Kiss of the She-Devil (21 page)

“I think my sister mentioned once how she felt abandoned by our family, since we moved [to Michigan] without her and she stayed behind.”

Life was not easy for Gail and the kids during those years. That much Donna never really quite grasped. As a child growing up, Emily said, “we did not realize we were Hispanic until my dad retired and we started going to public schools in Corpus.”

It was there, Emily recalled, when some students, “wanted to label me as ‘Mexican’ and put me into a box. We grew up with so many other different people that I just viewed us all as American, despite our various backgrounds. My parents didn’t speak Spanish to us, so maybe that is why, but even if they had, I would not have noticed. Many of my friends spoke other languages. And if they were American, I still simply viewed them as that, as I was too innocent, or naïve, and did not understand what ethnicity was.”

George grew up speaking Spanish (as a second language), but Gail did not.

“When my mom was raised,” Emily said, “it was not good to have an accent as Hispanics. Along with blacks and any minority, they were discriminated against. My grandmother told me that it would make my grandfather so mad how people treated him as stupid or less of a person because he was Hispanic and had an accent. My grandfather was brilliant, my grandmother says, as he could do math in his head. [He] predicted so many things that would happen in the future, and just had a good sense for business and working with people. He started out as a lawyer and then was appointed as the second Hispanic federal judge position in the United States. Because of the discrimination that my grandparents faced, they decided to raise their kids—my mom and her brother—
without
speaking Spanish.”

Gail Fulton pulled herself together. She decided to deal with a husband who had run off on her and the kids. She’d spoken of killing herself. She’d said things weak and submissive, making her attitude about life in general appear worthless. She’d nearly begged her husband to stay—and perhaps that’s what he had wanted—to work things out, to go to their priest, ask for forgiveness, and take refuge in the sacraments. Gail believed with the Church in their corner, Jesus directing them, the Fulton family
could
move mountains.

Donna would not give up, however. What made matters worse for Gail was Donna calling the house to harass Gail and make her feel miserable and worthless for forgiving George.

There was some light here for Gail, however, when, after the first of the year, Gail told a friend, “We’re trying to work through our problems, and George is trying to get out of the relationship with Donna, but the woman is
obsessed
with him.”

Whatever George was telling Gail, she perceived it as though they could move on and repair the marriage. Gail would not have said this if she understood completely, without question (as she had just weeks prior), that the marriage was doomed. She had hope now.

As Donna grew more insecure, sensing Gail wasn’t going to roll over and give up George, she amped up her rhetoric and proceeded to degrade Gail anytime she spoke to her on the telephone. Donna didn’t care about anyone but herself and her own needs. She was in an entirely different place. The cards and letters she sent George throughout that winter and spring were loaded with the same sort of he’s the “love of my life” bombast she had been mind-vomiting all along.

Strangely, reading these sentimentalities, there was no indication George and Donna were having any problems—at least not from Donna’s point of view.

Donna’s divorce came through and was finalized in February 1999; her piece of the puzzle now in place. As each day passed, she felt more secure about her relationship with George and their future—which could only mean George was telling Donna they were on.

If one looks into George’s life back home, a vastly different picture of the relationship emerges. On March 4, for some unknown reason, George and Gail wrote to a Boston, Massachusetts, bank under the subject “Partial Withdrawal Option,” demanding $5,000 of their retirement/investment money.

Had George and Gail decided to rekindle the marriage and make amends? Asking for this money appeared to be a step in that direction. And then, a few weeks later, on March 23, 1999, George put in his letter of resignation as CFO of CCHH.

He was quitting.

Reacting to that, Donna Trapani had some big news. Although she did not share it with George immediately, Donna was telling people she was pregnant with his child.

37

G
EORGE FULTON LATER
said that even before he met Donna, he and Gail were having problems. Yet he framed those problems with a bit of sugary glaze, saying, “Well, we just had—my wife and I had disagreements, but it wasn’t anything that I would call ‘major,’ just an accumulation of things, small things that became.... There were things that needed talking about and sorted out.”

As George started his own business in 1997—before he met Donna—and traveled to Florida “once a month,” he added, for “three or four days” at a clip, he and Gail got used to the idea that their marriage would involve time away from each other. Gail was cool with the three-day and four-day trips, according to George. After he met Donna, George spent more and more time in Florida, extending four-day trips into weeks. Gail assumed it was business keeping him away. When asked later if he had effectively lied to Gail by not telling her the extended trips were because he had met and bedded down another woman, George said: “I didn’t tell her. I didn’t lie to her. I didn’t have to lie because there wasn’t anything to lie
about.
It was just not told. There was deception, if you want to classify it as that, but
not
a lie.”

He noted that his behavior as an “untruth” wasn’t right.

“It was incomplete, yes,” George corrected.

George’s last day with CCHH was April 16, 1999. He agreed to continue processing claims for CCHH, but only from his Michigan home. When he spoke to Donna about this, George said the relationship wasn’t over in his mind. Yes, he had made a decision to work things out with Gail. However, he was still struggling to cope with having made the right choice. In fact, there was still a chance for them, he said.

For a while Donna didn’t react one way or another—besides, that is, the standard “Why, why, why?” She didn’t—at least not then—call the house and threaten Gail and call George and spew every foul-mouthed name in the book. (She was doing this behind his back in Florida to coworkers.) Donna seemed to accept defeat.

But then George went out to his post office box (POB) one afternoon in late April—and everything changed.

Donna Trapani is pregnant . . . ,
the letter said.

George’s eyes bulged. His jaw dropped to the ground, one could assume.

No way . . . how could this be?

Then another surprise:
Donna has terminal cancer,
the missive continued.

It wasn’t written by Donna, but rather by a doctor. Donna must have known that a simple letter from her might have sounded desperate and contrived, but this important information coming from her own doctor—a man George knew—was an entirely different matter.

Walking away from his POB, George looked at the envelope, which was definitely Donna’s handwriting.

George had a trip coming up to Las Cruces, New Mexico, something connected to a defense contract he was trying to nail down. Donna knew about it, but George did not in any way want her to go with him. He needed some time to think through the situation and figure out what to do. The stakes had changed. Now that Donna was carrying his child, it was no mere simple decision of choosing marriage over mistress.

“It was a moral dilemma, what to do,” George later said. “. . . not emotional. Moral . . . what was right by my wife and children and by [Miss] Trapani, who said she was dying and with child?”

At his hotel one night in New Mexico, George was startled by a knock on the door.

Donna.

“I’m here. . . ,” Donna said after George opened the door. She had a bag with her; there was a smile on her face that effectively communicated,
You didn’t think you could get rid of me that easy now, did you?

“What are you
doing
here?” George asked, letting Donna in.

“Change your plans,” she said. “Stay with me. . . . Let’s have a vacation.”

Donna suggested four days. Dinner. Sex. Long walks. Time to think.

“No,” George said. “I have work to do. I have to be home . . . in two days.”

Not long after Donna walked in, they had sex. Donna ended up staying.

“I could have [kicked her out],” George said later in court. “But knowing Miss Trapani, [I felt] she would have created a scene and started cussing and kicking the door in, and it would have been embarrassing. Plus, I was weak for her.”

On the way to the airport after the weekend, Donna said, “I have cancer.”

“I know. . . . I got the letter from your doctor.”

“So you know about the baby, too?”

“Donna,” George said, “I will try to be there for you and the baby.”

In Donna’s view the relationship was back on. George was home with his wife and children, but Donna felt his days in Michigan were numbered. Now that she was having his child and dying, George had no choice.

Falling in love with you was one of my life’s most perfect moments,
said the inscription on a card Donna sent George on May 31. It was a poem, describing how she felt about the rekindling of the bond they once had shared.

Sometime later, Donna wrote a desperate plea (in the third person), which she had planned on sending to George (although there is no indication she ever sent it). Through a series of questions, she was begging him to stay with her. Sentences along the lines of:
Is your wife as pretty as Donna?
The questions asked if Gail was as “smart” as Donna? As “unselfish”? What had Gail done to prove her “unselfishness” to George? Was Gail as “vibrant” and “energetic” and “passionate” and “sexy” as Donna? Did Gail please him in the way Donna could? Would she “sacrifice” or make as much “money” as Donna? What was it that George “learned” from his wife? When was it that he last “had a stimulating conversation” with his wife?

Pathetic didn’t even approach how desperate Donna sounded.

In that same letter Donna wrote of a divine threat, showing how fast she could turn on someone she supposedly had loved. She wrote that if Gail was George’s ultimate choice:
May God bring you all the pain and hell you deserve.
She said no man on “the face of the earth” would ever dream of “giving up what you have with Donna” to return to the dark hole in Michigan.

Concluding this bizarre rant, Donna stated that since she was dying, she had many things “to regret.” But none of those regrets compared to what George would feel if he abandoned her and returned to Gail. She could not figure out why this decision was so tough. The only answer to Donna was his wife was “holding something over your head.” Donna speculated that maybe it was something in George’s past that would all at once “ruin you” and “send you to prison.”

As they worked through their relationship difficulties, despite what George later said about juggling that “moral dilemma,” a letter he wrote to Donna on June 13, 1999, spoke of a man who had not withdrawn—or claimed not to have withdrawn—any of the feelings he once had. George was indeed coming back around. Perhaps all the begging and threatening and constant badgering on Donna’s part had paid off.

Opening the letter, George apologized for the way he had talked to her yesterday. . . . They had fought. George had sent Donna another round of what he called “mixed messages” and “inconsistent words.” He said he “felt so bad” and wanted to know what he could say to “make up” for his behavior. Saying he loved and admired and adored Donna “sounds so empty and inconsequential.” He begged Donna to believe him.

George talked about the “life growing inside” her and how much he loved the idea of Donna having his child. He called the baby a “product of our . . . love.” He suggested that if the child turned out to be a girl, they name her after Donna, so that Donna “will continue to live on.” He was going to do everything in his power to spend Donna’s “last days” with her.

He mentioned he was at home praying for her and the “Little Kahuna.” He knew there was a God and that God was “watching over” Donna and his child when he wasn’t in Florida to take care of them himself. He warned Donna that she had ruined his future with women because after having her, he could never be with another woman.

Concluding, George reconciled how he hoped Donna would “return” his page that night so they could talk:
I will love you forever, My Donna!!

38

E
MILY FULTON WAS
preparing for college enrollment. As summer approached, she could not ignore that her mother was once again suffering from bouts of depression and anxiety brought on by a father who had been taking the entire family on an emotional roller-coaster ride.