Killer lawyer Thomas Capano dies in cell

UNLIKE Anne Marie Fahey, he had the chance to die naturally.

Thomas Capano, 61, a once-prominent Delaware lawyer who was serving a life sentence for killing his mistress 15 years ago, was found dead yesterday in his prison cell. Foul play is not suspected.

In 1996, Capano shot Fahey, scheduling secretary for then-Gov. Tom Carper, after she tried to end an affair with him. The crime, its coverup and Capano's trial, conviction and seemingly endless appeals have captured headlines for years.

"Given that he never atoned for his sins, he never admitted he was guilty and he ruined many people's lives, my guess is that he went straight to hell, and that's where he belongs," said Robert Fahey, Anne Marie's older brother, who called Capano's death "long overdue."

The last reported sighting of Fahey, then 30, was in June 1996, when she had dinner with Capano at Philadelphia's Ristorante Panorama. She has never been found.

Police initially treated her disappearance as a missing-person case, but Capano quickly became a suspect after friends and acquaintances told investigators that Fahey feared Capano, who had stalked and threatened her as she'd sought to end their three-year relationship.

Police also found Fahey's diary, which included the entry, "I finally have brought closure to Tom Capano. . . . What a controlling, manipulative, insecure, jealous maniac."

After more than a year of investigation, police arrested Capano and charged him with Fahey's murder. They said he had killed Fahey in his home, then packed her body in a cooler and dumped it at sea from his brother's boat.

Capano, a married father of four teenage daughters, admitted packing and dumping Fahey's body, but said the death was an accident. He claimed that a second mistress had discovered him and Fahey together at his home and, in a rage, pulled a gun and threatened suicide. When he tried to get the gun, it went off, a bullet striking Fahey, Capano said.

The second mistress, a former administrator at a prestigious private school who said she had been Capano's lover for 18 years, denied being at Capano's house that night. She also said that Capano had asked her to buy him a gun in May 1996, then asked her to lie about doing it.

Capano's two brothers, Gerard and Louis, admitted they had helped their brother cover up the crime. Gerard Capano testified that he took his brother in his boat 60 miles off the New Jersey coast to dump the body and shot the cooler to try to make it sink.

Louis Capano admitted that he helped his brother dispose of a couch containing Fahey's blood, Fahey's nightgown and other personal items in his company's trash bins.

Both brothers pleaded guilty to related federal charges and testified against Thomas Capano in exchange for leniency. Gerard was put on probation for three years; Louis was sentenced to a year of probation.

Thomas Capano was sentenced to death for Fahey's murder in 1999, but that sentence was overturned by the state Supreme Court in 2006.

- The Associated Press

contributed to this report.