If Looks Could Kill (24 page)

As Christine Todaro told her story to the CAPU, it was clear that, over the course of the past year, John Zaffino had waged a careful campaign to get her involved in the murder of Jeff Zack. Some sort of “If I go down, so do you” scenario. Zaffino, she said, had taken all of his guns and ammunition and given them to her, asking her to hold on to them. What was she supposed to do? The guns were in her name. Of course she had to take them. As time went on after the murder, Christine became bolder and carried on like a detective, trying to figure out how and why Zaffino had murdered Zack. But not so she could run to the police—more so she could protect her own interests. “I was
not
going to go to jail for that guy.”

So when Christine saw the newspaper on the night of Zack’s murder and stared at a photograph of Jeff Zack accompanying the article, everything Zaffino had said began to make sense. “I didn’t even have to read the article,” she recalled. “I went through it all in my mind. I knew that John had told me that [someone] had bought him a motorcycle. I recalled the ‘white-haired Israeli’ comment John had made to me…the fact that this guy was bothering John and John said he had beaten the shit out of him ‘in front of his posse.’ I had seen John with that handgun. I knew what the guy looked like.”

It all added up to murder. She felt Zaffino wasn’t bragging this time; he had actually killed someone.

On top of it all, there was another comment Zaffino had made to Christine later on that further confirmed her theory. While talking to Zaffino one night on the telephone, asking him about the guy who was supposedly bothering him, Zaffino, in his condescending, coldhearted voice, told her not to worry about it anymore. There was no need to be on edge about the guy.

“Why not?” Christine asked.

“He is going to have a hard time parting his hair from now on,” Zaffino said coldly.

When she heard those words come out of Zaffino’s mouth, Christine took it as a yes, she told Beth Daugherty and Vince Felber. “To me, that was a yes.”

Detectives from the CAPU wondered what had stopped Christine from coming forward sooner? When they looked at it on paper, it seemed convenient that in walked the answers to a murder case that had baffled the CAPU for a year. It was hard for some members of the unit to get around why Christine had waited so long. “Fear,” she said. “[John] has been threatening me the whole entire time.”

“Have you ever [seen] John on a motorcycle?”

“I never saw the motorcycle or him on it,” she said later. “Like I had said, he used the motorcycle as a weapon.” In other words, he was a soon-to-be ex-husband. “He was bragging [to me] about all the things that his ‘new girlfriend’ was doing for him.” Then another key statement: “New clothes, money, motorcycle, cell phones, new residence.” According to Christine, which she later testified to in court, John Zaffino’s girlfriend, Cynthia George, had bought him a motorcycle and he bragged to her about it.

The CAPU had its most interesting—if not compelling—witness thus far. It had taken upward of a year, but it seemed the case had just taken a major turn.

“Are you willing to work with us?” Dave Whiddon asked Christine at some point. “Maybe wear a wire and record conversations with John Zaffino?”

Christine thought about it. What else could she do? She was in up to her neck at this point. “Yes,” she said, “I think I can do that.”

The CAPU had some serious work ahead of them. Before dragging John Zaffino in, detectives needed to learn as much as they could about him. Christine Todaro was going to help. But setting her up with a wire and recording device for her telephone was going to take time. It had to be done in the normal course of Christine’s relationship with Zaffino. She couldn’t go running to him now asking questions about the white-haired Israeli if she and Zaffino hadn’t talked about it in some time. It would seem too suspicious.

Once the CAPU had some information about Zaffino, be it from Christine or other sources, questioning him would be more productive—maybe they could even gather enough evidence to make an arrest. It wasn’t hard to get a rap sheet on Zaffino. Lieutenant Whiddon and Vince Felber asked Carrie Stoll, the CAPU’s true ambassador of the most tiresome jobs in the office, to come up with a complete printout on Zaffino, while they continued working on setting Christine up with the recording devices she needed, as well as briefing her on what to do.

Meanwhile, on June 13, 2002, Summit County investigator Dan Kovein, who worked for the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office, called the CAPU and explained to Vince Felber that one of the two addresses Summit County had for John Zaffino must be wrong. Felber had heard that Kovein’s daughter had lived at one of the addresses, so he put in a call to the investigator to ask him about it. Kovein said his daughter had lived there the previous year. But they came to find out, she had lived in apartment number 1603. Zaffino lived next door in 1602. After talking to his daughter, Kovein said she remembered Zaffino fairly well.

He had a “sporty” motorcycle. “She saw him frequently,” Kovein told Felber, “with a blond—very skinny—girlfriend.”

The following day, Felber drove out to South Akron, the last known address of John Zaffino. Along the way, Felber couldn’t help but notice Zaffino’s apartment was a straight shot down Route 8 from the Home Avenue BJ’s. On a good day, without any traffic, it was maybe a ten-minute drive. Certainly a lot quicker on a Ninja motorcycle.

Felber stopped at the manager’s office and found out Zaffino had been living at the address in June 2001 and had signed a rental agreement for the place back in August 2000. He listed one employer—himself—on the agreement. Zaffino had a son, twelve years old then, who had stayed with him on weekends from time to time, the office manager told him.

“What can you tell us about Mr. Zaffino?” Felber asked, looking down at Zaffino’s application.

“Aggressive,” she said. “Annoying. Yeah.” She shook her head.

“You ever see him with anyone, or riding a motorcycle?” Felber asked.

“No, I don’t recall.”

What was interesting, Felber noticed, was that on the rental agreement, where it asked a potential renter to supply what person the management office should contact in case of an emergency, Zaffino had written “Cindy Rohr.” He also gave a telephone number where Cynthia could be reached, but failed to put her address or any other personal information.

Interesting development. Here was evidence that John Zaffino and Cynthia George knew each other.

From the office, Felber drove out to the address to see if any of Zaffino’s neighbors remembered him. The apartment was quite nice. It looked like a condo from the outside and the landscaping on the property had been kept up: pricey shrubs, delicate golf course–like grass, a gorgeous common pool area, new asphalt driveway. Tidy and moneyed. Looking at the place, knowing a bit about Zaffino’s background, Felber found it hard to place him there. His reputation didn’t fit with the style and resident list—a bar-brawling truck driver, he seemed out of his element.

One neighbor had trouble recalling Zaffino, but after some time to reflect, remembered him having “two motorcycles” and hanging out with a “female who drove a dark pickup.” The daughter of another neighbor remembered Zaffino as a “well-built guy who owned a motorcycle…had a blond female visitor who had long hair, but then cut it short….” A woman down a few units remembered Zaffino well. “He owned a motorcycle,” she said. “He spent a lot of time with a female friend who spent a lot of time talking on a cell phone. She was sickly thin, blond, close to [fifty] years old but looked a lot younger. She drove a dark gray Suburban with a bike rack.”

“How can you be sure it was a Suburban?” Felber asked. The woman seemed so certain about the vehicle. Felber knew the Georges owned the same type of vehicle.

“I’m familiar with those types of SUVs,” she said. “The blond woman never stayed overnight. She would show up and then they would leave together.”

“She ever have kids with her?”

“No, I never saw any—and I never said hi or anything like that.”

The neighbor had been friendly with Zaffino; she said she believed he worked at an electroplating company. “I remember when he moved out. I spoke to him. He said he was moving in with the blonde…a house with a
lot
of land.”

“You think you’d recognize the woman and the Suburban from a photo?”

“Certainly.”

When Felber returned to the CAPU, that same neighbor called him. She had spoken to another neighbor she knew fairly well and they had come up with a description of the motorcycle they believed Zaffino drove. “Light green and dark purple or black.”

“Thanks,” Felber said. “If you recall anything else, call me back.”

Felber gave the information to Captain Beth Daugherty. “That’s good,” she said. Bertina King was standing in Daugherty’s office with Felber. Looking up at them from her desk, Daugherty said, “You and Bertina get over there as soon as you can and reinterview that neighbor. Get her on tape.”

Felber and King drove back out to the woman’s apartment. They had six photographs, one of which was Cynthia George. Felber brought a new digital recorder with him, but had trouble getting it to work. Regardless, it didn’t change what the woman had to say, at least according to Felber’s report and a second recording he made with the woman a few days later.

When Felber asked her to describe Zaffino, she said, “He wore a motorcycle helmet which was full-faced and had a very dark face shield. I remember this because he used to wave to me while pulling in on his bike…and I didn’t realize it was him until [after he took it off].”

After going through the photograph lineup, the woman eliminated five of the photos rather quickly, stopping at Cynthia’s, saying, “This
could
be her. I’m not positive, you know, because this woman has a ponytail and I never saw that woman he was with, with a ponytail. This woman in the photograph here looks heavier, too. But I
think
it’s her.”

She recalled the woman with Zaffino as being so skinny that she could have “worn kids clothes…maybe eighty pounds, she weighed.” But a detail that couldn’t be overlooked was that Zaffino’s blond girlfriend, the neighbor remembered, had a Starbucks coffee mug in a holder in her Suburban.

How could she recall such an odd detail?

She used to park next to the SUV and, while walking by, had seen it.

“I saw John kiss her on the mouth once, a good-bye kiss or something.”

“Tell me about Zaffino,” Bertina King asked.

“He was egotistical and conceited, annoying. He wouldn’t shut up. He told me this story once about accidentally sucking his pet bird up into a shop vac.”

“You have any idea where he went?”

“Him and his son packed everything up one day into his pickup truck and just left. Haven’t seen him since.”

Detective John Bell located the address of forty-year-old Frank Roppolo, Christine Todaro’s ex-boyfriend. The CAPU had heard Roppolo was connected to Christine and wanted to talk to him. Some within the unit felt Christine was a tricky character. There was a feeling maybe she had information she still wasn’t sharing. If so, how well could she be trusted? Detective Mike Shaeffer had his misgivings about Christine from the get-go. “I never trust a snitch,” he said later. “Essentially, whether it helped us or not, she was snitching on someone.”

Early on, the question of whether Christine was involved in hiding evidence and obstructing justice was still on the table. She hadn’t proven herself yet. All she did was tell her side of the story.

Regardless, a circumstantial—if not rough—connection to Jeff Zack was being made: John Zaffino was looking more and more like the link between Ed George and Jeff Zack. Still, how did it all fit together? Had Cynthia broken it off with Jeff Zack to go out with John Zaffino? Apparently, from the evidence thus far, Cynthia was dating Zack and Zaffino at the same time, a fact that would be confirmed in court later. Had Zaffino and Cynthia actually been lovers? It was the only part of the puzzle that didn’t quite make sense. Whereas Jeff Zack was a ladies’ man—a good-looking, well-kempt man—John Zaffino, when investigators took a hard look at him, seemed like an unlikely candidate for Cynthia George’s affection. Zaffino was a “thug,” several detectives later said. A short, chubby, gangster wannabe. He wasn’t the type of guy you’d expect to see on the arm of the adorable, lovely Cynthia George, wife of a very wealthy man, who had lived a life of distinction. It was no secret Cynthia liked her men rough around the edges, but John Zaffino?

“The question for us became,” a detective working the case later remarked, “how did Cynthia George end up with John Zaffino? He wasn’t her type by any means.”

The CAPU, if it wanted to build a case against John Zaffino, was going to have to make that connection.

“Keep looking,” Dave Whiddon told his unit. “The answers are out there somewhere.”

On the one hand, the case seemed to be opening up. Christine Todaro was aboard. She was planning on recording Zaffino. On the other, it was almost as if the CAPU was back to square one again, chasing something that was probably never going to materialize into an arrest.

Detective John Bell and a colleague arrived at Frank Roppolo’s house in downtown Akron one afternoon during the second week of June. Roppolo, a cabdriver, wasn’t home, but his mother invited Bell and his partner into the house. Mrs. Roppolo said she was concerned for her son. Was he in trouble? Under arrest?

“No, ma’am,” said Bell, “we’re looking to talk to him about a police report he had filed [sometime ago]. How can we reach him?”

Roppolo had filed a report about Zaffino. It was during a period when Zaffino believed Roppolo and Christine were seeing each other (which they weren’t). Even though Christine pleaded with Zaffino to believe her, Zaffino couldn’t let it go. Roppolo had a truck parked in Christine’s yard. Zaffino trashed it one afternoon, bashing the vehicle with rocks in an act of rage—trying to warn Roppolo to stay away from Christine. In the end, Roppolo had to total the vehicle with his insurance company. He was livid at Zaffino—but also quite unnerved by the entire episode, scared of what Zaffino was obviously capable of doing. “It got to the point,” Roppolo told me later, “where I [was scared Zaffino would] kill me and my son….”

Based on the police report Roppolo filed, Bell and his partner were elected by Captain Daugherty to find out exactly what happened, and also find out if Roppolo had heard from Zaffino lately. Was there still any animosity between them?

“Is this about the shooting?” Roppolo’s mother asked.

Both detectives looked at each other. “Which shooting?” They hadn’t mentioned anything about a shooting.

“The one at BJ’s?” Mrs. Roppolo offered, according to Bell’s report of the interview.

“Yes, we’re interested in that incident, too.”

The woman moved slowly. She was obviously in some pain and told the detectives that she had recently suffered a stroke. It was one of the reasons why she had a “tough time” remembering things, but she promised to do the best she could.

“That’s OK, ma’am, take your time.”

“I do remember the shooting at BJ’s.”

Bell asked if she knew Christine Todaro. “Sure. But she’s
bad
news.”

“How can we find Frank?” Bell asked.

“He’ll be home around four-thirty,” she said. “He’s working. I’ll call him.”

While Mrs. Roppolo was dialing her son’s cell phone number, the detectives heard a car pull up outside. It was Frank. Both detectives walked outside to greet him as he got out of his taxicab.

In the report Roppolo had filed with the police, he stated that he believed Zaffino and Christine Todaro were suspects in the murder of Jeff Zack.

They stood in the parking lot talking. Roppolo said, “He [Zaffino] threatens to beat me up all the time. He’s even threatened to kill me. I’m afraid of him. He said he’d come after me with a gun.”

The detectives wanted to know how well Roppolo knew Christine. Why was Zaffino so interested in making his and Christine’s lives so miserable? Had they all been friends at one time and hung out together? What was it that sparked the hatred Zaffino had for Roppolo?

Roppolo said he was Christine’s boyfriend at one time, for many years before she met Zaffino; and after they broke up, they remained good friends. Once she met Zaffino, however, things changed.

“Tell us about Christine,” Bell said.

“I’ll tell you that she told me once John Zaffino admitted to her that he was the one who killed Jeff Zack. I told her I didn’t want to know anything about it. I know the type of person John is. Christine and I are in danger if we talk about it.” It was surely the reason why Christine, when the CAPU approached her, hadn’t mentioned anything about Zaffino killing Jeff Zack, but then decided to go to the APD and tell them her entire story. “I believe her…simply because she’s so deathly afraid of John.”

Roppolo made a point to explain that if Christine had come forward and said
anything,
knowing that she would eventually have to talk to the cops, thereby putting her life at even more risk than it already was, it spoke of her integrity. Beyond revenge, what motive was there for Christine to lie about such a thing and then, when the cops finally asked her about it, not mention anything significant? If she wanted to sell out Zaffino, she had every opportunity to do so. That alone, at least in Roppolo’s view, meant she was being truthful.

Roppolo went on to say Christine acted strange whenever he brought up the subject with her, like she didn’t want it mentioned anymore. Adding, “John thinks he’s above the law, as if the world revolves around him.”

It wasn’t smart standing there in the driveway talking. Someone in the neighborhood might see them and put two and two together. Heck, if Zaffino was after Roppolo, he might even drive by the house himself. The last thing Roppolo wanted was word to get back to Zaffino that he had spoken to the cops.

So they walked inside.

Standing, Roppolo continued to speak. “Christine told me that the shooting was a hit, a murder for hire. Zaffino, she said, has been doing ‘things’ for the Georges…. This is why she is so scared—from not only John, but the people that hired him.”

By Roppolo’s estimate, Zaffino was someone people on the street feared; a point man, a strong arm for more powerful players. “If you beat John up, he will keep coming after you…. He’s definitely the type to just walk right up to somebody and shoot them. Listen, I don’t want to get involved in this.”

Bell looked at his partner. They were thinking the same thing.
It was too damn late for that now.

“I’m still good friends with Christine,” Roppolo continued, “and I’ll protect her to the end. But I will say this—she’s not telling you guys everything she knows. I’ll try calling her later and get some more info for you. If I get anything, I’ll call.”

Roppolo tried calling Christine that night, but couldn’t get hold of her. So he swung by her apartment. Her car was in the driveway. Once inside, Roppolo learned that Christine hadn’t been answering her telephone because she was frightened it might be Zaffino and she didn’t want to face him. She had a feeling he knew she had spoken to the police. Roppolo noticed she was pacing the room, fidgeting with things, chain-smoking cigarettes. He’d never seen her so nervous. Zaffino had gotten into her head. Under her skin. Changed her entire demeanor. The master intimidator. In many ways, Zaffino was still controlling her.

“It’s OK,” Roppolo promised. “It’ll be all right.” Even though they hadn’t dated in some time, Roppolo still cared deeply for Christine.

“It’s
not
all right,” Christine raged. Just then, the telephone rang. “Shhh,” she said, as if the person calling could hear them talking, “that’s John. I know it is.”

“You don’t
know
that.”

Christine was anxious, Roppolo later told police. She was mumbling. The telephone rang three different times while he was there. She believed it was Zaffino each time. (It wasn’t, though. Detectives later told Roppolo they had been trying to contact her for another interview.)

As the telephone rang, Christine told Roppolo to be quiet. Then, “John cannot know you are here.”

When Christine heard from Roppolo that detectives been over at his house to speak with him, she was furious.
How dare they put me in danger like that
. If Zaffino ever found out that cops were over there talking to Roppolo, he’d put it all together. She couldn’t believe that after she had gone into the APD and told them all she knew, and agreed to wear a wire, that they would still send detectives over to Roppolo’s house to talk to him. “They didn’t know then if Frank and John were friends or not,” Christine said later. “They could have been sending a message to John that I was talking to them.”

Scared, Frank Roppolo left Christine’s apartment and drove straight to the APD.