04.Die.My.Love.2007 (11 page)

Still, Piper was adamant that Fred was abusing her, and she told police that Melody Foster “knew what was going on and could verify it.”

Before leaving the Kingsley subdivision, the police took the additional step of driving around the block and knocking on Melody’s door. When they told her why they were there and asked her if she’d ever seen any sign that Fred Jablin was physically abusive with his wife, she answered, “Absolutely not.”

“My impression was that the police thought the same thing I did, that Piper was unstable and making it all up,”

Melody would say years later. “They didn’t believe Fred had done anything to her.”

Increasingly, Melody worried about her back-door neighbor, seeing Piper as wound so tight she could easily snap.

That spring, when Mel asked Piper to help her line a chest with fabric, Piper agreed. But that day at Mel’s house, Piper was anxious, jittery, and tense. As Mel watched her warily, Piper popped two Adderall stimulant pills in her mouth.

Although she had her own prescription for the pills from Dr.

Welton, it appeared those weren’t enough.

“These are Joce’s,” Piper said. “Have you ever tried Adderall? They’re great.”

Having witnessed such chaos in the house, their parents’

marriage imploding before them, the Jablin children must have wondered what would happen next. On January 17, six days after the police were at their door, Jocelyn, by then an eleven-year-old with dark blond hair and glasses, told her therapist that the thing that would make her the saddest was DIE, MY LOVE / 79

if her parents divorced and lived apart. What would make her the happiest, she said, was to have her family remain intact.

“But that’s probably not going to happen,” she admitted.

The next day, Fred wrote Piper an e-mail at 8:43 in the morning. The subject was marked as “Everything.” It was a touching letter, in which he begged to keep their family together. “I realize that you and I are about as angry with each other as possible and that we are both hurting badly. First, despite all that’s happened, I still care very much about you . . . a candle of love still remains burning, although it appears on a trajectory to burn out. Second: I miss you.

Third: It is clear we have both failed one another in many respects . . . I guess I am looking for a miracle . . . You seem to believe in them and have noted that your life has never followed the norm . . . what my heart and soul seem to be telling me (or perhaps what you might consider my angel communicating with me) . . . I feel convinced that we are not working our problems out in the best manner.”

As the letter unfolded, Fred suggested they remain married yet stay in their separate bedrooms while they consult a marriage counselor. In the meantime, he promised to continue to look for a position in Texas. If he didn’t fi nd one, he offered to take a leave of absence from UR in July and move to Texas with Piper and the children, so that she could be closer to her family. “All of this may take some kind of miracle, but miracles do happen, especially if people want them to happen. My heart and soul keep reminding me not to forget this, and I hope yours do as well . . . Love, Fred.”

Whatever his intentions and Piper’s reaction, the relationship continued to falter. Two weeks later, on the eve ning of January 31, the police were called to Hearthglow Lane a second time. This time Fred met them at the door. “My wife’s acting strange, and she’s trying to take my kids away,” he said.

80 / Kathryn Casey

Once inside, the police found Piper agitated, complaining that Fred had the children in one of the bedrooms with the door locked and wouldn’t let them out. She’d told him she was leaving and wanted to take them with her, but he refused to let the children go. By the time the police left, they’d noted in their report pad that there were no signs of any physical aggression between the couple, and that they’d both promised to stay apart for the rest of the eve ning and talk the matter over in the morning.

On February 4, Fred and Piper’s feud smoldered. By then he’d discovered that she had intercepted his credit cards in the mail and driven up the family debt by an additional $20,000. At UR, Fred told Joanne Ciulla about Piper’s reckless spending. “He couldn’t understand what she was doing,” says Ciulla. “It was like he was still trying to make sense of it all. He kept asking why a mother would do such things.” Furious, Fred threatened to press charges against Piper for mail fraud.

The next day the madness continued. Piper took Jocelyn to an appointment with her surgeon, Dr. Gable, and then checked into a hotel with the children, calling Melody and telling her that she was afraid Fred would have her arrested as he’d threatened. Mel explained that it was unlikely that even if Fred pursued charges the police would become involved. Frantic, Piper appeared not to hear her.

Two days later Piper was still in hiding at the hotel, telling Melody that she expected the police to pick her up at any moment. When Piper called her psychiatrist, Welton, to cancel her appointment, she told him that she was afraid Fred might have police waiting to arrest her at his offi ce.

On her chart, Welton noted that Piper’s actions were “part of a pattern of chaos.” At this point in the therapy, he noted that Piper’s emotions were out of control, and he questioned her ability to use medication to control her mood swings.

That day, while Piper didn’t show up at Dr. Welton’s, she DIE, MY LOVE / 81

did walk into the Henrico County magistrate’s office to swear out a restraining order and an arrest warrant against her husband. On it she charged that on the night of the initial police call to the house, nearly a month earlier, Fred had been physically abusive. If Fred thought that he and Piper couldn’t have hurt each other any more than they already had, he didn’t anticipate what happened next.

Hours later police arrived on the University of Richmond campus and walked up to the imposing building that housed the Jepson Leadership School. Inside the heavy oak doors, they entered the hallowed corridors where such lofty concepts as morals and ethics were taught, with a warrant in their hands for the arrest of one of the institution’s most honored faculty members, a world-renowned expert in his fi eld, Professor Fredric M. Jablin. The charge was domestic violence. As Fred was confronted, arrested, and walked under police escort from the building, he hung his head, and his colleagues and students looked on in amazement.

Later that same afternoon, Melody’s phone rang. It was Fred. He sounded tired and embarrassed, and at the same time mystified, as if the unfolding drama couldn’t possibly be happening to him. With a restraining order in effect, he wasn’t allowed anywhere near Hearthglow Lane. Despite all he’d been through that day, including being booked at the police station, Fred remained calm. He asked Mel, who had a key, if she would retrieve his clothing and his allergy medicine from the house and bring him a suitcase. “Fred was stunned,” Mel would recall years later. “He said, ‘It’s like my life is turning into a bad Lifetime movie.’”

That afternoon, Fred moved into a Studio Plus motel a few miles from the university, and with Fred barred from Hearthglow, Piper and the children returned to the house.

Later it would seem that the die had been cast, and that the circumstances that would eventually lead to tragedy were falling in place. There was no denying that Piper Rountree 82 / Kathryn Casey

and Fred Jablin were becoming increasingly involved in what would become a destructive game of strategy, control, and revenge, and their children would soon become the bat-tleground.

“It was beginning to look like that movie,
The War of the
Roses
,” says a friend. “They were both out for blood.”

On March 11, Fred, accompanied by an attorney, went before a juvenile court judge asking for an emergency hearing.

Fred argued that the children were unsafe with Piper and asked for temporary custody. The judge, after listening to the evidence, agreed.

When Piper found out, she was fuming. The next day she retaliated by returning to the magistrate’s office to swear out a second warrant for his arrest, again on a charge of domestic violence. This time, while Fred was maneuvering through the system, trying to be released, Piper used some of the $7,000 in moving expenses she’d prepaid on Fred’s credit card and took what she wanted from the house, including the master bedroom and dining room furniture, an antique pottery set, and Fred’s mother’s piano, pearls, and wedding ring. She then moved into a town house on Castile Place, a short drive away, but didn’t tell Fred.

Despite the growing cloud of anger forming around them, Fred was not ready to give up on the marriage. He called, begging Piper to take him back and re unite the family, if not for their sakes, for the sake of the children. “Even once Fred understood the scope of it, he didn’t know what to do,” says Melody. “He loved Piper. As crazy as it was, he loved her.”

Piper refused.

Perhaps reluctantly, on March 16, Fred instructed his attorney to file for divorce on the grounds of desertion. In the paperwork, he said he saw no possibility of reconciliation.

That day, with Piper gone and living in her town house, the judge lifted the restraining order, allowing Fred to move back DIE, MY LOVE / 83

into the house on Hearthglow Lane and again ruling that Fred had temporary custody of all three children. From that day on the battle lines were clearly drawn, directly through the hearts and minds of Jocelyn, Paxton, and Callie.

On one hand, the three children had a father intent on making sure they were safe. And after years of watching Piper grapple with motherhood, Fred had come to the conclusion that his wife could be dangerous. “Fred saw Piper as irrational and too distracted to be responsible for the children,” says Daly. “He saw the credit card bills as a violation of trust, and feared she’d run off with the children and simply disappear.”

At the same time, Piper envisioned herself as an exceptional parent, the very essence of motherhood. She would never, could never, give the children up willingly, for they constituted everything she believed about herself. “My children always came first to me,” says Piper, with such emotion that her hands begin to shake. “If I’d wanted to, I was inca-pable of giving them up. Why would I? It was in their best interests to be with me. I was their world and they were mine.”

Ironically, just as Fred’s private life dissolved around him, his professional life again surged forward. That month, the dean of the Jepson School was forced out, and Fred was tapped as acting dean. The job came with a $30,000 raise, one sorely needed with the court’s order that he pay Piper $1,167 a month in temporary support. At home, Fred hired Ana, a petite, dark-haired woman from Brazil, to be the children’s nanny. She was a gentle person, and they quickly grew to love her as a part of the family, but that wouldn’t mean that any of their lives would take on any semblance of normalcy.

There was no denying that Piper was angry and hurt, and the rest of the Rountree family, especially Tina, was furious.

“It’s all they talked about,” says Terry. “The Rountrees 84 / Kathryn Casey

couldn’t believe that Piper didn’t have her children. To them, it was simply impossible.”

That spring, 2001, Piper filed a cross-complaint, asking for her own divorce, and charging Fred with cruelty, both verbal and physical abuse. She asked the judge for joint custody. “I was born to be a mother,” she’d say later. “It was in my blood. He had no right to take my children from me.

Absolutely no right.”

Fred didn’t agree. As he’d habitually read and familiar-ized himself with the work in his fi eld, he now studied Virginia’s divorce laws, determined to make sure his attorney did everything possible to ensure that he retained custody.

Toward that end, in April, Fred’s attorney subpoenaed Piper’s medical rec ords, including those of her sessions with her therapist, Dr. Welton. In response, Piper’s attorney fi led a motion to quash Fred’s subpoena, to prevent such potentially damaging material from being used against her.

The bad news kept coming. As the school year drew to a close, Piper took the children out of school for a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains, hiking with Tina. What galled Fred was that Piper did it on the day Jocelyn and Paxton were scheduled to take the Standards of Learning tests, Virginia’s statewide standardized assessment tests that they had to pass to be promoted to the next grade. “Why would she do that? She’s their mother. Shouldn’t she know better?” he asked.

As much as he’d loved Piper, as dedicated as he’d been to her, her erratic behavior was chipping away at the last rem-nants of his attachment to her.

If Fred had any doubt that the marriage was over, that ended on June 8. For months he’d speculated that Piper was involved in an affair. That day he had his suspicions confirmed. “Fred discovered that Piper was having an affair with Jocelyn’s doctor,” says John Daly. “It’s true that Fred had his rules, but normally he forgave people who broke DIE, MY LOVE / 85

them. He rarely got angry. Instead, he’d try to help people, convince them that there was a better way to do things. But adultery, that was the biggest rule of all, and Piper had broken it. Not only that, but she took their children to spend time with this man. That, Fred couldn’t forgive. He was as dedicated to the children as he’d ever been to Piper, and he was determined to protect them from her. That’s when the real war began.”

8

Fred wanted to go after Piper’s lover,” says Melody. “He threatened to file complaints with the medical board and try to take away his medical license. As he saw it, the doctor had violated a trust, and he wanted revenge.”

The revelations kept coming throughout the summer of 2001, when Fred learned, in February, that Piper had been with Gable at Kingsmill Resort, a classy spa just outside Colonial Williamsburg, and in Toronto with him at the end of April. Even more damning in Fred’s eyes, Piper had taken all three children on their dates, hiking, roller skating, and out to dinner. As angry as Fred was—and he was livid—he also appeared mystified by what seemed a bizarre turn of events: The doctor was thin with an angular face, a slightly built, balding Jewish man.