26

Christopher Wheatley was not just a smart young man. He had a powerful father who got him a good lawyer. So, in a corner, the evidence of his involvement in the murder of Joyce Aparo overwhelming, facing a long term in prison as an accessory, he looked for a way out. He made a deal. And the state of Connecticut made a blunder.

On August 24 Wheatley and his sixteen-year-old girl friend Kira Lintner and their attorneys showed up at the office of State’s Attorney John Bailey and Assistant State’s Attorney James Thomas, who had been handed the prosecution of the Aparo cases. Wheatley and Kira Lintner would tell everything they knew, everything they had done, would tell the truth, would appear as witnesses, if necessary, in exchange for a deal. The deal was that neither he nor she would ever be charged as accessories to murder, that nothing they said could ever be used against them, that the only charges that could ever be laid against them were those of hindering prosecution and perjury and that if hindering prosecution charges were brought, the state would not object to his receiving a suspended sentence or probation or to her being tried as a juvenile offender, with the proceedings closed and the verdict sealed.

It was not an unusual bargain to gain the cooperation of essential and potentially convicting witnesses. There was just one thing that was left out. It happened to be crucial. In their haste to strike this deal, the prosecutors forgot to include the stipulation that any agreement would be null and void if either of them lied to the authorities and that if they did, they could then be charged and tried as accessories.

The papers signed, Wheatley and Lintner began their song. Only, as far as the authorities were concerned, that song had more than a few false notes in it, was more than a trifle off key.

For instance, Wheatley never mentioned that the first time Dennis Coleman asked for his help, he wanted to know what financial arrangements Dennis was prepared to make in exchange for that help, an omission Detective Cavanaugh, who conducted the interview, characterized in his report as “definite, calculated.” Among other “calculated” omissions from Wheatley’s statement were his failure to mention the substance of his conversations with Dennis Coleman the evening of the murder and his failure to mention what happened in his car just before Dennis left to “do the deed.” Further, Cavanaugh was of the opinion that Wheatley deliberately lied when he said, “I did not know that Dennis was going to kill Mrs. Aparo that night.”

He had his doubts, too, about Kira Lintner’s claim that she knew nothing about what was going to happen, that all she knew was that “Chris asked me if I wanted to go for a ride. Chris said we were going to New York City. When I asked why, Chris said don’t worry about it, he just had something to do, and Chris said, ‘Just go with me.’” As far as Cavanaugh was concerned, it was far more believable that Wheatley had told her all about it before and that she had heard a lot more about it while Dennis was in the car preparing to go off to the Aparo condo.

In fact, little in either statement went beyond, in general outline, what Cavanaugh and the other investigators already knew or surmised. About the only thing either one said that was new came from Kira Lintner. She said that Karin told her that when Dennis told her the precise time of Joyce’s death, the time he read on the digital clock at her bedside, Karin was struck by a coincidence; she had been in the middle of sex with Alex Markov at the moment.

Lintner had something else to relate. She said that in the days after the murder in a discussion with Karin Aparo, which dealt in large measure with the murder, Karin said that she was going to ask, or maybe had already asked, Alex Markov to kill Dennis. (When the police asked Markov about that, he denied that any such thing had ever been proposed to him or that he would ever have considered it had it been.)

When Wheatley and Lintner were finished, Cavanaugh was enraged. The state had gotten nothing for its bargain, he felt, except deliberate and calculated omissions and some outright lies. As far as he was concerned, that was grounds to throw the plea bargain out, indict both of them for accessory to murder and proceed to prosecution. He would have liked nothing better. Wheatley, particularly, with his superior and flippant manner, had gotten to him from the first day they met up at Lake George. The more he learned about Wheatley and his role, the more convinced he became that the law ought to move against him. “Of all the kids involved in this thing,” Cavanaugh says, “he was the worst. He had no excuse. He could have stopped the whole thing by just saying no. He didn’t. He went along. And the only reason he did was for money.”

Just about everybody who knew anything about the murder agreed. But they could only bridle with frustration. For the state had neglected to put into the plea bargain the little item saying that if Wheatley did not tell the truth and the whole truth, the bargain was void and he could be prosecuted as an accessory to murder. A bargain, even when one side has blundered in the making, is still a bargain.

Soon after signing those deal papers and making their statements, however incomplete, misleading and fudged, Wheatley and Lintner checked themselves into private psychiatric hospitals. During their stays their attorneys pressed State’s Attorney Bailey to live up to the agreement, despite what misgivings he might have, and Cavanaugh and other law enforcement officials pressed just as hard to have Bailey throw it out. Reluctantly Bailey decided that he had no choice. At stake, he said, was the reputation of the state as a responsible and principled entity. “When you enter an agreement with us, it will be honored,” he said. Otherwise, it would be a “breach of our promise of immunity.”

Wheatley and Lintner were off the hook. In February 1988 all the murder-related charges against both were dropped. Kira Lintner was granted youthful offender status, and her case, on the charge of hindering prosecution and making false statements, was transferred to juvenile court. Behind closed doors a hearing was held, though the record was sealed. She could have been sent away for three years. She was not. She was freed on probation.

As for Wheatley, in the late summer of 1988 he was in court on that same relatively minor charge. He could have been sentenced to up to five years in prison. His lawyer told the court he was a responsible young man and the state would not be served by locking him up. What Wheatley should receive was what in Connecticut is called accelerated rehabilitation, meaning that in the year since the murder of Joyce Aparo, he had become a good citizen and was totally rehabilitated. Without objection from the state, which said it had no right to object, Wheatley was rehabilitated instantaneously and put on probation for two years, at the end of which his criminal record was to be erased.

There was a public outcry. The Hartford Courant spoke for many. In an editorial, entitled “Getting Away with Murder?” it wrote:

Judge Quinn did not even order Mr. Wheatley to perform community service. He said the charge against the 20-year-old Glastonbury man was “not of a serious nature.” That may be true, but only because the judge never got to consider Mr. Wheatley’s participation in planning and executing a murder.…

A terrible crime was committed. Investigators believe Mr. Wheatley played-a part in it. But there will be no determination of his guilt or innocence, nor will there be any record of his involvement if he completes his probationary period satisfactorily. That’s not justice—for Mrs. Aparo or for Mr. Wheatley.

But nothing could change the court’s decision. It stood. In September 1990 Christopher Wheatley, having done nothing wrong, having gone back to his studies after initially being expelled from his college, was a totally free man, his record wiped clean.