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Carl
Anthony COPPOLINO
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Poisoner
- Parricide
Number of victims: 1 +
Date of murder:
August 28,
1965
Date of birth: 1933
Victim profile: His
wife, Dr. Carmela Musetto, 32
Method of murder:
Poisoning
(anaesthetic succinylcholine
chloride)
Location: New Jersey/Florida, USA
Status: Sentenced to life in prison on April 28, 1967. Paroled
in 1979
Motive: So that he could marry his lover.
Crime: Coppolino was charged with killing
his wife, Carmela at their home on Florida's Gulf of Mexico coast. He
was also tried for murdering Colonel William E. Farber, the husband of
his ex-lover Marjorie. However, he was acquitted from this offence.
Method: Coppolino gave Carmela an
overdose in the form of an injection of the anaesthetic succinylcholine
chloride.
Sentence: Coppolino was charged with
second degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. He served 12
years, before being let out for good behaviour.
Interesting facts: An overdose of
succinylcholine chloride is difficult to detect in the body, as succinic
acid and choline are found naturally in the body. To be able to prove
this was the cause of Carmela's death, toxicologst Dr Joseph Umberger
had to devise a test, which in June 1966 he succeeded in doing.
Coppolino was an experienced
anaesthetist, who had had to give up work at an early age due to ill
health. So he had the knowledge and the means to kill Carmela in this
way.
It was claimed that Coppolino had also
killed Farber in the same way. When he was exhumed, it was discovered
that his cricoid cartilage was fractured, which suggested that he had
been strangled. In court it was claimed that this damage could have
occurred during exhumation, and that he had sufficient arteriosclerosis
to have died of a heart attack, as was originally supposed.
Tracing the Untraceable
Time.com
Friday, May. 05, 1967
After his acquittal in New Jersey last year on
charges of murdering his some time mistress' husband, Dr. Carl
Coppolino appeared a sure bet to beat the less likely charge that
he had murdered his own wife. Since there was not even any public
evidence that she had died unnaturally, the case against Coppolino
seemed flimsy indeed. Yet last week, when the twelve male jurors
in Naples, Fla., returned their verdict after less than four hours
of deliberations, the retired physician was pronounced guilty of
second-degree murder.
The lean, hook-nosed Coppolino, 34, was caught up by
the patient, plodding groundwork laid by Prosecutor Frank Schaub, 45. In
contrast with the flamboyant forensics of F. Lee Bailey, 33, Coppolino's
cocky Boston attorney, Schaub wove a damning case showing that Coppolino
had the motive, opportunity and, most of all, the scientific background
for committing the murder.
It was done, he demonstrated in minute, Sherlockian
fashion, by an injection of the drug succinylcholine chloride, which
hitherto had been thought to be undetectable in the human body.
Murderous Motive. With surgical thoroughness, Schaub
showed that Coppolino obtained a lethal amount of succinylcholine
chloride — supposedly for animal experiments — from a friend a month
before Dr. Carmela Coppolino's death Aug. 28, 1965, at the age of 32.
Schaub had a witness testify that the death was
wrongly ascribed to a heart attack because Coppolino persuaded a
physician that she had suffered chest pains earlier. He called Carmela's
father to relate how Coppolino claimed an autopsy had proved that a
heart attack was the cause of death—though in fact no autopsy had been
performed at the time.
Coppolino's deteriorating finances, Schaub charged,
spurred his murderous motive. While the Coppolinos were living in New
Jersey, Carmela earned $16,000 a year as a physician in a research
laboratory. But when they moved to Sarasota, Fla., in April 1965 because
of Coppolino's heart condition —which Schaub did his best to show was
faked—Carmela flunked the state's medical examination, and could not
work as a doctor. They were left to live on Coppolino's $22,000-a-year
disability insurance, which was plainly not enough to sustain his high-living
tastes plus losses in real estate speculations that amounted to $15,500
that year. Only three weeks before his wife's death, Coppolino increased
by $10,000 the $55,000 in life insurance policies covering Carmela.
Early Marriage. Schaub called as a witness
Coppolino's former mistress, Marjorie Farber, 53, but was prevented by a
bench ruling from questioning her about the 1963 death of her husband,
retired Army Colonel William Farber. In the New Jersey murder trial, the
shapely widow had told a weird story of being hypnotized by Coppolino
and standing helplessly aside while he smothered Farber with a pillow.
Though it was Mrs. Farber who had aroused police suspicions against
Coppolino after he spurned her for wealthy Divorcee Mary Gibson, 39,
whom he married six weeks after Carmela's death, she had little to offer
the current trial. Schaub called on a group of women who attended the
same weekly bridge sessions as Coppolino and Mary; several of them
testified that they were quite certain that the couple lived together
before their marriage.
From experts, Schaub got all the help he needed on
the obscure pharmacodynamical properties of succinylcholine chloride. As
an anesthesiologist, Coppolino had had the opportunity to use it
frequently on surgery patients to relax their muscles. Schaub proved to
the jurors that it was also used on Carmela, injected into her left
buttock in such massive dosage that it paralyzed and within minutes
killed her. To carry the crux of his case, the prosecutor relied on the
experts—and they came through with explicit, if esoteric evidence.
Although scientists never had before been able to
find traces of the drug after it had been injected into a patient,
pioneering experiments under the direction of veteran New York City
Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Milton Helpern (who also had testified
against Coppolino in the first trial) and his aide, Toxicologist Charles
Joseph Umberger, revealed that there were components of it in Carmela's
brain and liver. Try as Bailey might to refute their testimony by
calling other medical witnesses, the New Yorkers' findings proved to be
the clinching testimony.
"Are these experiments good enough for a jury to make
a decision which can strike this defendant from the face of the earth?"
thundered Bailey. The jury's answer was a blow to the criminal counselor,
who gained fame only last year by winning acquittals for Dr. Sam
Sheppard and Coppolino and liked to brag about having an impressive
string of 19 victories in homicide cases. So far this year, with the
conviction of the Boston Strangler, he has a string of two well
advertised losses. Though Bailey vowed to appeal the verdict, a stunned
Coppolino was led from the courtroom to prison to start serving his
sentence of life. Mumbled he: "I just don't understand."
Carl Anthony Coppolino
Trials: 1966 & 1967
law.jrank.org
Defendant: Carl Anthony Coppolino Crime Charged: Murder Chief Defense Lawyers: Joseph Afflitto, F. Lee Bailey, and
Joseph Mattice Chief Prosecutors: First trial: Vincent Keuper; second trial:
Frank Schaub Judges: First trial: Elvin R. Simmill; second trial: Lynn
Silvertooth Places: First trial: Monmouth County, New Jersey; second
trial: Naples, Florida Dates of Trials: First trial: December 5-15, 1966; second
trial: April 3-28, 1967 Verdicts: First trial: Not guilty; second trial: Guilty,
second-degree homicide
SIGNIFICANCE: The two trials of Dr. Carl
Anthony Coppolino are case studies in the importance juries attach
to an ostensibly discredited witness. In the first trial they chose
to disbelieve a self-confessed accessory to murder and were swayed
instead by the welter of contradictory forensic evidence. A second
jury, confronted by much the same forensic testimony alone, arrived
at a very different verdict.
In 1966 a conversation between two women in Florida
sparked one of the most hotly contested debates in American legal
history: Did Dr. Carl Coppolino murder his wife and his ex-lover's
husband, or was he merely the hapless victim of jealous revenge? Two
trials, in two states, arrived at very different answers.
At age 30, Coppolino, a New Jersey anesthesiologist,
had been declared medically unfit for work because of a heart condition.
Supported by a disability benefit, royalties from writing, and the
salary of his wife Carmela, also a physician, Coppolino began a torrid
affair with 48-year-old housewife Marjorie Farber, a vivacious woman who
looked much younger than her years. Marjorie Farber's husband William
Farber, at first tolerated the liaison, then grew resentful.
On the evening of July 30, 1963,
Marjorie Farber telephoned the Coppolinos in a state of panic. William
Farber was unconscious in the bedroom. Could Carl come over
immediately? Coppolino, wary of losing his benefits if caught
practicing, sent Carmela Coppolino instead. She found Farber dead.
Apart from being "all blue down one side," there was no outward sign
of distress to the body. At Coppolino's urging, she signed the death
certificate, citing coronary thrombosis as the cause.
Over the next 18 months Coppolino's affair with
Farber waned, and, in April 1965, the Coppolinos moved to Longboat Key,
Florida. Disaster struck when Carmela Coppolino failed the Florida
medical examination. Coppolino, in desperate need of money, began dating
a wealthy divorcee named Mary Gibson.
At 6:00 A.M.
August 28, 1965, the Coppolino family physician, Dr. Juliette Karow, was
awakened by a phone call. She heard Coppolino tearfully describe how he
had just found his wife dead, ostensibly from a heart attack. Karow was
puzzled when she arrived at the house—young women in their 30s rarely
suffer coronary failure—but she found no evidence of foul play and duly
signed the certificate. Forty-one days later Coppolino married Mary
Gibson.
Marjorie Farber, who had pursued Coppolino to Florida
in hopes of resurrecting their romance, was incensed by this turn of
events. She went to Dr. Karow and unburdened her soul. It was a
sensational tale, one that would fill front pages across the nation for
months: how she had been hypnotized into attempting murder, then stood
by, a helpless onlooker, as her husband was smothered to death by Dr.
Carl Coppolino.
Both New Jersey and Florida ordered exhumations. The
autopsies were performed by Dr. Milton Helpern, New York's chief medical
examiner. He found evidence of succinylcholine chloride, an artificial
form of curare used by anesthesiologists, in both bodies. Also, Farber's
cricoid—a cartilage in the larynx—was fractured, indicating that he had
been strangled. These findings led to dual charges of homicide being
filed against Coppolino
Round One
After considerable interstate wrangling,
Coppolino stood trial in New Jersey for the murder of William Farber.
Prosecutor Vincent Keuper declared that Coppolino had not only
broken the commandment "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife,"
but also "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's life."
Defense attorney F. Lee Bailey knew his only hope
lay in totally discrediting Marjorie Farber. Break her testimony and
Helpern's words would fall on deaf ears. His opening address
contained a ringing indictment:
This woman drips with venom on the inside, and I
hope before we are through you will see it drip on the outside. She
wants this man so badly that she would sit on his lap in the electric
chair while somebody pulled the switch, just to make sure that he dies.
This is not a murder case at all. This is monumental and shameful
proof that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
When Bailey sat down, the battle lines had been drawn.
Now it was time for the first prosecution witness: Marjorie Farber.
She told of being under Coppolino's spell ever since
he had first hypnotized her to get rid of a smoking habit. She was
powerless to deny him anything, especially when he told her repeatedly,
"… that bastard [Farber] has got to go." Coppolino had given her a
syringe filled with some deadly solution and instructions to inject
Farber when he was asleep. At the last moment her nerve failed, but not
until she had injected a minute amount of the fluid into Farber's leg.
When he became ill she summoned Coppolino to the house. He first
administered a sedative, then attempted to suffocate Farber by wrapping
a plastic bag around his head. As the two men struggled, Marjorie begged
Coppolino to stop. Instead, he smothered Farber with a pillow.
Devastating Cross-examination
Bailey rose to face the witness. What followed was
brutal and at times belligerent. It also remains a classic of cross-examination.
Bailey began sarcastically. There had been no murder at all; everything
she said had been a lie, a figment of her malicious imagination,
instigated by an evil desire for revenge on the man who had ditched her.
Wasn't that right? Over a torrent of prosecution objections, Bailey
pressed on: "This whole story is a cock-and-bull story, isn't it?"
Sustained.
"Didn't you make this all up, Mrs. Farber?"
Sustained.
"Did you fabricate this story?"
Sustained.
Shifting tactics, Bailey ridiculed Farber's claim of
having been an unwilling but helpless participant in the murder, saying
he would produce medical testimony to prove such obeisance impossible.
He hacked away, constantly reminding the jury of her adulterous and
jealous behavior and, most of all, her age. "This 52-two year-old woman
…" was a repeated theme, as if this were reason enough to explain
Farber's vitriolic accusations. Perceptibly, the mood of the court swung
against her. At the end of a two-day ordeal, she limped from the stand,
her credibility in tatters.
She was replaced by Milton Helpern. Even this
seasoned courtroom veteran reeled under the Bailey bludgeon. At issue
was whether William Farber had suffered from terminal heart disease, and
if the cricoid fracture had occurred before or after death. Helpern was
emphatic on both points, although Bailey drew from him the grudging
admission that there was no bruising about the neck, as would normally
have been present if strangulation had occurred. Bailey speculated that
rough handling of the body during disinterment, in particular a clumsy
grave-digger's shovel, had caused the cricoid fracture. Helpern scoffed
at such an idea. But Bailey had his own expert witnesses and they
thought otherwise.
Doctors Joseph Spelman and Richard Ford, both
experienced medical examiners, expressed the view that, not only was the
cricoid fracture caused postmortem, but that William Farber's heart
showed clear signs of advanced coronary disease, certainly enough to
have killed him.
With the verdict still very much up in the air,
Bailey called his star witness, Carl Anthony Coppolino. Slim and sleekly
groomed, he answered his accusers well and without any noticeable guile.
Coppolino came across as confident without seeming cocky, helpful but
not obsequious.
Summing up, Judge Elvin Simmill commented on the vast
array of conflicting medical evidence and stressed to the jury that they
must be satisfied of Coppolino's guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." It
was an admonition that they took to heart. After deliberating for less
than five hours they returned a verdict of not guilty.
Florida Fights Back
Coppolino's second trial opened in Naples, Florida
before Justice Lynn Silvertooth on April 3, 1967. State Attorney Frank
Schaub, recognizing that there was no direct evidence to link Carl
Coppolino with the death of Carmela Coppolino, piled up a mountain of
inconsistencies and motives for murder that the defense couldn't counter.
High on the list was money. Schaub leaned heavily on the fact that
Coppolino was running short of cash. He portrayed the doctor as a
heartless philanderer, determined to wed Mary Gibson for her
considerable fortune. But Carmela Coppolino's refusal to grant him a
divorce had blown that idea sky-high. Instead, Coppolino began eying his
wife's life insurance policy, $65,000. With that and Gibson's bank
account, he would be set for life. "There's your motive," Schaub
trumpeted.
Persuasive as Schaub's case was, other, perhaps
more significant, forces were at work on his behalf. Coppolino's
reputation had preceded him. Nothing was said, of course, but this
particular jury gave Milton Helpern a far more favorable hearing than
their New Jersey counterpart. His task was much the same as before, to
explain the presence of succinylcholine chloride in Carmela
Coppolino's body, and this he did in lucid terms that anyone could
understand.
Marjorie Farber testified to overhearing Coppolino on
the phone after his wife's death, saying, "They have started the
arterial work and that won't show anything." Further questioning
clarified that this referred to the fluid used by embalmers to replace
the blood. It was damning stuff.
Once again F. Lee Bailey performed brilliantly, but
each witness stood firm. And this time he received no assistance from
the defendant. Unaccountably, Coppolino refused to testify on his own
behalf. Bailey was stunned, later calling it "a terrible mistake."
Certainly the jury thought so. On April 28, 1967,
they found Coppolino guilty of second-degree murder, a curious verdict
that has never been fully explained; under Florida law, murder in the
second degree implies a lack of premeditation on the part of the killer,
and anything more calculated than willful poisoning is hard to imagine.
Whatever the reasoning, their decision saved Coppolino from Death Row.
Instead, the slender ex-doctor who thought he had carried out the
perfect murder was led away to begin a life sentence at the state prison
at Raiford, Florida.
After serving 121/2 years, Carl Coppolino was paroled
in 1979. Coppolino holds a unique position as the only person ever
charged with two entirely separate "love triangle" murders. Either case,
taken on its own, might have resulted in acquittal, but coming in such
quick succession, the two proved insurmountable. Juries are not prepared
to extend coincidences quite that far.
Dr. Carl Coppolino, an anesthesiologist, lived with
his wife, Dr. Carmela Musetto, in New Jersey. He developed a romantic
relationship with his neighbor, Marjorie Farber. Her husband died in his
sleep. The Coppolinos moved to Florida. The widow, Marjorie, followed,
purchasing an adjacent lot. Carl asked Carmela for a divorce, so he
could marry a rich divorcee, Mary Gibson, whom he met at a bridge club.
A devout Italian Catholic, Carmela would not consent. Soon afterward,
she died in her sleep. Five weeks later, Carl married Mary.
Marjorie Farber then reported to the police in
Florida that Carl killed his wife — she knew, she said, because she
helped him kill her husband! New Jersey authorities exhumed Carmela's
body. The autopsy revealed a needle puncture mark in the left buttock, a
healthy heart and no discernible cause of death. A later autopsy on
Marjorie's husband produced evidence of death by strangulation, which
was consistent with her story that Carl smothered him in his sleep.
Grand juries in New Jersey and Florida indicted Carl
for homicide. The New Jersey trial, which came first, resulted in an
acquittal. The jury in Florida returned a verdict of second degree
murder, and Coppolino went to prison on a life sentence.
Toxicological testimony was vital evidence in the
Florida case. The prosecution's theory was that Carl injected his
victims with succinylcholine, a curare-like drug. Dr. Milton Helpern did
the autopsies. His chief toxicologist, Joe Umberger, "worked on the
tissues for a long time. [I]t was impossible by the methods of
toxicologic analysis to find the original substance in the body, as
succinylcholine is broken down within minutes to succinic acid and
choline. Although these two compounds are normally present in dead
tissue, they are there in such small quantities that ordinary techniques
fail to detect them. Joe Umberger devised a method that would show up
abnormally large amounts of the two substances but would not react with
the minute quantities normally present. Using this technique, he
eventually proved to his satisfaction that there was an abnormally high
concentration of succinic acid in the organs of the body. He could not
show that there was an excess in the left buttock itself, as he could
not apply the technique to fatty tissue." Milton Helpern, Autopsy 30-31
(1977).
In addition, Dr. Bert LaDu, a pharmacologist on the
NYU medical faculty, "found a positive reaction for [a monocholine
derivative of succinylcholine that is stable in fat] around the needle
track and a less intense reaction in the surrounding fat of the buttock,
fading out as the distance from the needle puncture increased." Id. at
32.
The Florida courts managed to allow the prosecution
to use this evidence while paying lip service to Frye:
In this case, unlike those involving lie detector
tests or intoxication tests, there is a dearth of literature and
specific case law to guide the trial and appellate courts. The trial
court listened to the testimony of the expert witnesses and in an
exercise of his discretion ruled that the tests in question were
sufficiently reliable to justify their admission.
On appeal it is incumbent for defendant to show
that the trial judge abused his discretion. This the defendant has
failed to do. 223 So. 2d at 70-71.
This attempt to reconcile the admission of the
toxicological tests with Frye is unconvincing, and the case is an
extreme example of how courts in a Frye jurisdiction can overlook
the general acceptance requirement when the evidence is too good to
resist.
