Authors: M. William Phelps
“I will not allow a
juvenile,
under these circumstances, to leave with you.”
Harris was a bit more firm now in his inflection, letting Despres know who was in control.
“Nothing is going to happen to her, Chet.”
“You admitted to me that you were involved with Buzz Clinton’s murder, Mark. You’re free to go, but she’s staying here!”
Detective Reggie Wardell had walked over while Harris was questioning Despres. By this point, Turner and his team had arrived to serve the search warrant and were scouring the area.
“You’re not leaving with her, Mr. Despres,” Wardell said. “We can’t let you do that.”
Despres agreed—and took off without the girl, who was eventually turned over to her mother.
Mark Despres’s apartment was adjacent to his mother’s house, a modest, raised ranch-style home with faded yellow paint and a well-kept yard. On the same property, near the edge of Winthrop Road, the apartment Despres lived in was nothing more than a two-car garage, with a large loft above it. Despres had lived there on and off since he and his wife, Diana Trevethan, had divorced back in the early 1980s.
After wading through piles of garbage inside Despres’ apartment, the ED-MCS found a few interesting items right away. While sifting through phone bills, motor vehicle records, address books and other common items, John Turner found what Joe Fremut had predicted he would earlier that day: a 9mm Taurus handgun.
It was a good start. Anytime a source’s information was accurate, Turner recalled later, “It means this person can somewhat be trusted.”
Next to the gun was a homemade silencer. It looked as if it had been recently attached and detached, with broken shards of solder visible on both the weapon and the silencer. Owning a silencer is a crime. At the least, Despres could be arrested on that charge.
Despres had come back after driving around for a while and was waiting outside while the search continued.
“That’s Joe’s gun,” Despres said when Turner approached him with it.
As the search progressed, what could have been seen as an arsenal of weaponry by some was merely a weak collection of hunting rifles and old, rusted guns that many a household in the area probably had on hand: .22-caliber Derringer, .22-caliber L.R. revolver, .22-caliber long rifle, a shot gun (Long Tom), an old Civil War–era rifle dating back to 1876, a service rifle, .22-caliber Winchester, .54-caliber black powder rifle, two Mossberg shotguns, a second black powder rifle (this one a .50 caliber), .30-caliber rifle made by Plainfield, .22-caliber rifle made by Chipmunk; Ithaca M49 rifle and a Crossman air gun.
Within Despres’s massive inventory of handguns and collector’s rifles, however, was no sign of what detectives were looking for—the .38 that had killed Buzz.
Also of interest to detectives was some satanic literature found out in the open on a table, scores of burned candles, a Ouija board, and a red pentagram spray-painted on the floor.
“We came up with a lot of little pieces of evidence,” Turner said later, “that, most important, corroborated what Catherine White had told us about. That’s when we knew we had a trustworthy source. Everything Cathy White described was there.”
Days later, the 9mm the ED-MCS had confiscated was given to the ATF, along with a request for a trace. Within a few days, it was learned that the gun had been shipped from Westfield, Massachusetts, to Hoffman Gun Center in Newington, Connecticut, on March 13, 1989. After checking with Hoffman, Turner found out that Despres had been telling the truth when he said it was Fremut’s gun because Hoffman listed the owner (or purchaser of the weapon) as Joseph Fremut.
On June 2, detectives and state troopers spent hours rummaging through every crevice of Fremut Texaco, hoping to come up with something to tie Fremut to Buzz’s death. Near the end of their search, Detective Marty Graham hit the jackpot in the bottom of the Dumpster out back. He found various papers, gun parts and live ammo buried under some garbage and old car parts.
A few days later, the Connecticut State Police Forensic Laboratory confirmed that the ammo taken from Fremut’s Dumpster was the same caliber as the bullets extracted from Buzz’s body. What was more important, however, was that the ammo was manufactured by the same company that had manufactured the bullets that killed Buzz Clinton.
A few days after Catherine White had made “the call,” she went to Joe Fremut’s apartment and took a sawed-off shotgun and a .38-caliber pistol, hid them in an overnight bag and boarded a train alone to California.
When Fremut found out what White had done, he contacted Despres and told him they were flying out to California right away to meet White and, as Fremut had suggested months earlier, kill White’s pimp, who lived in the San Francisco area.
Fremut, Despres later explained, had “intentions of robbing and torturing [the] pimp.” Despres decided to go along, if not to help out Fremut, but rather just to get out of Connecticut and away from the cops. However, when Despres arrived in California, he abruptly changed his mind and flew back to Connecticut without learning the fate of White’s pimp. Despres’s heart was in Florida. His Deep River apartment and mother’s home had been searched already. He had told detectives he was there on the night Buzz had been killed. He knew an arrest was imminent.
Arriving back in Connecticut from California in early June, Despres contacted Haiman Clein right away; he desperately needed the rest of his money.
The next day, Despres asked his mother, Esther Lockwood, if she would go to Clein’s office and pick up an envelope for him.
As she drove back from Clein’s office, Despres’s mother peeked inside the envelope, she later said, and saw about $1,500 in cash.
As soon as Despres got his hands on the money, he ran scared and picked up his fifteen-year-old girlfriend, Jackie Powers, and went to Florida.
As soon as he arrived, Despres began calling Clein, using the code name Edward Schwartz, demanding the rest of his money. Clein had given Despres about $5,000 by this point, but the deal had been for $8,000. Despres held the cards now. He could turn Clein in at any time.
“Where’s my money?”
To be safe, Clein told Despres not to call the office anymore—using the Edward Schwartz name or not.
When Despres pushed Clein for an exact delivery date for his cash, Clein said, “You’ll get your money, Mark. Hold tight.”
Over the next few weeks, at increments of between $200 to $800, using a fictional name and return address, Clein began overnighting Despres more money.
During the first phone call Despres had made to Clein, he explained that his apartment had been searched. He said he was worried. He said he needed a lawyer. He said Clein had promised him a lawyer if it ever got to this point, and he reminded Clein that he had also promised bail money, a passport and a ticket out of the country if the cops started asking questions.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do now, Haiman?” Despres wanted to know.
For Clein, it was the first time he’d heard that Despres’s apartment had been searched.
“I don’t know, Mark. I’m not a criminal attorney. But I’ll figure something out. Hang in there.”
Clein was scared, he later said, when he heard news of the search. He knew that once the cops got their hands on Despres, he was going to cave in like the paid informant he was. From there, Beth Ann’s name would come up. With Chris Despres involved, Clein knew, the cops would, undoubtedly, use him as a negotiating tactic.
Fear and worry drove Clein to call Bob Axelrod—an old friend and noted criminal attorney from Meriden, Connecticut, who had opened a second office and an antiques store in Florida—a day or so after he spoke to Despres. Axelrod had been an attorney for about twenty-five years. He and Clein had known each other for about fifteen years. Lawyers like Axelrod, however, commanded large retainers—something in the neighborhood of what neither Mark Despres nor Haiman Clein could afford.
Nonetheless, Clein was a friend of Axelrod’s. He needed advice.
After Clein finished talking with Despres and went to see Axelrod, he told Beth Ann what was going on.
“Let’s step outside,” Beth Ann whispered. “Bugs,” she added, pointing around the New London law office. “Bugs, Haiman.”
Clein followed her outside.
“Bob Axelrod is flying in from Florida,” Clein explained when they got outside. “He’s going to handle this. I don’t want you to worry.”
Then Clein told her why he had called Axelrod. So far, they were clear. There was no reason to begin panicking. Their names hadn’t even come up.
“I want to go to Bob’s office,” Beth Ann demanded. “I want him to represent
us,
too.”
This made sense to Clein, but frightened him at the same time. Having recently upped his Prozac and alcohol intake, most likely to supplement the cocaine he wasn’t getting from Despres anymore, Clein was climbing the walls with concern. The cops were scurrying around, gathering evidence, writing up search and seizure warrants, interviewing people. It was only a matter of time before they came knocking on his door.
About three days later, as Clein and Beth Ann drove to Axelrod’s Meriden office, about a forty-five minute drive from New London, Clein told Beth Ann he was going to tell Axelrod “everything” when they got there.
This didn’t bode well with Beth Ann. She became “agitated,” Clein later said, and began groping him, checking to see if he was wired.
Bugs.
After not finding anything, she began to shout, “Pull over! Pull over!”
“What are you—”
“I said pull over, damnitall!”
Bugs.
Route 9, near Middletown, Connecticut, is a two-lane highway, with the Connecticut River racing swiftly toward the Atlantic Ocean on one side and a thick, dense wooded area on the other. Clein, afraid he was going to get in an accident, pulled off to the shoulder of the road.
The car hadn’t even come to a complete stop when Beth Ann began to rummage through it as though she had dropped a burning cigarette.
Bugs.
She looked under the seats. In between the seats. In the glove compartment. Under the sun visors. Anywhere she felt Clein could be hiding a wire.
Bugs.
“We should tell him the truth,” Clein said after he calmed Beth Ann down and they got back on the road.
Silence.
“Beth?”
She then made it clear that she was finished talking. She was terrified that Clein, a man whose baby she was carrying, a man she was in love with, was setting her up.
Ultimately Beth Ann’s intuition was correct. Because only days after he and Beth Ann had met with Bob Axelrod regarding Mark Despres, Clein called Axelrod back and retained him for himself.
When Axelrod asked why, Clein told him everything.
After that conversation, Axelrod told Beth Ann that he could not represent her, too. Then he called Hugh Keefe, a noted criminal defense attorney from New Haven whom Axelrod had known for several years.
“I was sarcastic and hinted around enough,” Axelrod told investigators later, “to let him know what she was involved in…. I did tell Keefe that both Beth and Haiman would probably be arrested as someone who hired a hit man.”
At the behest of Bob Axelrod, on June 2, Haiman Clein drove Beth Ann to New Haven to meet with Hugh Keefe. According to Axelrod, Beth Ann wouldn’t let Clein speak to him without her being present. Even if Axelrod called Clein’s office, Beth Ann demanded to listen in on another line. She would harass Clein in front of Axelrod. She would demand to be present at
any
and
all
meetings and conversations. Axelrod was having a difficult time getting anything out of Clein.
Beth Ann met with Keefe on June 2 while Clein waited in the reception area of Keefe’s office. In private, she told Keefe that she was pregnant with Clein’s child, had carried on a romantic relationship with him since November 1993 and he was involved in her brother-in-law’s murder. She also said her family had been involved with litigation against her sister, who had been married to Buzz at the time of his death.
When Keefe asked Beth Ann if she was involved in the murder, she “denied any involvement,” Keefe later said, “…but was afraid she would get tainted with part of the blame because of her close relationship with Clein….”
After asking Keefe for “advice and representation concerning her father,” Beth Ann asked, “How can I best protect myself…? I want advice on severing my relationship from Haiman’s law firm….”
Before ending the brief meeting, Keefe told her she should speak to his partner, Robert Lynch, who had some expertise in that area.
Still, there was the matter of a large retainer fee Beth Ann needed so she could formally hire Keefe as counsel. Where was she going to get the money?
A few days later, Clein drafted a check from his trust fund for $5,000 and gave it to Beth Ann so she could pass it along to Keefe. Just like that, the same woman who had finished telling Keefe she wanted to sever her relationship with Haiman Clein for fear of being branded a murderer by association accepted a check from Clein for $5,000 to hire one of the most prominent criminal defense attorneys in Connecticut.
At the young age of fifteen, Chris Despres had already seen more than most people saw in a lifetime. He had sat by and watched as his father committed a savage murder. He had participated with his father in satanic worshiping ceremonies and séances. He had been smoking pot and drinking.
It wasn’t a surprise to anyone who knew Chris to learn that in the early part of June, depression infected him like a flu virus. His father was gone, no less with a girl Chris had dated at one time. He had information that could put his father on death row, even if he didn’t realize it. The weight of everything was just too much.
After Mark left for Florida, Chris had no reason to stick around town. So he moved back to Newington into his mother’s house and began to attend school regularly.
Chris had been friends with a shy, older woman,
Margaret Long,
for years. She had dated a guy whose younger brother had been a friend of Chris’s. She would see Chris from time to time through that friendship. Unassuming and a bit reticent, Margaret was a good listener and a friend to Chris.
After spending only a few weeks in Newington, Chris and his mom decided it might be best if he went to live with her father and sister in Old Saybrook. This way, Chris wouldn’t have to change schools. He could go back to school in Essex and try to lead a somewhat normal life.
At the same time Chris moved in with his aunt and grandfather, Margaret had broken up with her longtime boyfriend. One thing led to another, and Chris and Margaret began dating. They had already known each other, so dating only seemed natural. Something had been bothering Chris, though, Margaret quickly realized. But he refused to talk about it when she asked.
“I knew there was something wrong,” she said, “but I never knew what it was—at least not at that time. Chris would never talk about anything. As I got closer to him, I learned that he liked to keep things bottled up.”
One thing was utterly clear to Margaret during the first few weeks of their relationship, however: Chris wanted nothing to do with his father. For one, he was angry that Mark had run off with “his girlfriend” and left him to fend for himself. Two, there was something else that had happened between Chris and Mark that Chris didn’t want to talk about.
Regarding a fifteen-year-old girl’s taking off to Florida with a man old enough to be her father, Margaret later said that the girl’s parents knew she had run off with Mark, but did nothing to stop it. Others even claimed that the girl’s parents had given Mark permission to take her.
By Thursday, June 30, 1994, John Turner and Marty Graham tracked down John Filippi, a friend of Joe Fremut’s with whom Catherine White had suggested they talk. Filippi appeared anxious when they showed up. He was obviously worried about something.
“I heard about the murder from Cathy White,” Filippi explained. “But anything I say will put me in danger. Joe Fremut might do something to me if he finds out I’m talking to you.”
“When did you hear about the murder?” Turner asked in his trademark Joe Friday–like delivery.
“I don’t know. Must have been about two weeks after it happened.”
Filippi, who had just gotten out of jail on March 8 and, admittedly, started dealing drugs for Joe Fremut immediately afterward, went on to explain how he had driven White, a guy named Jed, and Filippi’s girlfriend, Elizabeth Stranland, to Hartford one afternoon to buy some heroin. During the car ride, White began talking to Jed about how Despres and Fremut had “killed someone on the highway in East Lyme.” She said she was afraid Fremut was going to kill her next.
“Don’t say that, Cathy,” Filippi said when he heard White mention it. “Don’t make things up like that. Joe will kick your ass if he finds out.”
“I’m not going down alone,” White said. “I’ll take that motherfucker with me!”
When Filippi saw Fremut the next day, he rolled over on White without a second thought.
“Be quiet about that!” Fremut warned. Then he asked Filippi if he would take two “dummy bags” of heroin containing rat poison and give them to Stranland and White.
“What?”
“They know too much,” Fremut said. “They’re talking too much shit.”
Filippi refused. He later told White and Stranland to watch their backs because Fremut was out to kill them.
As Graham and Turner interviewed Filippi, they confirmed he had set Fremut up with a silencer.
Next they wanted to know if Filippi had heard who had paid Fremut and Despres to murder Buzz.
“They were being paid,” Filippi said, “to do the hit by the victim’s family, who I understood was either the wife of the victim or the father-in-law.”
By June 16, Beth Ann and Haiman Clein’s relationship was breaking down. Clein was beginning to tell her that he wanted out of the relationship, saying he couldn’t leave Bonnie, the mother of his four kids, as he had originally promised. It was an abrupt change of heart from a man who, just a few months ago, had written to Beth Ann that—besides him wanting her to defecate on him—he would rather die than be without her. This made some later wonder if Clein’s lawyer, Bob Axelrod, had put him up to terminating the relationship.
In 1992, before Beth Ann had even known Clein, she met thirty-six-year-old Diana Hendelman at the local Gold’s Gym in Waterford. They became fast friends and started hanging out together. Beth Ann, Hendelman recalled years later, was “quiet” at first, but she opened up later when their relationship became more personal. Within a short time, Beth Ann told Diana about Joseph Jebran. She said Joseph viewed the relationship differently than she—that although they were intimate, it was more or less a “friends with benefits” thing.
When Beth Ann met Clein and later began talking to Diana about him, she admitted that the relationship was more intimate and sexual. She told how she was infatuated by Clein’s status, presumed wealth and stature in the community. But in Diana Hendelman’s view, she believed it was more about obsession than anything else.
Throughout the course of their friendship, Diana had met Clein on about three separate occasions.
“I was shocked,” she recalled later, “when I saw Clein and realized how much older he was than Beth Ann.”
It
was
an odd match. On one hand, there was Joseph Jebran: young, single, successful, good-looking, suave and charming; on the other, there was Haiman Clein: old enough to be her father, a chronic abuser of alcohol and cocaine, on Prozac, financially sinking and sharing his wife sexually with clients and friends.
Beth Ann, however, never told Diana about the problems her family was having with Buzz, Kim and the custody matter. It never came up. Nevertheless, Diana and Beth Ann remained friends throughout the entire time Beth Ann and Clein had hired Despres to murder Buzz. As Beth Ann and Clein’s relationship began to deteriorate, Beth Ann began to lean on Diana for support.
June 17, 1994, was a night Diana Hendelman remembered with vivid accuracy years later because Beth Ann had called her while she and her husband, Martin, were watching the minute-by-minute coverage of O.J. Simpson’s infamous flight in his white Bronco on a California freeway. They were supposed to meet Beth Ann for dinner. But shortly before they were going to drag themselves away from the television set to leave, Beth Ann phoned.
“I’m on my cell phone,” Beth Ann said.
“Are we going to dinner?”
“No!”
Beth Ann, Diana recalled, was “hysterical” and manic.
“Where are you?” Diana asked.
“I’m outside Haiman’s house….”
Hendelman heard loud noises, banging and clanking. Beth Ann, she then learned, was trying to break in.
“What are you doing, Beth?”
“I’m going in to confront that bitch Bonnie about our relationship.”
“What?”
Hendelman knew there was some friction between Bonnie and Beth Ann. Bonnie had known that Clein had been unfaithful for most of their marriage—she had even participated sexually in some of the relationships herself. But Beth Ann was staking her claim. She wanted Bonnie out of the picture. Clein, however, wanted nothing to do with Beth Ann anymore. He was trying to distance himself from her as much as possible.
Beth Ann wasn’t going to hear of it. She was under the impression that since she was still carrying one of his babies, Clein was going to drop Bonnie and marry her.
Sometime later, she even tracked Clein, Bonnie and the kids down at a local restaurant. While they were eating, Beth Ann stormed in and began fighting with Clein. A week or so later, while Clein, Bonnie and the kids were en route to upstate New York for a long weekend, she phoned Clein on his cell phone and demanded he meet her on the side of the highway. With Bonnie and kids in the car looking on, Beth Ann tore into Clein, asking why he was going away for the weekend with everything that was happening.
When Clein said he had to go, Beth Ann shouted, “Cops like to arrest people on weekends, too, you know.”
Clein’s kids even got into the act. One time, when Beth Ann, acting insane and obsessive, showed up at Clein’s house, one of Clein’s kids used a slingshot and rocks to chase her away. There was another time when Beth Ann, despite Clein and Bonnie’s insistence that the relationship was over, waved a pair of his underwear in front of Bonnie’s face, implying that she was still sleeping with him.
Oddly enough, however, when it came time for Beth Ann to abort the second child she was carrying, detectives from the ED-MCS were shocked to learn that it hadn’t been Diana Hendelman who had driven Beth Ann to the doctor to get the abortion.
Detectives later claimed it was Bonnie.