A case gone cold

To celebrate the end of graduate school this spring, Alicia Simoni and her housemates traded handmade scrolls with inscriptions about their friendships.

She was not surprised that a few of her friends wrote that what they appreciated most about her was her father, who had sent them lavish care packages all year.

"He really became a dad to everyone I was close to," Simoni, 27, said in a recent interview.

The popular father in demand is Brian Simoni, once considered the prime suspect in the 1989 murder of his wife, Susan, his childhood sweetheart and mother of their three children. But two grand juries heard evidence in the case, and neither he nor anyone else was ever charged.

The brutal killing in the prominent Norwood family ignited a firestorm of media scrutiny, but remains unsolved.

Joining more than 25 other cold cases in the communities south of Boston in the past quarter-century, the Simoni murder has sent ripples through the family ever since.

Now, Alicia and her brother, Eric, 25, have for the first time spoken publicly about their father -- to defend his innocence.

Alicia describes her father as "a strong source of stability and support." Eric calls him "a rock." By their accounts, his kindness, devotion, and occasional impishness was what got them through their mother's death.

Their testament to their father -- who declined to be interviewed for this story -- provides a counterpoint to the portrayal of him by the police and the press in the days and weeks after his wife's murder 17 years ago.

Susan and Brian Simoni, high-school sweethearts, married in 1973 and moved to a large house they had built beside the Simonis' third-generation florist business on Route 1.

Brian threw himself into his job in the family business, and successfully so. Before long, he was driving a Mercedes-Benz 380 SE and piloting a Cherokee 6 plane. The couple owned property on Martha's Vineyard, and traveled to Las Vegas, according to MaryAnn Ferzoco, wife of Brian Simoni's late brother, Barry, a partner in the business.

"They had a beautiful home -- everything top of the line," Ferzoco said. When Susan went out, "she always looked beautiful. She had the best of everything -- shoes, clothes, vehicles." And Susan Simoni was active in the community -- as PTA president and a member of the Norwood Mothers Club.

Susan and Brian Simoni spent Christmas Day with the Simoni clan. Susan and her mother-in-law would prepare homemade tortellini for a family feast. Ferzoco remembers many Yuletides when at least 25 people clustered around the dinner table, she said. One of Alicia's last memories of her mother is from just before her final Christmas, in 1988, when Susan called the children together to read aloud a letter she had written them. The theme, recalls Alicia, was "Christmas was about showing kindness."

While the marriage appeared serene from outside, Susan and Brian moved apart.

"He was always at work, same as my husband was, because the business was 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Ferzoco said.

The pace was partly driven by the family patriarch, Frank Simoni, Ferzoco said. "Everything was about the business. Everything had to do with the growing of flowers."

There were differences between Susan, petite, and Brian, tall and balding. She was bubbly and extroverted, while he was "quiet, a loner," Ferzoco said.

Later, investigators discovered that Susan had planned to divorce.

Shortly after 5 p.m. on a chilly day in December 1989, Susan Simoni left her job as a medical secretary to pick up her dog from a groomer and Alicia from a dance class, investigators said. Susan fetched the cocker spaniel at about 5:20 p.m. but never arrived at the dance class.

Her body was found the next morning inside the couple's new Jeep Grand Wagoneer parked behind The Mall at Walpole. Dressed in slacks, sweater, and overcoat, Susan, 37, was sprawled face down over the front seat and floor. She had been shot twice in the chest with a.38- caliber gun.

Brian Simoni brought the three children home from school that day and told them, "Mommy's died," according to the children's maternal grandmother, Lillian Gagnon, who was present. "Somebody killed her."

A dog, a book, and a gun were among the clues that made authorities focus their attention on her husband. Brian Simoni, through lawyers, has maintained his innocence.

An affidavit -- filed by a state trooper in Dedham District Court six days after the murder, in support of a search warrant for the family home and Brian Simoni's vehicle and airplane -- outlined investigators' suspicions.

He had said the family dog ended up in the garage on the day of the murder because Susan had come home and dropped the dog off, but had not taken the time to greet her two sons in the house before leaving to pick up Alicia. That was "unusual."

He denied he and his wife were having marital problems, but a handbook on divorce was found in a paper bag in a trash container.

On request, Simoni handed over a Smith & Wesson revolver, and a box of ammunition missing two bullets. Simoni said he had fired the handgun only twice, behind the house, after he got it. Police wanted to investigate whether the bullets that killed Susan Simoni were fired by that weapon, according to the affidavit.

Two grand juries considered evidence but never returned an indictment.

Still, the findings prompted wall-to-wall media coverage that split townspeople, said William Plasko, a former high-school classmate of Susan and a longtime Norwood selectman.

"They either defended him," Plasko said, "or couldn't understand why an arrest wasn't being made."

The shadow of the murder and its aftermath has followed the family ever since.

For a time, Brian Simoni and his children -- Jason, then 14, Alicia, 10, and Eric, 7 -- withdrew from other family members. But now they are reconciled and Susan's mother is happy to be able to see her grandchildren again.

But neither Gagnon nor her daughter, Lynne Zargham, have recovered.

"We were such a close family," Gagnon said. "Oh, God, how did you let this happen to my family?"

Zargham said her sister comes to mind particularly during family events, such as the recent graduation of her own children.

"You know she would have been there," she said. "I really miss her."

Gagnon refuses to speak publicly about the murder.

Alicia and Eric Simoni said they agreed to talk to correct the record about their father.

Alicia said she "never had the opportunity to really defend my Dad the way that I would want to."

They spoke recently outside their father's spacious contemporary beach house in Edgartown, where they were visiting. He still works in the florist trade, they said, but he no longer owns a business or a plane, and has not remarried.

Alicia said she now believes that being in the public eye after the murder damaged them; with reporters and photographers leaping out from behind trees, it was "very difficult to grieve."

What kept them going, she said, was their devoted father, who attended his boys' schoolboy sports and her dance recitals, and arranged family time together in the summer on the Vineyard.

He made sure all his children got a good education and, according to Alicia, still honors family traditions such as making their mother's holiday tortellini -- "Even if it takes a sleepless night . . . he makes the pasta dough from scratch."

Alicia and Eric said their father instilled in them the importance of helping others. Eric is working for universal health care, while Alicia will soon resume nonprofit work helping women in war zones.

Two years ago, she spent two months in Afghanistan with Women for Women International. She experienced the terror of being under fire but loved the work, partly because of what it reveals about the human spirit: "They still have so much hope and joy."

The violence of her mother's death probably influenced her choice of careers, she said, and certainly her life.

"I will never understand why someone murdered my mother, and I cannot change the false accusations made of my father," she said. "I can only try to live with an attitude of understanding and compassion."

The murder also gave her a profound sense of empathy, she said.

"I think that if I would ever know who did this, I would forgive them."

Connie Paige can be reached at cpaige@globe.com.