Carol Stuart, who was raised in a close-knit family headed by a pizza-dough maker, was a "little Cinderella," a friend said. Her fairy tale, though, ended with a bullet in her head.
After a week of silence, her anguished family is beginning to talk about the horror of discovering that the son-in-law they had invited to dinner after her death may have been the one who plotted the shooting."It's unbelievable, we never would have guessed it in a million years," Mrs. Stuart's brother, Carl DiMaiti, said Tuesday.
He said, even looking back now, no one in the family could recall a clue of discord between his sister and her husband.
DiMaiti said his sister had a "totally happy life." He and others said she was devoted to her family. She talked to her mother every day and she "idolized" her father, according to one friend.
Carol's father, second-generation Italian-American, is still paying off the cost of Carol's education - and the cost of her lavish 1985 wedding.
"She was a little Cinderella," said Carol Dunn, who worked closely with Carol from the time she started at Suffolk University Law School in Boston in 1983. "She was a shining light. She was so bubbly and outgoing. I never saw her in a bad mood."
Dark-haired and petite, 30-year-old Carol Stuart worried about her weight and almost always ate salads. But mostly, Dunn said, "she worried about other people and took care of them."
Dunn was especially impressed with Carol's close relationship with her family and her then-boyfriend, whom everyone called Chuck.
Tall, handsome Charles Stuart, a former altar boy, was as reserved as Carol was vivacious.
"He was quiet and she always had something to say so it was like Carol was the little spotlight and no one paid attention to him," said Dunn, who remembers Charles Stuart faithfully picking Carol up at school each night. "You got the impression he was her solid rock. When she got her engagement ring, she was on cloud nine."
Carol met Charles Stuart at a restaurant in his hometown of Revere 10 years ago. She was a waitress and he was a cook and dishwasher.
Remy Sharrillo, 69, of Medford, who knew Carol and her family since she was 15, said her parents never wanted her to marry Charles.
"He was a dishwasher," Sharrillo said. "The father didn't like him at all and the wife wasn't that crazy about him either. They finally gave in when she wanted to marry him. She idolized the guy. She was nuts about him."
Carol's parents, Giusto and Evelyn DiMaiti, have remained in seclusion since Carol's death. They have been under sedation at times.
The DiMaitis had some of Charles Stuart's siblings to their house while he was hospitalized and invited Charles to dinner two days before the 30-year-old killed himself by jumping off a Boston bridge.
Charles' brother Matthew told his lawyer that he told some friends and family members about the killing after it occurred.
That knowledge is one of the hardest things to face, said Carl DiMaiti, Carol's older brother.