After the Fire: A True Story of Love and Survival (18 page)

Chapter 27

A
fter eighteen months of stonewalling by the two prime suspects, investigators went to court to get a warrant to bug Joey LePore’s house.

The Essex County prosecutor’s office had recently gotten a tip that LePore’s mother, Maria, had allegedly spoken to a friend about her son’s involvement in the fire. The tipster wasn’t a typical citizen. He was Thomas Ricciardi, a Mafia hit man and now a professional snitch. Eight years earlier, Ricciardi, who had admitted to playing a role in nine murders, had been convicted of beating an associate from the Lucchese crime family to death with a golf club. Facing forty years in prison, he flipped, offering to tell the federal authorities everything he knew about the mob in exchange for a plea agreement that would lock him up for only ten years instead of life. Since then, Ricciardi had been a valuable tool for the government. With his help, the feds had been able to put away members of the Lucchese, Colombo, and Genovese crime families.

In the middle of his ten-year sentence, Ricciardi sent word to the Essex County prosecutor that he had information about the Seton Hall fire. Investigators met with him at the federal prison where he was being held, and a deal was struck. The prosecutor’s office would do whatever they could to cut time off the five remaining years of Ricciardi’s federal prison term in exchange for his information.

Ricciardi told prosecutors that his brother, Daniel “Bobo” Ricciardi, was dating a woman who was friendly with Joey LePore’s mother, and that he believed Maria LePore may have discussed her son’s role in the fire. The story was enough to persuade the judge to issue the warrant to place a hidden listening device in the house on Woodbine Road in Florham Park, a leafy bedroom community in one of New Jersey’s wealthiest counties.

Investigators quietly broke into the LePores’ home on the eve of the Fourth of July, 2001. They had nothing to lose. They had conducted 220 interviews and taken 150 sworn statements, and they were still no closer to an arrest than they had been on the day of the fire. Joey LePore had steadfastly denied he was even in the third-floor student lounge the night the fire broke out. Sean Ryan had never spoken to investigators after that first day in the South Orange police headquarters. And their friends weren’t talking, either.

While the LePores enjoyed a summer afternoon in New York City, detectives placed the bug in their kitchen and a tap on their phone before slipping back out without leaving a trace.

All that was left to do was sit back and listen.

Despite what they had been through together, Shawn and Tiha found themselves drifting apart. Two years after the fire, they decided to go their separate ways. Four months later, Tiha contacted Shawn to say she was pregnant.
Why is this happening now?
he wondered.
Now, when we’re both so young and trying to concentrate on school? We said we would stay friends, but do we want to be a couple again?

As it turned out, Tiha was having the same anxieties. She and Shawn had started out as friends, and she had hoped they would always be friends. But it had only been a few months since they decided to break up. She had been enjoying college life and meeting new people and all of the other adventures that had come with this new chapter in her life. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to go back.

“What are we going to do?” she asked Shawn.

On a perfect spring night in May, Shawn and Tiha sat down together to discuss their options. The talk was cordial and warm. They decided to stay close but to raise their child apart, and they parted that night with a hug and a vow to always be kind to each other, for the sake of their child.

That fall, Shawn was driving to a friend’s birthday party in Manhattan when Tiha called to say she was having contractions.

“I’m on my way to the hospital,” she said. “Can you meet me at Saint Barnabas?”

“I’m on my way,” Shawn replied, making a sharp U-turn at the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel and racing back toward the hospital.

Tiha’s labor was hard and long. Shawn held her hand and wiped her forehead with a cool cloth, trying to soothe her. Both of their mothers were there. Almost twenty-four hours after Tiha called Shawn, she was finally ready to give birth.

“Push!” the doctor said. “C’mon now, Tiha, you’re almost there. Push!”

Tamir DeShawn Simons was born a few seconds past five o’clock on October 27, 2002. The first thing Shawn saw was the black ringlets that covered his son’s tiny head. They looked just like his curls before the fire.
This is the best moment of my life,
Shawn thought as he looked at his son. It hadn’t been that long ago that Shawn had lain in a coma, two floors down, the promise of a future uncertain.

Shawn looked at Tiha through his tears.

“I promise that no matter what happens between us, I will always be there for my son,” he said.

Tiha smiled. “I believe you,” she replied.

It was a promise Shawn knew he would keep.

Panic pricked at Alvaro’s skin when he realized what had happened.

He had ventured out a few times lately, always at his friends’ insistence, but tonight he hadn’t wanted to go. Why, he wondered, had he let them talk him into coming to a
dance club,
anyway? He was too afraid to approach girls. He was certain that he would be rejected, or that he would make them feel so uncomfortable, they would feel they had to talk to him. He didn’t want that.

His friends wouldn’t take no for an answer, though. He needed to get out and start living his life again, they said. They would be there for him. They would walk him to the bathroom, walk him to the bar. Wherever he went, they would shield him from the stares of strangers.

But now he was in the middle of a pack of writhing dancers, under flashing colored lights, alone and terrified. Somehow he and his friends had become separated.

The summer air was thick with humidity, and the club was thicker with cigarette smoke. Alvaro felt as if he might suffocate. A red exit sign shone in the distance, and with his head down, he made his way toward the open door. A big, bulky bouncer stood in front of it, expressionless, staring straight ahead. “You can’t go out this way,” he said sternly, never even looking at Alvaro.

Alvaro stood to the side of the bouncer, closer to the door and the outside air. If he started to hyperventilate or it all just became too much, he could duck out the door before the security guard caught him, then wait in the dark of the parking lot for his friends to come out.

A Marc Anthony song blared from the loudspeakers. Alvaro, clad in his usual blue Mets baseball cap and an oversize sports jersey, tried to concentrate on the lyrics, but it was no use. He was certain everyone in the room was staring at him, and he fought the urge to run and hide. Maybe it was dark enough in the club that no one could see him — see his scars, anyway. He dared to take a quick look around for his friends. Sure enough, a girl was staring at him. He looked away.
If she’s still looking, I’m out the door,
he thought. He glanced back at the girl. She was pretty, very pretty, with melancholy eyes and long auburn hair, like Angie.

She beckoned him with her finger.
Did she really?

He turned to look behind him, but no one was there. Only the wall.

She beckoned him again.

He pointed his finger at his chest.
Me?

The girl nodded, and before he had the chance to run out the door, he saw that she was gently pushing her way past the people on the dance floor, headed straight for him.

Alvaro felt streams of perspiration drip from his forehead and down the side of his face and neck. His baseball cap was damp and he couldn’t catch his breath. Two and a half years had passed since the fire, and he was far from healed. His torso was still so raw it had to be wrapped in gauze to keep his wounds from becoming infected and to prevent blood from oozing through his clothing. His face, arms, and hands were a red and brown patchwork of thick scars and skin grafts. Alvaro thought he was ugly.

The petite girl stood there, looking up at him. “Hi, I’m Paula,” she said. “You’re Alvaro, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat nervously and looking from the girl’s eyes down to his feet.

“I went to high school with your sister Shany. You were two years ahead. You probably don’t remember me.”

“No,” Alvaro quietly admitted.

She remembered him, though. All of her friends at John F. Kennedy High School in Paterson twittered about Shany’s older brother.
Alvaro is so hot,
the girls would say, and Paula would agree because he was.

“I heard you were burned,” she said. “My mom read stories about it in the paper.”

“Yeah,” Alvaro replied.

“Do you mind if I stay and talk to you?” she asked.

“No. That would be fine.”

“Do you want something to drink?”

“A water would be good.”

“Okay. I’ll get us two waters,” she said, heading for the bar. When she returned, the two sipped bottled water and tried to think of things to say.

“Would you like to dance?” she asked finally.

“Uh . . .”

“Oh, c’mon. It’ll be okay.”

“Okay.”

The music played on and they started to dance, right there by the open door, away from the crowd dancing under the flashing lights. It was the first time Alvaro had held a girl in his arms since before the fire. He had feared he never would again. Paula felt good in his arms. She fit perfectly. One song turned to several songs. An hour passed. Then two.

Alvaro’s eyes were closed. All of a sudden, he felt like he was riding on a carousel. It was the two of them and the room was spinning around them, just like in a dream sequence from a movie. For a moment he forgot where he was. For a moment he forgot he was burned.

Then the music stopped and the room lit up. Last call, announced someone.

“I gotta go,” Alvaro said, avoiding the girl’s gaze under the bright lights that signaled closing time. “Can I call you sometime?”

The two exchanged numbers.

“I’d really like to talk again,” Paula said.

Yeah, sure,
Alvaro thought, then quickly answered: “Me, too.”

He did.

Chapter 28

Alvaro was falling in love.

He knew it, knew it as surely as he could know anything. But what about Paula? The question was keeping him awake at night. He couldn’t sleep for worrying about whether she could really love someone who had been through what he had.

It had been Paula who called
him
after they first met in the dance club. She told him she went home that night and dropped into bed without even changing into her pajamas. She kept her cell phone beside her in bed, wishing he would call. When she awakened the next morning, her stomach quivered with excitement, thinking they had spent hours on the telephone talking about everything and nothing. But she quickly realized she had dreamed the conversation. She had even checked her cell phone to make sure he hadn’t called, but there were no messages and no missed calls. After stewing awhile, she made up her mind to call. She didn’t care how pushy or desperate she looked. She really liked him.

“I had to talk to you again,” Paula had said when he answered her call.

Since then, they had spent almost every day together. When they weren’t taking a drive or watching TV in his room, they were talking on the phone. One week had passed, then another.

Alvaro knew Paula
liked
him. She had told him many times that he was the sweetest boy she had ever met. But could she love someone like him? If she couldn’t, wouldn’t it be better to know now? But did he really want to know? Did he want to know the reason if she couldn’t love him?

Finally he decided he had to act. Pulling up his shirt so that she could see just a glimpse of his gnarly, knotted stomach, Alvaro took a deep breath and asked, “Do you think you can handle this?”

Paula had given the question plenty of thought. Alvaro hadn’t been the first to ask.

Her own mother had pulled her aside one day. “What are your intentions with this boy?” she had asked. “Don’t play with his heart, Paula. He’s a nice boy and he’s been through enough.”

After that, her older brother put in his two cents, saying, “You don’t want to hurt this kid, do you? You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. You can’t handle this.”

“I think I can,” she told him.

“I know I can,” Paula told Alvaro, now that he was the one who was asking. “I look past the burns and see the person,” she told him.

They had made love after that. Alvaro told Paula, “I want to keep my shirt on.” So Paula kept hers on as well. The first time was awkward, painfully so. Alvaro was disappointed. Paula comforted him.
Don’t worry. It will get better. It’ll be okay.

Days passed. They made love again. It was better. After that, they took it slowly.

Paula asked permission to explore his body underneath his clothes. He unbuttoned part of his shirt and she touched his chest and his arms.

“I love your arms,” she said. “They’re so soft.”

Each time, he trusted her a little more.

“I want to see how your skin feels against mine,” Paula said one night when they were together in Alvaro’s bed.

Alvaro felt his heart beat wildly. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” she said soothingly. “It’ll be all right.”

Slowly he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it away from his scarred chest. He unzipped the special vest that exerted pressure on his burned skin. He was naked, and trembling.

Tears filled Paula’s eyes. She pulled him close to her.

“You’re beautiful,” she whispered.

The telephone call came from a detective in the Essex County prosecutor’s office on the evening of Tuesday, June 10, 2003. The sound of a gruff voice surprised Shawn. He had been expecting to hear from his new girlfriend, a pretty girl named Chinaire, whom he had known casually in high school and recently met up with again at a club in Newark. Sparks flew after he asked her to dance, and they had been spending a lot of time together. They had a date planned and she was supposed to call to tell him what movie she wanted to see.

Instead he was listening to a detective telling him that arrests in the Seton Hall fire were imminent. It had been 1,238 days since the fire. This was a courtesy call, the detective said. “We didn’t want you to be caught off guard.”

“What about Alvaro?” Shawn asked. “Does he know?”

“We’re trying to reach Alvaro, too,” the detective said.

Shawn didn’t sleep much that night. Every time he looked at the clock, it was only a few minutes later. After more than three years, he thought he had put the fire behind him. At least that’s what he told himself and everyone else. But after the phone call from the detective, awful memories he’d locked deep within began to wash over him like a tidal wave, and he hadn’t been able to catch his breath. He had tried calling Alvaro but hadn’t gotten an answer. He hoped his old roommate knew the news.

Lying there, all alone in his bed, Shawn wondered if it would have been better if no one had been caught. That way, he would have gone on pretending it didn’t matter much who set the fire. Somehow, without a name and a face to focus on, it had been easier not to blame anyone, to think it was just a terrible accident and no one was really responsible. Tomorrow he would have both a name and a face, and he wasn’t sure how he would feel.

The arrests of Joey LePore and Sean Ryan the following day made headlines around the country. Ryan was picked up as he was leaving a tanning salon near his home. LePore was pulled over in his car near his home in Florham Park.

The cops showed more emotion than the suspects as they led the pair, handcuffed and shackled, with their heads bowed, into the county jail at about six that night. John Frucci had tears of relief in his eyes as he escorted them from the unmarked police car to the jail. It had been a long, hard investigation. The suspects had stonewalled law enforcement officials every step of the way, and Frucci had often thought there might never be an arrest in the case.

The
Newark Star-Ledger
reported that a special grand jury had been meeting behind closed doors in the Essex County Courthouse in Newark every Thursday for a year and a half. They had heard testimony from hundreds of witnesses, including students, firefighters, and arson investigators, and pored over more than six thousand pages of statements and exhibits. By the time the proceedings were finally over, one of the grand jurors had died and several others had been excused because of illness or work problems.

What the grand jury heard over those long months was that Ryan and LePore had had a reputation in Boland Hall. One of the students had dubbed them Beavis and Butt-Head. On the night of the fire, after the biggest basketball game on Seton Hall’s schedule, a freshman girl and her roommate threw a party in their room on the third floor in Boland Hall, on the other side of the building from Shawn and Alvaro’s room. Ryan and LePore attended the party. It was raucous and spilled over into the third-floor lounge. A few of the boys were roughhousing, and a playful wrestling match broke out between Ryan and one of his fraternity brothers. A resident adviser named Dan Nugent, who had had previous run-ins with Ryan and LePore, threw everyone out of the lounge at around four in the morning, thirty minutes before the fire.

LePore and Ryan’s next-door neighbor in Boland Hall was John Giunta. Giunta’s roommate testified that after the commotion in the lounge quieted down, he heard two sets of footsteps running into and then out of Ryan and LePore’s room. The next thing he heard was the fire alarm wailing.

The case against LePore and Ryan was far from ironclad. But what had turned it from hopeless to possible for prosecutors was testimony from a reluctant witness named Michael Karpenski. Karpenski, a childhood friend, had partied with Ryan and LePore in Boland Hall in the hours before the fire. In early interviews with investigators, he had admitted being in the dorm that night but said he knew nothing about how the fire started, or who set it.

After testifying before the grand jury, however, Karpenski contacted investigators to say he had forgotten to tell them something. That “something” turned out to be the closest thing prosecutors had to clear evidence of guilt.

At a meeting at the prosecutor’s office, Karpenski recalled that two days after the fire, he was summoned to the Dunkin’ Donuts in Madison by Ryan, LePore, and Tino Cataldo, another friend who was with them in Boland Hall on the night of the fire. The boy told police investigators that the four friends had made a pact in the Dunkin’ Donuts on that Friday afternoon in January of 2000. Karpenski said they vowed they would not tell police anything about what was going on in the third-floor lounge before the fire.

Surveillance tape from an all-night fast-food restaurant confirmed that Karpenski and Cataldo had left the dorm at least an hour before the fire started. Even though Karpenski wasn’t in the lounge when the match was struck, investigators believed he knew what happened there after he left.

Karpenski was brought back to the grand jury, where he testified about the secret meeting. Prosecutors still couldn’t prove Ryan and LePore lit the banner, but they felt the clandestine meeting raised the question: if Ryan and LePore had nothing to hide, why call a meeting about the fire?

The grand jury obviously agreed.

Ryan and LePore were charged with arson, aggravated assault, reckless manslaughter, and felony murder. The felony murder charge carried a minimum sentence of thirty years in prison. Bail was set at $2 million each. At the bail hearing, LePore turned to the news cameras and smirked.

Separate indictments accused LePore’s parents and sister of covering up his role in the fire. The indictments revealed that the listening devices detectives had concealed in the LePores’ kitchen had picked up at least nine conversations about the fire. During one of those talks, LePore’s father discussed the possibility of taking the family out of the country rather than risking the chance that Joey might be charged. The next day, Maria LePore had urged her husband and children to lie to investigators and “stay united.” No one was going to hurt her boy.

The detective who called Shawn had not been able to reach Alvaro to warn him of the arrests. Instead, the next day, as he was driving to a store to buy a stereo, he got the news from a friend who called him on his cell phone.

“I’m going to have to stop now to take this all in,” he said, pulling his new black Acura with black tinted windows to the side of the busy highway.

A photograph in the next day’s newspaper showed Ryan and LePore being led to jail. Shawn sat alone at his kitchen table and studied the picture. He recognized the boys as the students who had lived right across the hall.