Lethal Guardian (19 page)

July 12, 1993, was a Monday. The weather during the past weekend had been typical for southern New England: hot, hazy, humid. From just a casual walk to the car, sweat would roll off the body like melting candle wax. It was the peak summer vacation period. Tourists were everywhere. Beaches were packed. Boaters were out cruising the Sound, lapping up the sunshine and marvelous view of Plum Island. Fishermen were bringing in fluke and porgy by the buckets. Kids were catching crabs and clams. Young couples were running along the beach, flying kites, holding hands. Moms were reading cheesy romance novels while their toddlers made sand castles and dads drank beers.

For Buzz and Kim, the day was filled with worry and trepidation. Kim was having labor pains; Buzz was timing them.

“They might be contractions.”

The next day, Kim woke Buzz up early in the morning.

“Let’s go.”

By the end of the day, Buzz and Kim welcomed a new baby, Briana Clinton, into their chaotic lives. They were ecstatic. Briana looked just like Buzz: dark hair, blue eyes, dark skin. She was a beautiful, healthy girl.

To celebrate the birth, the Carpenters sent Kim a present that same night while she lay tired from giving birth. But it wasn’t a box of candy or a bouquet of fresh cut flowers.

Instead, it was a subpoena.

Buzz and Kim had been scheduled to drop Rebecca off for a visit, but because Kim had been experiencing labor pains, they thought it wouldn’t be a big deal to skip the visit. On top of that, Buzz knew Kim would want Rebecca with him so the three of them could bond as a family as soon as Briana was born.

The Carpenters decided to hold Kim in contempt of the court-ordered visits.

On March 25, Haiman Clein celebrated his fifty-second birthday. Still sporting his signature Grizzly Adams beard, he was losing his hair now by the handful. He wore glasses. He was indulging in cocaine more frequently, drinking excessively and popping Prozac like Flintstone vitamins.

Walking around his office lately, however, Clein had his eyes glued on Beth Ann as though he had never seen a woman like her. By midsummer 1993, he and Beth Ann were taking lunches together and dining at some of the more elegant and expensive restaurants in town. They were even working out together at the local health spa.

Clein was totally smitten by Beth Ann’s charm and grace. She was looking good and hadn’t cut her red hair for several years now; it was beginning to trail down her back. She wasn’t an ounce over 110 pounds. She always wore trendy clothes and expensive jewelry—and had a glow to her personality that Clein had encountered seldomly.

Still, Beth Ann’s hatred for Buzz was never more fervent, while her emotional state, Clein later said, differed from day to day.

“She was happy when things were going well,” Clein recalled later. But when they weren’t, she became “angrier” as time went on.

Lately, it was Buzz and Kim’s thwarting of the visitations that bothered Beth Ann most. They were never home when they were supposed to be and always made it difficult for the Carpenters and Beth Ann to see Rebecca.

“Rebecca has an eye problem,” she told Clein one day. “Kim and Buzz aren’t taking care of it.”

“That’s horrible,” Clein offered. By this time, he and Bonnie had dropped their pledge to adopt Rebecca, and the subject was hardly ever brought up.

Beth Ann made no direct allegations of sexual abuse on Buzz’s part, but it was certainly implicit, Clein later remembered. In a rage, she would say things such as: “Buzz is forcing Rebecca to sleep in his bed!” From that, Clein assumed the worst.

Tricia Baker had been showing up at the office every other day. Beth Ann and Tricia, Clein began to notice, would go out to lunch or just sit and talk about the custody fight. It occurred to Clein that other than Rebecca, the two women had little in common. Clein had met several of Beth Ann’s friends by this point, but “Tricia didn’t look to me,” Clein later offered, “like the type of girl Beth would normally associate with.”

Like many other people, he thought the relationship was odd. So he asked Beth Ann what Tricia’s role was. There had to be, Clein surmised, a logical explanation as to why Beth Ann was hanging out with her so much.

“John Gaul is Rebecca’s natural father and is pursuing custody,” Beth Ann explained.

She then told Clein that Tricia was John’s fiancée. They were getting married in a few weeks.

“How do you feel about John getting custody?”

Because it would ultimately help the Carpenters achieve their goal one way or the other, Beth Ann said she “favored” it. Even encouraged it. After all, it had been Beth Ann who had sought out John Gaul initially.

Little did Beth Ann know, however, that John was beginning to have second thoughts about pursuing custody. He knew it was going to be a battle. He knew it would cost him a ton of money, regardless of how much the Carpenters had offered to pay. Not to mention that Rebecca wasn’t really bonding with John they way he’d hoped.

In contrast, Tricia had become emotionally attached to the child by this point. Beth Ann had really been playing up the notion that Rebecca could replace the child that Tricia and John could never have, and Tricia was lapping it up.

John was more grounded. He realized they were starting a life together. Suddenly it all seemed too much to bear. Less than a year ago, they had not known Rebecca existed. Now they were contemplating getting custody of her?

Tricia’s parents, Judy and Harry Baker, were smart, successful people. They owned a spacious stucco home on the ocean in Waterford, were respected members of the community, had been happily married for decades and were perfect role models for Tricia.

By late summer, the Bakers had told Tricia they honestly thought Beth Ann’s friendship was transparent. They said Beth Ann was using Tricia to further her own agenda. Tricia, though, was perhaps blinded by emotion. She accepted people at face value. She never believed Beth Ann was anything less than a friend. In fact, Tricia had informed her parents recently that she had even invited Beth Ann to her wedding.

Perhaps against their better judgment, the Bakers didn’t argue their point. Tricia was old enough to make her own mistakes.

When Beth Ann heard that she had been invited to the wedding, she asked Tricia about Richard, Dick and Cynthia.

“They can come, too, right?”

“Of course,” Tricia said.

With a court date set for mid-August to resolve the issue of visitations, Carolyn Brotherton, Kim’s attorney, filed a motion on July 29, 1993, to withdraw herself from the case.

Why?

“There has been a complete breakdown of the attorney-client relationship.”

Buzz was rubbing his nose into the entire matter, trying to take control of every facet of it. According to some, Brotherton wanted more money. It had required more work than she had anticipated. Buzz and Kim were broke, and they told her they couldn’t afford it. Buzz had scraped to come up with the $700 retainer, but now, some later claimed, Brotherton wanted $900 more.

Buzz told Brotherton he wanted all the files from the case. She said as long as he gave her more money, he could have whatever he wanted.

Nevertheless, here they were, a month before an important court date, and Buzz and Kim were without counsel.

Being the resilient person he was, with the court’s permission, Buzz decided to represent Kim himself. Dee and Buck had always taught their son to fight. No matter what, keep going forward. Buzz knew the case better than any attorney they could bring in at this late period, anyway. Why not give it a shot? They didn’t stand much to lose. The court date wasn’t about custody; it was about visitations.

Convincing a court of law to agree to let a layman act as counsel for his wife in a custody matter wasn’t the easiest thing to do, however. But after Buzz filed all the appropriate paperwork, the court agreed, to everyone’s amazement, to let him represent Kim—if only for the August 16, 1993, hearing date.

Weeks prior to the court date, Buzz had gone down to the court to file a restraining order against Dick and Cynthia. Perhaps it was part of his legal strategy, or maybe the Carpenters were just getting on his nerves again? Either way, the court rejected the order and advised Buzz that he was “not eligible because he did not fill the statutory requirement to get” the order.

On August 16, 1993, in the New London Superior Court building directly across the street from Haiman Clein’s law office, the Carpenters and Clintons showed up to square off.

Everyone was there. Buzz and Kim sat on one side of the room, while Beth Ann sat on the opposite side, yet only yards away. Haiman Clein and Dick Carpenter sat next to her. Cynthia would be asked to testify, as would Kim.

At the end of the day, what the hearing came down to—and the judge interrupted proceedings about two-thirds of the way through to point it out—was, “Why has [Kim] not complied with the court order regarding visitation? Has she any explanation for that?”

In the eyes of the court, Kim had not lived up to her end of the court’s previous order. The judge wanted to know why.

It was a simple request.

Ultimately the judge ordered visitations one weekend a month and one day a week. “The parties are going to have to agree on that,” he said. “I must caution the defendant, Kim Louise Clinton, that she must follow this order or she will be found in contempt and she could
go to jail.
” Now turning his attention toward Buzz, “So you best make sure that she does obey the court’s order…,” the judge said.

Essentially, the Carpenters had won.

As Buzz, Kim and the Carpenters began to file out of the courtroom, Buzz leaned over and said something to Dick Carpenter in passing. Just then, Beth Ann, Cynthia and Dick, who had sat and listened to the proceedings without saying much of anything, jumped up and hurriedly followed Buzz as he made his way out through the double doors. With all four of them standing by the doors, the Carpenters began to speak in “harsh, muffled tones,” Deputy Chief Clerk David Gage later said.

“You could see that they were very angry at each other,” Gage added. “There were lots of hand gestures, and all parties became very animated.”

“Why in the hell don’t you leave us alone?” Beth Ann screamed at Buzz.

“The custody battle of Rebecca is none of your business,” Buzz shouted back.

Then they began yelling at each other “very loudly,” Liz Hall, the judicial marshal who was standing next to them, recalled later.

After that, the pushing and shoving started.

While Buzz and Beth Ann pushed each other back and forth, Cynthia and Dick began yelling at Buzz. Making their way to the next set of double doors, they all became “logjammed,” Hall remembered, and couldn’t get out without rubbing up against one another.

So Hall stepped in between to make sure no one got hurt. “Calm down,” she said.

As Hall escorted them out of the courtroom, sending Buzz one way and the Carpenters the other, Beth Ann began to say something.

Buzz, who had begun to walk away, turned and stopped.

“I will kill your ass!” Beth Ann shouted, staring at Buzz.

Hearing that, Buzz just walked away.

Liz Hall asked Beth Ann, who was crying now, if Buzz was her husband. Hall was confused. She didn’t know much about the case.

“No! He’s my brother-in-law,” Beth Ann said through clenched teeth. “I don’t know why he is doing this to our family. He wants to take Rebecca. He’s no good.”

A few days after Beth Ann had told Buzz she’d “kill” his “ass,” family services referred the case to Ingrid Comeir, a seasoned gray-haired veteran of the agency who was brought in as a negotiator. Comeir’s first order of business was to set up visitations between Rebecca and her natural father, John Gaul. Comeir, of course, had no idea that John and Tricia had been visiting Rebecca for nearly a year already.

Toward the end of August, John and Tricia, days away from their wedding, had accepted an invitation to a Labor Day picnic the Carpenters were hosting at their Ledyard home. It was to be a family gathering. Tricia and John had been spending a lot of time with Rebecca lately, trying to get closer to her. But Rebecca, for whatever reason, didn’t want any part of them. Perhaps the picnic would help change that.

During the past six months, Tricia and John spent weekends at the Carpenters’ when Rebecca was there. John noticed that “even though Rebecca had her own room and bed in the home,” Beth Ann would sleep with the child.

Also, at this time, Dick and Beth Ann repeatedly expressed to John and Tricia their hatred for Buzz. They made little mention of Kim. It was always about Buzz: the abuse, the dancing (which he had been through with for some time now), the fact that he was thinking of moving Rebecca and Kim out to Arizona and that he was going to adopt her.

It was all too much for them.

But by the end of August, John had decided that fighting Buzz and Kim for custody wasn’t such a good idea anymore. Tricia, undoubtedly still seduced by Beth Ann’s counterfeit friendship, believed Beth Ann and Cynthia were doing the right thing for Rebecca and that Buzz was abusing the child. It was her and John’s responsibility to protect Rebecca any way they could. They had to forget about themselves and concentrate on the child.

Tricia, though, began to have second thoughts, too, on August 28, the day of her wedding.

The Carpenters sat together at a table near the bride and groom’s. Although it was Tricia and John’s day, to anyone who would listen, the Carpenters carried on about Buzz and how much they disliked him. It was all Buzz’s fault. Without him, there would be no trouble. What were they supposed to do, just roll over and forget everything?

“The entire Carpenter family hated Buzz,” Tricia said later. “Dick said to me that ‘ten thousand dollars could take care of the problem’—and I knew he was referring to Buzz and hiring someone to kill him.”

There were others, too, who had heard Dick say the same thing during the wedding.

Beth Ann called Tricia a day or so before the Labor Day picnic with some bad news. “We don’t want you and John to come to the picnic,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Well, Kim and Buzz are going to be there.”

Tricia was hurt and, at the same time, shocked. “Okay,” she told Beth Ann. “No problem.”

She wondered why the Carpenters would invite Buzz. There had to be some kind of motive behind it.

Buzz thought the gesture was a bit strange, too. If the Carpenters had just wanted to see Rebecca, they could have either said so, or invited Kim and Rebecca and not him.

Dee Clinton later said that to Buzz, any situation was salvageable. Any problem could be worked out. Maybe the Carpenters were finally giving up? By this time, there was no chance of their getting custody of Rebecca. And with Buzz now determined to move to Arizona, what other option did they have? If they wanted to see Rebecca, they would have to involve Buzz.

Whenever Buzz was torn about a decision, he usually turned to his mother for guidance.

“What’s up with this picnic, Ma?” Buzz asked Dee one day. “Do you think we should go?”

“Maybe you and Kim
should
go,” Dee said. “Perhaps they want to work things out.”

The picnic didn’t turn out to be all that bad. There was no trouble for Buzz or Kim. The Carpenters even acted as if they were perhaps accepting Buzz into the family for the first time. At one point, Kim later remembered, they even asked Buzz to stand next to the fireplace in their living room, an old relic of a thing with a worn mantelpiece above it, so they could snap a family photo of him, Kim and Rebecca.

Buzz obliged.

Sometime later, however, that seemingly innocent photo would, in many ways, contribute to his death.

Days after the Labor Day picnic, John Gaul made it clear not only to Ingrid Comeir, but to the Carpenters, that he wasn’t interested in pursuing custody of Rebecca—that he and Tricia had talked it over and thought it was in the best interest of their marriage not to take the issue any further. They still wanted to maintain a relationship with Rebecca, of course. But fighting for custody was not something they wanted to pursue any longer.

Interestingly enough, once Tricia and John told everyone how they felt, it was the last time they ever heard from the Carpenters. Beth Ann, who had been calling Tricia almost daily for the past eight months to a year, taking her out to expensive dinners and on trips, never called her again.

Anyone in the New London law office of Haiman Clein who had witnessed his relationship with Beth Ann blossom throughout the summer couldn’t ignore the fact that by October 1993, Clein and Beth Ann were an item. They no longer were trying to hide it. In September, Beth Ann had rented a luxurious, $1,032-a-month condo at the upscale Norwich Inn and Spa, about ten minutes from her parents’ home in Ledyard. Most of the condos had come furnished with the best furniture money could buy, but Beth Ann insisted it be removed, Clein later said, so she could replace it with her own. On top of that, she now drove a brand-new BMW. And many began wondering where all her money was coming from.

Beth Ann’s income had risen remarkably within the same time period. She went from making about $27,000 a year to $50,000, without any notice, Joseph Jebran later remembered. She was still seeing Joseph Jebran and, from his standpoint, their relationship was still going strong. He was still sending his checks home, and she was still sending him back a stipend to live on and allocating the remainder to his bills.

Clein was the first to admit that he had become obsessed with Beth Ann by this point. Melissa Jolley, a twenty-eight-year-old local woman who worked as Clein’s office manager and bookkeeper, recalled later how Clein had one day described his relationship with Beth Ann. Holding up a copy of the novel
Damage,
Clein said to Jolley, “You should buy a copy. It’s about Beth Ann and me!”

Damage
is about a successful doctor who becomes obsessed with his son’s fiancée, who is half his age. The book has been described by critics as a “ruthless story…an implacable work of the erotic imagination.”

For Clein, however, Josephine Hart’s highly praised novel was based on a reality he was now living.

By the beginning of November, Clein was calling Beth Ann several times a day whenever he was out of the office and seeing her at night whenever he could. They began to go out for drinks after work and on weekends. They talked about Buzz, Rebecca, Kim, work—and anything else Beth Ann wanted.

One night, Beth Ann looked at Clein and asked, “Do business trips ever come up?”

Clein felt a strong impression that she wanted to go. She seemed interested in the prospect of being alone with him.

“I have a trip coming up in November to Florida to see a client,” Clein said. “Would you like to go?”

Beth Ann smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. Yes. And yes!”

After that conversation, Beth Ann began calling Clein almost daily, and she began spending all of her free time, besides the weekends Joseph Jebran was around, with Clein. “Flirting,” Clein later recalled. It seemed to him that she was flirting with him now in a more sexual way. There was chemistry. The atmosphere was more charged. Clein, of course, was flattered. Here was a woman nearly half his age, a beautiful redhead with skin like porcelain who could have had any number of men, interested in
him.

“All the signals I was getting I perceived as positive,” Clein later said.

As luck would have it, the trip to Florida was scheduled for November 22—a day before Beth Ann’s thirtieth birthday. Celebrating it together, in the sunshine and warmth of Naples, Florida, one of the wealthiest areas on the Gulf Coast, would be like something out of a fairy tale.

As Beth Ann and Clein made their way to Florida, as usual, she began talking about the custody fight. As Clein would find out, the entire trip soon became a lobbying campaign for Rebecca.

“It is hopeless,” Beth Ann said. Then she explained how bleak the future for Rebecca looked. There was no way a court was going to award the Carpenters custody, especially now that Buzz and Kim were married and had been bringing Rebecca up for almost a year. In fact, just a few weeks before the Florida trip, Buzz, Kim and Rebecca had moved into a two-bedroom apartment in East Lyme. They were finally out of the Clintons’ house and on their own. Buzz had qualified for a position at Vinal Tech to begin his course for becoming a CNA, slated to start school within the next few months. In the eyes of family services, Buzz and Kim were doing everything by the book.

“Beth Ann was in constant agitation over it,” Clein recalled later.

In Florida, they dined at the finest restaurants and stayed at a resort hotel—and by the second night, when the maelstrom of lust was too much, they had sex.

When they returned, Clein began sleeping with Beth Ann just about every day. As they grew closer sexually, Beth Ann began to pour it on about her concerns for Rebecca’s welfare.

“My family is continually upset and frustrated,” she told Clein one morning as they lay in bed. “We’re continually worried that Rebecca is being abused.”

A week or so later, Clein was talking to Beth Ann’s brother, Richard, on the phone. Richard was crying, Clein remembered later.

“What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

“Something terrible has happened to Rebecca. She’s being abused.”

By the first week of December, Beth Ann became even more concerned that things were only getting worse for Rebecca.

“The whole family is upset,” she told Clein. She was crying. “I fear that my father or brother might kill Buzz.”

Ingrid Comeir, the counselor appointed by the court to keep an eye on the situation, began to receive calls from Cynthia and Buzz by the end of December. They were making accusations against each other. Most of the time, they were calling to say that the other had done something horrendous to Rebecca.

As the frustration mounted, Beth Ann continued her daily testaments to Clein, implying that the only alternative left was to get rid of Buzz.

“As long as he’s alive,” Beth Ann said one morning, “Rebecca is never going to be safe, and we’ll never get her!”

Then a few days later, Beth Ann called Clein in a rage. “What happened, Beth?” Clein asked. “She was in high anxiety, weeping, bordering on being hysterical about it,” he remembered.

But she wouldn’t say exactly what had happened. Only: “As long as he’s alive, Rebecca will never be safe. We will never get her!”

“Jesus,
what
happened?”

Beth Ann then had a request. “Will you help me?” she asked matter-of-factly.

“What?”

“Will you kill him for me?”

Clein was taken aback. He hadn’t expected to hear such a thing from someone he felt so close to, someone with whom he was now in love.

“No!” he said.

Beth Ann then began weeping more profoundly.

“Listen,” he offered. “I won’t, but I know someone who would. But I’m unsure at this point.”

Clein wanted to check it out before making any promises.

The following day, he told Beth Ann that he had spoken to an old client of his about it.

“What’s his name?” she asked.

“Mark Despres.”

Over the next few days, Beth Ann was “pretty intent” on hiring Despres, Clein later said. But Clein wanted to be sure she was serious. So he asked her again.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“With what?” Clein wanted to hear once again.

“The killing.”