Death comes calling for Jeremiah Croft

One of the most controversial events of Marciano family life was sister Maria’s decision to marry. It wasn’t the act of marriage itself, but who she married that caused a family crisis.

Maria’s attraction to men the size and strength of Hercules sent her hurtling towards the altar with a sizable Sicilian named Shekko Lombardi. My brother-in-law’s style with everyone he brushed up against was purely confrontational. That didn’t matter to Maria, who liked her men big, strong, bellicose and chauvinistic. Nothing refreshed my sister’s sexual passions more urgently than being physically dominated by the male of the species. That domination took forms ranging from general manhandling to being forced to participate in unusual bedroom acts still outlawed in several southern U.S. states.

Despite its fetishes, the marriage sailed along, both partners getting what they wanted. It tripped over just one crisis, a suspected affair. Shekko was making a routine rummage through Maria’s purse when he intercepted a light-blue square of folded paper that contained, in Maria’s handwriting, one three-letter word: Wet. It was the very word Maria once used at the start of their relationship, in writing, on a slip of paper, to shyly communicate her state of arousal. Shekko naturally took this repeat performance to mean the same — but who was this salacious missive destined for? Certainly not him; Maria was long past using indirect communication with her husband. There was an interloper among them, he surmised.

A rage ensued. Several pieces of furniture were busted as he demanded to know the intended recipient of her scandalous note. Maria, hyperventilating for her life, insisted the word was the start of a brief shopping list. Wet, she cried, was shorthand for Wet Wipes, which she used to clean kitchen and bathroom fixtures. But Shekko had already come completely unhinged and would not be that easily appeased. He demanded again and again to know who the note was earmarked for. Maria barely managed to stand by her story.

Shekko wasn’t buying it. Over the next few days he conducted an investigation that included a review of the household’s phone records. A pattern emerged, a repeating number with a prefix corresponding to the local junior high school where two of the Lombardi’s four children were currently being educated. It was the same school where Maria seemed to be participating in unusually frequent parent/teacher conferences. He called the number. A voicemail system answered with the recorded message of a man identifying himself as vice principal Jeremiah Croft. This was the same name Shekko had once heard his wife swoon over while chatting with a girlfriend. The same guy she had met with several times this school year, ostensibly to discuss disciplinary problems with their eldest daughter. Slamming down the phone, Shekko Lombardi dashed to the school. With spittle flying in all directions, he made the acquaintance of the trembling vice principal. Doing his best John Gotti imitation, the madman described several pieces of the educator’s anatomy that would be severed from his torso if he ever so much as came within one square acre of his wife.

As a visual demonstration of his promise, Shekko tore a leg off Jeremiah Croft’s 300-pound oak desk and waved it maniacally across the air. Anticipating the imminence of death, Croft’s eyes starting rolling toward the back of his skull. Shekko departed school grounds moments before two police department squad cars came blaring to the scene.

Jeremiah Croft, standing haplessly behind his busted and slanted desk, told two disbelieving police officers that he had been involved in nothing more than a mild misunderstanding and had no interest in pressing charges.

@copyright/Mike Consol