Beyond Obsession (5 page)

As they had noted earlier, in the living room, on top of a coffee table, was a ten-dollar bill and a Texaco gasoline credit card. That nobody had picked up the cash and card seemed to rule out robbery.

On the floor near the bedroom door was an empty box of Glad garbage bags; most of the bags lay on the floor between the living room and kitchen, on either side of a multicolored afghan. Had the killer tried to remove the body in one of those large bags? The forensic laboratory later did a test to see. Perhaps the killer had tried, but if so, he had failed, for the weight of a body ripped open the bottom of the bag. Joyce Aparo's body would have slid right through. Under the sink in the kitchen was an empty roll of paper towels; tests showed that the towel found in Joyce Aparo's mouth had come from that roll, had been the last one on it.

During their search they made only a cursory sweep of Karin's bedroom. But, then, it would have taken hours to search that cluttered room, filled as it was with the treasures of an adolescent. The tops of a high dresser and a bookcase were invisible beneath a menagerie of stuffed animals—teddy bears, pandas, giraffes and more—hats and books and papers. On a low dresser they found a stack of photographs, some of Karin alone, some of Karin with a young man; the young man was not Dennis Coleman. Another photograph of that same young man, Alex Markov, violin nestled beneath his chin, rested against the mirror over that dresser. One bookcase was filled with books and sheets of music, violin scores. The shelves over the desk contained dolls, more stuffed animals and a couple of photographs, most prominent among them a framed one, autographed to Karin, of Archbishop John Whealon, the head of the Hartford archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church. In a drawer of a bedside table they came upon a couple of books, diaries. Revoir skimmed them. In that quick search, in that cluttered room, they found nothing they thought had any bearing on the case.

If at this point, on the second day, the police had a suspect, they weren't telling anyone. What they were saying was that there were no leads.

Dennis Coleman later said that once they reached his room after their hours at the police station, he and Karin had talked for a long time in the darkness before falling asleep. At that moment he was sure the police had targeted him as a suspect.

Karin Aparo later said that they had gone to sleep almost immediately, had talked not at all.

Dennis was up a little after six and off for his job at the Tallwoods Country Club before seven. Karin, he said, was still asleep when he left the house.

Karin later said that she was up with Dennis, that they had a brief conversation then, that he gave her the keys to his Triumph Spitfire sports car, telling her that she could use it that day and that he would be back after two.

By seven-fifteen Karin had begun making telephone calls. Both Dennis Coleman, Sr., and his wife, Carol, had already left for their own jobs. Only Dennis's younger brother, Matt, was still in the house.

She called her best friend, Shannon Dubois, a girl her own age whom she had known since third grade, a classmate at Glastonbury High School, a tall, pretty girl with short blondish hair who looks like everybody's idea of the girl next door. It was then seven-fifteen in the morning.

Shannon remembers that Karin's voice on the phone was nervous and upset when she said hello. Shannon asked, “What's the matter? What's worrying you?”

Karin said, “My mother was found murdered last night. I need you. I'm at Dennis's. Can you come over right away?”

Shannon said that of course, she would, but somebody would have to pick her up.

Karin said she'd ask Dennis's brother, Matt, whom Shannon had been dating, to drive over and get her. When Shannon told her parents what had happened, they told her that if Karin wanted, she could stay with them until other arrangements had been made.

Next, Karin phoned Archbishop Whealon, at his private number. She had known and been extremely close to him all her life; he had a very special relationship with her and with the Aparo family. She reached him, told him her mother had been murdered and asked if he would conduct the service at the funeral. It was a strange request, for Joyce Aparo was a divorced woman, had almost never attended church, was at odds with the church and had attempted to prevent Karin from practicing her religion. And presiding over funerals was a thing the archbishop no longer did. The last funeral he had conducted was for the late governor of Connecticut, Ella Grasso, in 1981. Nevertheless, Archbishop Whealon agreed to preside at the burial of Joyce Aparo and to do whatever he could to help Karin.

She made two more calls then. One was to Michael Zaccaro, telling him she was at the Colemans' and asking him to drive over because she needed his help. He agreed. The other was to Alex Markov, in Rowayton, to tell him what had happened.

When Shannon arrived at the Coleman house a little later, Karin was waiting for her on the lawn outside. About a hundred yards in front of them they could see the Connecticut River sparkling in the summer morning sunlight, and behind the house stretched a large tract of deep, dense woods. Matt went into the house and up to his room. Karin and Shannon stood outside on the lawn and talked. “I said I couldn't imagine who would have done such a thing,” Shannon remembers. “Then I asked her where Alex had been when it happened.”

Karin said, “He was with me in Rowayton.”

Shannon said, “Who could have done it?”

Karin didn't answer immediately. “She was standing there looking down at the ground, and I had this sudden feeling that she knew who had done it,” Shannon says. Karin looked up at the Coleman house. Shannon said, “Do you know?”

Karin said, “Yes, I know. It was Dennis.”

According to Shannon, she stared at Karin with disbelief and asked how Dennis had done it. Karin told her that Dennis had strangled her mother with a pair of nylons. “I didn't believe her. I didn't want to believe her.”

But Karin offered proof. She led Shannon into the house and upstairs to Dennis's room, opened the closet and pulled out a light-colored duffel bag. Karin opened the bag. Shannon looked inside. She saw what looked to her like black clothes and a black ski mask. And then Karin reached inside and pulled out a bright orange leather purse. Shannon recognized it. “I had seen Mrs. Aparo holding it. I was shocked, and then I saw a wallet inside and I pulled it out, and sure enough, Mrs. Aparo's identification was inside it.”

Shannon turned and walked out of the room. Karin put everything back into the duffel bag, put the bag back into the closet, and then she and Shannon went back downstairs and out to the lawn. They stood there waiting for Alex Markov to arrive, and while they waited, they talked more, about the murder and about the past.

A car pulled up outside the house. Alex Markov and a friend name Yura got out and walked up to them. Karin greeted them, and immediately she and Markov went into the house and up to Dennis's room, leaving Shannon and Yura alone on the lawn. After a while Markov and Karin reappeared. In one hand Markov was carrying an envelope. Shannon had seen folders like it before; they usually contained musical scores. Markov and his friend went back to their car and drove off; Markov had told them he had to leave because he had to prepare for a concert.

When they were gone, Karin told Shannon that she and Markov had been talking about their future. If things worked out as they hoped, the twenty-four-year-old Markov would become sixteen-year-old Karin Aparo's guardian. Karin wanted them to live together in the Aparo condominium: Markov wanted Karin to live with him in Rowayton.

Alone again, Karin and Shannon discussed what they would do now. “We talked about how we would have to be quiet about the whole thing.” It was, Shannon remembers, something they both agreed was a necessity.

About eleven-thirty Michael Zaccaro arrived. With him were two of his Athena partners, Roland Butler and Ann Marie Murray. They went into the house, and Shannon began to prepare lunch for them. While they waited, Karin and Ann Marie Murray went out for a walk. For about a half hour they roamed through the neighborhood, talking. “Karin,” Ann Marie Murray says, “was very concerned about her future and where she would live. She mentioned Mike Zaccaro, but Mike was single then, so that was out. We said we would do whatever we could to provide her with a home, and if necessary, she could come and live with me and my husband. Karin wasn't terribly worried about money, though; she told me that there was about three hundred thousand dollars in insurance.”

Back at the Coleman house, lunch was ready, and after they had eaten, Karin, Zaccaro, Butler and Murray left to drive into Hartford to meet with Jeff Sands at his office, to try to make some order of the chaos, to begin to deal with Karin's future. Shannon stayed behind to field phone calls.

For about three hours that afternoon the adults—Sands, Zaccaro, Butler and Ann Marie Murray—and the teenager, Karin, gathered in the conference room at Wiggin & Dana. “Karin was very confused,” Sands says, “and she had a lot of questions, and we were there to help answer those questions.” It was decided then that Zaccaro would serve as executor and Sands as lawyer for the estate.

There were the unpleasant but necessary topics. There were the funeral arrangements. Karin told them she had already spoken to Archbishop Whealon who had agreed to officiate. A funeral home had to be contacted, and the body had to be brought down from Springfield; Sands took care of those things.

Where, Karin asked, was she going to live, and how was she going to pay for everything that had to be paid for? The obvious answer was her father.

Sands called Michael Aparo. “I asked him whether he wanted to be the executor of the estate instead of Mike Zaccaro. He said he didn't. I asked him what kind of arrangements he was going to make for Karin in the interim. He said, ‘I want to do everything I can for Karin. Isn't it awful what happened?' He was very supportive in that first phone conversation. Both Mike and I thought she ought to go and stay with him, though Karin wasn't terribly keen on that idea. But after all, he was her father, and he had responsibilities. Then I got a second call from Michael Aparo, and he said, ‘She can't come. Because, well, my wife …' It was unbelievable. Her dad's new wife didn't want any part of her. I was dumbfounded by it.” Karin would stay with the Duboises for a while, but a more permanent place would have to be found. Karin did not mention her own plan to live with Alex Markov or any other plan she might have had in mind.

“She knew that Joyce had life insurance and a will,” Sands says, “but she didn't seem to know how much insurance, and she was under the impression that they were in debt, but she seemed to have no idea how deeply in debt.” Karin did not repeat the figure for the insurance she'd offered Ann Marie Murray, and Murray did not bring it up.

What Karin did know was that her mother kept her papers in an expandable file that was either in her closet or in a file cabinet in the basement of the condo. But no one was yet permitted to enter the premises, so, Sands says, “we were at a loss at this point.” Any decisions would have to wait until the police allowed them to go in and look through the papers. Sands called the police and asked when they could get into the condo, explaining why it was necessary to do so as soon as possible. He was told that they could go in the next day, that Charlie Revoir would meet them there. Revoir wanted to talk to Karin, anyway, wanted her to look around the condo and see if anything was missing, anything present that had not been there before, if anything was not as she remembered it.

As the conference went on, Karin seemed, Sands thought, increasingly pale, distracted and in some shock, and at one point she broke down and began to cry. They gave her time to recover, which she did rather quickly, and then the discussions went on.

Sometime after five it ended. Zaccaro led her down to his car and drove her back to Glastonbury, to the Duboises' house, where she remained for the next three weeks.

In South Glastonbury that afternoon Shannon Dubois, distraught over what she had been told by her best friend, answered phone calls at the Coleman house and waited, for news, for anything.

At some point, she couldn't remember when, Matt Coleman left, and she was alone. About three Dennis arrived home from work. Shannon went out onto the lawn to greet him, and they stood there for a few minutes, “talking about normal things. Then the phone rang, and I answered it. Dennis went upstairs. He was acting weird.”

When she finished the call, she went upstairs after him. He was in his room. He looked at her and said, “Do you know what happened?”

Shannon said, “Yes. Karin told me you killed her mother.”

Dennis nodded and then told her how he had done it, told her the details that she had already heard earlier that day from Karin.

About five Shannon went home. Karin arrived a little later and moved into Shannon's room. Through the evening they tried to act as normally as they could, as normally as possible for two teenagers caught in the middle of a murder. But later that night, in Shannon's room, Karin asked, “Did you talk to Dennis today?”

“Yes, and he told me everything.” Slowly Shannon repeated the story Dennis had told her.

“Oh,” Karin said, “that's what he told me last night.”

For a while they talked about what might happen. “There was,” Shannon says, “a kind of understanding that we weren't going to say anything to anybody.” It was the kind of compact teenagers are forever making, an essential part of that eternal conflict between the generations. Usually, those secrets are of little interest to anybody else, so it matters little when they are held close. This, of course, was a secret of a different kind, a dangerous one with far-reaching consequences, not just for Shannon and Karin but for many others. Still, for Shannon at that moment and probably for Karin, too, there was something unreal about the whole thing. “I couldn't believe it had really happened,” Shannon said later. “I didn't want to believe it.”