And Never Let Her Go (81 page)

Authors: Ann Rule

Judge William Swain Lee presided over Capano's stormy and widely publicized trial. Sandwiched between his husky bailiffs, the judge left the Daniel Herrmann Courthouse in March 1999 after delivering a withering denunciation of the defendant and passing the stiffest possible sentence.

Defense attorneys Joseph Oteri (center), Eugene Maurer, Charlie Oberly, and Jack O'Donnell (latter two partially hidden) had been unsuccessful in preventing their arrogant client from taking the stand in his own defense.

Marguerite Capano was devastated by the verdict against her golden son, Tommy, and a sentence that would shatter her once proud and prosperous family. She grasped the hand of the family's longtime priest, Father Roberto Balducelli, while her son Joey pushed her wheelchair away from the courthouse.

After hearing their father's sentence, Tom Capano's three younger daughters (the first two in short skirts and the girl just emerging from the doorway) were rushed to a waiting car by relatives and friends.

Kathleen Fahey-Hosey and Brian Fahey spoke to the press after sentence was passed on Tom Capano. Still in mourning, they found justice in the verdict, although little consolation for their great loss.

Debby MacIntyre escaped Tom Capano's jealous rage, perhaps only because she had never tried to leave him. After eighteen years in a relationship that ended with another woman's murder, she at last found the confidence to face the future on her own.

A haggard and humbled Tom Capano was led in chains from the Daniel Herrmann Courthouse in Wilmington on March 16, 1999, almost three years after Anne Marie Fahey's disappearance and murder. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

Photo Credits

Author's collection: 2, 3, 4, 27

Eric Crossan: 1, 5, 6, 12

Evidence photo: 18, 24

Fahey family collection: 8, 9, 10, 11

Emily Hensel: 23, 28, 29

Bob Herbert,
News Journal,
Wilmington, Delaware: 19

Mary Kemp: 7, 15, 17, 30, 31, 34

Official court photo entered into evidence by the state: 13

Official police document entered into evidence by the state: 16

Philadelphia Daily News:
36

Police photo: 20, 22, 25