Beyond Obsession (33 page)

He wrote it down in detail, a schedule of just how everything should go and how much time it ought to take. It went like this: He would go into the condo about one-thirty on Wednesday morning, after Joyce was asleep, and then with Karin's help, kill Joyce, either with the ammonia-bleach combination or by strangling her. It should take about ten minutes to kill her. Then he and Karin would carry Joyce's body out to the Volkswagen. Karin would return to the condo and clean up, wait twenty-four to thirty-six hours, then call the police to report her mother missing.

Dennis would drive away in the Volkswagen, Joyce's body in the back. At a prearranged rendezvous point he would meet up with a friend whom he would enlist to help him. They would drive in two separate cars to a remote section of the Bronx or perhaps Harlem, he wasn't sure which, clean all the evidence out of the car and then abandon it. Considering the normal pattern with abandoned cars in such areas of New York, it would be days, perhaps even weeks, before the body was discovered and identified; the car would probably be stripped before anyone thought to look inside and see what was in the back, and even if someone did while looting the car, it was doubtful if that person would call the police. Thus, by the time the body was discovered, it would be impossible to pinpoint with any degree of accuracy the date or time of death, so there would be nothing to implicate him, Karin or anyone in particular.

According to Dennis's timetable, the trip to New York, the ditching and cleaning the car of any evidence and the trip back ought to take something less than five hours, bringing him back to Glastonbury by seven in the morning, in time to go to work as though nothing had happened.

There was, of course, the necessity of recruiting someone to drive that second car. On Sunday he approached his friend Chris Wheatley, home for the summer from his premed studies. “He owed me one,” Dennis says, “because of what I'd done for him when he needed help with money.” He laid out for Wheatley the plan to kill Joyce as it was developing in his mind.

“What's in it for me?” Wheatley asked.

Dennis offered him a thousand dollars from Joyce's insurance, though he'd have to wait for it until the insurance companies paid up, and Wheatley could have whatever loose money might be lying around in Joyce's purse.

Wheatley didn't say yes, and he didn't say no. He told Dennis he would think about it and give an answer in a day or two.

On Tuesday, August 4, Dennis arrived home from work at the country club at midafternoon, expecting that Karin would be home and he would be hearing from her momentarily so they could discuss how they would implement the plan, which he now set for that night, and to fill her in on the final details as he had formulated them. When she called, at three thirty-six, it was not from home but from Rowayton. She was still there; she was going to be there another day. In the background he could hear Alex Markov moving around, talking. Dennis had a funny feeling, he said, that Alex was overhearing all their plans. He didn't like it, but he didn't know what to do about it.

Once again, during the conversation, which lasted about ten minutes, Karin told him that Joyce would have to go; there was no other way. But, she said, it would have to wait until Wednesday night. Joyce would not be getting to Glastonbury until very late that Tuesday, and Karin would still be in Rowayton and unable to help. He told her he had left a note for her between the sheets of her bed, telling her that he had come up with a nearly complete plan. If she wasn't going to be home, he was afraid Joyce might find it. She told him not to worry, Joyce would never look there.

At six-oh-six that evening Karin called again. Once more Dennis heard Alex Markov talking in the background. He wondered how Karin could be so open in her talk with Alex around. She had been thinking about what they were going to do, she told him, and she realized that she just couldn't be in the house when he killed her mother. She just couldn't be there. Since she was coming home the next morning, the murder would have to take place that night, Tuesday. He should do it and not worry about leaving anything behind; when she got home, she would clean the condo thoroughly so that when she did report Joyce missing a day later, if the police decided to search, there would be nothing for them to find. He should remember to take clothes to dress Joyce in. She shouldn't be found in her nightgown. That would tell everybody that she had been killed at home and then moved. If she was dressed, there would be no way of knowing where she was killed; it would be just as possible the cops would think that she had never reached home that night, that she had been waylaid someplace, killed and left. At the beginning of that conversation she was breathing heavily, and he heard Alex Markov in the background. He didn't think much of it at the time. Later he became convinced that they must have just finished making love when she called him.

It was essential now that he win Chris Wheatley's agreement to help. Otherwise there was simply no way he would be able to drive away with Joyce's body once he had killed her, leave it and her car far away and be back in time for work. He went looking for Wheatley and found him at Kira Lintner's house. He asked Wheatley to go for a ride. They got into Dennis's car and drove around Glastonbury. Dennis told him the murder was now definitely set for that night. He would need Wheatley. He wanted a commitment. Wheatley said he hadn't completely made up his mind. He would think about it and let Dennis know later that evening.

Dennis dropped Wheatley off at Kira Lintner's and drove back home. At seven-thirty he called Karin at the Markovs'. He told her he had talked to Chris Wheatley, but Chris hadn't made up his mind if he would help. It was vital, she said, that the plan be carried out as they had agreed; a body had to be found if she was going to collect the insurance. She said, “If you can't get Chris, then get your brother, get Matt to help.” He would try to get Wheatley, he said, and call her back later and let her know.

“I was determined to find somebody,” Dennis says, “anybody but Matt. But if I couldn't, if Chris hadn't agreed, I would have asked Matt. I wish I had. Because he wouldn't have. But I was desperate. I thought this was the only way I could save myself. If everyone had said no, this never would have happened. But everyone didn't say no.”

He went out to find Wheatley once more, to press him to make a decision. He found him, they went for another ride and this time Wheatley agreed. They drove around, looking for a place to buy some beer, couldn't find an open store and drove to the Coleman house in South Glastonbury to grab some beer from the refrigerator. They took a few cans; Wheatley carried them out to the car while Dennis called Karin. It was nine-oh-three.

It was on for that night, he told her. Wheatley had agreed to help, to drive the second car. All he needed to know now was when Joyce would be home.

She was already home, Karin said. They had talked an hour earlier, and Joyce had told her she was tired and was going to bed early.

Dennis went out to the car. He and Wheatley drove back to Kira Lintner's. She and another friend, Frank Manganaro, were there. Over the next few hours they sat around, drank beer, watched a couple of horror movies, including
Friday the 13th
.

About eleven-thirty, the movies over, the beer gone, Kira and Manganaro went off to try to buy a Garfield mug. Dennis and Wheatley discussed what would happen over the next hours. They agreed that Wheatley would pick Dennis up at the Coleman house about one in the morning.

Dennis left then. On his way home he stopped at a Wa-Wa convenience store and bought a pair of L'eggs panty hose, a black wig, work gloves, a box of plastic garbage bags and a pack of Marlboro cigarettes. He did not smoke. He began to smoke that night.

Once he was home, he burned the schedule he had written out. He changed into black pants, black shirt, black socks and shoes. He grabbed a black ski mask, a black hat, a pair of goggles and the box of plastic bags and put them in a duffel bag along with a change of clothes for later, for after. He wore all black, he later said, so that he would blend into the night darkness as he crossed lawns and entered the Aparo condo. The ski mask, the gloves, the goggles, the plastic bags all were a precaution against leaving any evidence behind in the condo, in case Karin didn't get around to cleaning as well as she should, and in Joyce's car. “I knew something about forensics,” he later explained. “It was a question of hair falling out, things like that, leaving traces of myself around. You can never be too careful.” He had learned about forensics, he said, when he read a book about the Atlanta child murders. “They eventually caught the guy who turned out to be the guilty party through forensics.” He put his duplicate key to the Aparo condo and the unwrapped panty hose in his pocket. He would now “do the deed.” There was no turning back. “That's the way it had to be. I thought it had to be done. She had put a tremendous amount of pressure on me. There was nothing, literally nothing I wouldn't have done for her. If I did the deed, there would be the insurance money, there would be the condo and I would be getting Karin.”

Then he waited. A little after one in the morning Wheatley drove up. In the car with him was Kira Lintner. “I was very upset when I saw her. Chris said he had told her what was going to happen. I don't know why, but she insisted on coming along.”

He got into the backseat of the car. Wheatley drove to Terry Brook Drive, a block from the condo, and parked. Dennis opened the duffel and removed the things he would need. As he did, they went over the final plans. He would be in the house about twenty minutes, he figured. It would take him that time to murder Joyce and then put her body in the backseat of her Volkswagen Jetta. Wheatley agreed to be outside the house about then, and they would start the trip down to the Bronx.

About one-twenty Dennis opened the car door and started away, toward Butternut Drive and the Aparo condo, dressed all in black, the ski mask over his head, the gloves covering his hands. He had decided against the hat and goggles and left them behind. Five minutes later he was at the front door. He put the duplicate key in the lock. There was some trouble with it. It was making what to him seemed like a terrible racket as he tried to turn it, and he was afraid the noise would wake Joyce.

At last the door swung open, and he entered the dark condo. He went into the living room and laid the box of garbage bags on the coffee table. He took off the ski mask; it was too hot, and he was sweating beneath it, the sweat dripping into his eyes and blinding him. He took the panty hose from his pocket and started into the bedroom. Joyce was lying on her back. He paused. “I was afraid she was awake and waiting, because people don't usually sleep on their backs. I was afraid she had heard me.”

Then he started forward. He could not stop. “It was like a time that didn't exist in my life,” he said. “It was as if it wasn't really me in the room, as if I was standing outside my body. It was surreal.” A psychiatrist later said, “If there had been a cop in the room at that moment and he had ordered Dennis to stop, he would not have stopped. The only thing that would have stopped him and prevented the murder was shooting him.”

As he neared the bed, Joyce suddenly woke and sat up. She shrank back in terror. “Please don't hurt me,” she gasped. “I have no money. Please don't hurt me.” Dennis doesn't think she recognized him. It was too dark in that room.

He pounced on her, wrapped the parity hose around her neck, twisted tighter and tighter, bracing himself with his knee on the bed. She began making gasping noises. “I was going shh, shh, shh. I was trying to quiet her. I didn't want a lot of noise.” He grabbed a pillow and put it over her face to deaden the sound. He kept losing his grip on the panty hose, regained it, twisting and strangling. His finger pained him; he was developing a blister on it from the pressure. “I thought about stopping, but it was past the point of no return. I wanted to stop, but I couldn't.”

At last she was dead. He looked at the digital clock beside her bed. It was one fifty-six. She might have been dead for several minutes by then. He had no way of knowing. All he knew was that it was 1:56, that the deed was done, and it had taken twenty-five minutes, far longer than he had estimated.

He was in a hurry now. He had to get the body off the bed, out of the condo and into the car. Chris would be waiting outside. They had a long drive ahead. He tugged her body off the bed, across the floor to the entrance to the kitchen. He went for the box of plastic bags, opened it, took out a bag and tried to slide her body into it. Her body slid right through. The bag was not strong enough to hold it. He gave up, went into the living room, took two afghans she had made and covered her with them.

He moved to the sliding glass windows facing onto Griswold Street and looked out, expecting to see Wheatley's car. It was not there. What he did see threw him into a panic. A police car was cruising slowly along the street. A moment later another police car appeared and moved past. The first police car reappeared, returning and passing. “I was flipping out. Chris wasn't there, and there were just those police cars. I didn't know what to do.” He had no way of knowing that police were all over the area, cruising back and forth along the streets, up and down the culs-de-sac. The cops were out in force to catch the cat burglar.

He grabbed Joyce's purse, pawed frantically through it until he found her car keys. He took them, went out the front door, relocked it behind him and raced into the parking lot and climbed behind the wheel of her car. For the next fifteen or twenty minutes he drove around the neighborhood, frantically searching for Wheatley. But Wheatley was nowhere to be found. Finally he drove back to the condo, parked the car on the street just outside and let himself back into the house.

In the living room, Joyce's body lying nearby, covered by the afghans, he reached for the telephone and called Kira Lintner's house. He figured Wheatley would be there. He wasn't. What happened? he asked. Why wasn't Chris outside the Aparo condo waiting for him, as he had promised?