Connie Delvecchio was raised by her parents in a tiny Pennsylvania coal-belt town. She had a younger brother and shared a bedroom with her older sister. Connie was a sociable child with disturbing antisocial tendencies. Her family often treated her as if she were invisible, because, frankly, they saw her as a disruptive, creepy girl.
When she was young, Connie frequently stole her sister’s clothes and later stole money from relatives with unwavering denials. Since childhood she displayed an innate ability to lie unflinchingly; as she got older, her psychopathic behavior became more pronounced and intimidating. Connie didn’t express guilt or remorse for the wicked things she did; indeed, she seemed to derive pleasure from her actions.
Before turning 16, Connie was promiscuous. After playing in a high school basketball game against state police, Connie snuck off with a married officer named Max, who was twice her age. She easily seduced him into having sex with her, which provided her with blackmail leverage over him. Their lives remained entangled for the next 25 years.
Connie was quick-minded and clever. She was seen as troubled and unsettling by most of the people in her life, but those who knew her best found her frightening and evil. She married soon after high school, had her first child (Clarissa) at age 20, and had her second child (Anne) at age 25. In her mid-thirties Connie became a licensed practical nurse. Two weeks into her first job at a regional hospital, she was arrested for stealing hundreds of syringes of Demerol. Her co-workers claimed she also stole narcotics from patients. She was fired and her license was revoked.
Connie was a self-medicating drug addict. Throughout her life she attempted to mask her psychopathic behavior by alleging migraine pain. She used headaches to excuse her hysterical antics and to obtain both sympathy and Demerol. She used this pretense even though Demerol is rarely used for emergency treatment of migraines.
Dozens of times, Connie coerced Clarissa, a minor without a driver’s license, to drive her at odd hours to distant emergency rooms because all the nearby hospitals knew to watch out for her.
“She had me driving because she was completely out of it,” Clarissa reported. Using her medical knowledge and often-stolen identities, Connie convinced the doctors to inject her with high doses of Demerol. “She faked it really well,” said Clarissa, who would drive home as Connie passed out in the back seat in a narcotics-induced stupor.
One by one, her family members abandoned Connie. Her tumultuous marriage of 25 years finally ended, and her ex-
husband moved across the country. Clarissa relocated and ostracized Connie. “My mother is dead to me,” she declared. Anne remained under tight maternal control until Connie was sent to jail for violating her probation by committing one of many felonies. Anne was sent to live with her father and didn’t see her mother again.
Even Connie’s siblings severed their relationships with her. Barbie, her sister, felt Connie was always an untrustworthy thief, dating back to her youth. Barbie recalled how, as their father was dying, “possessions from the home were disappearing as he was getting closer to death.” There have even been allegations that Connie accelerated his death. Connie made statements that she “put him out of his misery.”