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When the cops arrived, they found Paul Solomon extremely
distraught. He was nervous, excited and looked very scared. “I got
home, the first thing I heard was the TV on very loud. I walked into
the living room. The lights were out. I noticed that Betty Jeanne was
on the floor. I assumed she was asleep,” Solomon said later. “I
touched her and she was cold. I went and turned the lights on. I
turned her over and there was blood. I thought she had fallen and hit
her head.”
The police surveyed the room before them. Lying on the living room
floor in a wide pool of fresh blood, her head away from the door, was
the body of Betty Jeanne Solomon. She was laying face down and
appeared to have been shot several times. There were obvious bullet
holes in her back and leg. The room was apparently undisturbed and
there were no signs of any type of struggle. The furniture and
fixtures were intact. There was no forced entry through any of the
doors or the windows. Nothing was stolen from the apartment. The
television was still on and the volume was turned up. A telephone
receiver was lying on the floor just out of reach of Betty Jean’s
hand. The telephone jack was unplugged from the wall.
Detective Sgt. Tommy Lind and Detective Richard Constantino of the
Greenburgh Police Department soon arrived and began the tedious job of
note taking and conducting interviews. Within minutes, the
forensic team entered the apartment and began to process the scene.
They took photographs, completed a diagram of the crime scene and
dusted the area for latents. Sgt. Lind found Solomon sitting in the
living room of a neighbor’s apartment. When he asked Solomon what
his movements were before he came home, Solomon recited everything he
did. But he left out one important point. At first, he did not mention
that he met Carolyn at the Treetops.
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Det. Richard Constantino
(Mark
Gado) |
Det. Constantino, 33, was a 10-year veteran in 1989 and already a
detective for several years. Although he had assisted in other death
and homicide investigations, this would be the first murder case in
which he would be the lead investigator. After a few minutes at the
scene, Constantino immediately suspected Solomon. “When a wife is
murdered and the body is found by the husband and he’s the last
person to see her alive, what would anyone think?” he said in a
recent interview. “And statistically, in the majority of the cases,
it’s the husband,” he added. Although they did not like all of
Solomon’s answers, Constantino and Lind made note of his oral
statements. Solomon was distraught but continued to answer all the
questions. In the meantime, the forensic team had located six
.25-caliber shell casings on the living room floor. A superficial
examination of Betty Jeanne’s body revealed that she had been shot
at least eight times. Later, Solomon agreed to give a formal
written statement.
At the police station, detectives went over every detail of
Solomon’s movements prior to arriving home. He then told the cops he
did not come straight home after visiting the bowling alley. He said
that he met Carolyn Warmus at a restaurant in Yonkers and had dinner.
Solomon outlined his relationship with Carolyn for the past year. He
told them about the Treetops date, the clandestine meetings, love
notes at the job and telephone calls to his home.
And, by the way, Solomon said, he almost forgot to mention that
after the Treetops dinner, he did have sex with Carolyn in her car
while they were in the parking lot.
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