For more than a year after Anne Marie Fahey disappeared, Thomas Capano denied responsibility. When his murder trial arrived, his account changed dramatically.
Case brief
Wilmington, Delaware · 1996
- Recorded outcome
- Thomas Capano convicted in 1999; death sentence vacated and replaced with life without parole in 2006; died in prison in 2011.
Key moments
People in this case
- Thomas Capano
Convicted of murdering Anne Marie Fahey
Photo at source · WHYY · Associated Press courtroom and booking photographs
He acknowledged that she had died in his house. He acknowledged concealing her body and disposing of it at sea. But he said another woman had accidentally shot her.
The jury rejected that explanation. Its decision followed testimony from Capano’s brothers, the woman he accused and people who knew Fahey’s relationship with him. The prosecution did not have a recovered body or a medically established account of the precise fatal act. It had a network of testimony and physical circumstances that Capano’s own eventual admissions partly confirmed. [1]
A relationship she wanted to leave
Fahey worked as scheduling secretary to Delaware Governor Thomas Carper. In 1994, she began a relationship with Capano, a prominent lawyer who was married and later estranged from his wife.
The relationship was largely private. Fahey’s diaries and communications described its instability and her difficulty managing Capano’s influence over her life.
She later began seeing Michael Scanlon. As that relationship became more important to her, she tried to end the romantic relationship with Capano. The prosecution argued that he resented losing control and could not accept the change.
The defense offered a different interpretation. Capano maintained that he and Fahey had moved into an affectionate friendship. Their emails could contain warmth even as other evidence documented conflict. The trial therefore required more than a simple picture of a relationship that was uniformly hostile every day.
Fahey’s personal writings became evidence, but they also reflected a person making choices about her own future. Her efforts to change a relationship were not a provocation that excused violence. [1]
Dinner and disappearance
On June 27, 1996, Capano took Fahey to dinner in Philadelphia. It was the last occasion on which she was seen alive outside the account later supplied by her killer.
Her family reported her missing on June 30. Police questioned Capano, and the FBI joined the investigation. He was an obvious person to interview because of that final dinner.
The investigation continued for months without a body. Investigators examined his home and found small blood spots that testing associated with Fahey’s known sample. They also investigated furniture that had disappeared and been replaced.
The significance of those changes emerged through people close to Capano. His brothers and Deborah MacIntyre, another woman with whom he had a longstanding relationship, initially gave false accounts that concealed important evidence. Their eventual cooperation became a turning point. [1]
The brother with the boat
Gerry Capano began cooperating in November 1997 after federal agents searched his home and he faced criminal exposure. His agreement gave him a reason to assist investigators, a circumstance relevant to judging his credibility.
He described Thomas coming to him early on June 28 and asking to use his boat. Gerry testified that the brothers transported a large cooler from Thomas’s home to the New Jersey shore and took it out to sea. He described helping dispose of Fahey’s body.
The account was not evidence from a disinterested observer. Gerry had participated in concealment and had previously lied. The state had to present his testimony with those vulnerabilities, while the defense challenged it.
His account nevertheless connected with other evidence: the cooler purchase, the boat, the missing furniture and Thomas’s later admissions. The prosecution argued that the details supported planning and concealment rather than an unexplained disappearance.
Another brother, Louis, described instructions concerning a construction-site dumpster. Thomas had placed material there and wanted the dumpster emptied. That testimony helped explain why investigators could not recover every item they sought. [1]
Corroboration that came back from the sea
Gerry's account contained a detail investigators could check beyond the brothers' competing words: the large cooler taken on the boat. A fisherman had recovered it at sea. Phone records and gasoline receipts also supported portions of the journey. The Delaware Supreme Court emphasized the recovered cooler when examining the evidence supporting Gerry's account. [1]
The court was careful about what this established. Evidence of concealment did not, standing alone, show exactly how Anne Marie had been killed. Capano himself ultimately admitted much of the disposal account while claiming the shooting had been accidental and caused by someone else. The issue was therefore not simply whether the brothers had gone to sea. It was whether the planning evidence and the rest of the record established an intentional killing. [1]
A loan with two explanations
Gerry said that in February 1996 Thomas borrowed $8,000 after describing people who supposedly threatened his family and career. The prosecution argued that this was part of an evolving cover story. Thomas disputed Gerry's account and said the money was connected with a planned cash gift to help Anne Marie. The existence of the loan did not establish that any extortionists actually existed. [1]
The cooler purchase in April and a handgun purchase through Deborah MacIntyre in May added transactions preceding the June disappearance. Capano offered innocent explanations, including that the cooler was a gift for Gerry's boat. The jury had to judge those explanations against the witnesses, purchases and later conduct. In the gallery, the cooler is marked as important corroboration, with the express limit that it did not independently reveal the fatal act. [1]
The gun purchase
MacIntyre testified that she had purchased a handgun at Thomas’s request and handed it to him. She had originally lied about both the relationship and the purchase before agreeing to cooperate.
Her evidence became especially consequential because Thomas later accused her of causing Fahey’s death.
The case’s dramatic shift came when Thomas took the stand and supplied a version that admitted much of the concealment while attempting to move responsibility for the fatal act to MacIntyre. [1]
Capano’s alternative story
Thomas testified that Fahey had returned to his home after dinner. He claimed that MacIntyre arrived, became upset and threatened to shoot herself. According to his account, the gun discharged while he tried to intervene and struck Fahey.
MacIntyre denied being there and denied that the event happened.
Thomas said he concealed the death to protect himself and MacIntyre. He admitted arranging the scene and disposing of Fahey’s body with Gerry. The defense also offered innocent explanations for earlier conduct the prosecution considered planning, including the purchase of the cooler.
This created a sharp distinction for jurors. They did not have to decide whether concealment occurred; Thomas had acknowledged much of it. They had to decide whether his explanation of an accidental shooting was credible or whether the state had proved intentional murder.
The jury found him guilty of first-degree murder in January 1999. [1]
The sentence changed; the conviction did not
Capano initially received a death sentence. His 2001 direct appeal failed, although the Delaware Supreme Court identified some errors it considered harmless in the context of the full record.
Later review changed the sentencing outcome. The death sentence was set aside, and in 2006 he was sentenced to life without parole. That was not a pardon, an acquittal or a finding that the state had prosecuted the wrong person.
He died in prison on September 19, 2011. Contemporary reporting confirmed that he was serving the life sentence for Fahey’s murder. [2] [3] [4]
What cooperation revealed
The case depended in part on people who had helped hide the truth and later testified. That makes their earlier conduct central to evaluating the evidence, not an inconvenient detail to remove.
Their accounts did not stand entirely alone. Physical findings, purchases, discarded property and Capano’s own admissions supplied additional pieces. The jury rejected his attempt to separate admitted concealment from responsibility for the murder.
Fahey’s story is often framed around the fall of a powerful lawyer. The more consequential loss was hers: a woman with work, family and a developing relationship beyond Capano. The criminal proceedings established who was responsible, but they could not restore the future she had been trying to choose.
Look closer · 3 visuals
Inside the evidence.
Open a visual to explore what it contributed to the case—and the limits of what it shows. These original illustrations explain the record; they are not photographs of the actual evidence.
The cooler that corroborated a witness
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
The recovered cooler corroborated Gerry’s account alongside receipts and phone records.
Generic cooler. It corroborated concealment but did not independently show the fatal act.
The disputed loan explanation
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
Gerry described an extortion story; Thomas disputed it. The loan featured in the prosecution’s planning argument.
Not an authentic bank record. The alleged extortionists are not established as real people.
The purchase through MacIntyre
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
MacIntyre testified that she bought a handgun at Capano’s request and gave it to him.
Generic transaction symbol, not a gun photograph or original receipt. She initially concealed information from investigators.
★ Key evidence used in a conviction · ✓ Exclusion or reversal · ◇ Disputed evidence · ⊘ Excluded at retrial · ◆ Identity / investigative finding, not a conviction. A symbol does not mean one item proved the whole case.
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Follow the dated entries, then select an event to find its regional setting. Shared-location pins open a group of events. Evidence symbols identify important findings and their limitations.
Open the map in its own window ↗Sources & further reading
- Capano v. State, Delaware Supreme CourtRelationships, disappearance, investigation, cooperation, trial evidence, defense and direct appeal.
- Capano v. State, later Delaware Supreme Court reviewLater post-conviction and sentencing history.
- The Philadelphia Inquirer: Capano gets life without paroleResentencing after death sentence overturned.
- The Philadelphia Inquirer: convicted Delaware killer Capano dies in prisonDeath in prison and life-sentence status.
Editorial review: 2026-09-29 · 1323 words