Lethal Guardian (11 page)

Shortly after birth, Rebecca had been diagnosed with several problems. Most prominently, she was having trouble with speech and motor skills. Kim had been diagnosed years earlier with phenylketonuria (PKU) disease, a genetic blood disorder that required a strict diet. The family was worried that Rebecca would end up with it, too. She was constantly fidgeting with her fingers, putting them in her mouth, chewing on them, and she seemed not to be able to concentrate entirely on what she was doing.

By this time, Beth Ann had a bigger problem on her hands that had little to do with her niece, however. By the end of the summer, after failing the New York bar exam, she was forced to make a decision. If she wanted to become a lawyer, she would have to hunker down, study and take the exam again. There would be no time to spend with Rebecca.

So beginning in October 1990, for four months, Beth Ann studied between twelve and thirteen hours a day, mostly at the Connecticut College Law Library, in New Haven, and the local Ledyard Dunkin’ Donuts when the library was closed. This time around, she vowed not only to pass the New York bar exam, but Connecticut’s, too.

By February 1991, she made good on her promise and passed both exams.

Passing the bar exam in two states was one thing, but finding a job in what had become a tight job market since she’d graduated was another. Armed with excellent scores from the bar exam, Beth Ann began sending out hundreds of applications and answered ads in all the local law publications. After about a month, she realized that test scores and determination weren’t necessarily enough to secure a job as a lawyer. In the course of about two months, she could schedule only three interviews.

Nobody seemed to want someone fresh out of law school, with little experience.

By the end of 1991, Beth Ann had such a stranglehold on Joseph Jebran and his feelings that he was signing over his paychecks to her and sending them back to Connecticut. When she got her hands on the money, she would pay his bills, pay her bills and send Joseph a stipend to live off while he worked in the city during the week. As for the rest of the money, Joseph and others later claimed, she used it to live in the lap of luxury, driving around town in a BMW, a car for which, in fact, Joseph had traded in his own vehicle as a down payment.

Nevertheless, Joseph was still in the dark as to how Beth Ann viewed the relationship. Yes, he would take her on expensive cruises and out to elaborate downtown dinners, buying her anything she wanted. But he still wasn’t sure how she felt about him. It seemed hot and cold. In one of the many cards Jebran sent Beth Ann throughout the years, his confusion over how the relationship progressed was evident.

“You’re the one I want to turn to,” he wrote, “when I want to talk about my most important joys and my most private problems.” He went on to say that he didn’t really know if they were “in the same place…emotionally and physically….” Ending the brief card, Jebran wrote that he loved her and knew they were always together, if nothing else, in “spirit.”

Later, in a card Joseph gave Beth Ann for her graduation, he wrote in a large font: “I LOVE YOU.” He called her “beautiful, elegant, honest.” He wrote her poems: “When things are chaotic, I wish you inner silence / When things look empty, I wish you hope / When pockets are empty, I wish you win the
LOTTO
…” He had underlined Lotto, and, perhaps developing an understanding of how Beth Ann was using him for his money, he finished the Lotto line with, “So you don’t buther [sic] me.”

According to Cynthia and Beth Ann Carpenter, Kim was anything but an ideal mother, daughter or sibling. Since the latter part of her high-school years, Kim’s life proceeded in a downward spiral that seemed to get worse around every corner. The only difference now was that Kim had a child to care for, Rebecca, who had turned two shortly after Kim had met Buzz in 1992.

By the time Kim had met Buzz, the Carpenters were saying that Rebecca was being neglected horribly. Kim would have to make some changes, or the family was going to have to step up and take charge. They were tired of Kim’s lack of responsibility. Rebecca needed a mother, she needed special attention. Kim just wasn’t giving it to her.

“[My parents],” Beth Ann later said, “had problems with my sister her whole life. She has PKU. It’s phenylketonuria. It’s a genetic disorder disease where you lack the enzyme in your blood to digest protein. It leads to mental retardation, cognitive problems and sexual promiscuity. Because she came off the diet, her IQ was lowered to seventy…. She was a constant source of problems for my parents through her life [and] high school.”

PKU is an inherited disease. It can, if left untreated, cause mental retardation in adults. Kim was at risk, certainly. A person with PKU, however, can lead an otherwise normal life as long as she takes proper care of herself—obviously something the Carpenters felt Kim wasn’t doing. The best treatment is a diet devoid of high protein foods: meat, fish, poultry, etc. Victims of the disease generally take an expensive synthetic formula to replace the food products they can’t eat. With Kim working part-time at the local Stop & Shop, having moved back home after her divorce, and then the birth of Rebecca, it was likely she didn’t adhere to a strict diet.

But Kim’s “sexual promiscuity,” if indeed she was sleeping around, wasn’t brought on by her PKU, as Beth Ann had suggested. It couldn’t have been. Sexual promiscuity was not among the known symptoms of the disease. In fact, when asked, people who suffer from PKU get upset at the common, misinterpreted correlation. “There is no connection whatsoever between PKU and sexual promiscuity,” one woman who has suffered from the disease for years opined. “Absolutely not!”

On July 14, 1992, Buzz returned home from his job at the Café Del Mar. Like a seventh grader who had just gotten home from his first date, be babbled on and on about how he’d just met the girl of his dreams.

“I’m all finished with it, Ma,” Buzz said the following morning. “I met a really nice girl last night, and I’m not dancing anymore.”

“That’s good, Buzz—but don’t bring her home until you’ve been married for five years.”

Dee had seen her son go through women as if they were cars. It seemed that every day brought a new woman for Buzz, and Dee wasn’t buying any of the “this is it!” crap she’d heard Buzz say more times than she could remember.

“By the time he was fourteen, Buzz had girls all over him—and he never really ever slowed down,” Dee later said. “He wasn’t an angel…but then who is? He was a guy, and like any guy his age, he was always looking for women.”

Indeed, it wasn’t hard for Buzz to hook up with many different women, often at the same time. But the girl he had met on July 14 was different from all the rest, he insisted.

About five feet four inches, 120 pounds, strawberry blond hair running down past her shoulders, Kim seemed to be everything Buzz had been waiting for. She was fragile and shy. He liked that. She wasn’t overbearing. He liked that, too.

Kim had been out of school for about six years, already married, had a child and was now single for the first time since she’d started dating back in junior high. Going out on the town was something Kim had never really done before. She had been tied down ever since childhood.

If nothing else, Kim was naive, perhaps even codependent. She spoke only when she was spoken to. Part of it had to do with her PKU disease. Part of it was her character. Being single, she liked to go out with friends. The Carpenters, however, viewed this as neglect on her part. To Beth Ann, Cynthia, Dick and Richard, Kim was a mother. It had been her decision to have the child. If she wasn’t going to take care of Rebecca, they would have to do it for her.

When the Carpenters found out that Kim had met Buzz, it just added to their concern. Kim was out of control. Now she was going to bring an exotic dancer into the picture?

Buzz was outgoing, energetic and not afraid to speak his mind. He was a hustler, talking his way in and out of trouble whenever he had to. Unbeknownst to Buzz and Kim during the first weeks of their relationship, this posed a major problem where the Carpenters were concerned: Kim would now have a voice in her corner speaking up for her. Before Buzz, the Carpenters could manage Kim with little opposition.

From Kim’s point of view, Buzz wasn’t John Wayne, but he was nothing like her first husband. Sure, Buzz had had his share of run-ins with the law, but he wasn’t a jailbird.

Buzz had learned his strong will from his parents. Growing up, he watched Buck and Dee fight the town of Old Lyme for ten years for a permit to build and open a kennel on their property.

“We taught Buzz,” Dee said later, “to fight for what he believed in. But fight issues, not people. Never make it personal. Fight for your beliefs!”

Indeed, principles, not personalities.

To many people who knew them, Buzz and Kim were far from winning any couple-of-the-year awards. But they still meshed well together and got along. It was a match. And there wasn’t much anyone—including the Carpenters—could do to stop the relationship.

A week or so after they met, Buzz brought Kim home and introduced her to Suzanne, who was eight years old then.

When Buzz and Kim left, Suzanne went running into the kennel where Dee was working. Dee could tell Suzanne was excited about meeting Kim. She could see it on her face. Buzz and his first wife, Lisa, hadn’t ended their relationship on good terms, and Buzz hadn’t really met anyone in some time that the family felt serious about. Buzz had recently turned over parental rights for his son, Michael, to Lisa and her new husband, Dan. It wasn’t an easy decision, of course, but something Buzz knew would make a better life for Michael. As it was, Buzz hadn’t really seen the child much because Lisa had moved away and, for no malicious reason, had kept the child from him.

It wasn’t hard for Dee to tell that Suzanne was drawn to Kim in a big-sister way. It was a good sign that maybe things were looking up for Buzz—that he had finally met someone who cared about him, that he could care about, plus the family approved of her.

“Mom, she’s really nice. I just met her,” Suzanne said excitedly.

“They’re
all
nice, Suzanne.”

At first, Dee thought it was just one more bimbo to add to a long list Buzz had accumulated throughout the years. But weeks later, when Dee finally got a chance to sit down and chat with Kim, she realized she might have been wrong.

They sat and talked for hours, Dee recalled. Kim showed Dee photographs of Rebecca. Then she told her that Rebecca was sick and needed to have an operation. Dee later said Kim was very “articulate and knowledgeable about [Rebecca],” her condition and the treatment she needed.

That impressed Dee.

“When can I meet Rebecca?” Dee asked.

“I don’t know….”

“You don’t know?”

“I’ll have to ask my mother,” Kim said, looking down.

It was a strange answer, Dee thought. But she didn’t press Kim. She could tell by Kim’s voice that there was something going on, yet it wasn’t any of her business. Dee had no idea, of course, that the Carpenters had had total control over Rebecca by this point, including how often Kim could see her.

The reality of the situation, however, was much more difficult. Because once Buzz came into the picture, the Carpenters made it their number one priority to gain legal custody of Rebecca. Time had run out for Kim. Even though she was falling in love with Buzz—and, perhaps, for the first time in her life was going to have a stable environment to raise Rebecca in—the Carpenters didn’t want to hear about it anymore. They wanted Rebecca to live with them, no matter where Kim’s life was heading—and they routinely made it known that they were prepared to do anything to get their way.

Only a few weeks into Buzz and Kim’s relationship, Dee, seeing Kim and talking to her several times since they’d first met, began to realize something was incredibly askew regarding Kim, Rebecca and the Carpenters. Kim would tell Dee stories about Rebecca and how her mother, father, sister and brother viewed her relationship with Buzz. Kim was fraught over the entire ordeal. Here she was falling in love and losing her child at the same time.

It wasn’t fair.

There was one night when Cynthia and Beth Ann approached Kim to sign a document that would legally hand over all medical rights of Rebecca. By signing it, Kim would be passing over to the family the right to make any medical decisions on Rebecca’s part without Kim’s consent.

Kim refused.

Still living in the Carpenters’ Ledyard home with Rebecca, Kim came home the following night after refusing to sign the document to find the doors locked. Looking in through the picture window, Kim could see a flickering glow of the television visible from where she was standing on the porch. So she peeked through the shades and looked inside.

There was Beth Ann sitting on the couch, watching television, paying no mind to Kim’s banging on the door.

So Kim knocked harder.

Beth Ann came up to the window, looked at her, then sat back down without answering the door or saying anything.

It was a slap in the face.
If you don’t sign the papers, you don’t live here.
The Carpenters, apparently, were playing hardball now.

When Kim returned to Buzz’s house in Old Lyme and told him what had happened, Buzz insisted it meant only one thing: Kim had been kicked out of her house.

“Great, now what am I going to do?”

“You’ll move in here with us. I’ll talk to my mother.”

The following day, Kim and Buzz went to the Ledyard Police Department (LPD) and filed a police report. Buzz wanted to be sure to document everything that was going on. Beth Ann, whether she had a job or not, was a lawyer who had, in fact, been studying this very type of litigation. She knew the ins and outs. Buzz wasn’t educated in law, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what they had to do to protect themselves; like the Carpenters, he was prepared to fight.

While Buzz and Kim were at the LPD filing the report, they found out that Beth Ann and Cynthia had filed a ten-day temporary-custody order for Rebecca.

It was the beginning of what would amount to a battle between the Clintons and Carpenters that would escalate with each passing day. It was the first strike—the beginning of a war that would last for the next year and a half and end with Buzz’s murder.

By midsummer 1992, the Carpenters had had it. As they saw it, they were raising Rebecca themselves, while Kim and Buzz were always off doing their own thing.

Moving back home after her first husband had gone to jail seemed like the best thing to do for Kim at the time. For Rebecca, moving into the Carpenter home wasn’t that big a change. Cynthia claimed Kim had been dropping Rebecca off at least three times a week prior to Kim’s moving in, anyway, and that the Carpenters had developed a rather close relationship with the child because of that. Rebecca’s moving in really didn’t change anything in that respect; it just made the bond between the Carpenters and Rebecca that much deeper.

A bond the Carpenters, apparently, weren’t prepared to sever.

But Kim’s lack of care and concern for Rebecca’s well-being after moving back home only got worse, not better, Cynthia later wrote in an affidavit to the family court.

Things reached a crescendo on July 6, 1992, shortly before Kim had met Buzz. Kim went out that night, never returned, and it was the last time the Carpenters “saw her on a regular basis,” Cynthia wrote. In fact, for four days, while the Carpenters took care of Rebecca, they claimed they didn’t even know where Kim was. And when she did finally reappear on July 10, she sneaked into the house in the middle of the night, retreated downstairs and closed the door so no one, including Rebecca, would bother her as she slept in the next morning. When she did wake up, Cynthia and Dick asked her where she was going, but Kim failed to answer. So they asked her for a phone number, just in case something—God forbid—happened to Rebecca in her absence.

But on her way out the door, Kim would only say, “Call me at work if you need me.”

Not having a phone number to reach Kim wasn’t necessarily the end of the world, but things only got worse from there, Cynthia insisted.

When Kim did come home, for example, and stay for a night or two, she would “ignore Rebecca” and expect Beth Ann and Cynthia to care for the child, which they gladly did without reservation. It was obvious to the Carpenters that Kim was just coming home to sleep, rejuvenate and prepare for the next night out—and they were tired of it.

On July 21, Rebecca had an appointment at Boston Children’s Hospital, a two-hour drive from Ledyard. She needed to be tested for several different things. There was plenty of evidence that she had some sort of learning disability; she hadn’t been communicating like other kids her own age and was still lacking appropriate motor skills. The family also wanted to have her tested for PKU. It was possible, doctors were saying, Rebecca had it. The sooner they found out, the better off she’d be.

The appointment was scheduled for 11:30
A.M
. Cynthia had even gone to Kim’s work to remind her about the appointment earlier that week.

Kim promised she’d be there.

By the time Kim had shown up at 10:30
A.M
., however, Richard and Dick had already left with Rebecca for the appointment. They said later they were worried they’d miss it.

“I overslept, Ma,” Kim said when she arrived.

The hospital ended up verifying what mostly everyone suspected: Rebecca had “slowness in the development of fine motor skills and speech development.” Results on the more intricate tests to see if she had PKU would take weeks, maybe months. But it was enough to indicate that Rebecca needed special attention, which, according to the Carpenters, she wasn’t getting from Kim.