A Bucks County woman was strangled and dismembered by her husband before he dumped her body, DA says
Stephen Capaldi was having an affair, prosecutors said, and Googled "how to get away with murder" in the weeks before his wife's killing.
Two days after Elizabeth Capaldi vanished from her Sellersville home, prosecutors said, her panicked daughter told her father she was going to call the police.
“Do what you think you have to do,” Stephen Capaldi responded, adding that he had no idea where she was.
That coldness betrayed what investigators say is the truth of Elizabeth Capaldi’s disappearance: Her husband strangled her, dismembered her corpse, and buried the remains in a makeshift grave near the Philadelphia International Airport.
On Thursday, Stephen Capaldi, 57, was charged with third-degree murder, abuse of corpse, tampering with physical evidence, and related offenses in his wife’s death. He remained in custody, denied bail.
Capaldi’s attorney, William Whitenack, did not return a request for comment.
Through a negotiated deal, Capaldi is expected to plead guilty to those crimes, and be sentenced early next year to 20-to-40 years in prison, Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub said at a news conference announcing Capaldi’s arrest.
In exchange for leading investigators to his wife’s remains, he avoided a more serious first-degree murder charge, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
“This negotiated resolution will now allow Beth Capaldi’s family to grieve on their own terms, knowing we did everything we could do to find her and bring her home,” Weintraub said, adding that the negotiation was made with the blessing of the victim’s family.
He said that the family wanted to thank the public for its “never-ending support,” but that they had declined to make a public statement and asked for privacy.
Capaldi was taken into custody late last week, and led county detectives to a secluded, wooded area on Hog Island near the airport, according to Weintraub. There, after hours of searching, investigators uncovered some of the remains of Capaldi’s missing wife.
The couple’s daughter had reported Elizabeth Capaldi missing on Oct. 12, after not hearing from her for some time. She told investigators her mother, rarely traveled alone, and wouldn’t do so without telling her. And although her mother’s wallet was missing, her vehicle remained parked at her home. Her cell phone and car keys also were left behind, as were other essentials her daughter said she wouldn’t travel without, like her overnight bag and makeup.
The last person to have reported seeing Elizabeth Capaldi alive was her husband, who told his daughter he hadn’t heard from her since Oct. 10. Capaldi also told her that $13,000 had been missing from their home.
As friends and family searched for Elizabeth Capaldi, local businesses put up fliers in the area around Sellersville, a suburban borough about an hour north of Philadelphia. Members of Facebook groups dedicated to finding her swelled to the thousands.
» READ MORE: Husband of missing Bucks County woman, Elizabeth ‘Beth’ Capaldi, is in police custody
During an initial conversation with Perkasie police officers who responded to his daughter’s missing-persons report, Capaldi said he believed his wife had left on her own accord to “prove a point,” according to the report of a grand jury impaneled to review the case.
He told the officers his wife was unhappy with their marriage, and had recently told him she was having an affair.
The grand jurors, in reviewing Capaldi’s statement, said they didn’t believe him.
Prosecutors said that instinct was correct. An examination of Capaldi’s phone turned up evidence that he was having an affair, and that in the weeks before his wife’s death he had Googled “how to get away with murder,” and looked up information on reciprocating saws.
Capaldi was subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury on Dec. 8, and “unraveled” during questioning, according to the grand jury report. And he failed a polygraph test in which he was asked about his wife’s murder, the grand jury said.
When confronted with this evidence, Capaldi admitted his guilt, prosecutors said, and brokered a deal.
He told investigators he had strangled his wife inside their bedroom on Oct. 10, and then took her body to their basement, where he dismembered it. In early November, he said, he took some of her remains to a dumpster at an apartment complex in Lansdale, and the rest to Hog Island.
Capaldi escorted investigators to Hog Island on Dec. 9, and, with the help of a cadaver dog, law enforcement officials recovered the remains.