Fatal Cape shooting reveals a secret

Last summer, after a fishing trip on Cape Cod, Ann Gryboski and her sister Ellie were in the kitchen talking with their husbands when Ann's husband, Patrick Lancaster, described how he'd gotten into a fight with a co-worker. He wanted to demonstrate what he'd done, so he grabbed Ann tightly around the neck and held her in a near-chokehold until she told him to stop.

"We were shocked that he did it, but to him it was a joke," says Ellie, who lives in Maryland.

Though Ann's family knew how verbally abusive Lancaster was -- they had all suffered his barbs over the years -- they never knew that he was physically abusive, too.

Few people apparently knew much about what was happening at 11 Coach Lane in Barnstable until Ann Gryboski shot and killed Lancaster on Easter Sunday. She told police she killed him as he came at her when she attempted to break up a fight between him and their 25-year-old son, Christopher.

Gryboski, a doctor in South Yarmouth, also told police that Lancaster had physically and mentally abused her and their two sons for years, and that the violence had been escalating. Gryboski, 51, is charged with murder. A grand jury will hear evidence in the case within the next several weeks, according to the district attorney's office. Her lawyer, Kevin Reddington, says he will rely both on self-defense and battered women's syndrome.

Those close to the couple knew that Lancaster had a bad temper. There were the tirades and tantrums that had long alienated him from her family. The insults and obscenities he hurled without provocation. The anger management classes he supposedly took a few years ago.

In retrospect, family members now say, it was a classic case of abuse: He had become obsessed with her as a teenager, had a violent temper, was verbally abusive, and had tried to isolate her from her family.

"I knew Pat as a teenager," Ellie says, "and all he talked about obsessively was how much he loved Ann."

Years ago Ellie remarked to Lancaster that if her husband ever cheated on her, she'd leave him. "Pat then said he would kill Ann before he'd ever let her leave," she recalls.

Gryboski's mug shot tells part of the story: Her lip and eye are swollen, and bruises and cuts mar her face. The night before the killing, she told police, her husband had punched her repeatedly as she drove her Saab with their 2-year-old grandson in the back seat. Her battered face is allegedly what led to the heated exchange between Christopher and his father on Easter.

Today those who know her are struggling to piece together the rest of the story. Why would the highly respected physician stay in an abusive relationship for so long? Why didn't she reveal the abuse to anyone? She had never filed a restraining order, never contacted police.

Her lawyer says he isn't surprised.

"The sound of domestic violence is silence," says Reddington. "They don't say anything because they're terribly afraid. And they're concerned with what the neighbors will think."

Ann Gryboski was also concerned about what her family would think. Though they had all witnessed Lancaster's wrath, relatives believed it was strictly verbal.

"We never dreamed he would hit her or she would tolerate it," says her mother, Barbara. "I am ashamed of myself now for not paying more attention." When her brother, Joe, noticed bruises on her legs, she'd say she bumped into something.

The warning signs were there from the earliest days of the couple's relationship. Over the years her siblings had distanced themselves because of his temper. "There just wasn't the closeness there had been," Barbara says. "Pat was a thorn in her side."

As the middle of seven children, Ann had grown up close to her sisters and brother. "Ann was the most mild-mannered and nonconfrontational," says her father, Joseph, also a doctor. But her husband apparently had the opposite temperament. "Patrick antagonized all our family so that we had little contact with him."

Ellie Gryboski says she rarely saw her sister until her children were older, because Lancaster used to berate her family, including the children. But in the past couple of years, as the children grew up, she began to see more of Ann. "If anything happened, Pat would slam Ann first," she says. Such as the time last summer when Ellie's daughter was driving his boat and hit a wave, making Lancaster fall. He began screaming at his wife.

Still, Ann was always loyal to him, her family says. Once, when Ellie and her husband got into an argument with Lancaster over work he'd done on their house, Ann took his side. "She said she believed her husband over us and that she would support whatever he did," says Ellie. "She was really committed to making the marriage work."

Ann's oldest sibling, Kathryn, says that though Lancaster had a volatile temper, her sister felt stuck. "We're New England Catholics, sort of private people. When you get married, you stay married. She just got in over her head and couldn't get out."

But there was more than that, her family now realizes. "I really feel that Ann knew if she left or took out a restraining order, he would hurt her or the boys," says Ellie.

Barbara and Joseph Gryboski raised their large family in a Lexington home that they describe as happy and hectic: a jumble of children, pets, crafts projects, and jigsaw puzzles. From an early age, Ann wanted to follow her father into medicine. At Lexington High School, she was a serious student who took honors classes and played flute in the orchestra and in a local chamber music group. She was a Girl Scout, an avid reader and biker, and belonged to a swim team.

Patrick Lancaster was not a serious student, and first met Ann Gryboski when they were fixed up for the prom at the end of their senior year. When they graduated in 1974, Ann went to Trinity College in Hartford as a premed student and Pat went to the Maine Maritime Academy, where he earned a degree in marine engineering. At the school, Pat had a friend from Connecticut, and he'd hitch a ride to Hartford whenever the friend went home.

"He pursued her," Barbara says. "He'd go to campus and show up in uniform." At a family wedding in 1979, Pat announced that he and Ann were getting married before he shipped out as a merchant marine. A few months later there was a small ceremony at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury. Ann made her own dress.

The Gryboskis have few wedding photos of their daughter. "I cut them up after he was abusive to me," says Barbara. Lancaster also alienated Ann's then-teenage sister by calling her "a spoiled brat." That sister, says Barbara, is in therapy following the shooting. "She's in anguish because she distanced herself back then and she's realizing now what was happening in Ann's house."

Still, her parents say, Ann had some happy years with her husband, scuba diving, rock-climbing, and hiking. "He was a nice-looking fellow, and he had some talent and potential, and that's what Ann was working on," says her mother. "She tried so hard to make things good. I weep for what could have been."

Lancaster and his sons also liked to hunt, and sometimes Ann transported rifles in her car on their hunting trips, often to Utah and Colorado. So she obtained a firearms identification card. She also had a pistol permit. "I'm just guessing that part of that [the pistol] is her husband would go away for three or four months at a time and they were concerned about her being in the home alone," says her brother. It is the pistol that killed Lancaster three weeks ago.

The couple spent the first two years of their married life in Ann Arbor, where Ann earned a master's degree in public health at the University of Michigan. While there, she gave birth to Christopher. Barbara flew out to help for a couple of weeks with the newborn. "I would take him at 2 a.m. and walk around with him and put him to sleep. I cleaned the house. Pat would go down in the basement to do his woodwork and bring all the sawdust up. I would not say a word. I cooked, and when their friends came over I got out of the way."

Ann rarely criticized her husband. "She'd never say a word about him," says Barbara. "Just 'Pat's grumpy.' We knew he had gotten into fights with others, but we didn't think of any physical abuse with Ann. He didn't drink."

After Ann Arbor, the couple moved back to Boston, where Ann, financed by her parents, enrolled in Tufts Medical School. Pat, who was working as a carpenter, did not want her to attend. "He did not like the fact that she was a successful physician," says her father, who briefly shared a medical practice in Cambridge with Ann before he retired. "She was persecuted by this guy."

When Ann became pregnant again during her last year of medical school, her mother, who was taking care of their 3-year-old, told them she could not handle both little ones. "Pat said, 'You have nothing else to do. You're over the hill,' " recalls Barbara, who was then in her late 50s. He also told Barbara he didn't want to be like her -- spending her time raising children. As usual, it was Ann who apologized for his behavior.

Meanwhile, the Gryboskis had bought a condo near their house in Lexington, to make it easier for Ann to drop off and pick up baby Daniel. "It was very convenient for Ann, but Pat didn't like it," Barbara recalls. "He said he wanted us to buy a house with a cellar for his woodworking."

In 1994, the couple moved to Cape Cod at Lancaster's insistence: He liked fishing and boating and was trained as a marine mechanic. It was difficult to start a medical practice from scratch, but Ann became an internist in South Yarmouth, affiliated with Cape Cod Hospital, and built up a large clientele.

Meanwhile, Lancaster had a small business repairing diesel engines and another chartering his fishing boat out of an East Dennis marina. He'd often ship out with various vessels, and those occasions offered his wife some respite, say her parents.

According to his obituary in the Cape Cod Times, Lancaster felt most at home at sea. The obit said he had three sisters and two brothers and did not mention his parents, who are dead. "To the best of our knowledge, he was pretty much estranged from most of his family," says Kathryn Gryboski. "He isolated himself from most of his siblings. The family had been divided for years."

Ann's brother Joe spoke yesterday to one of Lancaster's brothers, who lives in Maine and did not want to be identified. "He told me he and his family do not want to make a statement because they were told not to talk to anyone but police, the district attorney, and the defense attorney in the case," he said. Joe said Lancaster's brother and his wife visited Ann shortly after the shooting to voice support for her.

In 2001, Lancaster went to work for the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay, but was fired in the middle of the term. Academy officials declined to elaborate.

Last September he became a senior lab technician at the US Merchant Marine Academy on Long Island. His boss, Jose Femenia, spoke highly of his work.

"He was very, very mechanical," Femenia says. "My only complaint with Pat was that he was too aggressive, very impatient. He wanted things done immediately."

Lancaster was living in the dorm Monday through Thursday. On Friday, he'd head home to Cape Cod for a long weekend. "Initially he came in a little rough and tough, and we sort of had to cool him down a little bit," Femenia says. "He was accustomed to people responding when he wanted something done." Both Christopher and Daniel Lancaster are juniors at the academy.

Hip replacement surgery last summer made Lancaster walk with a limp. He had also begun to lose some hearing, and wore an aid. For the current semester, Femenia assigned him two lab classes: machine shop and welding. But in February, Lancaster had emergency hip surgery. He was due to return the day after Easter. Instead, Femenia got the news that he had been shot to death.

"When I found out that morning, I almost fell off my chair," said Femenia. "I was absolutely shocked."

So were others, who have sent hundreds of letters and phone calls of support to Gryboski. Patients said they hoped she'd return to her practice. Colleagues commented on her compassion and professionalism. Strangers wrote to say that they, too, had been abused, and felt her pain.

One acquaintance, whose son worked for Lancaster last summer, wrote: "He was horrible, degrading and almost sadistic. Everyday [my son] asked if he could quit and finally he could take it no more."

After the boy left, she wrote, Lancaster refused to pay him. The woman also said she recalled him taking the boys to Sandy Neck to work years ago. "He was always hollering and calling them names. It was awful to watch."

As obstreperous as Lancaster may have been, his wife is described as private and reserved; one friend even described her as "passive" -- until it came to her sons, her grandson, and her patients.

"Ann Marie was painfully shy but friendly," says Tom Mullen, who lives across the street. "I'd see her walking the dogs, and she'd keep her head down a lot. What happened that weekend is obvious: She got the hell beat out of her." Still, he'd never witnessed any trouble.

Nancy McLean, a Dennis attorney, was one of Gryboski's patients. "I felt I could ask her anything," she says. "She's the best doctor I've ever had. I know if she did that [shooting], something terrible must have happened in that house."