acted as though she were better than and superior to everyone else, she had few friends and no real confidantes. Alone and friendless, then, thrown on her own resources, she retreated often into a world of fantasy, of make-believe, and expressed those fantasies as though they were real. Someone who knew her when she was a teenager remembers a day when they ran into each other on the sidewalk and Joyce held out her hand. âSee my new ring,â she said. âThe queen gave it to me when we were in England.â The Cantones made no trips abroad. Others remember that she always had a story, about trips, about meeting and becoming close to famous people, and that she always told them with such absolute conviction that many believed what she said.
That she was very intelligent is indisputable. She invariably scored high marks all the way through school and graduated near the top of her high school class. She had, a friend says, a photographic memory. âI was a little intimidated by her. She knew Latin, Italian, Frenchâthree or four languages. I had to work like crazy, study all the time just to get by, and she could pick up a book and just glance at a page, her eyes just darting over it, and that was it. She knew it all.â
Her education did not end with high school. When she was graduated, she enrolled as a business major at Hillyer College in Hartford, now the University of Hartford. According to what Joyce told friends, her decision to go on to college, rather than being supported by her family, was bitterly opposed. She fought constantly with her mother. They agreed about nothing. Finally, she said in one version, her mother threw her out when she was sixteen, and from that day on she made her own way. Like so many other things she said, then and throughout her life, that just didnât happen to be true. All through college she lived at home with her mother and commuted to school, though a bed and a roof were about all the support she got. She paid for her college education with scholarships and by holding a job as an assistant to an insurance agent named Gino Dinatto at the Aetna Life and Casualty Insurance Company from her freshman year right through graduation in 1961.
With a degree in her hands, she had a kind of real independence she had never possessed before; she had credentials; she had education. One thing she knew for certain was that now she could cut all but the most casual ties with the home where she had felt trapped, where she was sure nobody had understood or sympathized with her and her ambitions. The opportunity to do just that was there for the taking: Robert I. White. Over the years of college their friendship turned into a kind of romance. When he proposed, she accepted, and within days of graduation they were married. It was a small ceremony, attended by only a few friends and some family, so small and casual, in fact, that one person who was there cannot remember who else attended, cannot even remember if it was a religious ceremony. When it was over, Joyce had cut the ties; rarely after that did she see her mother, brothers or sisters.
Hardly had the vows been taken before Robert and Joyce Cantone White were gone. They moved to New Haven, where he had found a job as a beginning executive with Good Humor, the ice-cream company. Joyce continued her education. In New Haven she spent her days taking graduate courses in sociology at Yale, eventually, her resume noted, earning masterâs degrees in social work and education.
The marriage lasted less than five years. White will not discuss the marriage at all. He will say only that it was a relief to him when it finally ended. Some who saw them occasionally say that the marriage was doomed from the start. Whatever expectations White had, Joyce did not share. He wanted children. Children were the last thing she wanted. She had decided on a career, and children could only interfere with that. That was only one problem with the
That she was very intelligent is indisputable. She invariably scored high marks all the way through school and graduated near the top of her high school class. She had, a friend says, a photographic memory. âI was a little intimidated by her. She knew Latin, Italian, Frenchâthree or four languages. I had to work like crazy, study all the time just to get by, and she could pick up a book and just glance at a page, her eyes just darting over it, and that was it. She knew it all.â
Her education did not end with high school. When she was graduated, she enrolled as a business major at Hillyer College in Hartford, now the University of Hartford. According to what Joyce told friends, her decision to go on to college, rather than being supported by her family, was bitterly opposed. She fought constantly with her mother. They agreed about nothing. Finally, she said in one version, her mother threw her out when she was sixteen, and from that day on she made her own way. Like so many other things she said, then and throughout her life, that just didnât happen to be true. All through college she lived at home with her mother and commuted to school, though a bed and a roof were about all the support she got. She paid for her college education with scholarships and by holding a job as an assistant to an insurance agent named Gino Dinatto at the Aetna Life and Casualty Insurance Company from her freshman year right through graduation in 1961.
With a degree in her hands, she had a kind of real independence she had never possessed before; she had credentials; she had education. One thing she knew for certain was that now she could cut all but the most casual ties with the home where she had felt trapped, where she was sure nobody had understood or sympathized with her and her ambitions. The opportunity to do just that was there for the taking: Robert I. White. Over the years of college their friendship turned into a kind of romance. When he proposed, she accepted, and within days of graduation they were married. It was a small ceremony, attended by only a few friends and some family, so small and casual, in fact, that one person who was there cannot remember who else attended, cannot even remember if it was a religious ceremony. When it was over, Joyce had cut the ties; rarely after that did she see her mother, brothers or sisters.
Hardly had the vows been taken before Robert and Joyce Cantone White were gone. They moved to New Haven, where he had found a job as a beginning executive with Good Humor, the ice-cream company. Joyce continued her education. In New Haven she spent her days taking graduate courses in sociology at Yale, eventually, her resume noted, earning masterâs degrees in social work and education.
The marriage lasted less than five years. White will not discuss the marriage at all. He will say only that it was a relief to him when it finally ended. Some who saw them occasionally say that the marriage was doomed from the start. Whatever expectations White had, Joyce did not share. He wanted children. Children were the last thing she wanted. She had decided on a career, and children could only interfere with that. That was only one problem with the
Similar Books
The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey Into the Minds of Sexual Predators
Stephen G. Michaud, Roy Hazelwood
