If Looks Could Kill (23 page)

On the morning of June 12, 2002, Bertina King and Vince Felber, with an FBI agent tagging along, drove to Christine Todaro’s apartment. After they knocked on the door, she invited them into the kitchen. The FBI had become part of the investigation because several witnesses had made an “organized crime” implication. If there was a mafia element to the murder, the FBI could help.

“Go downstairs,” Christine told Tony. (Her daughter, by then, had gone to live with her ex-husband.)

They sat down at the dining table. Christine explained that she had been married to Zaffino, but they had been divorced—“finally”—for some time. “I left him after…he punched my son and knocked him to the ground. After we left the house, I went back to get my belongings [later] and John held me in the house for two hours.”

“Like kidnapped, against your will?” King wondered.

“Yeah. He broke my arm.” Christine couldn’t believe law enforcement was finally standing in her apartment. It was a relief, actually, with all she knew about the murder of Jeff Zack and Zaffino’s possible involvement. “What took you so long?” she asked in jest, shaking her head. Although she was glad to see law enforcement, she was fearful of Zaffino, who was still a major presence in her life. Because of that, she wasn’t about to tell Felber and King anything at this point. She felt Zaffino was somehow setting her up to take the fall for the murder. She worried greatly that she had, without realizing it, become involved.

King and Felber looked at each other after hearing Christine reiterate her feeling of what had taken them so long to track her down. It was good news. They sensed the CAPU would be getting somewhere.

As Christine explained it to King and Felber, Zaffino had been arrested a few times for hitting her, and possibly other violent episodes that had nothing to do with her. Then, “He may be dating a girl from Medina.”

Cynthia George lived in Medina.

In truth, Zaffino was a street thug, a tough guy. Short and stocky, medium-cut black hair, he sported a goatee sometimes. Some later described him as the type of guy to stop at a local dive for a few beers after a day’s work and fight his way through the night. Anything, others said, would set the guy off: an awkward look from a stranger, an unsuspecting comment, someone beeping the horn at him on the road. He was a time bomb, ready to go off on some violent rampage the moment he felt the least bit threatened.

King and Felber wanted to know more. They were investigating a murder. Christine was married to the guy at one time. She knew him better than most. A possible girlfriend in Medina was a good start, but what else?

“He’s been taking medication for an anger management problem, Effexor, or something like that. He sold his trucking business, which he had for eleven years. I think he’s doing electroplating now.”

“Does he have a motorcycle?”

Important question. Could clear up a lot of unanswered questions and get things really rolling.

“As far as I know, he’s never had a motorcycle, except for when he was a kid. That’s what he told me. He owns two long-barrel shotguns, though, I know that.” She gave them Zaffino’s cell phone number. She told them where his mother and father lived and gave them their numbers as well. “He has a sister—”

Interrupting, Felber came out with it. “Do you have any idea why we’re here asking these questions?”

“No.” She seemed nervous now. Quick with her answers. Trembling. Scared.

“Do you know if John’s involved in anything illegal?”

“No.”

It was a lie in some respects; his entire life could be classified as illegal.

“We think John might have been involved in a homicide.”

Christine reacted “shocked and alarmed,” Felber wrote in his report of the conversation. “Oh, my goodness,” she said.

“Has John ever talked about anything like that?”

“No.”

Good investigators are patient. They know how to plant a seed, walk away and allow that information to germinate in the mind of a potential source. In a way, a source, like Christine Todaro, was a veiled adversary, only to be trusted to a point until she proved herself. Keeping her walking on eggshells, wondering, waiting, was going to be an asset to the investigation. It was clear she knew more, but they didn’t want to push her right now.

Felber took out his card and handed it to Christine. “If you think of anything else, can you call me?”

“Sure.”

When they left, Christine sat down at the table and wondered why she hadn’t just come out with it. By contrast, she was scared to death of John Zaffino. If he found out she was talking to the police, without even thinking twice about it, he would “stomp the s - - -” out of her, or, worse, she believed, “put a bullet in my head. He had already killed one person,” Christine said later. “I
know
he wouldn’t have thought twice about killing me to cover up the entire thing.”

With the CAPU gone, Christine, now filled with emotion and fear, decided the best thing to do was to call her ex-husband.
Contact John and see what he knows
. Christine knew the guy, his moods, how he thought. If he knew the CAPU had been to her house, she’d be able to hear it in his voice.

She dialed his number, thinking,
What if he drove by my house while they were here?

Christine was now very much concerned about her role in helping Zaffino throughout the past year. Had she committed a crime herself? Zaffino was acting as if he had something over her. She had always questioned whether he had committed the murder—he had never come out and told her, yes, it was me—but she knew in her heart, not to mention several comments he had made, that he could have done it.

Zaffino had recently given his telephone number to Christine’s father, telling him to let her know to call him. Now was as good a time as any.

“John,” she said after he answered, “the cops were just here.” Playing dumb, she asked, “What is going on?” Then, “I’m not going to jail for anybody…if it comes down to me or you, it’s going to be
you
.” Christine said later that she had used that line on her ex-husband just about every time they spoke, repeatedly reminding him, regardless of the consequences, that she wasn’t “going down” on his behalf.

“F- - - those cops. Don’t tell them anything,” he said.

“They were
here
, John. In my house.” She felt like he didn’t believe her, which offered a bit of comfort. At least she now knew he hadn’t driven by or heard it from someone it on the street.

“F- - - them.” He was chuckling a bit. “Tell them to f- - - off. Don’t answer any of their questions.”

“I have their business cards.”

“I want them.”

“The cards?”

“Yes…I’m on my way over.”

Christine Todaro was fully aware of the consequences she faced once John Zaffino found out she was talking to the CAPU. She needed protection as much as she needed to finally tell police all she knew about the murder of Jeff Zack, which was a lot more than anyone thought. Felber and King showing up at her apartment to talk to her was one thing—but the FBI’s presence terrified Christine. Things had turned serious—and she knew it. She handed off the business cards to Zaffino and managed to find sleep after he said a few nasty words about the cops and took off. But this was it. She couldn’t hide what she knew any longer.

First thing the next morning, June 13, Christine decided to drive to the APD and explain everything. “I realized,” Christine recalled, “I just couldn’t go through my life with all that I knew about this—not to mention John had threatened to kill me on a daily basis. But it wasn’t so much just me. It really bothered me when John started threatening my dad and Tony.”

Once inside the confines of the CAPU’s sixth-floor office, Christine sat down in the conference room with Detective Vince Felber, Captain Beth Daugherty and FBI special agent Roger Charnesky.

She talked about how, where and when she met Zaffino. Daugherty did most of the questioning while Charnesky and Felber watched Christine’s body movements and studied how she answered questions. Then Christine gave Daugherty a complete rundown of Zaffino’s family, before Daugherty asked, “Can you tell us about your marriage to John?”

Christine, of course, sighed, bowed her head and felt a sharp pain in her gut. “Horrible,” she said. “Absolutely horrible.”

“What happened?”

“He was very abusive.
Very
abusive. You know, he almost strangled me to death once in front of my kids.”

After a brief description of how violent Zaffino had been throughout their marriage, Christine talked about how she realized her ex-husband was involved in Jeff Zack’s murder. It started when Zaffino told her one night “to watch out for [herself].” What he meant was, there were a few guys after him, he claimed, and they would be after her as well. All because, Christine told Daugherty, Zaffino had “beat the shit out of this Jeff Zack guy, but he didn’t use [Zack’s] name.”

Felber said, “OK?” Implying,
How do we know it was Jeff Zack he was talking about
?

“I knew who he meant.”

“How did you know?” Daugherty wondered.

“Because he talked about this white-haired…guy—that’s what he called him.”

“Oh?”

“OK, and he said it’s ‘Zack Something,’ OK?” Christine said.

“OK.”

The murder—and Zaffino’s involvement—all started to make sense to Christine, she recalled, when the
Akron Beacon Journal
ran its first story about the Zack murder during the early morning hours of June 17, 2001. Before she saw the article, she was quick to say, she believed Zaffino’s role in Zack’s murder to be another tall tale he was telling, trying to act like the tough guy he had always wanted to be. She had gone out with friends that night and picked up an early edition of the newspaper on her way home. As soon as she looked at the headline, the thought hit her:
He did it. John did it. Son of a gun. He really killed that guy.

What had given Christine cause for alarm? The events that led up to that day, she said. Zaffino showed up at her house, before the murder, asking if he could “talk.” He sat down. “I want to tell you that someone is looking for me,” he said with a serious effect. Christine wondered who. Why? What was going on? It was around the first of the year, 2001. “I was a bit pissed off,” she recalled later, that he was in her apartment to begin with. Their marriage was over. According to her version, Zaffino was a wife beater. She wanted nothing to do with him. But he wasn’t the type of guy she could just brush off. Ever since the split, she had moved from town to town trying to avoid him. But he always tracked her down. She knew he had met someone else, which was good. “A blonde,” he described the woman to Christine, “with money. Her name is Cindy.” But that was it. He went no further.

Zaffino continued talking. “The guy [that’s after me] is a white-haired Israeli. He’s looking for me because I beat the shit out of him in front of his posse. He knows who you are, too.” Then he said that “Ed George has something to do with this, so I want you to stay out of the Tangier.”

Christine figured out rather quickly that the woman her ex-husband was talking about had to be Cynthia George. But at that time, Christine believed Cynthia was Ed’s daughter—and thought for sure that the “white-haired” guy was also dating “Cindy.”

To Christine, Zaffino had always been a braggart; he liked to tell “stories” about himself. She never knew what to believe. But if the Israeli, as Zaffino put it, was out and about looking for him and also knew where she lived…“What the hell are you doing here?” Christine asked Zaffino in a panic. She didn’t want the guy after her, too.

“Get out of here,” Christine finally said as Zaffino carried on about the guy and how he had been going back and forth with him.

Zaffino ultimately left. Christine was glad to see him go. It was the first time she had heard about a white-haired Israeli who Zaffino claimed was causing problems for him.

Sometime later, she explained to Felber, Daugherty and the FBI, Zaffino showed up again. “Anyone looking for me?” he asked. “Anybody been around?” They were standing outside her apartment by Zaffino’s car.

“John, I’m through with this shit. Get out of here.” As she spoke, Christine noticed there was a gun holster on the seat of his car. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to it. “Is that for me?” she wondered out loud. More intimidation. Scare tactics. She thought Zaffino had brought the gun along to frighten her, same as he had in the past.

“No, no, no. That’s not for you,” Zaffino said, kind of laughing at the suggestion. Then he opened the car door, grabbed the gun and began waving it in front of her face. It was a handgun. A .38 caliber. Christine knew guns. She had grown up around them. Her father was an avid collector. She had target shot her entire life. She wasn’t some naïve female who had never seen or handled a handgun before and jumped back like a mouse was in the room at the sight of one. “I’ve been raised around guns,” she added.

After showing off his gun, Zaffino left.

Then the telephone calls started.

Reassessing the balance of power, Christine decided that she needed to move again. Zaffino had a handgun. He was a hot button and could snap, she believed, at any moment. She had to get away from him.

Not long after she moved, Zaffino found her. But not only did she believe Zaffino was “following her,” but it seemed everywhere she went—to clubs, bars—with her girlfriends, “the same two guys would appear.” One time, she confronted one of the guys inside a bar. “Don’t you think it’s strange that wherever I go,” she said in jest, “you guys are always in the same place?”

The guy shrugged.

“Aren’t you friends with Ed George?” Christine asked.

“I can’t stand Ed George,” the guy said.

Christine had put the Ed and Cynthia George connection together after being at Zaffino’s apartment one day picking up some of her belongings. The telephone rang while she was there. She glanced over at the caller ID while Zaffino was out of the room, and noticed the name “Cynthia George” on the little screen. By then, she had figured out that Cynthia was Ed’s wife. She had even written down Cynthia’s cell phone number (and later handed it to the CAPU).

As they sat and listened to Christine tell her story, Felber and Daugherty were interested. But part of Christine’s story seemed too perfect. Captain Daugherty was pessimistic. She had been a cop for twenty years. She had made captain in 2000, had been a lieutenant for five years prior to that, a sergeant for three years leading up to making lieutenant. She was skeptical about Christine Todaro.
Maybe she was involved in the entire plot,
Daugherty wondered.
Perhaps she had come in to score the best deal because the heat had been turned up
. “But,” Daugherty told me later, “we had Christine tell her story from beginning to end. Then we asked her to tell it backward. Then from the middle. And every time she told her story, it never wavered. It stayed the same, every detail. We knew then that she was telling the truth.”

Christine said later, “At first, I thought that maybe Ed George had chosen John and brought Cindy in and it was his plan to have John be the fall guy. But as I got to know the story better, I realized that it didn’t appear that Ed [George] knew John at all.”