Bail Bondsman Accused of Killing Wife
Maggie
but if he did, he sure was dumb about his choice of hitmen and smart about his
actions the day of the murder. From the Washington Post:
Dino Pantazes Adored His Wife or Had Her Killed
By Paul Schwartzman and Jamie Stockwell
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 2, 2000; Page A01
They envisioned their dream house together: a romantic 6,000-square-foot manse,
its grand, arched entrance framed by two imposing white columns and enough
windows to bathe the interior in constant daylight.
It would be a testament to their marriage, their family, their future. It would
be their Graceland.
Wasn't that always the way with Clara and Dino?
A love story born more than 20 years ago, the moment he saw her bright smile
across the room at a friend's wedding and said, "I'm gonna marry that girl."
She was the shrewd one, the college graduate who pushed him to forge an
identity distinct from his working-class family. He was the brawn, the one who
never went to college, the one who dressed up as Santa Claus on Christmas to
make his kids laugh.
The one, friends say, whose loving, doting ways suggested no trace of the
calamity to come.
Clara and Dino. Dino and Clara.
Together, they raised a son and a daughter, befriended influential politicians
and built a bail bond business that thrived on thieves and drunken drivers, men
accused of assault and sometimes worse. Their success bought them Rolex watches
and expensive jewelry, a Mercedes and regular trips to New York and Greece.
Theirs was a life at which their friends marveled. A dream life. A life meant
for Graceland.
At 12:15 p.m. March 30, Dean J. Pantazes telephoned the police to say he had
found Clara lying in a pool of blood on the concrete floor of their garage. She
had been shot once in the head and once in the neck.
Nothing could be worse than losing his beloved wife, Dino said.
A month later, the police came for him.
It was Dino, investigators said, who had ordered the execution of his Clara. It
was Dino, they said, who had a secret life, a netherworld of transvestites and
prostitutes in which he plotted to break free of the woman he seemingly
cherished.
Now, their dream house sits empty and unfinished on a dirt mound in Anne
Arundel County, a shrine to what might have been.
The case of Clara Pantazes reads like pure pulp fiction: sex and money and
betrayal and death. It's a case that links incongruous worlds, the tony reaches
of Upper Marlboro and the seamiest of strips in the District.
At its core is a mystery: Who is Dean J. Pantazes?
To his friends, family and even his in-laws, he remains a loving husband who
never seemed happier than when he was with his wife and two children.
Why, they ask, would he forfeit his family's future? Why would he build a dream
house? Why would he take the mother from the children he so adores?
"Quite frankly, it doesn't add up," said Lou Martucci, a lawyer and longtime
friend. "I never saw a disagreement between Clara and Dino. She never once
expressed any displeasure about him, and he never expressed any about her. They
had the kind of relationship I admired."
But to prosecutors, who are seeking the death penalty in the murder case,
Pantazes' family-man demeanor was camouflage. "This is a cold, calculated
execution," Assistant State's Attorney John Maloney said at a pretrial hearing.
"There's no more serious a crime than the one before you."
In the prosecutors' narrative, Pantazes led a double life, one in which he
visited the ramshackle stretches of Eastern Avenue, where drug-addicted
prostitutes offer sex for as little as $10.
His associates, prosecutors said, included Kevin Young, a prostitute and
transvestite whom police know by the street name Mimi. It was Young,
prosecutors said, whom Pantazes first asked to kill his 46-year-old wife.
Pantazes later turned to Jermel Chambers, another Eastern Avenue regular with a
long record of prostitution and drug convictions. It was Chambers,
investigators said, whom Pantazes enlisted to shoot Clara.
While they are still searching for a motive, investigators are focusing on
marital problems that may have existed. They say a trail of evidence points to
Dino, including cellular phone records showing Chambers called him before, and
minutes after, Clara was killed.
Most troublesome for Pantazes, perhaps, is that Chambers pleaded guilty to
first-degree murder and has agreed to serve as the prosecution's witness. "We
have a number of phone calls tying him to her, leading right up to the day,"
Maloney said in court.
Pantazes, 45, has pleaded not guilty and said during an interview before his
April 26 arrest that he did not kill his wife. "She was my life, and I'm a
shell without her," he said, brushing away tears. "She means everything to me,
and I just can't imagine my life without her."
He added: "I have absolutely nothing to hide. I had no reason to want her dead.
No insurance policy out on her. Greeks don't get divorced. That's the ultimate
shame, and we wouldn't have done that. She was my best friend."
Referring to the police questioning him about Clara's death, he compared
himself to O.J. Simpson. "Now I know what O.J. felt like when he was accused of
killing his wife," he said. "He didn't do it either and was hunted down for it.
It's a terrible, awful thing to feel like this, like being accused of something
like this when I love her so much."
Friends, family and in-laws stand by him, dozens of them packing the courtroom
for every hearing, crying as they watch him stand before the judge, his burly
frame covered in orange prison garb. "Dino has been nothing but a good husband
and a lifelong partner. They would've been married forever," said Virginia
Demoleas, one of Clara's sisters. "If anything was wrong, I would've known. We
know he had nothing to do with this."
John Pantazes, Dino's brother and a former Annapolis police officer, said the
couple's marriage was healthy. "They had spats about Clara spending too much or
Dino buying a piece of equipment that she didn't like," he said. "I'm not
saying they were Mr. and Mrs. Perfect."
But murder? Not a chance, he said.
Dino's daughter, Nike, 17, inherited Clara's large eyes. His son, Sotereas, 19,
a Washington College sophomore, shares his father's broad smile and dimpled
chin.
His son talks of an ideal family life, but a law enforcement source said
investigators have focused part of their attention on a letter Sotereas wrote
to his father in which he alluded to troubles between his parents.
Sotereas, who said he wrote the letter within the past two years, said
prosecutors asked him about it during his grand jury appearance. "I told them
it was blown out of context and they're fishing about something," he said. "It
was a letter to my father, and that's all I have to say."
In an earlier interview, Sotereas described his family as close. "We ate dinner
every night, and my father raised us with family values," he said, his eyes
laden with grief. "My father would take his own life before he'd ever let the
thought of his wife dying cross his mind. They don't know my mother. They don't
know my father."
The whole family knows the story. They've heard it many times.
How Clara met Dino.
He saw her at a wedding and was entranced by the way her eyes lighted up, her
smile, her vivacious manner. "The first time he saw her, he said he was going
to marry her," said Demetria Demoleas, a sister of Clara's.
They came from different worlds. She was from Elizabeth, N.J., the daughter of
a liquor inspector. Her grandfather, a Greek immigrant, opened a large hardware
store in Lower Manhattan. Clara had aspirations, receiving a master's degree in
child education at Newark State College.
Dino grew up in Greenbelt, one of eight children, the son of a grocer who
emigrated from the Greek island of Andros. "My father was a dishwasher, a bread
deliveryman. He had restaurants that always failed, but he always got up and
worked," John Pantazes said. "That's the one thing he always preached to us:
You work."
Dino Pantazes skipped college and soon was working for the bail bonding
business of his oldest brother, Nick. He fell for Clara about the same time,
visiting her in Elizabeth and sending her flowers.
After one delivery, she didn't phone to say thank you.
So he called.
Did you get the flowers? he asked.
Yeah, she replied, but my cat ate them.
So he sent her 24 roses – 12 for her, 12 for the cat.
"Clara got to like him," said Helen Demoleas, Clara's mother. "He was simple
and nice. Not a conniver. He loved to see her happy."
One day he took her to Ocean City, Md. They were sitting outside when she
looked up and saw a plane skywriting, "Will You Marry Me Clair?"
"She didn't know what it meant," her mother said. "He told her, 'This is for
you,' and she said, 'My name is Clara, not Clair.' He always called her Clair.
He couldn't understand the name Clara."
From the start, Clara wanted Dino to leave his brother's bonding business so
they could start their own. "I didn't get along with his wife," Nick Pantazes
said. "She wanted to be the boss, and I wanted to be the boss. I didn't think
wives and family should be involved. We were constantly having problems, and he
was caught in the middle. Finally, I said: 'You go your way, and I'll go
mine.'‚"
Dino's relationship with his brother deteriorated further after a family
vacation home on Kent Island burned down in 1983. John and Dino accused Nick of
setting the fire to collect insurance. Four years later, prosecutors charged
Nick with arson, but they dropped the case because they lacked evidence.
The bitterness among the brothers lingered. Nick sued John and Dino for
defamation and sought $2‚million in damages. The family eventually settled,
and a judge ordered that the brothers stay apart for five years. Nick and Dino
rarely spoke, and Nick and Clara did not exchange a word for 18 years.
Nick and Dino began speaking only after Clara was killed.
"Blood is thicker than water," Nick said. "I wouldn't be helping him if I
thought he was with other women or if I thought he had killed his wife."
On their own, Clara and Dino's bonding business grew into one of the most
successful in Prince George's. Their network of influential acquaintances
included Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening and Senate President Thomas V. Mike
Miller Jr., who appears with Dino in a photograph that hangs in Pantazes'
office.
To bring in additional cash, Dino and Clara started Apartment Services, a
company that performs a range of odd jobs, including evictions, landscaping and
repairs.
For years, Dino and Clara lived in a two-story brick home on Kenfield Lane, an
exclusive Upper Marlboro street. They planned to move, buying 24 acres in Anne
Arundel County and hiring an architect to draw up plans for a house based on a
photo Dino had seen in a design magazine.
There would be four bedrooms and five bathrooms, an exercise room, a wine
cellar, heated floors, walk-in closets and a kitchen with two ovens so they
could cook for large family reunions. They envisioned a compound, their
children eventually marrying and building their own homes on the property.
"They'd sit in the office for hours going over the plans," said Jimmy Varipapa,
81, a bondsman who worked with the couple. "They'd talk about where the
mother-in-law's bedroom would be, where the kids' bedrooms would be. He wanted
custom-made cabinets in the kitchen, she wanted something else, and he said,
'Whatever you want, it's your kitchen, we'll do it.'‚"
Lisa Holmes, the architect who drew up the plans, said Clara and Dino shared a
vision. "It was their dream house," she said. "They were always very
agreeable."
Eastern Avenue near 60th Street in Fairmount Heights is a short drive from
Upper Marlboro, but it's a far different world, one lined with worn
single-family homes, public housing, liquor stores and churches. At night, the
strip is known as a haven for prostitutes.
"They're all addicted to crack and will do anything to get it," said District
police Sgt. Brian Bray, who patrols the area. "They're not professional
streetwalkers. This is how they pay for their habit."
Kevin Young, 35, a small man with a pencil-thin mustache, is known to police on
Eastern Avenue for wearing women's clothing and calling himself Mimi. His more
than two dozen arrests include charges of prostitution, drug possession and
robbery, court records show.
In one arrest, in the 600 block of Eastern Avenue in 1998, he was picked up at
5 a.m. and accused of offering to perform oral sex on an undercover officer for
$10, according to court records.
Jermel LaDonna Chambers, 35, was also a familiar face on Eastern Avenue, having
been convicted of prostitution, theft and drug possession. She has identified
herself to police by various names, ages, heights and weights. During an arrest
last year, she was found with syringes, a crack pipe, a razor, a spoon and a
lighter, records show.
It's unclear whether Young and Chambers know each other, but prosecutors say
they had something in common: Dino Pantazes.
How those relationships began is unknown. But during pretrial hearings,
prosecutors said Pantazes had had affairs with both.
While prosecutors said Pantazes has denied knowing Young, Dino's brothers
confirmed that a relationship existed, though they say it was not sexual. Young
"was an informant for Dino and several other bondsmen, and I had used him one
time," Nick Pantazes said. "Every bail bondsman has snitches."
Late last year, Nick Pantazes said, Young helped Dino try to find a nude dancer
for whom he and another bondsman had posted a $200,000 bond after the woman was
arrested on an assault charge. The dancer disappeared, and Dino was in danger
of forfeiting the money.
"That's what Dino was panicking over," Nick said, recounting his brother's
trips to strip clubs in the District, Baltimore and Philadelphia. "You're out
doing anything you can to find this woman. You're putting money on the street.
Sometimes you got to get down in the gutter with these people to find them."
On Dec. 27, according to the indictment drawn up by prosecutors, Pantazes first
sought to hire Young to execute Clara.
Dino and Clara, along with John Pantazes and his family, had just returned from
a holiday visit to New York. They saw a performance of "Scrooge" and shopped
for Christmas gifts. One morning, Clara and her sister-in-law Charlotte woke up
early to stand in the crowd outside the "Today" show studio hoping to be seen
on television.
On Jan. 14, according to the indictment, Pantazes tried to hire Chambers.
Clara's friends and family say they detected nothing unusual in her behavior or
Dino's in the days before her death. March 29, the day before she was killed,
was noteworthy only because it was so ordinary. "It was a normal, routine day,"
Varipapa said. "She did what she always did – write bonds, take care of
bills."
Prosecutors have offered only sketchy details of what they believe occurred
March 30. But they have said Pantazes brought Chambers to his Upper Marlboro
home that morning and drove away.
Chambers, they say, punched in the access code to the family's garage – a
code they say was known to few people outside the family – and found a pistol
Dino had left for her above a refrigerator. Then she hid behind the family's
Mercedes and waited for Clara.
Helen Demoleas's phone rang at 9:15 a.m. Clara was calling to ask about her
sister Virginia, who was having health problems. They spoke briefly, and Helen
promised to call her daughter that afternoon. "I told her to be careful, and I
love you, and she said, 'I love you, Mom,' " Demoleas recalled, her voice
breaking. "It was so sweet."
At 9:30 a.m., police say, Clara walked into the garage and Chambers fired,
striking Clara in the head and neck. Then Chambers sped away in Clara's silver
1999 Jeep Cherokee, stealing her Rolex watch, gold wedding band and purse. At
9:40 a.m., according to a police affidavit, she used Clara's cell phone to call
Dino Pantazes.
Pantazes has given his family a different account. He awoke before dawn that
morning, as usual, and drove to inspect several foreclosed properties that
Apartment Services was to clean. He was scheduled to oversee an eviction when
his cell phone rang.
Clara, he was told, had not shown up for a 10:30 a.m. appointment. Dino drove
to his office shortly before noon. Clara was not there. "He didn't seem
nervous," said Varipapa, who was in the office. "He said, 'I'm going to check
the house and be back with lunch.'‚"
Pantazes drove to Kenfield Lane, he has told his family. He walked into the
house through the front door, disabled the security system, greeted Misty, the
family's Labrador, and called out his wife's name.
No answer.
He ran upstairs. The rooms were empty.
Finally, he went to the kitchen, and from there he saw his wife, dead, lying on
the cold concrete in the garage, surrounded by a pool of her own blood. He
called police, who found him weeping on his knees in the yard when they
arrived.
Hours later, after the story of the slaying had been broadcast on the news,
Young notified police that he could identify the man responsible for the
shooting, according to sources close to the case.
Young told investigators he knew the man not as Dino Pantazes, but as Steve.
And Young told police that Steve had tried to hire him to kill his wife, the
sources said.
A couple of weeks later, after he had presided over Clara's wake and burial,
Pantazes decided to drive to the house that he and his wife were building. "He
said he had to get out, he had to get some fresh air, he was going crazy," said
his brother John.
The visit provoked more pain.
"He said, 'I see Clara in everything. I see Clara in every room. I don't want
to see the house anymore,' " John Pantazes said. "The house reminded him of
Clara, and the man broke down."
Dino was arrested days later, and construction of the dream home halted.
They tell themselves the charges are ludicrous, that they are enduring a world
gone upside down. No way their Dino could have done this to Clara. The police,
the prosecutors, the newspapers, the television – they all have it wrong.
"Even if Dino comes out and says he did it, I wouldn't believe him," said Helen
Demoleas, his mother-in-law. "I'd say they forced him to say it. I'd say
they're torturing him."
His brothers have their own theories about what really happened.
Dino was an open book, they say. Told people who worked for him the access code
to his garage. Bragged about recently paying off the loan on his Mercedes.
Maybe it was the car they were after.
"It was a botched robbery," Nick Pantazes said. "I don't think they expected
Clara to be there. A lot of people had the access code. Almost all his workers.
There was no great secret about that code."
John Pantazes believes there was another person besides Chambers involved in
the slaying, though he concedes he doesn't know who. At his worst moments, he
acknowledges, he finds himself wondering whether his brother could have done
it.
"Then I scold myself for thinking it," he said. "Dino had money. He could fly a
hit man to take out his wife, and no one would ever know. Dino would never hire
a [prostitute] to kill his wife."
And another thing.
"His house was for sale for two years," John Pantazes said. "The last thing he
would do is hire someone to kill his wife in the house. It would hurt his
chances of selling. He'd have to knock down the price."
Back in his parents' office, Sotereas Pantazes is talking about how his father
liked to mow the lawn to perfection, how his parents cared for him when he was
sick, how he'd sometimes find them dancing in the living room.
On and on.
"I'm proud of my dad," he said. "He's like a country boy. You follow the law,
you respect the badge, you live for your family. When we met at the house at
night, in the family room watching TV, that's when you felt the safest.
"I'd say we lived a fairy tale," said Sotereas, for a brief moment smiling at
the thought.
Maggie
"There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory."
Josh Billings
GLC1173
>He added: "I have absolutely nothing to >hide. I had no reason to want her
>dead.
>No insurance policy out on her. Greeks >don't get divorced. That's the
>ultimate
>shame, and we wouldn't have done that. >She was my best friend."
This guy is lying.
A Greek friend who's an officer in a nearby town is divorced.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<B>Dissident news - plus immigration, gun rights, nationwide weather
<I> Al Gore - in his own words</I>
<A HREF="http://www.alamanceind.com">ALAMANCE INDEPENDENT:
official newspaper of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy</A></b>
Maggie
>>He added: "I have absolutely nothing to >hide. I had no reason to want
>her
>>dead.
>>No insurance policy out on her. Greeks >don't get divorced. That's the
>>ultimate
>>shame, and we wouldn't have done that. >She was my best friend."
>
> This guy is lying.
> A Greek friend who's an officer in a nearby town is divorced.
***I don't know whether it's true or not, butI can't imagine why the guy said
it. Sounds like an excellent motive for murder, to me.
Lo52964
writes>>>He added: "I have absolutely nothing to >hide. I had no reason to want
>>her
>>>dead.
>>>No insurance policy out on her. Greeks >don't get divorced. That's the
>>>ultimate
>>>shame, and we wouldn't have done that. >She was my best friend."
>>
>glc said:
>> This guy is lying.
>> A Greek friend who's an officer in a nearby town is divorced.
>
>***I don't know whether it's true or not, butI can't imagine why the guy said
>it. Sounds like an excellent motive for murder, to me.
Except both families, his and her's, say there was no trouble and no reason.
You would think that if there were, someone would know. Bailbondsmen know a
lot of scumbags and someone might have been a bit anoyed.
" Don't talk to me about justice, it is bad enough to be mixed up with the
law."
LO5 2964