30

Then no more delays were possible. In the fall of 1989 it was announced that trials would be held before the end of the year, first Karin’s and then Dennis’s. The last thing Norris wanted, naturally, was a jury trial for Dennis, a trial at which, despite whatever psychiatric testimony he might bring in as mitigation, all the details of the strangling would be spelled out. But neither did he want Dennis to go to prison for forty-two years. He met with Bailey and prosecutor Thomas. They discussed and argued and finally came to an agreement. If Dennis would change his plea to guilty, the state would not hold him to the terms of the original compact: that he accept those forty-two years. A hearing on the sentence would be held in open court. Norris could present whatever evidence he wanted, could, in essence, present what would have been the defense in a trial. He could ask the judge to impose a lesser sentence, but no less than thirty years. The state would still ask for forty-two years. It would be up to the judge to make the final determination.

Just before Thanksgiving the hearing began. It lasted three days, with one break for the holiday and then another while Judge Raymond Norko considered what he had heard and what he should do. Norris was given latitude, and he used it. He spent a day with Detective Cavanaugh, who testified to all he had discovered about the crime and the relationship between Dennis and Karin. He spent another day eliciting testimony from Shannon, Kira Lintner, and his two psychiatrists, Faris and Brauer. Then it was up to Norko. He was to announce his decision on Tuesday, November 28.

On Monday Dennis tried to prepare. It was to be the last night he would spend in his father’s house, in his own room, in his own bed. It was to be his last night of freedom. He left the house early in the afternoon and wandered through the woods, stopping at the campsites he had carved out, following the trails he had created. It was dark by the time he returned home. He went to bed early.

On Tuesday morning, just after ten, he was back in court. He was dressed neatly in a dark suit. He wore a dark raincoat over it. His red hair was neatly combed. His face was too thin, thinner than it had ever been, almost hawk-like. It had no expression, no show of emotions. His eyes appeared lifeless, hopeless. With him were his father, mother, stepmother and brother. They all looked lost and helpless, stricken, especially Dennis’s mother, on the edge of collapse. With him, too, was a tall, attractive blond girl. Her name was Margaret. Matthew Coleman had met her in New Haven a few months before and brought her home because; she said, she wanted to meet his brother, Dennis. It was something that happens often in notorious murder cases: the sudden appearance of young girls attracted to the murderer, for one reason or another. From then on she rarely let Dennis out of her sight. Some of his friends thought she was manipulating him just as Karin had. She said she was in love with him and he was in love with her and they planned to marry.

Norris spoke eloquently for Dennis, castigated Karin for enslaving Dennis, for taking away his will and giving him no option but to “do the deed” or die. He noted that Dennis had cooperated with the state and would be a major witness in the “final act of this tragedy” when he testified against Karin. Dennis had to pay for his crime, yes, but how much should he be asked to pay, considering all that the court now knew? The minimum sentence in Connecticut for murder was twenty-five years in prison. Norris asked the court to send Dennis away for thirty years. If he served even two thirds of that time, not unusual in the state, “he will be my age when he gets out. He will have lost the best years of his life.” But, Norris added, no matter what the sentence, Dennis’s file should be flagged to alert the prison authorities that he required special ongoing psychiatric treatment. Further, he was very concerned about Dennis’s safety. He ought not to be sent to the state’s maximum security prison at Somers, an overcrowded place inhabited by hard-core career criminals, where violence was the rule rather than the exception. Some better, more fitting place should be found for Dennis, someplace where his life would not be in danger and his many talents could be put to use profitably.

Jim Thomas spoke for the state. The crime, he said, “was murder, pure and simple.” Dennis had acted with intent, and he had known what he was doing. His explanations of why and all the opinions of the psychiatrists didn’t mitigate what he had done. “It is easy to look at him and feel some mercy, but there was no mercy for Joyce Aparo. This is a horrendous, horrific case. It is a brutal, brutal case. The state asks for the maximum under the bargain it made with the defendant, a sentence of forty-two years. Any sentence less severe will not serve the people of the state of Connecticut.”

Then Judge Norko, a tall, burly, balding blond man who bore a remarkable resemblance to the football quarterback Terry Bradshaw, who had been a public defender before going on the bench, looked down at Dennis. He seemed as stricken as anyone. He noted that he had been the judge who arraigned Dennis on August 14, 1987. “You and I,” he said, “made eye contact that day, and I cannot forget it.”

A few nights before, Judge Norko had been reading a mystery story in bed before going to sleep. He came across a passage that burned in his mind, a passage he paraphrased as “No crime is so detestable as a murder. It contaminates and pollutes all the lives it touches, and no one can ever be the same again.”

This case, he said, was especially disturbing. Dennis was not a child of poverty, nor were any of the others involved. They all were children of the middle class. Yet he had listened to some of them testify, and “watching them sent chills up my spine. They spoke of murder as if it were a candy bar to be reached on a shelf. Why none of your friends tried to reach out and stop this tragedy is beyond me. Why did they let you do it? Why there was no parent, no educator, no one in the church, no one in the community you could turn to I’ll never know.”

He shook his head. One could see tears glistening in his eyes as he said, “When I sentence you, part of me goes with you. I don’t forget I’m sending you to Somers, probably one of the most dangerous places on earth. I’ve wrestled about this, slept on it, woke on it. Everyone would agree whatever I do to you, I’m throwing away your youth. Indeed, I accept Mr. Norris’s recommendation that we find a better and more suitable place for you than Somers.”

He looked at Dennis, seated beside Norris, staring intently at the judge. “Dennis,” he said, “resolve to yourself to survive and come out and become a citizen like the rest of us. Don’t lose all hope. There are peers of yours who should go to jail. But I can’t do anything about those agreements that they made with the state. Now, before I pass sentence, do you have anything you wish to say to the court?”

Dennis rose slowly. He stood rigid and looked at Norko. He spoke in a very low, soft voice. “If I could turn back time, I would. I’m not a cold-blooded person, and this was not cold-blooded. It was the opposite. It was passion. I felt very much like it was a choice between committing suicide or committing murder. I can’t tell you how much I regret it.”

That was all. He stood there, Norris standing beside him. Norko looked down at papers before him. He looked back at Dennis. He shook his head. The back of one hand wiped across his eyes. And then he passed sentence: for the murder of Joyce Aparo, thirty-four years in state prison, for conspiracy to commit murder, twenty years in state prison, the sentences to run concurrently. “Dennis,” he concluded, “do what you can. Use your mind to survive up there. There is hope.”

Two deputies moved quickly to Dennis, one on either side. They marched him out through a side door in the courtroom. A few hours later he was in a prison van on his way to the state penitentiary at Somers.