Under the Knife: A Beautiful Woman, a Phony Doctor, and a Shocking Homicide (25 page)

The defendant, under circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life, recklessly engaged in conduct which created a grave risk of death to another person, and thereby caused the death of another person.

Two circumstances allowed the district attorney to charge Dean with murder instead of manslaughter, even though when Dean injected the lidocaine into the tongue of Maria Cruz, he had no intention of killing her or doing her any harm. First of all, Maria’s death occurred in the commission of another crime—practicing medicine without a license. Second, Dean called Dr. Goldschmitt, who’d advised him to rush Maria to the hospital. Dean chose to ignore the advice that could have saved Maria’s life.

When Dean fled from the United States, he faced a 6-month term of imprisonment. With these new charges, he now looked at the possibility of 25 years to life behind bars.

BEFORE RETURNING TO NEW YORK, JEANE MACINTOSH RE
ceived an invitation to dinner with Costa Rican defense attorney Moises Vincenzi, at his home in the country. Vincenzi had a long history of death threats, compelling him to wear a bullet-proof vest and travel with armed guards. Knowing this, Jeane was not surprised to discover that Vincenzi lived in a gated community and had armed guards around the perimeter of the home where he lived with his beautiful wife and son.

After a pleasant dinner, Jeane was taking her leave when she tripped over a suitcase standing behind a sofa. She righted it and noticed an identification tag labeling it as the property of Dean Faiello. “Can I look inside?” she asked.

Vincenzi rushed over to secure the bag. “I’ve been storing some of Dean’s belongings for him.”

“Come on, let me take a peek inside. Have you looked at the contents? Maybe there’s another body in there,” she joked.

Vincenzi laughed. “Maybe so,” he said, but he would not let Jeane check it out.

MOISES VINCENZI CONTINUED HIS BATTLE WITH THE POWER
vested in the New York government. Most extradition requests resulted in the fugitive’s return within six months of arrest. But, thanks to Vincenzi, six months after Dean’s capture, he remained in San Jose.

Somehow, Dean arranged for take-out meals from McDonald’s, Burger King and Pizza Hut to supplement the usual prison fare of beans and rice and had money placed into the accounts of other inmates to provide protection
for him behind bars. In addition, he paid a lot of money to jailers to enjoy the simple luxury of sleeping on a bed each night. In the first six months of his incarceration in Costa Rica, $7,000 went through Dean’s hands to pay for these perks.

Vincenzi denied that he’d made these arrangements. “It was my job to protect him legally, not in jail. It is not my business what he does in jail. I did not get into those issues with him.”

Dean expected Vincenzi to get him out of jail while he awaited a decision on the extradition request. Vincenzi tried, petitioning the judge to allow his client to go to his beach home and report in to court every two weeks. His request was denied.

When it appeared that Vincenzi had exhausted his arsenal of maneuvers to delay extradition, Dean fired him. He knew that changing lawyers would automatically delay the legal process a little bit longer. “Dean Faiello thinks he can buy liberty,” a Costa Rican lawyer told Jeane MacIntosh. “But Vincenzi doesn’t operate that way. He believes in the justice process. If Faiello had had a bad defense, he’d be back in the United States already.”

“The guy’s a fool,” Vincenzi said. “He won’t listen to anyone. He prefers living in a Costa Rican jail to coming back to the States.” Vincenzi could not understand how Dean—or anyone—would choose the primitive conditions of the Central American jail over the far more civilized situation in U.S. prisons.

DEAN FOUGHT EXTRADITION TO THE UNITED STATES IN THE
San Sebastian jail with 1,200 inmates awaiting trial. Because of the facility’s high elevation, he often watched clouds drifting through the grounds. During the wet season, heavy rains pounded down on the corrugated roof of the jail, creating a loud—but oddly soothing—drumming
noise. “I found it very peaceful to read in the library and hear and feel the rain,” Dean wrote. “The noise from the rain also cancelled out a lot of the cacophony of jail noises such as prisoners shouting and the metal clanging of gates.”

Dean caught exotic glimpses of volcanoes and the surrounding lush rainforests from many parts of the jail, but his favorite spot was the path to the attorney meeting room in an adjacent building. To reach it, Dean walked through an outdoor garden filled with hanging pendulas, banana trees, bougainvillea, palm trees and marble statues of saints. While waiting outside for his lawyer to finish up with other inmate-clients, Dean spent time reading and admiring the flowers in that serene oasis.

After his meeting, he returned to the chaos of his dormitory-style unit. There, a group of fifty-five men shared two toilets, two showers and one sink. There were no electrical outlets, no hot water and lights were turned on for only four hours a day from 6 to 10
P.M.

Pandemonium reigned over the area until midnight. Then, for a few hours, a restless near-quiet descended over the unit, broken only by coughing, sneezing and hacking. Half of the men slept on uncomfortable cots and the other half curled up on the floor.

The government of Costa Rica provides medical care, prescriptions and surgery to all of its citizens at no charge, but the wait for services is often long for everyone. Jail was no exception. Dean often had to wait two to three weeks just to see the doctor. Then, he found that the government did not provide any HIV medications to prisoners. Dean’s T-cell count plummeted from 420 to 183. His viral load shot up from undetectable levels to over 16,000. He contracted pneumocystis carinii, the most common opportunistic infection in people with HIV, and cytomegalovirus, a naturally occurring virus that rarely
causes illness except among those like Dean whose immune systems were compromised.

Another drawback to the jail was the food. There were only two meals a day: lunch and dinner. For both meals, the menu was the same: black beans and rice. Occasionally, the rice was enlivened with bits of vegetable and ground beef, but that was as extravagant as it got. Inmates never received chicken or fish, bread, fruit, juice or dessert.

To make matters worse, every meal tasted of the scorched canola oil that was used again and again long past its prime. Despite occasional supplementary meals from the outside, Dean lost thirty pounds in the fifteen months he spent in the facility.

To get out of the dorm room, Dean taught English at the jail school five days a week for five to seven hours each day. “I was fortunate in that my students were very motivated,” Dean wrote.

Even though there were no officers in the classrooms, I never had a disciplinary problem. I think that had to do with the fact that the school offered so much. Those who caused trouble would miss out on the use of computers, painting classes, wood-working shop (yes, with power tools and cutting blades!), candle-making, sewing classes, watercolors and even free coffee, which was the real reason I stuck it out.

Dean took advantage of the prison library, stocked with hundreds of books in Spanish, German and English. He often selected a paperback novel in his native tongue, but also learned to read Spanish with a dictionary at his fingertips. Hemingway in Spanish was a pleasurable challenge for Dean. He read
Islas en el Golfo (Islands in the Stream), Por Quien Doblan las Campanas (For Whom the Bell Tolls)
, and
El Viejo y el Mar (The Old Man
and the Sea
). He also enjoyed the Spanish translations of J. R. R. Tolkien’s books, but found that the works of Lillian Hellman fell flat in that language. Between this reading and learning to communicate with his fellow inmates, he was fluent in Spanish within months.

JEANE MACINTOSH RETURNED TO NEW YORK AND, WITH A PHO
tographer, staked out the house of Dr. David Goldschmitt, awaiting his arrival from work. Once he returned, they gave him a few minutes, then knocked on the front door. David welcomed them inside.

Chaos ruled in the old Victorian home, where a major renovation was underway. David gave the
Post
duo a tour. They stepped over tools and lumber and dodged scaffolding as he explained the work in progress and the expected outcome. He told them about the history of his house, as well as that of Dean’s place up the street.

He talked about his concerns for Dean. As a doctor, David knew all too well the risks faced by a bisexual who was promiscuous. “It made me crazy when he went cruising for guys.” He said that Dean often went trolling in a seedy area near the neighborhood of Forest Hill.

He related the events of the night Maria died. “I could have saved her—somebody could have saved her if Dean had just called an ambulance. I tried desperately to make him understand she needed immediate medical attention. That’s the worst part. In cases like this, we save ninety-five percent of them. It’s very rare for someone to die, unless you wait too long for medical attention.

“He said she was a friend. Was that the truth? Now, I don’t know. I’ve learned that Dean can be a very convincing liar.”

Jeane asked to take a picture of him. He agreed, but excused himself first to don a fresh shirt. Jeane asked, “How do you feel now about what Dean has done?”

“I can’t forgive him. He tortured this woman’s family for ten months. I cannot imagine the anguish they went through. But maybe I might be able to give the family some comfort to know that she probably wasn’t in pain when she died.”

Before they left, David told them about his annual Christmas party and got their phone numbers so he could invite them to the next one.

FOR MONTHS, THE PRODUCERS OF
48
HOURS MYSTERY
NEGOTI
ated with Dean’s attorneys for an interview. Finally, access was granted. Harold Dow and his crew flew to Costa Rica. They entered the crumbling, derelict building that housed prisoners in San Jose and immediately realized that conditions here were far more rustic than in any New York prison.

Dean started the conversation with complaints. His voice sounded whiny, but the expression on his face appeared arrogant. “The truth is, I’m very unhappy with my physical health at this point. It’s no secret I’m HIV positive. I have been here for six months without any treatment, any medical treatment of my HIV condition. I think I’ve lost eleven kilos, which is about twenty-two pounds.”

Dow’s face bore the countenance of a placid pool. As a practiced interviewer and listener, he knew when it was in his best interest to conceal—or to reveal—any judgmental feelings toward his subject. He asked Dean why he continued to fight extradition when he faced such miserable living conditions.

Before answering, Dean darted his eyes sideways to his attorney, Nuria Mataritta Martinez. Then, in a seeming contradiction of his previous complaints, Dean said, “I like Costa Rica and I’m doing everything that I can with my attorney and in my legal powers to stay here in this country. I wish to spend the rest of my life here in Costa Rica.”

Dean’s new lawyer stood on the sidelines during the interview, interrupting whenever she did not want Dean to answer. She clearly harbored doubts about the wisdom of allowing CBS to speak with her client, and she tried to terminate the interview many times before she succeeded.

Dean, though, appeared to have a strong desire to tell his side of the story. Dow brushed aside the lawyer’s interruptions, persisting with his customary tenacity: “Did you kill Maria Cruz?” he asked.

“I have no comment. I am innocent of the charges presented against me. I’ve been falsely accused by the U.S.”

Dow raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You really feel you’ve been falsely accused by the United States?”

“Absolutely,” Dean insisted.

Dow wanted to know why, if Dean was innocent, Maria’s body was found in the garage of his Newark home.

“I have no statement about anything that happened in my house,” Dean said.

“What would you want to say to Maria Cruz’s family, if you are innocent?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Are you concerned about these charges?”

Dean turned to his lawyer, whose agitation was quite obvious. He turned back to Dow. “My statement is, remains: I am innocent of the charges.”

“Were you pretending to be a doctor in New York?”

“I have no comment on that,” Dean said.

His attorney terminated the interview and removed Dean from the area.

IN DECEMBER OF
2004,
A THREE-JUDGE PANEL CONVENED IN
Costa Rica. They ruled that Dean Faiello could be extradited to the United States. Dean’s new lawyer danced a legal tango, delaying her client’s departure for five more months.

AFTER THE EPISODE OF
48
HOURS MYSTERY
ABOUT DEAN
Faiello and Maria Cruz aired, Greg got a call from one of Oprah Winfrey’s producers. She said, “Oprah thinks you are an interesting person with a fascinating story and would make a great guest on the show.”

Greg rolled his eyes and turned down the request.
You know your relationship ended badly when Oprah calls
, he thought.