PERFECT HUSBAND

Blood-chilling case history by Provost (Without Mercy, 1989) of a murderous psycho accepted by his credulous wife and small community. Lisa Paspalakis was the beloved only daughter of a Greek immigrant who had made a business success in Daytona Beach. When she met Kosta Fotopoulos, Lisa found him so charming that the knot was tied in six months. Soon Fotopoulos began angling with Lisa's father for a share in the family enterprises. Receiving $10,000—which he promptly spent on a BMW—but no part of the hard-won businesses, Fotopoulos killed the old man with a dose of mercury. As Lisa mourned her father's ``heart attack,'' Fotopoulos acted the sympathetic and supportive husband. Several flights to Milan produced suitcases of counterfeit C-notes, and soon Fotopoulos was a man of respect with his own business—a tawdry pool hall, Top Shots, that attracted every runaway, hophead, rip-off artist, and street sister in Daytona. There, Fotopoulos met his perfect match in Deidre Hunt—hooker at 15, coke mule at 16, armed robber at 18 (11 months served for shooting a victim four times). With Lisa being the only thing that stood in the way of several million dollars, Fotopoulos and Hunt arranged for a Top Shots drifter to murder her at her office—but the gunman spooked and ran away after showing his pistol. Taking a break from uxoricide, the pair got some kicks with a teenaged acid dealer by tying him to a tree, Hunt shooting him point-blank while Fotopoulos videotaped. Fotopoulos finally found a competent runaway who entered the bedroom and shot Lisa in the head, whereupon Fotopoulos promptly wasted the ``intruder'' with a Walther PPK. Maddeningly, Lisa survived without any brain damage. As she lay in the hospital beginning to suspect her husband for the first time, he was planning to send her a bomb in a potted plant. Psychiatric background is included in Provost's account of this monster's growing madness. A heavy hit for true-crime readers.