Ordinary People? : At ‘Fatal Attraction’ Murder Trial in New York, Media Focus On Sex and Death in the Suburbs

There’s nothing like a little sex and sleaze to take your mind off a war. Especially when life imitates the movies and leaves Hollywood in the dust.

That’s been the story in affluent Westchester County, where the so-called “fatal attraction” murder trial is drawing huge crowds. A tale of greed, lust and bowling, it’s a suburban shocker that gets steamier by the week, raising one lurid question after another:

* Did 27-year-old Carolyn Warmus really murder the wife of her lover, Paul Solomon, and then join him for sex in the back seat of her compact car?

* Why would Solomon, who portrays himself as a grieving husband, hop in bed with yet another woman soon after his wife’s death--and sign a $130,000 movie deal with HBO?

“I’ve never seen anything like this, never in a million years,” says Mary Sorentino, one of a small army of senior citizen regulars who have been crowding into the county courthouse in White Plains, N.Y., to catch the trial that has become a media sensation.

“Everybody knows that men cheat on their wives,” says another elderly woman, standing in line outside the courtroom. “But this is all so messy . It’s the kind of thing you expect actors and musicians to do. Not nice people from Westchester.”

All of a sudden, the sleepy suburb 30 minutes north of New York City finds itself under a very public microscope. But it’s not the first time. Ten years ago, the same kind of circus came to town here when Jean Harris, the regal headmistress of a private girls’ school, was convicted of murdering Herman Tarnower, the well-known “Scarsdale Diet” doctor.

That celebrated trial took place in the same building, yet some locals are muttering now that the “fatal attraction” case is more tawdry and . . . well . . . lowbrow.

“At least Jean Harris was a lady you could identify with,” says Sorentino, adjusting her hat. “But let me tell you, the people in this trial are not normal.”

Never mind that Warmus, a flirty blond, and Solomon, 43, a brooding man with dark, curly hair, both teach elementary school. Forget the fact that Warmus is considered an outstanding instructor and that Solomon coaches kids’ basketball on weekends. Their carryings-on have parted the curtains on a snake pit of marital problems that many people whisper about but rarely see splashed across front pages and on television news.

As a mark of its notoriety, the “fatal attraction” trial has held its own as a news story during the Persian Gulf War, while many other local stories have been given short shrift. Reporters are coming from across the country to cover it, and three are writing books about the case. Several witnesses in addition to Solomon have lined up lucrative television or movie deals, and Penthouse magazine reportedly offered Warmus a tidy sum to pose nude.

“Everybody wants the green in this case,” says a member of the Westchester County district attorney’s office. “But that’s because it touches a chord with average people on the street. It’s not just a trial. This is about sex, money and death.”

It’s also frighteningly human, a case that looms larger than the 1987 movie from which it took its name. Indeed, Warmus’ menacing pursuit of Solomon--and his public guilt over a series of tacky affairs seem more disturbing than anything Glenn Close or Michael Douglas, the film’s stars, could dream up.

This is, after all, a story about ordinary folks. The characters in People v. Warmus don’t have naughty flings at the Plaza Hotel. They grope each other in the back seats of Hyundais, in between trips to the mall and Little League games. They don’t dine at La Cote Basque or vacation in Gstaad. Instead, they bowl a few frames on the sly, order up some burgers at the local Holiday Inn and adjourn to the parking lot before calling it a night.

Against this backdrop, Warmus and Solomon played out a game as old as the marriage bed itself. A losing game for the other woman, as Newsday columnist Carole Agus tartly observed:

“He told her he loved his wife, he told her he didn’t love his wife. He told her he might get a divorce, he told her he might not get a divorce. When women talk to each other, they have a name for men who play games like this. Bastards. She gets half a life. He gets a life and a half.”

It was a familiar role for Warmus, who has a troubled history of pursuing married men and trying to get them to leave their wives, according to published reports. Several years ago, she pasted pictures of herself in see-through lingerie onto snapshots of a married bartender, planning to send them to his wife. In another broken affair, she spent months studying with a rabbi and converted to Judaism in an attempt to win over a Jewish man who was engaged to another woman.

All of this was a warm-up for her tryst with Solomon, who taught at the same elementary school. Warmus, the daughter of a Michigan millionaire, concedes she was desperately in love and claims the philandering husband promised he would one day leave his wife. She stopped at nothing to win his affection, giving him gifts, taking his teen-age daughter on skiing trips and even visiting him at home when his 40-year-old wife, Betty Jeanne, was there.

The unhappy 18-month affair might have gone on forever but for the fact that someone shot Betty Jeanne nine times in the back on the night of Jan. 15, 1989. And it was Warmus’ final desperate play for Solomon that ultimately led police to arrest her.

Six months after the shooting, she tracked her lover and his new girlfriend to a hotel room in Puerto Rico. Enraged, she flew to the island and demanded to see him. A frightened Solomon fled the hotel that night, and detectives began turning their attention to Warmus several days later.

According to prosecutors, the murder took place when Warmus entered Solomon’s home and shot his wife around 7:15 p.m. She then met her lover for drinks, dinner and sex until 11:30 p.m. Warmus has denied the charge, saying that she was at a bowling alley with Solomon the entire time. Her attorney says his client has been framed, but has not named a culprit.

If she is convicted of second-degree murder, the teacher faces 25 years to life in prison. But the case rests on circumstantial evidence, which could make it difficult for prosecutors.

There was no witness to the crime, and the murder weapon has never been found. However, Vincent Parco, a private investigator whom Warmus sought out months before the murder, has testified that he sold her the gun and silencer believed to have been used to kill Betty Jeanne. On the morning of the murder, phone records indicate that a call was made from Warmus’ home to the New Jersey gun shop where the bullets used to kill Solomon’s wife were purchased a few hours later.

Since the opening arguments Jan. 14, the trial has produced one bombshell after another, including testimony that Warmus tried to seduce the potbellied Parco and that Betty Jeanne also had affairs during her 19-year marriage. Through it all, Warmus has remained silent, refusing to testify. But her presence haunts the courtroom.

During pretrial hearings, she shocked observers by appearing in court wearing tight black dresses and chic suits with plunging necklines. Yet when the trial began, Warmus was all business, wearing bulky, oversized sweaters with long skirts and sensible shoes. In her large glasses and pageboy haircut, she looks like a quiet schoolteacher alongside her attorney, David Lewis.

At times, Warmus has played a key role in her defense. During one explosive exchange, Solomon testified that he visited his former lover months after the murder but did not have sexual intercourse with her. The defendant promptly scribbled a note to Lewis, who seemed to stun Solomon with the following question:

“Do you recall a conversation with Carolyn (that day) about your underwear matching your clothing?”

It was one more embarrassment for Solomon, who was humiliated by Lewis during 10 grueling days on the stand. A shambling bear of a man, the 36-year-old attorney is a national expert on cross-examination techniques, and the evasive, sometimes testy husband was no match for him.

Assistant Dist. Atty. James McCarty needed Solomon’s testimony to describe Warmus’ obsessive behavior and to establish a motive for Betty Jeanne’s slaying. To get him on the stand, however, the state had to grant him immunity from prosecution. It was an odd request by a witness who has not been charged with anything, and Lewis made the most of it.

With mocking, sarcastic questions, Lewis ridiculed Solomon’s grief for his murdered wife, forcing him to reveal that he had had affairs with other women besides Warmus. At the end of the ordeal, Solomon began shouting at Lewis, saying he should be “punished and judged” for his tactics. But the attorney fired back: “As you know, sir, there is no court of law that will punish or judge you, because you made an agreement that you are immune.”

After Solomon’s testimony, the stories told by Parco seem almost humorous. Under questioning by Lewis, the private eye said he teaches a class called “How to Spy on Your Spouse” and compiles “sexual resumes” to find out who’s been sleeping with whom.

If Solomon wanted to strangle Lewis, Parco seemed to be the kind of guy who’d like to whack him with a pool cue. A blunt, tough-talking sleuth who also admits to cheating on his wife, he shocked jurors by revealing that Warmus once offered to have sex with him. She was wearing “black, sexy lingerie” at the time, Parco explained. It was all in a day’s work.

The trial is expected to run through early April, and none of the people who pack the courtroom can guess what the outcome will be. But one senior citizen, a diminutive woman with frosted gray hair, summed up the prevailing view from Westchester.

“This gal Warmus isn’t looking too good,” she said, leaving the building. “Whatever else happens, she’ll have trouble getting dates around here when this is over.”