Who Killed Chrissy?: The True Crime Memoir of a Pittsburgh girl's Unsolved Murder in Las Vegas (5 page)

Chris was fascinated with gemstones
and gold and many times expressed an interest in developing a business in
wholesale jewelry. Chucky nurtured Chris’s obsessive curiosities by educating
her on what he knew, and I believe he bought her gifts of expensive jewelry on
a regular basis.  It seemed to me that anyone having more life experience than
her was someone she wanted to know and investigate with curiosity and awe, but
in no way did Chris want to listen to anyone’s advice about anything. At times
the expressions on her face reminded me of a child seeing a lit up Christmas
tree for the very first time….

I believe that Chucky was the one
positive force in Chris’s life that could have changed things forever, could
have made a difference had she chosen to absorb what he had to teach her at the
time. Chris listened to no one. She knew she was tough and she knew she was
strong, and at the same time she had a childlike innocence that permeated the
hardened shell that defined her presence.  I saw it and I felt it. My son loved
going upstairs and playing with “Chrissy’s cat,” and she loved picking him up,
tickling him and bouncing him around in her arms. I saw this and I knew that
Chris was not what she was displaying to everyone around her. One afternoon I
captured that exact image of Chris on my Polaroid camera in front of our
apartment building. She picked up my son and tickled him as they both giggled
like small children. 

This was the Chris I wanted to
know.

M
y son’s father, Rick, was in town performing at the
Hukelau nightclub on McKnight Road in the North Hills, a suburb of Pittsburgh.
I met Rick in 1975 at the Holiday Inn, Monroeville, Pennsylvania, while sitting
in the audience with my fiancé, Stephen Lange, a conservative Jewish guy from
the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh. Stephen and I had dated for five years
before getting engaged, and the wedding was planned for that upcoming June. My
father had given us complimentary tickets to see the Drifters at the Holiday
Inn. Little did I know that tickets to a show would change my life forever, and
send me on a path in life that would change my values, my morals, and my entire
being—the rest is history, as is the world famous singing group, the Drifters,
who have spawned hundreds of phony performers.  Rick had his own group and was
at one time a member of the Drifters that recorded on Atlantic Records, thus
qualifying him to use the name.

I
had spent four years on the road with Rick and the Drifters, touring the U.S.
and Canada. We lived in Toronto, Canada for a while and then rented an
apartment in Pittsburgh because of numerous scheduled performances at the
Hukelau nightclub.  It was short lived though, as I never felt like it was a
home to any degree. It had more of the feeling of being a place for band
members to stay between gigs if needed, as the lifestyle of entertainers was
fast and furious, never knowing when they would be called out of town or left
to sit for weeks without gigs when agents didn’t provide work.

The
Hukelau was a Hawaiian themed dinner show club and was owned by Anthony “Wango”
Capizzi, a notorious Pittsburgh mob boss who Rick developed a business
partnership with in the form of an entertainment booking agency called
Fullhouse Productions. I never knew the scope of this relationship, but years
later it would become part of my life, as I, too, became a major player in the
business of entertainers in Pittsburgh and the entire Tri State area of
Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

Many
major nightclub venues in Pittsburgh were owned by mob bosses in one form or
another. The famous Holiday House in Monroeville, for instance, was a major hub
of activity by Pittsburgh’s notorious crime bosses, including Michael Genovese
and a few others. I have no idea who actually owned the place. It was an era of
strong mob activities and somehow it was all connected to Cleveland,

Ohio.
I never had any interest in figuring out the food chain and how it worked; I
was just trying to survive and pay my bills.  I  would  occasionally  hear  things
 from  Rick  and

Anthony
at lunches, dinners and social events. Women were not included in the business
of mob bosses.

From
1975 until 1979 I had a back and forth life of coming and going, in and out of
Pittsburgh. I would leave and go on the road with Rick for a while, then we’d
fight and argue, and I’d come back to Pittsburgh and stay with friends until
he’d convince me that he would change as a person, or when I felt that I could help
him change. I have always been the type of person who enters into relationships
thinking the person may have some problems, but there is always the possibility
of them changing and reforming their attitude. When you fall in love, you
rarely ever experience the true character of the person until a situation
arises that requires
character
, then it’s slowly revealed to you as you
experience and learn what the person has inside of them. This relationship was
no exception, and after my realization that I was doomed to just stay on the
road and travel aimlessly from town to town with this man, I knew that wasn’t
going to work. He was obviously lonely to a certain degree and was filling in
that emptiness with different girlfriends while he was on the road. I don’t
believe the relationship was ever more meaningful than that to him. The
whirlwind romance was full of drama, excitement and constant emotional
stimulation that ignited many emotions in both of us and ultimately progressed
into obsessive, possessive behavior that lacked any real substance.  It was
void of all the basic elements such as trust, respect and fortitude.  

Upon
leaving Pittsburgh in 1975 when Rick had me give up my apartment and my job at
the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, I had wanted out. I was tired of
Pittsburgh; I was tired of Steve Lange, my boyfriend who never did anything
exciting in his life, including dancing or drinking. He was getting on my
nerves full time, and pushing me to be like him.  He wanted a plain girl with
plain tastes, and as time went by this realization built up inside of me, and I
knew I wasn’t that girl. By then the wedding was planned, somehow; I don’t
remember how it got that far, but I wasn’t happy; I knew I wasn’t happy. I
hadn’t finished experiencing life; I wasn’t ready for settling into cups and
saucers and handpicked plates with Stephen. I was bored and losing it with
him.  I was ready to be plucked out of the mundane Pittsburgh atmosphere, and I
ran. I left my family crying, and everyone else crying, and I didn’t care—I did
not care. I was totally numb to all the tears and all the begging.

In
leaving Pittsburgh with Rick in 1975, I did not appreciate anything about
Pittsburgh, where I grew up.  When I returned, pregnant, in 1979, I was slowly
developing the appreciation that Pittsburgh was a family oriented town, with so
many quaint neighborhoods and people, but I attribute that to the nesting
hormone, or whatever you want to call it; I was ready to nest with my baby. 
The itch would return soon after having my son. I was going to want out again,
and I felt it creeping in on me.

I
believe that my son saved me from a horrible life with a person who was only
concerned for himself. If I had not become pregnant, I would have stayed on the
road with the group and traveled until I couldn’t stand it anymore.  Touring is
something that is only exciting for about two years, and then you have an
overpowering need to stay in one place and just rest. The unconditional love
for a child can do wondrous things if you open your heart to it.

My
son was the first grandchild and was showered with attention by my parents. I
needed their moral support, and they wholeheartedly gave me the comfort and
stability that I craved. My tumultuous relationship with the Drifter for four
years was sometimes too much for them, and at one point, I was disowned. It
lasted six months when I didn’t speak with them and they couldn’t find me. I
think this created a fear in them and they needed to be in contact, so they
un-disowned me so I would stay in touch with them.

There
was a culture shock in the black and white relationship with Rick that my
parents did not comprehend.  They were traditional middle class folks who
basically expected people to tell the truth and do the right thing. I was never
raised to dislike any ethnic group of people, although my mother told us
stories about her sisters being disowned by her Croatian immigrant parents
because they had married Italians. I also had a girlfriend in high school whose
Italian parents said they would disown her if she married a Jew. She did marry
a Jew. This was all so silly and stupid to me, always.

I
allowed Rick to visit my son at my apartment sometimes.  It all depended on
whether we were arguing and fighting at the time. I did not want him interfering
with my life, as I had no plans on going back with him.  He was a possessive,
chronic liar who had swept me off my feet and then destroyed my mind, degraded
my self-worth, and smashed any hope I ever had of living a normal sane life—he
was an empty narcissist.

Rick
never had any good intentions towards the promised relationship that he
preached when I first met him. He sat on my parent’s living room sofa and told
them we were going to get married, while he himself was still married to
someone else. And yes, he had lied to me about that, too.  He lied about
everything in his life. He seemed to roll along and invent his daily life as it
played out, a self-created myth without substance or character.

I
did continue to depend on Rick in certain capacities though, due to the fact
that I was a single mother with a bi-racial child in Pittsburgh, a racist city.
Since he was spending time here with Wango Capizzi and the Hukelau nightclub, I
did find myself calling him up if I needed something.  He was always willing to
help me out in small ways, but never willing to take the responsibility of
being a father to our son. It didn’t matter; my family was all I needed.

Chris
had stopped in my apartment to meet Rick for the first time and challenge him to
spar with her, which made me laugh because I knew Rick’s capabilities as a
fighter; I had seen him in action. His knuckles looked like crooked mountains
sticking up from his thin hands. This sparring session lasted five minutes.
Rick got her in a chokehold right away and it was over. Her spindly arms looked
like they would break in his grasp, as he spun her around the apartment and she
kept coming back for more. Once she realized he had knowledge on the subject of
fighting, she craved his attention for instructions and training any time he
stopped over. It was a source of entertainment and laughter for me, watching
them play in the living room for hours, and each time he would overpower her
and she would sit and figure out other moves to beat him. Then I would tease
her and say things like, “Hey Chris, you’re touching a black man, what would
Martin think of you tainting yourself like that?”

“Shut
up, bitch,” she would say to me while flipping me her Italian arm gesture for
ba fungul, or sometimes she’d just tell me “ba fungul,” which means to fuck off
in Italian.

Chris
thrived on this self-defense stuff, along with physical conditioning, running,
muscle toning and everything that I personally looked upon as a waste of time. 

Rick
commented after several sparring matches that, “Chris knows enough about self-
defense to get her hurt. She doesn’t understand that women are not built the
same as men, they lack muscle and weight, and for a woman to think she can take
on a man in a fight is just plain stupid.”

I respected
Rick’s knowledge on self-defense. Not only was he a black belt in Goju Karate,
but he was also a New York City cop for many years in between singing gigs with
the Drifters. When he was not working as an entertainer, he was a seasoned,
highly decorated New York cop who didn’t drink or smoke.

I
managed to save up around three hundred dollars to hire an attorney to file for
child support, but Rick was from New York and the process was tedious. The
first thing that happened was the paternity part of the case. Rick denied he
was the father, so I had to take my son to a public clinic for a blood test,
which infuriated me. Watching my small toddler have a huge needle stuck in his
arm by a shabby clinic worker made me wonder if all this was really worth trying
to obtain any child support money. The paternity test was a ploy by Rick to
delay the case.  He knew my son was his child, but anything he could do to
delay the process was in his favor. The test was a positive match, of course.