WITNESS TO MY BROTHER’S EXECUTION: An Angel on Earth

Margaret Ann Passaro was an angel, a gift from God. She was born Nov. 19, 1996—11 months after Michael and Karen married—and looked just like her daddy did when he was a baby. Maggie’s happy smile always brightened the room. It brightened my life. I loved getting the chance to babysit her. She was my “Magpie,” short for “Maggie-pie, the apple of my eye.”

My brother’s wife, Karen, was quiet, shy even, but never hesitated to speak if she had something to say.

It seemed as if she and Michael were happy being together and having a new baby. Michael had bought a condominium in Surfside Beach, S.C., for his little family (with life insurance money left to him by Donna, his dead first wife), was going to school full time and looked after Maggie while Karen worked.

During the fall and winter of 1997, and into the spring of 1998, it became evident to my parents, however, that all was not well in Michael’s household. We all thought it was typical newlywed problems, and with a new baby, adjustments were probably in order.

But things were brewing beneath the surface, things that no one saw coming.

When Michael brought Maggie to visit, his wife stopped accompanying them. When I would telephone my brother, he was nervous about talking too long, afraid of upsetting his wife.

Two years after their union, Karen announced she wanted a divorce. She wanted to return to her native Virginia with full custody of Maggie. She planned to sell their South Carolina home and use the proceeds to make the transition.

Michael would be cut off from his daughter. Karen applied for a restraining order, but a judge denied it as baseless. The judge ruled that more of Maggie’s time should be spent with her father, who was again living with our parents. Michael gained custody of Maggie from Fridays through Mondays.

Maggie was a typical toddler. She ran, jumped and played. At a family get-together in August 1998, she played Ring Around the Rosey, her favorite game, with my sister’s two children. Maggie’s daddy also joined in.

Maggie also loved to sing. Michael doted on her continuously when he wasn’t working or going to school. And I remember that Maggie loved butterflies, rainbows and stars.

Even so, Michael began stewing, telling his family that Karen would do everything in her power to eventually win full custody and that she had bragged about doing the same thing to two other husbands.

Michael’s way out

Michael’s anger increased after every contact with Karen. He also spoke of his dead wife, Donna, more and more - how he missed her, how he wanted to be with her.

Our parents were at a loss over what to do. Michael lived with them and it was becoming a financial burden they couldn’t handle. My father already had told Michael he’d have to move.

Michael began doubting his family’s support.

He decided he would be better off being with Donna again and taking Maggie with him. If a murder-suicide hurt Karen, he thought, so much the better.

Then Maggie’s second birthday arrived, a milestone that would set Michael’s plan in motion.

Karen would not let Michael speak with his daughter by phone to wish her a happy birthday. Inside, Michael boiled over - even though he would be with Maggie the next four days, including Saturday, when he planned to throw her a birthday bash.

There would be a birthday party, but Michael already had made up his mind what would happen that Monday.

With that, he was at peace. He went on with Maggie’s party on Saturday “as if he hadn’t a care in the world,” my aunt would say later.

On Monday morning, Michael awoke Maggie from her new “big girl” bed, a gift he had given her just two days before. He got her ready for day care and prepared himself for class.

When he bid goodbye to my parents, my mom noticed he did not have his schoolbooks and reminded him to get them. He did. He would not need them.

In Jacksonville, Fla., I was at work when my fiancé called to tell me that Michael’s minivan had blown up with Michael and Maggie in it.

Michael was alive, but … Maggie … was gone.

Confronting the unthinkable

That Monday morning, Michael had not driven Maggie to day care but instead to her mother’s condominium. He climbed out of his white Ford Windstar minivan and left Maggie strapped in her car seat.

A witness told police he saw Michael open the rear door and pour something inside. Then Michael got back in the driver’s seat. The witness described hearing an explosion, and then saw Michael jump from the minivan.

It is clear to me that Michael had no intention of surviving, but he succumbed to human reflex: When burned, get away from the fire.

When firefighters arrived, Michael was lying on the ground with severe burns to his arms, legs, face and hands. Rescuers asked him if anyone else was inside the burning van, but Michael didn’t say anything.

He couldn’t say anything - his lungs were burned. After firefighters doused the blaze, they found the car seat and Maggie’s remains. They also found the remnants of a suicide note that had been typewritten three months earlier: “I never wanted my first wife to die or for me to fall apart afterwards, but I did,” Michael had written. “I never wanted my second marriage to end in divorce, but it all happened. I’m tired of fighting.

“I just realized that I was never supposed to be happy,” the note read.

The note also stated: “Well, Karen won the war, and it’s at the expense of our daughter. I guess that I’m getting the last laugh now, Karen. Whatever anyone does, please make sure Karen doesn’t kill herself. I want her to live in pain.”

According to news accounts, Karen saw the burning van and collapsed when a fire official told her Maggie was inside.

I arrived at a hospital in Charleston, S.C., where Michael was in critical condition with burns on his body and inside his trachea and lungs.

At the hospital, my mother told me that the police believed Michael had set the fire because they had found a note in the ashes.

Visiting Michael that day was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. He had a cloth over his genitals, but the rest of his body was exposed - covered only by a petroleum-jelly-looking sheen. Tubes protruded from his nose and arms, and he was surrounded by monitors.

He could barely talk and when he did, it was a low raspy sound. Mucus that filled his burned lungs often blocked his airway. He coughed and hacked so much that besides wanting to cry, I wanted to puke.

Then he spoke.

“Maggie’s gone.”

With tears in my eyes, I gulped hard, nodded and swallowed. “I know,” I said.

“I wanted to go with her,” he said.

I gulped hard again, trying to be brave, “ … I know.”

“She’s with Donna now,” Michael said.

I had to turn away. I was about to lose it. I needed air and inhaled deeply.

Finding the note

The next day, the day before Thanksgiving 1998, I woke up in the bedroom my brother and niece had slept in only two nights earlier. No other relatives could stomach staying in his room.

At the foot of the full-size bed was a miniature bed with a colorful quilt on it - Maggie’s new big-girl bed. It was adorable, but empty.

On a hunch, I checked the nightstand next to the bed. I found seven copies of Michael’s suicide note. He had written a separate note for my parents, instructing them to send his estranged wife one of the copies.

Finally, the family knew definitively that Michael had killed his daughter. It was there in black and white. They no longer could believe it was an accident.

Still, while some of us accepted it, others repressed that knowledge, not wanting to believe it.

Jailed before his trial, Michael told our visiting parents that he had done the horrible deed.

Then, against his public defenders’ wishes, he pleaded guilty.

I was proud of him. He could have feigned innocence. He could have let our parents go on believing he was innocent.

One of the lessons our father taught us was to own up to what you did.

Michael went before a judge in August 2000 for sentencing and permitted his attorneys to offer only the minimum defense allowed by law.

A mental health professional testified that Michael had borderline personality disorder, which affected his thinking. An expert for the state testified Michael was competent and knew right from wrong.

My mother and I testified about his upbringing and obstacle-ridden and unhappy life.

The judge returned with his decision. Even though the case had mitigating circumstances that would have allowed a sentence of life without parole - Michael had rejected such a sentence before trial - the judge imposed the death penalty.

Most of the family was not shocked: Michael told us he wanted to be with Donna and Maggie. Fate had stopped him when he was saved from the burning minivan. But the state of South Carolina was going to finish what Michael had started.

In Michael’s own words, the state was going to help him commit suicide.

“It’s pretty funny how the system works,” he wrote in his suicide note. “I get visitation with my daughter, and I’m allowed to end our lives from existence with the help of the courts and my wife. I guess that I’m getting the last laugh now, Karen.”