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An informer suggested that Sarasota County Sheriff Ross Boyer look into "something odd" about Carmela's death. According to Boyer, the tipster was Marge Farber. Suspicion focused on succinylcholine chloride, a muscle relaxant commonly used by anesthesiologists. The drug is injected into patients to depress breathing temporarily during some operations, but an overdose can kill within ten minutes—and traces of the compound disappear from the body almost immediately.
Thus for Dr. Malcolm Gilman, chief medical examiner of New Jersey's Monmouth County, where Carmela formerly lived, began seven months of painstaking detective work. Gilman imported six rabbits to his farm, injected them with lethal doses of succinylcholine chloride, buried them (one with embalming fluid), and a month later disinterred the bodies. Sure enough, he reported, autopsies revealed telltale traces of the drug's components, though not of the compound itself. As a result, Gilman had Carmela's body exhumed and a four-month analysis performed on vital organs. Said Gilman: "What we found was enough to make us exhume Colonel Farber's body."
Cracked Cricoid. Fortnight ago, dug up from Arlington National Cemetery, the colonel's corpse was also autopsied, with equally startling results: the cricoid cartilage, a ring around the larynx below the Adam's apple, had been cracked in two places. The doctors' conclusion: "strangulation."
Last week a New Jersey grand jury returned an indictment accusing Coppolino of having "feloniously murdered" Farber. Police believe that Carmela was pressured or duped into signing the death certificate. Days later, a grand jury in Sarasota handed down an indictment charging that Carmela had died from a "premeditated" act by Carl. Receiving reporters in her dinette, Marge insisted: "I loved my husband, not Carl."
As the onetime winter home of the Ringling Bros, troupe, Sarasota is accustomed to circuses. Not so Fox Run, where one resident last week repeated in horrified tones the oldest caveat of modern living: "You never know who your neighbors are."