04.Die.My.Love.2007 (12 page)

“The strange thing is that this guy looks just like me.

Piper left me for a man who looks enough like me to be my brother. Why would she do that?” he asked.

Mel had no answers.

At UR, Fred cornered his colleagues in the hallways and their offices, again detailing the odd turn of events in his life. When he pigeonholed one of them, he’d talk for upward of an hour, dissecting the dissolution of his marriage, trying out ideas on them, and asking for advice. “I’ve seen this doctor and he looks a lot like me,” he told Joanne Ciulla one afternoon. “Can you believe that?”

DIE, MY LOVE / 87

Amazed, Ciulla began laughing. Despite all he’d been through, Fred smiled, then caught up in the absurdity of it all, laughed with her.

Yet, Fred Jablin never truly saw the situation as funny.

Instead, he described the affair as even more evidence of his wife’s instability. Piper was acting without bounds, he said, not thinking of their children’s needs, and that was something he couldn’t tolerate. “Fred saw the affair as even more reason why he needed to have custody of the children,” says Mel. “It made him determined to win in court.”

At home, he shored up the fortress he was building around his children, to protect them from their own mother. Throughout the eighteen years of his marriage to Piper, Fred had rarely attended synagogue, and they’d celebrated both Christian and Jewish holidays. With her out of his life, he returned to the religion of his childhood, seeking the strong foundation his faith offered. That summer he signed the children up for religious classes at Congregation Beth Ahabah, in downtown Richmond. In an impressive stone and brick structure with classic columns, the synagogue, founded in 1789, was the oldest in Virginia and the sixth in the nation. Outside, a plaque read: “What doth the Lord require of thee: Justice—

Mercy—Humility. Micah 6:8.”

To get through this heartbreak in their lives, Fred relied on religion, friends, and family. His brother Michael lived just outside Washington, D.C., with his wife Elizabeth and their two children. After the split, Fred and Michael talked each Sunday on the phone, and on holidays Fred traveled to visit him with the children. That year Fred wrote a new will, and Michael became Jocelyn, Paxton, and Callie’s guardian in the event of Fred’s death. If something happened to him, Fred didn’t want Piper to have control of the children or their money. And he did worry about something happening to him: As a precaution, he had a security system installed on the house. In what had to have been a sad 88 / Kathryn Casey

task, he talked with the children about their mother, explaining that Piper was unstable and that he feared she would take them and disappear. After many such conversations, he told friends he’d grown to believe that Jocelyn and Paxton understood and would watch out for themselves, but he worried about Callie. “Fred saw her as vulnerable,” says Mel. “He understood how troubled Piper was, and he feared she could become dangerous. He didn’t know what she might do.”

Fred’s anxiety grew when he heard from Dr. Gable’s wife, Elaine. She, too, had learned of the affair, and she suspected Piper was behind something odd that had happened. One day when Elaine went to her mailbox, she opened it and found what appeared to be a snake. Her heart pounding, she slammed it shut. Only later did she learn that the snake was a rubber toy. Elaine didn’t interpret the scare as an innocent prank but as a threat, and she told Fred that she felt certain Piper was responsible.

Meanwhile, Piper acted as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She dated Gable, introducing him to friends, and telling many that she thought he was “the one.” That the physician was wealthy with a thriving practice probably didn’t diminish his appeal.

Rather than looking for work, Piper concentrated on her art.

That summer, like cities across America, Richmond spon-sored an art exhibit by local artists. Chicago had cows, Houston long-horned steers, and Richmond chose a large, preformed resin and polyurethane Atlantic striped bass, and its exhibit was called “Go Fish!” Artists throughout the community volunteered, and Piper was among them. She spent much of that summer in a friend’s garage, working on the project.

When the kids came for visitation, they helped. In the end,
Soul Rays,
as she named her bass, was painted in blocks of vivid color, with a black fin. Sponsored by Noah’s Children, a DIE, MY LOVE / 89

children’s hospice, Piper’s fish took its inspiration from children in grief counseling. Inside glass blocks, inserted like scales, she preserved the children’s memories and thoughts, in their own words. A red rose inside one block was dedicated to a dead mother who’d loved flowers. Sand preserved a young girl’s memories of a deceased sister who’d taken her to the beach.

One of
Soul Rays
’s glass scales would later haunt those who noticed it. The boy it was dedicated to was identifi ed only as Ryan, age sixteen. Scrawled across the glass in black marker Piper had written: “I miss my dad because he shot himself.” Inside that block was a small grave with a tomb-stone marked R.I.P., and suspended in the glass was an empty brass cartridge, from a fi red bullet.

Fred and the children were at the beach house in North Carolina on July 1, when Piper arrived at the Hearthglow house at 2:43 in the morning. Later she’d claim she’d come to visit the family pets, her much-loved cats, ferrets, and dogs. The new security system horn bellowed when she opened the door, and police responded. When Fred was contacted by the offi -

cers, he told them to arrest Piper for trespassing. They refused, saying the house was in both their names and that there was no court order barring her from entering it. When he returned home, he’d later say, more of their possessions were missing, including the Kiddush Cup he’d inherited from his parents, a Jewish ceremonial cup used in Sabbath celebrations.

That afternoon, twelve hours after leaving Hearthglow Lane, Piper sent an e-mail to a friend in which she mused about her relationship with Gable, saying that he was trying to “reconnect” with his wife. She joked about the alarm incident of the night before, laughing that she set the alarm off two more times when she let the cats out, gleeful that Fred could be billed for the police responding.

90 / Kathryn Casey

“I’m trying to stay inside to avoid falling comets,” she wrote.

That night, the friend responded, writing: “A man can not have two real bitches in his life at the same time.” It seemed to predict that the doctor could not tolerate his wife and Piper simultaneously.

With the battle over custody intensifying, Piper hired a new attorney, and so did Fred. He chose Susanne Shilling, a well-known Richmond divorce lawyer who officed in a converted house not far from the historic St. John’s church.

Shilling, known as an expert in custody cases, sat down to talk with him and heard his story. Fred would later tell a friend that he instructed Shilling to proceed as quickly and as aggressively as possible, to ensure that he win custody of the children. The day after Piper’s late night visit to Hearthglow, Shilling began her assault, redrawing Fred’s divorce petition, changing the grounds from desertion to adultery.

The stress must have been incredible that spring and summer. Most neighbors would say they never saw Fred Jablin lose his temper, but one day Annie Williams, Jocelyn’s soccer coach, gave her a ride home when no one showed up to pick her up from practice. When the Hearthglow house was dark and deserted, Williams wanted to leave a note on the door to tell Fred where Jocelyn was and take her home with her. The twelve-year-old became fearful, crying and insisting she was supposed to go inside and wait. Just then Fred drove up. He was livid, shouting at Williams, “What are you doing with my child?”

Although Williams assured him that everything was fi ne, that she was just giving Jocelyn a ride home, Fred continued to fume, “No, it’s not fi ne.”

Stunned at his reaction, Williams pointed out that she had done the responsible thing when no one had come for Jocelyn after soccer practice. Williams then offered to give Joc-DIE, MY LOVE / 91

elyn rides home from future practices, believing it would help Fred, who’d been struggling to balance work with the children’s needs. He turned her down, defensively saying,

“Never mind. I’ve got it covered.”

Williams had seen Piper looking glazed, like she was on heavy medication, and Jocelyn’s soccer coach left the Jablin house that day worried about the children, concerned that neither of their parents were in the frame of mind to raise them.

Yet, others in the neighborhood experienced a very different Fred that year. They saw him biking and throwing the ball around in the front yard, laughing and playing with the children. Fred had always been single-minded. Now that Piper was gone, he focused his attention on the children, as he’d once focused on her.

In the court system, the Jablin divorce was assigned to Judge Catherine Hammond, a

middle-aged woman with short,

windblown blond- brown hair. She appointed a guardian
ad
litem
for the three children, a woman named Donna Berkeley. Fashioned under old English law, in Virginia divorces were handled in two parts. The first, overseen by Berkeley and Hammond, would consider the children’s custody. The second part of the process would distribute assets, and for that Hammond appointed Edwin Bischoff, a commissioner of the court.

There was a lot to lose for both Piper and Fred: not only custody of their children, but their money and property as well. Yet, in hindsight, it seemed that Piper wasn’t concerned. In fact, she appeared indifferent to the pending divorce case, as if her actions were immune to scrutiny.

Throughout the summer, Fred received e-mails forwarded to him through others and coming directly from Piper. It was odd. She was an attorney, a bright woman, yet she wrote to friends and copied everyone on her list. Sometimes the 92 / Kathryn Casey

material was potentially damaging to her bid to reclaim the children, like on June 8, when an old friend from Texas e-mailed, asking Piper to ask her angels where her lost dog could be found. Piper replied with obtuse advice: “Seeking is what is not necessary. Listening is the key.”

At times she was flippant, like the day she e-mailed nearly everyone in her address book—including Fred and Paxton—

with an idea for a new type of computer joystick, suggesting it could be used for sexual gratification. At other times she was mournful, lamenting the new sadness in her life, as on June 13, when she e-mailed her family and friends. The subject: “Night Moans.” In the body of the e-mail she wrote:

“Crying myself to sleep missing my babies.” She complained that Fred had dragged a sick Callie to Jocelyn’s piano con-cert. She said when she arrived, Callie wanted to sit on her lap. “I lean so heavily on Paxton for strength and love . . . and he me,” she wrote.

At the same time, e-mails flew back and forth between Fred and Piper, in which she chastised him for interfering with her visitation when he called the children at her apartment. Their relationship worsened, and the plans to hand off the children to one another for visitation became increasingly complicated. Once, Piper picked up the children from swimming lessons to take them to an afternoon with her paramour. Fred was furious.

On July 18, as the tension mounted, Fred filed a petition with the court, this time asking not for joint custody, as he and Piper had discussed in the past, but for full custody. His reasons: Piper’s erratic behavior, including her bouts with depression, her inappropriateness with the children, and her contention that she spoke to angels. To back him up, he produced copies of her e-mails. Fred also claimed in the petition that Piper had falsely charged him with domestic violence.

By then the charges against him had been dismissed when Piper failed to appear at a hearing. Fred contended that the DIE, MY LOVE / 93

entire episode had been a ruse. He charged that she had sworn out the warrant simply so she could “loot” the Hearthglow house while he was in jail.

“The children are suffering, confused by their mother’s behavior,” Shilling argued for Fred in the petition.

The night the petition was filed, police again responded to 1515 Hearthglow Lane, while Fred and the children were at the beach house. This time the locks had been changed, and Piper broke a garage and a kitchen window to get inside.

Again police called Fred and advised him that there were no orders on file to prevent her from entering the house. When Fred talked to one of his old graduate students, he described Piper, a woman he’d once dearly loved, a woman who’d once loved him, as evil.

“She’s trying to take advantage of everything she can,” he complained. “She’s totally unscrupulous.”

At times Fred walked through the backyard gate over to the Fosters, as Piper had once regularly done, to watch the children play and talk to Mel. She listened sympathetically as he lamented the turn of events that had changed his life.

He worried that the divorce judge wouldn’t clearly see Piper.

In the courtroom, he complained, she appeared professional, a lawyer and mother concerned about her children, but while she had the children, she seemed oblivious to their needs and their safety. Like the time she allowed Callie and one of the older children to cross a busy four-lane road near the apartment, to go to a convenience store. Word spread of Piper’s reckless behavior, and some of Paxton’s friend’s mothers were so concerned about their children being with Piper that before they’d allow them to stay overnight with Paxton, they called Fred to make sure the children wouldn’t be going to Piper’s apartment.

During one of her talks with Fred, Mel admitted that she and other neighbors had seen signs that Piper was troubled going way back, and she told Fred of the rumors that Piper 94 / Kathryn Casey

had affairs with some of the young men she played tennis with at the club.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Fred asked.

“We all thought you knew or didn’t want to know,” she said. “If we’d told you, would you have believed us?”