The story
New Paltz is a small college town in Ulster County, New York, just across the river from Poughkeepsie, built around the State University of New York campus and about 70 miles from Manhattan. Darlene Louise Bauer was born on 31 December 1968 and waited tables at the Plaza Diner.
In 1996 her life fell apart. Her infant son was diagnosed with brain cancer, and she took him out of state to Houston for treatment available at only one hospital. In September the doctors told her there was nothing more they could do and that he might have a couple of months. He celebrated his first birthday at the beginning of December and died on 22 December 1996, three days before Christmas. Darlene gave $5,000 of unused medicine to another family in Orange County with a sick child, then went back to ten-hour shifts at the diner. She saved her tips, lost 80 pounds and bought a small white house with green trim five minutes from her mother. Everyone described her as unusually kind, the sort of waitress who would listen to a lonely regular's story longer than anyone else.
He was a self-described compulsive eater who had once weighed 350 pounds, was down to about 175, and was taking Zoloft and Paxil. He ate at the Plaza Diner at least once a day, always in Darlene's section, and he became fixated on her. They became friends rather than lovers. In August 1997 they flew from Stewart in Newburgh to Long Island for a day out, rented a Ford Contour from Hertz with her Visa card, and he bought her a bottle of Opium perfume at Macy's.
On the evening of 18 September he asked Darlene to stop by his apartment, a motel-like L-shaped block, after her shift, saying he was having trouble putting up a curtain. She sat at his table while he worked. He then took a claw hammer and hit her over the head. She fell onto the bed and struggled, and he kept beating her for about forty minutes, more than fifty blows. Twice he stopped to lie down with her and say the Lord's Prayer. He told her she was going to be with her son.
His brother hung up and called the police. The staff called 911.
His lawyer said he had never had a more difficult client.
He was found mentally competent. Darlene's mother Janice and her half-sister described a woman so badly beaten that the casket had to be closed. He was sent to Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill the same day, which his public defender said was the fastest transfer he had ever seen. Darlene is buried in Kingston, New York, in a grave she shares with her son.