Lethal Guardian (15 page)

With the blessing of his future wife, who was 100 percent behind him, by the end of November, John Gaul had accepted full responsibility of being Rebecca’s biological father. A blood test had recently confirmed there was 99 percent chance that John was the father. A family man, John wasn’t one to run away from things. If he was Rebecca’s natural father, he and his wife-to-be would begin taking responsibility and accept her into their hearts and home—which was exactly what the Carpenters had been hoping for all along.

Tricia had never met Beth Ann—that is, before she and John had subsequently met her and the rest of the Carpenter clan at the Groton Town Hall before the first hearing on Cynthia’s petition for custody. Both Tricia and John assumed the meeting and recent interest from Beth Ann and Cynthia in John’s being involved in Rebecca’s life was about child support payments. They had no idea that a fierce legal battle was mounting between families.

Tricia had undergone a hysterectomy sometime ago. It was a heartfelt blow to the couple, who had talked frequently about starting a family together. Tricia was a natural-born caretaker. Friends and family agreed she would make the ideal mother.

Not being able to bear children was something many women feared. Yet John had fathered a child out of wedlock some years before, and Rebecca was now thrust into their lives.

At first, John and Tricia were a “little torn as to what to do,” Tricia later said. They had been planning their wedding, and John now had a child in his life.

“It was scary and shocking, and you don’t know what to do,” Tricia recalled. “On the one hand, you know, [Rebecca was] just [two] years old…and we had not been in her life.” On the other, Tricia continued, she and John were operating under the assumption that Rebecca was being abused by Buzz. “And I wouldn’t leave any child in that situation.”

In the end, it was an opportunity for Tricia to have a child she could not have naturally—a chance to love a child unconditionally.

Since that day at the Groton Town Hall, Tricia and John were under the impression that Rebecca’s life with Buzz and Kim was “the most horrible situation you could imagine.” They were good people. They cared. Of course, they weren’t going to abandon Rebecca. If it meant setting aside their own plans, so be it. The child had to come first.

This naïveté, or perhaps just plain goodness, however, played right into the hand of the Carpenters.

When they arrived at town hall, Tricia and John saw Buzz, Kim, Beth Ann, Cynthia and Dick outside in the hallway. They weren’t together, but they were waiting separately to enter the hearing room.

Buzz went right up to John and asked him straight out to “terminate rights.” Buzz was having enough trouble fighting the Carpenters; he didn’t need John in the picture now.

“I want to adopt Rebecca,” Buzz said.

John didn’t answer one way or the other; he just took it in. After he talked with Buzz, Cynthia and Beth Ann and Dick sat down with John and Tricia and, after introducing themselves, began laying out their case.

Beth Ann specifically asked Tricia to make sure John didn’t terminate his rights.

“Why?” Tricia wanted to know.

“Because Buzz wants to adopt her!”

“Yeah, he told us that.”

“We’re trying to get custody. That’s why we’re here. You guys shouldn’t terminate rights.”

“That’s what we hear. But why?”

“Because Rebecca is being abused.”

As the hearing began, Tricia and John had to leave because they were not allowed in. Beth Ann, however, before walking into the hearing room, pledged to Tricia that she would be calling her soon. She had plenty more to talk about.

As the weeks passed, Beth Ann and Tricia began calling each other on a regular basis. For the most part, their conversations were about Rebecca. Beth Ann would continue to beat the drum for custody, alluding to the fact on each occasion that Rebecca was being abused by Buzz. Whenever something happened with the custody battle, Beth Ann would call and fill Tricia in. With all the ups and downs the case was bringing, Beth Ann used Tricia as a sounding board, bouncing things off her. By this time, Tricia had confided in Beth Ann that she couldn’t have kids of her own—and Beth Ann wasted little time using that to her advantage.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we got Rebecca, because you would have a child that was half John’s?” Beth Ann asked one day.

On another occasion, Beth Ann mentioned that if John and Tricia petitioned for “partial custody,” the Carpenters would “be able to see Rebecca more, and John and Tricia would be able to see her more.

“It would work out great for both of us,” Beth Ann insisted. “Because we would all get to spend more time with Rebecca and get her out of the situation she’s in.”

From almost her first day on the job at Haiman Clein’s law practice, Beth Ann began pleading her case incessantly regarding the custody battle her family had waged against Buzz and Kim. By the end of November, merely weeks after she had started working, there wasn’t a person in the office who hadn’t heard the entire story.

“My sister has a child,” Beth Ann explained to Clein one day. “My parents had gotten custody of her in the Ledyard Probate Court. There is some friction over the child between us and my sister’s future husband. His name is Buzz. Buzz Clinton.”

Clein, after that first conversation, said later he was under the impression that Beth Ann had custody of the child, not her parents.

“She was passionate. A bit overly concerned. Perhaps more than a sibling should be,” Clein thought then.

“My sister is even living over [at the Clintons’] now,” Beth Ann continued. “Buzz Clinton says they’re going to get married.”

“How is this Buzz?” Clein wanted to know.

“I’m afraid of his influence on my sister. She won’t be able to stand up to him and properly mother Rebecca.”

Her emotional state began to fluctuate. Some days, Beth Ann would come to work and tell Clein she had no idea what to do. She was scared that Buzz and Kim would gain permanent custody. At this time, the Carpenters didn’t have an attorney, and Beth Ann said she was handling all the legal matters for the family herself.

Clein thought it was odd. A conflict of interest was one thing, but the family—if conditions were as bad as Beth Ann had described—should have the best legal representation they could afford.

When Clein offered Beth Ann the job, he saw an eager, young law school graduate whom he could perhaps take under his wing and mentor. She lived nearby. She had good credentials.

She had no idea, of course, how corrupt and misguided Clein’s career in law had become. She saw a larger-than-life figure—someone she wanted to become herself, perhaps.

“She seemed like a good candidate for the job,” Clein later said. “She was licensed in New York and Connecticut and had been a merit finalist.”

By November, Beth Ann had her own office inside Clein’s stone building on State Street in New London—a place that was quickly becoming the epicenter of the fight for custody of Rebecca.

On November 18, a “Social Study for Removal of Guardianship” was prepared by Teresa Jenkins, a social worker for DCYS, and was issued to everyone involved. Basically, it was a family history for both sides, along with detailed legal matters pertaining to the case up until that point.

“To date, Kim has followed through with all of the aforementioned recommendations,” the report read.

Kim had kept her end of the bargain and attended all of the parental classes suggested by Judge Palm. The woman wanted her child back. She may not have been Carol Brady, but Kim was taking things seriously now. She was going to do whatever she had to do to get Rebecca back, and Buzz was right behind her every step of the way.

Still, the state recommended that “temporary custody [should] remain with [Cynthia Carpenter] for [an] additional thirty days [and that] Kim be involved in individual counseling on a regular basis [and that] Kim have full responsibility of Rebecca while in her care.

“Early intervention,” Jenkins wrote, “to be held at Kim’s residence. Visits between Kim and Rebecca to increase and to include weekends at Kim’s residence.”

Jenkins had visited the Clinton home and interviewed Buzz, Kim, Dee and Buck. She found no evidence that led her to believe Rebecca was being treated improperly or that the housing accommodations Buzz and Kim were living in were as bad as the Carpenters had described. Sure, they weren’t living in a ten-room estate, but Kim and Buzz were making a go of it, doing the best they could.

Jenkins was impartial. She could look at things from a bystander’s point of view and judge things on how they were, not on how Cynthia and Beth Ann or Kim had explained them. She had even visited the Carpenter home and interviewed Cynthia, Dick and Beth Ann and recalled later how Beth Ann “seemed to be the spokesperson for the family” during that interview. So it wasn’t just Buzz, Dee and Kim claiming that Beth Ann was taking control. In many ways, the state of Connecticut thought it to be true also.

The DCYS report allowed the Carpenters, for the first time, to get a complete look at Buzz’s plans. He had been enrolled at Vinal Tech, in Middletown, studying for his certification as a CNA, and according to what he had told Jenkins, he had expected to graduate in January 1993.

Buzz wasn’t going to be driving a tow truck much longer. He was going to be a nurse’s aide, something he had talked about for years.

What Buzz didn’t tell anybody at this time, however, was that he was planning on moving not just off the Clinton property after graduating and getting married, but he was shipping out to Arizona, where the Clintons had family, and Buzz had already set up a job for himself.

Buzz had done some research and found out that Arizona was one of the toughest states in the country for a grandparent to sue for custody of a grandchild. As Buzz and Kim saw it, they were going to get back custody of Rebecca, pack their bags and get as far away from the Carpenters as they could. And
nothing,
Buzz repeatedly told friends and family, was going to stop him from doing it.

By Thanksgiving, Judge Palm, now a bit more informed about the situation, laid out a detailed visitation schedule. The judge ordered dates and times for when Kim could pick Rebecca up and drop her off. The Carpenters were even instructed by the court that they, too, would have to drop Rebecca off at the Clinton house on certain dates—something they surely hadn’t planned on and were probably not looking forward to.

What was clear from the judge’s order was that, one way or another, the two families were going to have to make an effort to get along, if only for the sake of the child.

This would prove to be wishful thinking on the judge’s part. Because the Carpenters, perhaps fearing now that the court was leaning more toward giving Rebecca back to Kim and Buzz, were even harder to get along with. Plus, it was soon obvious that they were going to stop at nothing to smear Kim’s reputation.

On one occasion shortly after the court-ordered visitations began, Beth Ann and brother Richard called Dee and asked if they could come over for a chat.

According to Dee, when Beth Ann and Richard got to the door, Beth Ann asked Dee if they could come in for a moment. There were some things about Kim they wanted Dee to know—things no one had heard before.

A bit apprehensive, Dee agreed. Then she called Buck into the kitchen so they could all sit down and chat. Kim and Buzz knew about the meeting with Beth Ann and Richard, but Dee and Buck had asked them to leave so they wouldn’t be around when Beth Ann and Richard showed up.

“Kim is an unfit mother,” Dee remembered Beth Ann saying right away as the meeting got under way. “She’s a slut and whore…a negligent mother!”

Taken aback, but hardly surprised, Dee and Buck said nothing.

“She was in love with a sailor before Buzz,” Richard added, as if it were some sort of crime. “Did you know that?”

“She sleeps with everyone,” Beth Ann said. “Do all in your power to stop the relationship.”

The Clintons didn’t react one way or another as Beth Ann and Richard continued to rattle on about how bad a person Kim was.
So what,
Dee thought,
Kim and a sailor. Big deal. Buzz is no Prince Charming.

“I’m not going to get involved,” Dee finally said. She wasn’t about to begin telling her twenty-seven-year-old son how to manage his love life. “It was his business who he dated.”

“Come on, Richard,” Beth Ann said, grabbing him by the arm. “Let’s go! We are not going to get anywhere here.”

In a surprising move, during a December 15 hearing regarding which family would get custody of Rebecca, Kim and Buzz were awarded full custody. It wasn’t time to celebrate just yet, though. There were a few stipulations that went along with the order. Kim needed to continue to attend parenting classes and individual counseling, and she had to apply for parental aid. The state had certain programs set up to help single mothers, both financially and emotionally. It was strongly urged that Kim take advantage of them.

Kim had little trouble accepting the judge’s orders. After all, she was going to get her child back. It was time to rejoice and celebrate.

But there was one last stipulation that somewhat shocked Kim, Buzz and the Clintons. The judge made it a point to say that a visitation schedule needed to be set up between Rebecca and her “maternal grandparents.” Buzz and Kim would have to let the Carpenters see Rebecca one weekend a month. There was no way of getting around it. Cynthia and Dick were Rebecca’s grandparents. The court, understandably, agreed that no one should deny them the right to see her.

Regardless of what amounted to a minor setback, things were back on track. Point in fact: the state wouldn’t have given custody back to Kim if it wasn’t sure she could handle it, or thoroughly checked Buzz out. With all the talk of abuse on the Carpenters’ part, if the state had even an inkling that Buzz was a threat to Rebecca—physically, sexually or emotionally—Buzz and Kim likely would not have gotten custody back.

At first, Teresa Jenkins had recommended that Kim get temporary custody. After several more meetings with Kim and Buzz, she changed her mind.