Authors: M. William Phelps
It was a side of Buzz, Dee added, that many never knew. He was a delicate person, misunderstood by many. He liked to play with his siblings, for example, and often spent hours outside in the Clintons’ woodsy yard—swinging, playing ball and just being a big brother. He took Suzanne for rides in his tow truck. She loved it. Sometimes he’d just sit around and talk to the kids, telling them stories. There were even times when Buzz spent time with some of the elderly in town, playing cards, being a friend.
Indeed, there were many different aspects of Buzz Clinton—and as time went on, his future in-laws, the Carpenters, came up against a person not many knew existed.
South central Connecticut—New London, Old Lyme, Waterford, East Lyme, Groton—in the late 1980s and early 1990s had always been a haven for hardworking American families. The U.S. Naval Submarine Base, the Global Research and Development Center of Pfizer, Inc., and Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics, where submarines were built, had provided jobs for area residents for decades. The Subway sandwich shop corporation had even opened its first restaurant in nearby Bridgeport in 1965.
But as the manufacturing boom subsided, residents felt the cut. People were being laid off by the thousands. Jobs were scarce.
Route 156 runs parallel to Interstate 95 and, in several of the larger coastal towns, intersects with Route 1, a major thoroughfare that hugs the scenic Long Island Sound. From Waterford to East Lyme, Route 156 has always been a homey, comforting path to travelers. Small-town ambience. Local bars. Diners. One-pump gas stations.
The Café Del Mar wasn’t the classiest nightspot in town. It was a “gin mill,” filled with locals and passersby who stopped in for a couple of beers and went home.
In early 1992, Buzz had been dancing at the Café Del Mar on a somewhat regular basis on ladies’ nights. One evening, Kim Carpenter wandered into the bar with some friends. Buzz happened to be dancing that night.
Spotting her from where he stood onstage, after his set, Buzz went over to Kim and struck up a conversation. She seemed unassuming and withdrawn, but pleasant to be around.
Buzz, of course, didn’t know it then, but Kim had been easily tamed by the men she’d dated throughout her life. She had married right out of high school, and many of Kim’s relationships had ended sourly. Her first husband, who was in and out of jail throughout their relationship, had scarred Kim. In one way, she was broken and despondent when she met Buzz. They were the same age, twenty-six, born about one month apart, and they seemingly had a lot in common.
It didn’t take long for Buzz to become infatuated with Kim. They fell in love almost immediately.
“He must have loved that woman,” Charlie Snyder recalled. “Because Buzz was a decent-looking guy. Being a dancer, he could have had any number of women. But he chose Kim for some strange reason.”
“When she was with my son,” Dee recalled, “[Kim] was a good wife, good mother. Buzz loved her dearly.”
But Kim’s upbringing and family life, according to some, had been anything but pleasant. One person close to the family likened Kim’s upbringing to that of Cinderella’s: Kim was treated like the unwanted stepdaughter, while her older sister, Beth Ann, had the luxuries of royalty.
“Kim could do no right; Beth could do no wrong!”
In the short time that Buzz and Kim had been together before Buzz was murdered, this parallel would play itself out almost as if it were scripted—with Buzz, Kim, Cynthia and Beth Ann playing the leading roles.
Kim Carpenter had grown up in a socially mixed family of academics and blue-collar men. Her mother, Cynthia, was a college graduate with several degrees, while her father, Dick, was a military brat who later owned and operated a landscaping business. He was gone for most of her formative years, so when Dick returned from the navy, Kim later said, “they all had to adjust to the fact that he would be around permanently.”
Beth Ann had dreams of becoming a doctor, while Kim graduated from high school, waited tables at a local restaurant, married a “heavy drinker [who] was physically abusive,” then began a career at Stop & Shop. Afraid to leave her husband while he was around, Kim filed for divorce when he went to jail.
After dating a local Groton man for a time in late 1989, Kim became pregnant. She wanted to keep the baby, she told the guy after she found out. But he didn’t like the idea of being a father at such a young age, and asked Kim to have an abortion. He said he would kill himself if she didn’t.
Not sure of what she was going to do, the man left Kim before she made a decision. But in August 1990, Kim gave birth to a blond-haired, blue-eyed angel, Rebecca Ann Carpenter.
With no man around, after giving birth, Kim began raising the girl, she said later, “with the support of her family.”
Beth Ann Carpenter was born on Saturday, November 23, 1963. For most of America, it was probably the second most tragic day in history. On November 22, a balmy Friday afternoon in Texas, President John F. Kennedy was gunned down in broad daylight as millions watched in horror.
Yet for Cynthia and Dick Carpenter, cute little Beth Ann, their first child, came on like a blessing—a fleeting relief from the collective grief that had gripped the country that week over the death of one of its most beloved leaders.
From day one, Beth Ann was adorable: blue eyes, pale white skin, dark red hair and the rosiest red cheeks of any kid in the nursery.
When she graduated in 1981 from Ledyard High School, Beth Ann looked more tomboyish than many of the girls in her class. Her rust red hair, freckles and boyish manner made her a prime target for her schoolmates to call her “Red.” In photos from that era, Beth Ann looked like a female version of Opie, Ron Howard’s straitlaced redheaded character from the popular TV program
The Andy Griffith Show.
She sported bony wrists, twig arms, thin legs and lips, and an awkward, stubborn smile that appeared forced. Her straight, fine hair was cut ultraconservatively—butchlike—just above her ears, and parted to the right side like a child on his first day of kindergarten. She was petite, much shorter than her fellows, and wore little makeup. She was sometimes called “Turtle.” Her favorite sayings were “Tell me about it” and “Really.” She liked to ski and swim.
Throughout high school, Beth Ann dreamed of only one occupation: medicine. She wanted to help people. But more than anything, perhaps, becoming a doctor would allow her a chance to get out of Ledyard. There wasn’t much Ledyard could offer a child who had dreamed of anything else besides agriculture.
Born in 1966, Kim was a couple of years behind Beth Ann. She was more girlish and prissy than her more masculine sister. Always smiling, she dreamed of hairdressing school and moving out of Ledyard. Like Beth Ann, Kim loved the water and went swimming with friends whenever she could. She liked to play tennis and ride horses, developing decent skills for both.
Kim smiled in her high-school yearbook photograph. She appeared happy and certain. Almost content. In stark contrast to big sister Beth Ann, Kim styled her hair appropriately to the times and wore plenty of eye shadow, blush and other kinds of makeup.
The Carpenter sisters, it would turn out, were as different as a snake and a bird.
As fifteen-year-old Kim entered her sophomore year at Ledyard High School in 1981, Beth Ann was off to the nation’s capital to attend the prestigious George Washington University. Admitted as a botany major, hoping to accrue enough knowledge and accreditation to further her studies in medicine, Beth Ann went through her George Washington years doubting her decision to go into medicine after graduation.
After graduating in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in botany, the ideal next step for Beth Ann would’ve been medical school. Among the requirements for admission to medical school were fifteen hours of botany, fifteen hours of biology (genetics and biochemistry), one year of math, two years of chemistry and one year of physics.
Beth Ann had done it all.
But instead of taking the expected route, Beth Ann abruptly decided to take a year off. She was a woman now, much more feminine and removed from that young and naive girl back in Ledyard. Suddenly, being a doctor didn’t seem appealing any longer.
With nothing but time on her hands, Beth Ann decided to take the LSAT, “a one-hundred-question, three hour and twenty-five minute exam consisting of five multiple choice sections followed by a thirty-minute writing sample.” There is no other test more important in preparation for law school than the LSAT. Seventy percent of the admission process is based on one’s LSAT score. Beth Ann now wanted to become a lawyer—not a doctor. It was a total flip-flop in professions. She had studied for four years to go into medicine, but had thrown it all away to go into law inside of a year.
It was an odd change, indeed. But Beth Ann was a smart kid; she could have done anything she wanted to, and her family would’ve likely supported her proudly.
On the first try, she did exceptionally well on the LSAT. And because of that, her next decision wasn’t hard. Beth Ann later said, “…I thought [law] was a proper profession for me.”
Armed with an unquestionable understanding of prelaw, Beth Ann applied to the Catholic University School of Law, also in Washington, DC, in May 1987. Because of her clear understanding of the law and subsequent high score on the LSAT, she was accepted with open arms.
Quickly, though, any dreams of studying criminal and corporate law that she might have harbored were replaced by a desire to go into real estate, divorce and contractual law. Guardianship and conservatorship was another option. A paper lawyer. Beth Ann later said that the idea of working in a court of law seemed “very intimidating.” She wanted no part of arguing cases before judges, but instead wanted to work with people behind the scenes.
After three years at Catholic University, she graduated in 1990 and decided to take the bar exam immediately. Back home in Connecticut, the housing boom was in full swing. She thought she would have no trouble returning, passing the bar exam and finding a job as a real estate attorney or divorce lawyer.
Not only was she in debt for more than $150,000 in student loans, but after going out to Los Angeles during the summer of 1990 to study for the New York bar, Beth Ann returned and failed the New York test horribly.
While at Catholic University, Beth Ann would take her breaks from school and return home to Ledyard. One night, in 1987, while on a break from studies, she went to a local disco. Sitting at the bar was an olive-skinned man about thirty-one years old. Classy-looking, he had dark hair, cropped tightly back like Dean Martin, and was in good physical shape.
Dressed fashionably, the man soon noticed Beth Ann, walked over and struck up a conversation. “My name is Joseph,” he said with a strong Middle Eastern accent. “Joseph Jebran.”
Jebran was a bit older than Beth Ann. He had been a successful architect for about four years when they met. A man of the world, he’d grown up and attended high school in Lebanon. After that, he and his family moved to Paris. It was the mid-1970s. By 1984, Jebran had graduated from one of the most prestigious schools in Europe, the Beaux-Arts School of Art and Architecture. From there, he bounced back and forth between Rome and Beirut working for a local contractor. In 1986, Jebran moved into his cousin’s house in New London, Connecticut, and became an American citizen shortly thereafter.
A
GQ
-looking guy, Jebran had no trouble finding women. But Beth Ann, from that first night, seemed different. She had a peculiar way about her, almost alluring. By this time, Beth Ann had grown from a rather plain-Jane schoolgirl into a beautiful woman of five feet three inches, 110 pounds. She was fit and trim, with a nice shape. Men were all over her. Her bronze red hair flowed halfway down her shoulders. Redheads were always noticed, and Beth Ann, one would expect, liked the attention. She didn’t look anything like the tomboy she had been back in high school. She was stylish and smart-looking now, determined to become a lawyer.
Joseph Jebran—with his heavy foreign accent, well-dressed appearance, old-fashioned manners and playboy looks—undoubtedly fulfilled her blueprint for the man she saw as being fit to be with her. Since moving to the States, Jebran had hooked up with a local architectural firm in nearby Norwich, and he was working for Richard Sharpe, a respected architect who had taken Jebran under his wing and sponsored his American citizenship.
As Beth Ann and Joseph talked that first night, they ended up exchanging phone numbers.
The next week, after Jebran had thought about the night many times, he called Beth Ann a couple of times to hook up, but she never answered her phone or called him back.
Maybe she’d changed her mind? Perhaps she was out of town? Either way, Joseph wrote her off.
A week or so later, however, while back in Washington studying, Beth Ann called Joseph out of the blue.
“Would you like to come to Washington?”
It was an odd request. They’d just met. Jebran had thought he’d never hear from her again. But at the same time, he felt something. So he packed up his car, and off he went to the nation’s capital.
In the end, Joseph spent the weekend and, just like that, found himself involved in an intimate relationship with a woman he had known for only about two weeks. As time went on, he made the five-hour trek to Washington about once a month.
On paper, they were made for each other: Beth Ann studying to become a lawyer and Joseph already an established architect—two professionals on their way up the socioeconomic ladder.
Both were going places. It seemed like the perfect match.
After Beth Ann finished law school in 1990 and spent that summer in California studying for the bar exam, she moved back home to her parents’ Ledyard home. Joseph Jebran, who was now working for a high-brow architectural firm in New York City, began spending more and more time with her. Beth Ann had gone to Europe with her brother, Richard, for about eight weeks after taking the bar exam, but now she was back, settling into life.
Because of his job, Joseph began living in New York City with four other men during the week and commuting to New London on weekends. For the most part, Jebran would hang around the Carpenter home when he was in town. But even though it was just weekend visits and telephone calls during the week, Joseph fell hard for Beth Ann. When the weekend visits were over, Beth Ann would drive Joseph to the train station in downtown New London, see him off until the next weekend and go about her life.
For Jebran, he would count the days until they saw each other again.
Soon after Kim gave birth to Rebecca in 1990, the child became the main topic of conversation around the Carpenter house. One of the things Joseph Jebran would later recall in vivid detail about being at the Carpenter house during this time was how Rebecca was all anyone—especially Beth Ann—ever talked about.
How was she doing? How was Kim treating her? What have the doctors said recently?
It was as if the entire ebb and flow of the house were driven by Rebecca and her needs.