Murder reveals the darkest part of our imaginations.
A woman's broken body in a cooler thrown into the ocean, a newlywed couple gunned down by mercenaries, chocolates mailed to Dover with deadly intent — in Delaware the most violent killings have remained the most memorable. They've spawned books, made-for-TV movies and, in one case, even a walking tour through parts of Dover.
The names of everyday murder victims quickly slip into obscurity.
But when the killing is ghastly, cruel or inhuman,American ears and eyes turn to it.
“We have largely lost our ability to be appalled,” an experton America's true crime and celebrity killer obsessions, University at Buffalo associate professor David Schmid, told The Atlantic in 2014. “It takes a very, very extreme crime for us now to recover that.”
Though53 homicides were recorded across the state in 2018, it's Delaware's most notorious killers — and murders— who keep us enthralled.
Tom Capano
No one ever foundAnne Marie Fahey's body.She disappeared in June 1996.
Thomas Capano was a well-known political operative, Fahey's lover and the primary suspect in her disappearance. He was the last known person to see Fahey alive.
By the end of his trial in 1999, the details were revealed. Capano was convicted.
Capano brought Fahey to his home and shot her with a gun purchased by another of his mistresses, Deborah MacIntyre, whom Capano later would blame for Fahey's murder.
He stuffed Fahey's 5-foot-10-inch body into an ice chest and, with the help of brotherGerry Capano, took his young girlfriend out to sea aboard a boat to dispose of her, evidence revealed.
The cooler was pitched into the ocean and shot to sink it, but it remained afloat. Capano retrieved the cooler, wrapped anchor chains around Fahey's body, puked and sent Fahey back into the sea. Gerry Capano testified he saw her foot sink below the waves.
The murder trial was a national spectacle. Capano died in prison in 2011.
Chris Rivers
Joseph and Olga Connell died in front of theirPaladin Club condominium in the Fox Point area on Sept. 22, 2013. They were gunned down by killers for hire doing the grisly bidding of Chris Rivers.
The newlyweds were celebrating Olga Connell's 39th birthday, which they'd spent on the Wilmington Riverfront. They didn't know Rivers, Joseph Connell's business partner atC&S Auto Repair, was looking to collect on Connell's $1 million life insurance policy.
Rivers had hiredJoshua Bey, his drug dealer, to put out a hiton the Connells.Bey then hiredtwo men, Dominique Benson and Aaron Thompson, to kill the Connells for him, evidence revealed.
Bey admitted he'd been the middleman in the plot. He testified against his co-defendants.
A jury found Rivers guiltyof two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, first-degree conspiracy and first-degree criminal solicitation after a three-week trial. He received two life sentences for the crime.
"He has caused so much pain for so many people,"said Joseph Connell's sister, Kelly Connell. "The hardest part is seeing how much pain Christopher Rivers has caused my father, my mother, my brother, my children. I want to take away their pain, but I cannot."
Steven Brian Pennell
On March 14, 1992, the state of Delaware killedSteven Brian Pennell.
It was the first state execution in 45 years. It was the fate Pennell asked for himself.
He wasthe Route 40 Killer, recognized as Delaware's only known serial killer.
Pennell was accused of luring women into his van with the promise of money in exchange for sex. Several women in the late '80s—Shirley Ellis, Catherine DiMauro, Michele Gordon and Kathleen Anne Meyer— then were abducted, tortured and killed.
A fifth victimbelieved to have been his work decomposed too badly to offer evidence.
Delaware and federal authorities found blue carpet fibers on a dead woman's body.A police officer, posing as a prostitute, was able to collect matching fibers from his van.
Pennell pleaded guilty to killing two of the women and pleaded no contest in two other cases. His one condition for the pleas was that Delaware execute him for the crimes.
Pennell maintained his innocence until deathbut said he wanted to spare his family the pain of his imprisonment. His wife tried to prevent that fate but failed to sway a court.
Charles Cohen
Chares Cohen was 23 when he lured his dad into his bedroom one November day in 1988 and used a 10-pound dumbbell to repeatedly bludgeon himinto unconsciousness.
Afterward, heslit Martin Cohen's throat.
Cohen then headed downstairs calling for his mother, Ethel.
"Mom! Mom! Dad fell down!" he cried. "Come up quick — come up and look!"
The 63-year-old woman, who needed a walker to move around, would meet the same gruesome fate as her husband at the hands of their only child.
He fled the state in the family's 1983 Ford LTD, ending up in San Francisco, where in February 1989 he was taken in by a 51-year-old banker named Conrad Lutz.
Cohen admitted killing Lutzbecause he said the man made sexual advances toward him. Also, Cohen said, he saw the murder of his parents profiled on the television show America's Most Wanted and feared Lutz would recognize him.
After the Lutz killing, Cohen made his way back east hitching rides and jumping freight trains, eventually landing in New Orleans a few days before Mardi Gras in 1990.
About two months later, Cohen was arrested in a suburb of New Orleans and charged with mugging an elderly woman and cheating a cab driver out of a fare.
He was brought back to Delaware where the 54-year-old remains in prison.
Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson
Brutalized and discarded in a dumpster, the victim ofAmy Grossberg and Brian Peterson was their unnamed, newborn child.
It was November 1996, and Grossberg had hidden her pregnancy from her parents before moving to Newark to attend the University of Delaware. Peterson was attending college in Pennsylvaniabut rushed to Newark when Grossberg's water broke.
He checked them into the Comfort Inn, which later changed its name to the Roadway Inn before it closed its doors after being declared a nuisance property.
The couple gave conflicting storiesabout how their dead baby was found in a dumpster days later.
Peterson was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter because he was going to testify against Grossberg. She then accepted a plea bargain for manslaughter.
Both were imprisoned. They were released in 2000.
Cordelia Botkin
The work of Cordelia Botkin would go down in the Dover annals asthe "Chocolate Candy Murders," the first murders in the United States committed through the mail.
John P.Dunning married Mary Pennington, the daughter of a former Delaware congressman, in February 1891. They moved to San Francisco, but Dunning began an affair with another woman, Botkin, which caused Pennington to return to Dover.
Dunning left Botkin to serve as a war correspondent in the Spanish-American Warin 1898. Botkin didn't take it well— she mailed Mrs. John P. Dunning a package.
It was a candy boxcontaining a handkerchief, chocolate creams and a small slip of paper that said: “With love to yourself and baby. — Mrs. C.”
Six people ate the candy. Mary Elizabeth's sister, Ida Deane, died two days later. Mary Elizabeth followed her a day later on Aug. 12. The other four people survived.
Dunning recognized Botkin's handwriting. Her trial made newspaper covers nationwide. She was sentenced to life in prison on Feb. 4, 1899.
Contact Adam Duvernay at (302) 319-1855 or aduvernay@delawareonline.com
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