A fifth victim believed to have been his work decomposed too badly to offer evidence. Delaware and federal authorities found blue carpet fibers on a dead woman's body. A police officer, posing as a prostitute, was able to collect matching fibers from his van.
Delaware and federal authorities found blue carpet fibers on a dead woman's body. A police officer, posing as a prostitute, was able to collect matching fibers from his van. Pennell pleaded guilty to killing two of the women and pleaded no contest in two other cases. His one condition for the pleas was that Delaware execute him for the crimes.
In January 2006, the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed Capano's conviction but remanded the case for sentencing because the death penalty was imposed by a non-unanimous jury verdict. In February of that year, the state abandoned its efforts to seek capital punishment, opting to leave Capano imprisoned for life without parole.
A woman's broken body in a cooler thrown into the ocean, a newlywed couple gunned down by mercenaries, chocolates mailed to Dover with deadly intent — in Delaware the most violent killings have remained the most memorable. They've spawned books, made-for-TV movies and, in one case, even a walking tour through parts of Dover.
Capano died of a heart attack on Sept. 19, 2011, at age 61 at the Vaughn Correctional Center near Smyrna, where he was serving the life sentence.
September 19, 2011Thomas Capano / Date of death
At age 49, he was convicted of murder and received a sentence of death. It was later overturned. Capano died in his sleep in the evening of Sept. 19, 2011 at a prison near Smyrna where he was serving a life sentence.
Gov. Tom CarperSunday morning the jury found Capano, then 49, guilty of the first-degree murder of 30-year-old Fahey, a scheduling secretary for then-Gov. Tom Carper.
Levy disappeared in May 2001, and her body was found in Rock Creek Park about a year later.
Dec. 21: Capano testifies Fahey died when a gun MacIntyre was holding accidentally discharged after MacIntryre burst into his house and found Fahey there with him. He says he buried Fahey at sea to protect himself and MacIntyre.
State Government "Delaware became a state on June 15, 1776,..." on September 11, 1776, at a special constitutional convention,... Delaware enacted the Delaware Declaration of Rights...
The trial. During the trial, Connolly, the young, unflappable federal prosecutor who led the investigation, endured Capano's intense hatred, which included verbal attacks. At one point, Capano had even planned to put a hit on him. Judge William Swain Lee sentenced Capano to death. It was later overturned.
Judge William Swain Lee could not talk to the media during the trial or for years after. But the judge, now retired, shared several never-heard-before nuggets about the Capano trial in a November 2017 interview with The News Journal.
Judge William Swain Lee sentenced Capano to death. It was later overturned. Capano died of a heart attack on Sept. 19, 2011, at age 61 at the Vaughn Correctional Center near Smyrna, where he was serving the life sentence.
After a night dining out in Philadelphia, Capano apparently shot Fahey at his rented home in Wilmington's Highlands neighborhood and jammed her body into a cooler. Capano's two brothers Louis and Gerry helped him get rid of evidence and later testified against him.
When the cooler wouldn't sink after firing a bullet into it, Tom Capano then dumped Fahey's body into the Atlantic Ocean. The cooler floated away and was later found by fishermen.
Capano also said he had wrapped her body in a cotton blanket. Lee, who was just a few inches shorter and weighed about the same as Fahey, agreed to climb into the 3-foot-8-inch hard-plastic cooler. Lee, who left her high heels on to compensate for Fahey's height, wanted to see if a body would fit.
Former News Journal reporter Valerie Helmbreck in the summer of 1996 received a phone call at her Hockessin home from Tom Capano. Helmbreck had been working on stories about Fahey for weeks and calls to Capano’s lawyers asking for interviews had gone nowhere.
On January 17, 1999, the jury convicted Capano of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to death by lethal injection . In January 2006, the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed Capano's conviction but remanded the case for sentencing because the death penalty was imposed by a non-unanimous jury verdict.
Several books were written about the case, including And Never Let Her Go: Thomas Capano: The Deadly Seducer by Ann Rule, The Summer Wind: Thomas Capano and the Murder of Anne Marie Fahey by George Anastasia, and Fatal Embrace: The Inside Story of the Thomas Capano/Anne Marie Fahey Murder Case by Chris Barrish and Peter Meyer. In 2001, a television movie based on Rule's book was made, And Never Let Her Go, starring Mark Harmon as Capano and Kathryn Morris as Fahey.
The highly publicized case went to trial on October 26, 1998, and lasted twelve weeks. The defense claimed that MacIntyre had burst into Capano's room and, in a jealous rage upon seeing Capano and Fahey engaged in intimacy, had threatened to shoot herself; as Capano and MacIntyre were wrestling for the gun, it discharged and killed Fahey. On January 17, 1999, the jury convicted Capano of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to death by lethal injection .
Vaughn Correctional Center state prison near Smyrna, Delaware. The medical examiner determined that Capano died of sudden cardiac arrest.
In February of that year, the state abandoned its efforts to seek capital punishment, opting to leave Capano imprisoned for life without parole. In April 2008, the U.S. District Court rejected Capano's habeas corpus petition, and on September 2, 2008, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed.
He became an affluent lawyer, state prosecutor, Wilmington city attorney, legal counsel to Governor Mike Castle, and political consultant, well known in Delaware's political circles.
Lovers, murder and madness: Revisit Delaware's most sensational killings. Murder reveals the darkest part of our imaginations. A woman's broken body in a cooler thrown into the ocean, a newlywed couple gunned down by mercenaries, chocolates mailed to Dover with deadly intent — in Delaware the most violent killings have remained the most memorable.
Steven Brian Pennell. On March 14, 1992, the state of Delaware killed Steven Brian Pennell. It was the first state execution in 45 years. It was the fate Pennell asked for himself. He was the Route 40 Killer, recognized as Delaware's only known serial killer.
Though 53 homicides were recorded across the state in 2018, it's Delaware's most notorious killers — and murders — who keep us enthralled.
He testified against his co-defendants. A jury found Rivers guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, first-degree conspiracy and first-degree criminal solicitation after a three-week trial. He received two life sentences for the crime.
Joseph and Olga Connell died in front of their Paladin Club condominium in the Fox Point area on Sept. 22, 2013. They were gunned down by killers for hire doing the grisly bidding of Chris Rivers. The newlyweds were celebrating Olga Connell's 39th birthday, which they'd spent on the Wilmington Riverfront.
Capano retrieved the cooler, wrapped anchor chains around Fahey's body, puked and sent Fahey back into the sea. Gerry Capano testified he saw her foot sink below the waves. The murder trial was a national spectacle. Capano died in prison in 2011.
Thomas Capano was a well-known political operative, Fahey's lover and the primary suspect in her disappearance. He was the last known person to see Fahey alive. By the end of his trial in 1999, the details were revealed. Capano was convicted.
The last person who saw her was a squirrel hunter who told police that he seen the woman talking to another hunter. Detectives made public a composite of that unknown hunter. A month after the murder, police accused the squirrel hunter of killing Prichard, citing inconsistencies in his statements to police.
Before he went to trial, the case fell apart and the charges against the squirrel hunter were dropped in August 1987. DNA tests on a hair found at the crime scene proved he could not have been the killer. By that time police investigating the case had conducted more than 300 interviews.
I was flabbergasted,” brother Keith Prichard, 59, of Maryland, told the News Journal. Campers found the body near a trail. Jane Marie Prichard had gone to the state park as part of her thesis research for her master’s degree in biology from the University of Maryland.