Authors: M. William Phelps
At one point, Fremut broke out a crossbow, and they started taking target practice. Despres admitted later that they were checking the various weapons for “accuracy, distance and power.” Despres thought perhaps he was going to have to kill Buzz from afar, and he wanted to be sure he had the right weapon for the job.
Days later, Fremut and White went over to Despres’s apartment. Despres wanted to show Fremut a .25-caliber automatic pistol he owned. For the past week or so, Fremut and Despres had been discussing making a silencer and even purchased a handbook on how to do it. Despres had called Fremut up to say he’d made a silencer for a 9mm Fremut owned. He wanted to show it to him.
After showing Fremut how the silencer fit perfectly on the weapon, Despres said, “Let’s go out back and try it out.”
Despres also brought a .38-caliber Saturday night special he’d owned and a .22-caliber rifle. The .38 had a brown handle, White later recalled, and a black frame. The serial numbers, she noticed, had been filed off. In their place, Despres had engraved F
UCK
Y
OU
P
IG
.
“Where’d you get that?” Fremut asked Despres.
“A biker friend of mine I buy my cocaine from.”
As they took turns firing the various weapons, White listened as Despres explained to Fremut how he had been stalking Buzz lately.
“I’ve been standing behind his house, watching him at night. But the person who wants it done doesn’t want any of his kids around when I do it.”
Sometime later, Despres finally confessed to Fremut that he was getting paid between $5,000 and $10,000. This time, Fremut believed him.
When Fremut heard the amount, he laughed. “It doesn’t seem like a lot of money to shoot someone, Mark,” he said.
Mark Despres called Haiman Clein a few days after he and Joe Fremut had practiced firing weapons and told Clein he was having trouble finding Buzz. He thought he had seen him a few times, but he just wasn’t sure it was Buzz. He didn’t need to tell Clein that it would be a disaster if he killed the wrong guy.
“Come in today! We need to talk,” Clein said.
As Despres sat down in Clein’s office later that afternoon, Clein began pacing. Then he started yelling at Mark. It was obvious from what Clein had to say that Beth Ann was putting the squeeze on him to get the job done.
“Why the fuck is this not done yet?” Clein asked in a rage. “Huh? It’s taking too fucking long. Just get it done!”
“I’ll give you back the money if you want,” Despres offered.
Turning red, Clein began walking out of the room. But before opening the door, he said, “You stay right here, Mark. Don’t move.”
When Clein returned, Beth Ann was behind him.
“He drives a black Firebird,” Beth Ann mumbled in a whisper, looking at Despres. Then, without saying anything else, she handed Clein a photograph of Buzz, Kim, and Rebecca. They were standing, Clein later recalled, in “front of a hearth.” Clein recognized it immediately as being the one in the living room of the Carpenters’ Ledyard home.
“It was a wooden hearth, not a big fireplace or anything like that,” Clein said later. “If you walk into the house, it’s to the left.”
Clein had been over to the Carpenters’ house several times. Beth Ann had told him previously that she had gotten the photograph from her parents. Many later speculated that the photo must have been taken when Buzz and Kim went over to the Carpenters for the 1993 Labor Day picnic. In all likelihood, it was the only time the Carpenters would’ve had a chance to photograph Buzz at their house. They had been fighting with the man for nearly a year by that point. Taking family photographs didn’t seem to be at the top of their priority list.
With Despres sitting patiently, not saying much, Clein pulled a pair of scissors out of his desk drawer and cut Buzz’s face, from the neck up, out of the photograph. The new photo was about the size of a nickel.
“Here,” Clein said, handing Despres the cutout. “Now you go find that motherfucker!”
During the afternoon of February 20, 1994, Catherine White and Joe Fremut were hanging around Fremut Texaco when Mark Despres pulled into the parking lot, parked his car by one of the garage bays, got out and walked casually over to where they were standing. As was generally the case lately, Chris Despres was right behind his dad.
“Catherine, go do something,” Fremut said, wiping his hands off with a rag.
“I can’t find the opportune time to do him, Joe,” Despres said in frustration. “I’ve been following him around but just can’t seem to get him alone.”
“Continue to follow him around,” Fremut urged. “The moment will present itself.”
Later that night, White finally confronted Fremut about what she suspected.
“Mark picked up this contract for eight thousand dollars to do this guy from Old Lyme,” Fremut said without hesitation.
This was the first time White had heard directly from Fremut that he and Despres were going to kill someone.
Things abruptly changed one day near the end of February. Clein and Beth Ann had gotten into, Clein later said, a “petty argument,” and Clein got so upset at her that he called the murder off.
“Forget about it,” Clein told Despres over the phone the following day.
At first, Despres didn’t say anything.
“You hear me?” Clein said again.
“Okay,” Despres said. Then, thinking about it for a moment, he asked, “Do you want me to lower the price?”
“
No
! It’s off.”
Later, Clein explained that it was possibly his moral compass on that day beckoning him to look for a reason to call it off. He said the argument had been so trivial it shouldn’t have been enough to make him mad enough to cancel the contract. “I reasoned with myself that I shouldn’t be doing this for her—that why should I do this for her? I might have just been looking for a reason to call it off.”
Somewhat amazed by the recent turn of events, after realizing how serious Clein was, Despres said, “Fine, no problem.”
Later that night, Clein showed up at Beth Ann’s condo and explained how he’d called it off.
Beth Ann didn’t say much of anything one way or the other, Clein later said, and just let it go.
At least for the time being.
Haiman Clein and Beth Ann’s life together stayed pretty much plain and simple for the next week or so. They continued sleeping together, dining out and working together, but the subject of Buzz’s murder, according to Clein, hadn’t been as much a part of their conversation as it had been in recent months. Throughout the past few weeks, Beth Ann had noticed an increase in Clein’s anxiety, though. He would sweat profusely, she later said. He would shake. His skin was pasty and clammy. There were times when he would become enraged for no apparent reason. They might be driving down the road and Clein would snap and begin banging his head against the windshield. She suspected he was abusing drugs, but she never called him on it.
A short time after they had first slept together back in November 1993, Beth Ann went to Clein and explained how ashamed she felt about the relationship. He was married, for heaven’s sake. He had children. He was her boss.
“Bonnie and I,” Clein admitted, “haven’t had sex in three years. She criticizes me for all of my business failures. Anyway, she’s having an affair with a Connecticut college professor!”
By then, Beth Ann later admitted, she was in love with Clein.
“I was impressed by his stature.” He was an older man, a professional. “He was the board director at a local bank. I looked up to him.”
She said she could learn things from Clein that she couldn’t from anyone else. Since the affair had begun, Clein had made a key to Beth Ann’s condo. He would leave work early and go cook for her. While she shopped or worked out, he would prepare gourmet dinners. He would show up the next morning with doughnuts and coffee.
But now, three months later, they were planning a murder together. Gourmet dinners, trips to Florida, working out at the local spa and shopping excursions seemed like some domestic fantasy. They were in this thing together now. Unless Beth Ann wanted to call it off completely, as she had said, there was no turning back.
Beth Ann was on the phone one afternoon near the end of February talking to someone in her family, when suddenly she broke into tears, crying as if there had been a death in the family. Hysterical, Clein later remembered, she began shaking, mumbling things he couldn’t understand.
Something had happened to Rebecca, Beth Ann said after hanging up—something really,
really
bad.
“What is it?” Clein asked. “Tell me.”
“Buzz locked Rebecca in the basement…. She had a burn mark on her back. The whole family is upset.”
Indeed, the entire Carpenter family, Clein soon learned, had been in a frenzy over the incident ever since they’d picked Rebecca up for the weekend.
Moments later, Clein and Beth Ann took off to her Norwich condo. As they drove, Clein picked up his cell phone and called Cynthia Carpenter. Beth Ann, sitting beside him, was panic-stricken and crying; she was carrying on about how bad the situation still was for Rebecca.
“It won’t go on much longer,” Clein promised Cynthia over the phone. “It” wasn’t stated, but it was certainly implicit: “it” meant the alleged abuse Buzz was perpetrating against Rebecca.
Locked in the cellar? A burn mark on her back?
When they got to Beth Ann’s condo, she asked Clein if he could “call Mark and tell him to go ahead with it?” Looking into his eyes, as serious as she had ever been, she said, “I’ll pay for it if I have to.”
“I will,” Clein reassured her. “Don’t worry about it.”
At the office the next day, Beth Ann repeated her previous offer. “I’ll pay the remaining three thousand. You
have
to get Mark to go through with it.”
Buzz was never charged with any type of abuse against Rebecca. Neither DCYS, the Family Services Unit, which had investigated every allegation made against Buzz, nor the state’s attorney’s office ever brought charges against him for abuse of any kind. It was all lies, many later said, made up to convince those involved to kill Buzz. This most recent event arose from an incident that took place at Buzz and Kim’s new apartment. Rebecca, Dee Clinton later said, had fallen against a space heater and burned her back. The entire Clinton family had heard about it. Buzz had never locked her in the basement or burned her with a cigarette. The story had been fabricated, many later claimed, to get Clein back into the mind-set of rehiring Despres to kill Buzz.
“What did Haiman say about that incident that led him to reinstate this murder?” Kevin Kane, Connecticut State’s attorney, later asked. “It was those phone calls in which [Beth Ann] was so upset from talking about Rebecca having been burned.”
The issue of Rebecca’s being burned quickly worked its way to the murder team. Within days, Clein told Despres, which only solidified Despres’s personal theory that Buzz was a “scumbag” who deserved to die; then Despres told Fremut, who told White, and finally Chris found out.
After explaining to Chris that Buzz had to die because he was abusing a child, Despres said, “He’s putting cigarettes out on [her] back, for Christ’s sake.”
What more proof was needed? Despres reasoned. The courts weren’t doing anything. The Carpenters weren’t doing anything. It was time Buzz Clinton paid for his repulsive acts against children.
Despres had been game since day one; he needed very little convincing. To him, Buzz was a child molester. So when Clein called him back and told him to go through with it, Despres said, “No problem.”
Still, Mark had to convince Chris that they were doing the right thing.
A former friend of Mark Despres’s recalled later how Mark had justified the murder to Chris; told him how he had proof that Buzz was sexually abusing Rebecca.
“Chris told me that Mark played some tape for him that had the child being abused. Whoever had approached them to do this said it was awful that there was a screaming child on the tape…. The reason they were going to do the hit was that there was this child screaming on the tape.”
According to that same friend, Mark believed the tape was of Buzz raping Rebecca. He said Clein had played the tape for him one day when he was in his office. Clein insisted that the man on the tape was Buzz and the screaming child was Rebecca.
This seems almost impossible, however.
If Mark believed that a person would record himself raping a child, or that a third party would record it but not do anything to stop it, then Clein could have probably talked Mark Despres into anything. He was as gullible as a child.
Nonetheless, regardless of the truth, this tape was positive proof to Mark that Buzz “needed to be taken off the face of the earth”—and murder, in Mark Despres’s twisted mind, was the only justifiable way to accomplish that task.
By the beginning of March, seven different people—Mark Despres, Haiman Clein, Beth Ann Carpenter, Chris Despres, Catherine White, Jocelyn Johnson, and Joe Fremut—knew of the plot to murder Buzz. Yet no one went to the police and, subsequently, saved Buzz’s life.
If he had his way, inside of the next few weeks, Mark Despres would be basking in the sunshine of Florida, living off the blood money he was being paid to kill Buzz—that is, providing he could get Buzz alone somewhere.
During the first week of March, Despres had even called Pettipaug a few times from a pay phone across the street from Fremut Texaco to see if Buzz had been working. But he never seemed to be there when Despres phoned.
With that, Despres’s frustration began to mount.
On March 6, 1994, Despres picked up Fremut, and they drove to Pettipaug for the second time that week. This was it. No more screwing around. They were going to find Buzz Clinton, stuff him into the car and, on some remote stretch of road, blow his brains out—the same way they had rehearsed.
Before they got to the parking lot, Fremut took the wheel. Then he pulled around into the rear parking lot of the building, dropped off Despres and drove around to the front of the building, where he waited for Despres to give him the signal that Buzz’s tow truck was parked out back.
“We were just looking to follow [Buzz]…so we could get an idea where [he] goes…so we could shoot him,” Despres later recalled.
But Buzz wasn’t anywhere to be found.
The following day, Clein called.
“Have you found him?”
“Nope.”
“Come into the office!”
Later that day, Despres drove to New London.
“What the fuck is going on?” Clein demanded. He and Despres hadn’t spoken for some time. Clein assumed Despres was close to finishing the job. He expected to pick up the newspaper any day now and see that it had been done.
“He must be driving something else. I can’t locate him,” Despres said.
Despres’s instincts were spot on. Buzz had been driving a Pontiac Firebird he and Kim had recently purchased. The tow truck hadn’t been running well.
Clein had always been unsparing and strict, like a scolding parent, when conveying his demands to Despres. Despres, whose own father had hit him repeatedly and left him, perhaps looked to Clein as the father figure he never had. In one way, Despres, a man certainly capable of snapping Clein’s neck as if it were a twig, was frightened of Clein. If Clein was capable of commissioning one murder, why not two? Despres even went to his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Jocelyn Johnson, one night and admitted how scared he was. He told Johnson Clein had given him a photograph of Buzz, but he was still having trouble identifying him from the photograph alone. He told her that Clein was “aggravated” that the murder hadn’t yet been carried out, and Clein had even threatened his life, saying at one point, “You’ll be next if you don’t carry out the murder.” Despres gave Johnson the “impression,” she later said, that he “didn’t want to go through with” it. But he was terrified and felt he had to because he’d already spent the down payment Clein had given him to buy a gun and car.
As Despres shuffled a bit in his chair, watching Clein grow angrier because Buzz was still alive, Despres said, “I called him a couple of times, Haiman—”
“What the hell for?” Clein asked, interrupting.
“I was thinking of asking him to tow a car for me.”
“You’re making me look like an
asshole
!” Clein screamed.
“This isn’t something you can just do anywhere, Haiman.”
During one of their first meetings, Clein had been very specific regarding how he wanted Buzz killed, making a point to tell Despres
not
to kill Buzz in front of his children or near his home. He wanted it done privately, he said, with no one around. But things were clearly different now. Something had dramatically changed the stakes.
“Do it on the fucking sidewalk,” Clein said. “On the road.
Anywhere!
Just fucking do it!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Despres could see Beth Ann through the door window in Clein’s office. She was peering in from her office, undoubtedly curious about what was being said.
Despres then asked Clein if he wanted his money back.
“No. Just get it done.”
“How?”
“His wrecker is for sale. Just call him up and tell him you want to look at the wrecker—and then…get rid of him!”
Since being hired by Clein, Despres had made it a habit to stop and let Fremut in on the latest details about the murder plan. So after leaving Clein’s office, Despres drove to Fremut’s to talk.
“His wrecker is for sale,” Despres told Fremut as they stood outside in the parking lot. “The best way for us to get rid of him is to make believe we’re going to buy the wrecker.”
“Sounds like a good enough idea to me,” Fremut said.
Despres then walked across the street, called Buzz and explained that he wanted to look at the wrecker.
“I’m too tired to come out,” Buzz said. “Call me tomorrow night.”
Despres hung up and walked back to the garage.
“So?” Fremut asked.
“He said he’s too tired.”
Despres was clearly disappointed. Things had gone on too long. It seemed the longer they waited, the harder it was becoming.
“Keep trying,” Fremut urged.
The same scenario played out twenty-four hours later when Despres called Buzz again from the same pay phone.
“I’m too tired,” Buzz repeated. “Try me again tomorrow night.”
Dee Clinton had recently turned forty-seven. She owned a successful kennel and had raised three beautiful children. She never wanted anything more. Buck Clinton was the wrestling coach at Wethersfield High School. He had been involved with the sport his entire life. His kids respected him. The Clintons had had their share of troubles, but they always came together as a family to overcome whatever obstacle was put in their way. Since Dee had gotten to know Kim over the past year and a half, she began to understand that Kim was one of the main reasons why her son had changed so much lately. Buzz seemed ready to settle down. Now, with this issue of custody almost behind them, Dee surmised that Buzz, Kim, Rebecca and Briana could begin their lives together as a family—but, more important, without any meddling from the Carpenters.
On March 9, 1994, Dee had been over at Buzz and Kim’s apartment because Briana had been ill, which was likely the reason why Buzz had told Despres for two consecutive days that he couldn’t meet him. Buzz wanted to be home with his daughter. She was sick. Everything else could wait.
Dee brought a pair of shoes for Rebecca and some medicine for Briana when she showed up that night. Buzz was on the couch. Kim was sitting on the floor holding Briana. Rebecca was her old self, “buzzing around the living room,” having a grand old time, Dee later recalled.
While she was there, Buzz had taken a call. When he got off the phone, he told Dee it was “the guy I’m going to meet. He wants to look at my wrecker. When you get home tonight, Ma, put my battery on the charger. I need to charge it before I meet him.”
Dee said she would.
“I’ll bring the battery back here tomorrow,” Dee said, and explained that she was coming back over anyway to pick up Kim so they could go shopping. Dee said she’d be there around 6:00
P.M
.. By her bringing the battery, she added, it would save Buzz a trip.
“Sounds good to me, Ma.”
Around 5:30
P.M
., on March 10, Mark Despres drove over to Fremut Texaco with Chris. Catherine White, along with a friend of hers, was at the garage hanging around.
“I’m going to call Clinton about the wrecker,” Despres said after pulling Fremut aside for a moment.
“I’ll come with you,” Fremut said.
Mark and Chris, after talking with Fremut for a few moments, got into Despres’s car and hightailed it out of the parking lot. Fremut and White followed.
About fifteen minutes later, near 6:00
P.M
., with Fremut behind him, Despres pulled off Exit 64, on Interstate 95 in Westbrook. One of Connecticut’s many state police barracks was up ahead, not more than half a mile away. At the end of the exit, Despres pulled into a commuter parking lot where there was a pay phone.
As White watched, Fremut and Despres got out of their cars and walked toward the pay phone. But before they approached the phone, Fremut grabbed Despres by the arm.
“I can’t come with you,” he said. “I have something else I need to do tonight.”
“So I’m supposed to go by
myself
?” Despres had planned the murder with Fremut from the start. Here it was,
show time,
and Fremut was bailing out?
“Just go do it! It’s no big deal.”
“What the fuck, Joe?”
Just then, Chris came walking up.
“Bring Chris with you,” Fremut suggested, pointing at him. “Have him do it for you.”
“Yeah, right.”
What at first seemed like an idiotic suggestion became one of the only options Mark had left.
So he asked Chris if he wanted to go along.
“I want three hundred dollars and a gun,” Chris said.
“I’ll throw in a bag of weed, too,” Mark said.
Mark later said he would have given Chris the money and weed anyway. It didn’t matter that Chris had agreed to go along.
Fremut then got into his car and took off. A disgusted Despres watched Fremut barrel out of the parking lot. Then he picked up the telephone and called Buzz.
“So, can I take a look at the wrecker tonight, or what?” Despres asked when Buzz answered.
“Sure. I can show it to you anytime tonight,” Buzz said.
“How is it? In good shape?”
Buzz had painted it recently. It was old, but it looked as if it had been well taken care of.
Despres later said he then made small talk with Buzz so as to make the call seem legit.
“It’s bad on gas,” Buzz offered.
They then agreed to meet at the Howard Johnson restaurant parking lot, in Old Saybrook. HoJo’s, as it was called, was at the intersection of Route 9 and Interstate 95. The Connecticut River, which runs parallel to Route 9, dumps into the Atlantic Ocean at the same intersection. The Baldwin Bridge acts as somewhat of a town line between Old Lyme and Old Saybrook.
“How’s seven o’clock?” Buzz asked Despres.
“I’ll see you then.”
Shortly after Buzz hung up with Despres, Dee phoned to tell him that she was running late and wouldn’t have a chance to drop off the battery until later on that night when she picked Kim up to go shopping.
“I’m not going to make it by six, Buzz,” Dee said. “There’s no way I can finish all of my work. Sorry.”
“I need that battery. I’m meeting this guy.”
“The earliest I can do is seven.”
“Just leave the battery out. I’ll pick it up on my way out.”
When Mark and Chris arrived at Despres’s Deep River home after talking to Buzz, Mark pulled his .38-caliber Saturday night special out of the drawer where he stored it, loaded six rounds and put it in his shoulder holster.
The gun, bought sometime in early 1994, had been purchased by Jocelyn Johnson, Despres’s girlfriend, at Ron’s Gun Shop, in Niantic. Despres was with Johnson when she purchased it, and had even picked it out.
After loading his gun, Mark sat down next to Chris to watch television. It was about 6:45
P.M
. They didn’t have to meet Buzz until somewhere around 7:00
P.M
. With HoJo’s about a ten-minute drive south on Route 9, there wasn’t much left to do except wait.
Despres had traded in his white Buick Skylark and purchased a blue Buick Regal for the specific reason of killing Buzz. The plan was to meet with Buzz and tell him he wanted to take the wrecker for a drive to check it out. Despres would then tell Buzz that Chris would follow them in the Regal. Once they got going, Despres would pull off somewhere in the woods and blow Buzz’s brains out in the truck.
As Chris and Mark were getting ready to take off for Old Saybrook, Chris asked what they were going to do. The boy still seemed to think it was, perhaps, all a joke.
“We’re going to kill that guy,” Despres said matter-of-factly.
If Chris had thought his dad would never go through with the actual murder, now it was clear that he was serious. Chris watched as his dad loaded a weapon, shouldered it and made several calls over a two-day period to hook up a meeting with Buzz. There was even one time a few days back when Despres and Fremut were fanning through the
Bargain News,
a local newspaper that sold cars and trucks, and came upon a For-Sale ad Buzz had placed for the wrecker. Mark recognized the phone number in the ad as being the same as the number on Buzz’s tow truck. When Mark and Joe began discussing the notion of calling Buzz and luring him away under the guise of buying the tow truck, Chris’s name came up as being the possible triggerman.
Then, as Mark walked away for a minute as the three of them were sitting around and joking about things, Fremut put his arm around Chris and, slapping him on the back as though he’d just whacked a two-run homer for his Little League team, said, “I’m going to make you a hit man, Chris!”
They all laughed.
Chris could do nothing else except look at Fremut and wonder what he was getting himself mixed up in. What seemed at first like a plot for some sort of twisted game of Dungeons & Dragons was now materializing into reality.
When Buzz showed up at his parents’ house in Old Lyme to pick up the battery, Buck was cooking dinner. In the foyer, to the right, on the wall, were photos of Buzz and all the kids. The Clinton home wasn’t by any means one of the larger homes in Old Lyme, but it was a warm place of solitude and strength for Buzz Clinton. He knew his family loved him. Buck and Dee, although they were tough on their son when he needed it, would have done anything for Buzz—and usually did.
“You stayin’ for supper, Buzz?” Buck asked.
“No. I’m in a rush, Dad. I’ve got to get out of here as soon as possible.”
As they were talking, Suzanne, Buzz’s sister, came running into the kitchen. There was a play area off to the side of the kitchen where Suzanne had been playing when Buzz arrived. Suzanne looked up to her much older brother as though he were a movie star. She adored and idolized him.
“Buzz was her everything,” Dee recalled later.
Buzz had always found the time to stop whatever he was doing and give his sister a hug and kiss on the cheek, or maybe even play with her if he had enough time. Tonight was no different.