Biography

Thomas Joseph Capano (October 11, 1949 – September 19, 2011) was a disbarred American lawyer and former Delaware deputy attorney general who was convicted of the 1996 murder of Anne Marie Fahey, his former lover.

Anne Marie Fahey was last seen alive on June 27, 1996, when she went to dinner with Capano in Philadelphia. Fahey's family reported her missing on June 30. After an extensive search, the FBI joined in the investigation in July and a federal grand jury heard evidence for over a year. Capano, the last known person to have seen her alive, was the prime suspect. He was arrested for her murder in November 1997, over sixteen months after her disappearance. However, Fahey's body was never found, and prosecutors were unable to establish the cause or manner of her death.

The highly publicized case went to trial on October 26, 1998, and lasted twelve weeks. On January 17, 1999, the jury convicted him of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. This marked the first time in Delaware state history in which a person was convicted of murder without a body or murder weapon.

In January 2006, the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed Capano's conviction but remanded the case for sentencing because the death penalty was imposed by a non-unanimous jury verdict. In February of that year, the state abandoned its efforts to seek capital punishment, opting to leave him imprisoned for life without parole.

Capano, aged 61, was found dead in his jail cell at 12:34 p.m. on September 19, 2011, by an officer performing a routine security check at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center state prison in Smyrna, Delaware. The medical examiner determined that Capano died of sudden cardiac arrest.