Putting people to sleep was Dr. Carl Coppolino's specialty, and it paid well. In 1962, the 30-year-old anesthesiologist, with his wife Carmela, also a physician, built a $34,000 home at 35 Wallace Road in Fox Run, an upper-middle-class development in east-central New Jersey. As the Coppolinos' house was going up, another was rising diagonally across the street. The builders of 50 Wallace Road were Colonel William Farber, then 50, a bemedaled World War II veteran who had retired after 21 years in the artillery, and his wife Marjorie, 47.
Marge Farber, once divorced, had an eye-catching schoolgirl figure. Her husband tended to interest himself in puttering around his lawn and rhododendrons; Marge, who seemed restless, took lessons in riding, golf, interior decorating. The Coppolinos and the Farbers naturally got to know each other. Recalls Marge: "We just met like neighbors do in a town, on the street. Carm and I were really good friends." So were Marge and Carl.
Up the Street. In early 1963, pleading heart trouble, Carl resigned from his post at a hospital in Red Bank, N.J., teamed with Carmela to write a book, The Billion-Dollar Hangover, a report on alcoholism. Time evidently lay heavy on Coppolino's hands. His wife would leave the house in their blue Chevrolet every morning for her job in a Nutley laboratory. Coppolino, according to the watchful neighbors, would stroll out to his mailbox and then up the street to visit Marge Farber, whose husband had gone to work in a Manhattan insurance office. Then, on July 30, 1963, Farber died. The death certificate was signed by Carmela, who listed the cause as coronary thrombosis.
Afterward, Marge told everybody, the Coppolinos were a tower of strength. The trio started attending church together. An amateur artist, Marge began painting Carl's portrait. Neighbors began joking about "Dr. Strangelove" and friend, but the widow assured a neighbor that she thought of Carl "like my son." Early last year Marge decided to move to Florida, bought land adjacent to the Gulf Coast resort of Sarasota-and told acquaintances that she had induced her friends to head South with her. In April 1965, the Coppolinos settled in a white stucco home on fashion able Longboat Key off Sarasota. Marge later moved into a house next door.
Surprise Bride. On Aug. 28, Carmela Coppolino died. Again the cause was listed as a heart attack. The death certificate was signed by Juliette Karow, a Sarasota physician, who said that Carl told her when she arrived that Carm had suffered chest pains the previous day. The listed beneficiary of $65,000 worth of insurance on his wife, Carl, 30 days after her death, applied for a license to marry—but not, as it turned out, Good Neighbor Marge. On Oct. 7 Coppolino wed handsome Mary Gibson, 38, whom he had met at his bridge lessons, and who was rumored to have won a $250,000 divorce settlement. Carl vacated the house next to Marge's and moved into Mary's far more elegant villa, where he continued work on a new book, Welcome to the Coronary Club.