Jury Rejects 2nd-Mistress Defense in Woman’s Death

A politically connected attorney was convicted Sunday of murdering his mistress and dumping her body at sea, a verdict rejecting his story that she was accidentally killed by another mistress in a jealous rage.

Jurors deliberated three days before finding Thomas Capano guilty late Saturday of killing Anne Marie Fahey, who was Gov. Thomas R. Carper’s scheduling secretary.

Without a body, a weapon or any concrete evidence to prove that Fahey was killed, prosecutors used circumstantial evidence to show Capano planned her death. Jurors had to believe the crime was premeditated to convict on the sole charge of first-degree murder.

Capano, 49, could be sentenced to death.

The trial lasted 12 weeks, and exposed lurid details of Delaware’s elite.

Capano’s mother, Marguerite, and Fahey’s sister, Kathleen Fahey-Hosey, both burst into tears when the verdict was read.

Testimony in the trial’s sentencing phase will begin Wednesday.

Capano admitted he stuffed Fahey’s body in a cooler and threw it overboard from his brother’s boat. But he insisted that another mistress had accidentally shot Fahey at his home in a jealous rage and that he got rid of the body to protect the woman.

Prosecutors ridiculed that story and said Capano, who was married, killed Fahey because she wanted to end their secret three-year affair.