew that she, too, had suffered grievous injuries from a bungled tummy tuck and that Anthony had attempted to release her from Buffalo Mercy Hospital against medical advice when she was critically ill.
    The outcome of the grand jury hearings was that Anthony Pignataro was indicted on six counts on January 27, 1998:
Manslaughter in the second degree (for recklessly causing the death of a patient by asphyxia).
Assault in the second degree (for recklessly causing serious physical injury by means of a dangerous “instrument”—drugs).
Criminally negligent homicide.
Falsifying business records in the first degree (for falsifying his report on Sarah Smith’s operation).
Reckless endangerment in the second degree (for attempting to discharge Connie Vinetti from the hospital).
Criminal possession of a forged instrument in the third degree (for displaying a forged American Board of Otolaryngology diploma).
    Anthony was baffled and outraged. Still writing in Debbie’s persona, he used whole chapters of what was essentially his autobiography to rant about the blindness of justice and the venality and conspiracy practiced by the Erie County District Attorney’s Office.
    “One can never imagine the enormous emotional pain and pressure events such as these can put on a family,” he wrote. “Anthony became ever more distant and retracted. He would lie awake at night trying to make sense of it.”
    So did Dan Smith, alone with two little children who had lost their mother, just as he had lost his wife.
    There was no question that Anthony’s family was suffering, although he scarcely took that into account except when he scribbled over his tortured chapters about his own innocence. Not only was he narcissistic, he was also bizarrely untalented as an author, with a forced and artificial writing style and little or no grasp of proper sentence structure. The kindest critique would say that he could at least spell.
    Anthony’s