Beyond Obsession (39 page)

Still, he got some unexpected help in spreading the word and preparing the public at large for what was to come. The evening before Zaccaro's appearance, this writer appeared on a local television news show. The show's producer asked if I had heard the rumors about Whealon and Joyce. I had. She asked if I might find some way to air them. She and a lot of others, she said, were very tired of the way the newspapers and television and radio stations were hushing this thing up. It was time to get the stories into the open and let Whealon or others have the opportunity to respond. During the program I responded to a question by saying I had heard the rumors from a great many people and had no way of knowing if they were true, but to me the importance lay not in whether they were true but in the effect such stories told to her by her mother must have had on Karin Aparo all through her life. There was, naturally, an immediate and angry response, a torrent of phone calls to the station from outraged listeners. Santos, though, was not upset. The next morning he had a wink and a broad smile when he saw me.

On the fourth day of testimony, at just before three in the afternoon, Dennis Coleman was called to the witness stand. The courtroom was packed. Among the spectators was Dennis's brother, Matt, who had left Connecticut within hours of Dennis's sentencing and gone to the West Coast and had recently returned. With him was Margaret, proclaiming that she and Dennis were now engaged and planning to marry if and when the state gave them permission. There were crowds lined up outside the entrance hoping for a seat, hoping that someone would leave so they could enter.

Dennis Coleman was much changed from the moment at the end of November, when he was marched out of a nearby courtroom to go to prison. The six months had not been good to him. His hair was longer and fuller. He had grown a mustache, red like his hair, perhaps in an effort to make himself look older. It didn't help. He had put on weight, had filled out some, but there was a puffiness, a flabbiness about his face. And his eyes were lifeless, devoid of anything. He was wearing a white shirt, open at the neck, and black pants, gathered at the cuffs. He was imprisoned now not at the maximum security facility in Somers but at the correctional center in Hartford a few miles from the courthouse, a jail used mainly to house prisoners waiting for trial, waiting for sentence, waiting to be sent somewhere more permanent, serving short terms. He had been moved in anticipation of his testimony, to have him at easier access to the courthouse than Somers, nearly an hour's drive to the north. But he had been moved for another reason. He wrote to a friend a few weeks after his arrival at Somers that things were not as bad as he had expected. The other convicts were pretty much leaving him alone, he was not being hassled and he expected that it would work out. He was wrong. He was different from most of the other prisoners. For one thing, he was white; for another, he was middle-class; for yet another, his had not been a crime growing out of poverty, out of need. Within a few more weeks he was the target of the other convicts, particularly the hard-core, violence-prone inmates. He was assaulted and beaten, for reasons known only to those who beat him. His arm was broken. He was battered. And then he was threatened. The word spread that he was going to testify for the state against Karin Aparo. It mattered not that he had good reason to testify against her. By testifying, the reasoning held, he was siding with the state, and at Somers it was always us against them, the cons against the state. He was, then, a traitor or worse. If he testified, he was told, he would be killed. So he was moved to Hartford, for the state's convenience and for his protection.

He entered the courtroom with his wrists overlapped in front of him, as though he were manacled. Karin watched him from the moment he appeared through a side door. She could not take her eyes off him. He glanced at her, then quickly looked away. Over the next hours, as she stared at him, he looked at her and then away in a moment. Their eyes rarely met.

He was on the witness stand for five days. He had been coached well by Reese Norris and Jim Thomas, and he told his story—from his meeting with Karin through the murder of Joyce and beyond—fluently and, it seemed to most observers, with conviction and convincingly, though in a voice rarely tinged with emotion. As he came to the moment of the murder, as he described how he strangled Joyce Aparo, Karin began to weep. There was a brief recess so she could gather herself. Then, as he picked up the details and proceeded through them, she put her head on the defense table, and her body shook with deep sobs. There was another recess. (Later, when the jury, during deliberations, asked for this testimony to be reread, she broke down again at those precise points.)

“Why,” Thomas asked as he concluded his direct examination, “are you testifying against Karin?”

“I had my story to tell,” Dennis said. “It was the right thing to do, considering all the circumstances.”

“Have your feelings toward Karin changed?”

“Yes, but not in a single day.”

“What are your feelings toward her now?”

“Well,” Dennis said, “for a long time after I'd been found out …” He shook his head, not finishing his thought. Then: “Today, more or less my feelings are apathy, not hate.”

It was Hubert Santos's turn at him now. Santos struck in a dozen different directions. He asked about the deal Dennis made with the state so that his sentence would be reduced from a possible eighty years to thirty-four. “And the board of pardons can reduce that sentence to whatever it wants, correct?”

“I believe so,” Dennis said.

“And you can appeal to the board of pardons to have that sentence reduced after you serve four years, and you can make such appeals every year after that, isn't that right?”

“Yes.”

“And you intend to do that.”

“I most certainly do.”

Santos turned in another direction. “Do you believe in God?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever tell people that you were an agnostic?”

“Yes. Many people. That was true at the time. It's not true anymore.”

“And when did you find God?”

“In January.”

Dennis did not say how he found belief then, nor did Santos ask. Santos's point was to say that if Dennis did not believe in God, then his oath to tell the truth, “so help me God,” was meaningless.

“Why,” Santos asked, a question to which he returned again and again, “did you murder Joyce Aparo?”

“There were many, many reasons. It all really comes down to that Karin said it had to be done.”

“Was that the sole reason?”

“There were many factors. But it all comes to that.”

“She asked you to do it?”

“No, she begged me.”

“There was no other reason? What about the life insurance?”

“The life insurance was not my concern. That was Karin's reason. We were going to split the money and live in the condo. But the insurance had nothing to do with my motivation.”

“When you murdered Joyce Aparo, did you have suicidal thoughts?”

“They were not suicidal thoughts. They provided an alternative. The choice was suicide or murder.”

“Was it a cold-blooded murder?”

“No. It was not cold-blooded. It was a crime of passion. It was for Karin and for life. It was not against Joyce. I liked Joyce Aparo.”

“Did you ever express a dislike of Joyce Aparo to Karin?”

“I may have.”

“Did you ever tell Karin that you considered her mother unstable?”

“Yes.”

“That you considered her self-centered?”

“Yes.”

“That you considered her ignorant?”

“Yes.”

“That you considered her close-minded?”

“Yes.”

“What opinion did she have of you?”

“I don't know. She never expressed anything to me but a good opinion. All I knew about what she felt was told to me by Karin.”

“Did you go out with Joyce Aparo socially in the summer of 1987 when Karin was in Rowayton?”

“Occasionally.”

“Did you have conversations with her? And did those conversations center around Karin?”

“Mostly about Karin, yes.”

“Did she tell you that Karin was having a good time in her relationship with the Markov family?”

“She may have.”

“What did they center on, these conversations?”

“Karin's future, mainly.”

“Did that future include you?”

“No.”

“Did it bother you that Karin was with Alex Markov?”

“Yes, it did.”

“Did you have a good time when you were with Mrs. Aparo?”

“Yes. It was pleasant.”

Santos turned to the reason why Dennis had finally agreed in September 1987 to cooperate with the police and tell his story about Karin's involvement. “Is it not the real reason that you decided to cooperate because you looked at Karin's last diary entry and then you were informed that she wanted to get rid of both you and her mother? When you heard that, you wanted to kill yourself?”

“Yes, briefly.”

“And kill Karin?”

“Yes, briefly.”

“On August third, you went into the Aparo condo?”

“Yes.”

“Did you go into Karin's room?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see pictures on her dresser?”

“Yes.”

“Of her with Alex Markov?”

“Some with, some without.”

“You knew that she kept diaries and papers in her bedside table in a drawer. You opened the drawer and held the diary. You read it, and you learned the number of times she had sex with Alex Markov. Isn't that true?”

“I did not read the diary.”

“Well, were you read the last page of the diary before you agreed to cooperate?”

“Portions of it.”

“What part?”

“That she had sex with Alex Markov twenty-six times.”

“And you said you murdered Joyce Aparo out of love for Karin?”

“Yes.”

Just what kind of love Dennis had for Karin was Santos's next tack. “You were in love with her throughout the relationship?”

“Yes.”

“Was the act of tying her to the bed with nylons and having sex with her love?”

“It was love and passion.”

“You tied both arms to the top of the bed and her legs to the bottom and then had sex. This was love?”

“It was love and passion.”

“Did you buy a pair of handcuffs?”

“Yes.”

“And did you drill holes in your bed and attach one set of handcuffs to the holes and the other to her wrists?”

“Yes.”

“And this was an act of love?”

“It was an act of passion.”

“Did you buy a metal dildo to have sex with Karin?”

“Yes.”

“And this was an act of love?”

Dennis turned bright red. “I'm trying to recall the circumstances” was all he could say.

“Was it love to ask Karin to write you obscene letters?”

“I don't recall asking her to do that.”

Santos grilled Dennis for more than two hours about various letters of late July and early August 1986, demanding that he put precise dates on them since most of them were undated. The questioning went back and forth, Dennis uncertain about which letters came first or second or third, becoming more and more lost and confused, and the spectators and jurors becoming just as confused. (Later Matt Coleman commented, “I learned one thing listening to all that. I'm never going to write a letter again without putting a date on it.”)

Finally, when Judge Corrigan tried to put a stop to it, asking, “Is there a point to be made in all this?” Santos's answer brought down the wrath of the court.

“The point,” he replied, “is that the witness is lying.”

Corrigan was furious. He glared at Santos. “You are out of order, Mr. Santos,” he raged. “You are not to characterize the witness's testimony. The court is not interested in your opinions, and they have no place in a court of law. Another outburst like that, and this court will be forced to take some action.”

Santos bowed his head. “I apologize, Your Honor,” he said meekly. But he had made the point he wanted to make.

Now Santos wanted to know whether Karin really had the kind of influence over Dennis that he said she had, really had that overwhelming effect on him. “You were not eating, you were not sleeping, you were not feeling well, you were walking around like a zombie, isn't that what you said? What did you mean by that, feeling like a zombie?”

“I meant basically that my life revolved around her and she was removing herself from my life. There was no way I could resist doing whatever she asked.”

“If she asked you to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you have done that?”

“No.”

“If she asked you to go to Washington and kill the President, would you have done that?”

“No.”

“If she had asked you to kill your mother, would you have done that?”

“No. There would have been no point in doing any of those things.”

“But you say she asked you to kill her mother and you did that.”

“Yes.”

There was not an area of Dennis's testimony that Santos did not probe, not try to impeach with questions that were often rambling and confusing, not just to Dennis but to the spectators and the judge as well, who broke in more than once to wonder just where Santos was going.

There was even the inevitable question about the Catholic Church and the immediate objection from Thomas, sustained by Corrigan.

When Dennis Coleman finally left the stand, most of those who had listened to those five days of testimony, to all the cross-examination by Hubert Santos seemed to think he had made a credible witness, that he had borne up well under the intense strafing from the defense counsel, that there had been little hesitation in saying he couldn't remember precise dates and times of letters and phone calls, even some events and that he had inflicted major, perhaps fatal, damage to the defendant.