Boat's driver found guilty

John Dwyer slumped in his seat.

A jury on Friday had finally declared Todd Spangler guilty of manslaughter in the boating death of Dwyer's wife, Jennifer Finke-Dwyer — and Dwyer didn't know what to do, didn't know what to feel. Dwyer started to get up, then sat back down. A prosecutor came over and offered a hand — a hand that Dwyer could barely shake.

Eyes welling, Dwyer then rose and walked toward Spangler's wife, Kim, as she wept quietly on the other side of the courtroom.

A couple steps later, he stopped, then pivoted towards Todd Spangler — his former good friend and the boater that day on West Shores Lake near Waterloo.

Dwyer dropped his hands to his side. A prosecutor suggested they leave the courtroom.

“I don't know what to say,” Dwyer muttered, his eyes red. “I feel bad for them.”

Just as he had during the trial, Todd Spangler avoided eye contact with Dwyer.

As Spangler sat with his chin in his palm, his attorney, James Martin Davis, asked the judge if Spangler could move from Omaha to his native Ohio with his wife while he awaits sentencing.

Asked why, Spangler told the judge: “To reside there and begin a new career.”

Douglas County District Judge James Gleason said they could take up that matter later. He set sentencing for June 23.

Spangler, who has a law degree and worked in the financial industry, faces up to 20 years in prison or five years of probation. And, his attorney said, the conviction could jeopardize his broker's license.

Outside the courtroom, Spangler had few words.

“I can't comment,” he said, his eyes swimming.

“Anything to Mr. Dwyer?” a TV reporter asked.

“I just can't come up with anything right now to even speak to him,” Spangler said. “It just hurts.”

Indeed, the parties on both sides of this tragedy are far from healed. In an exclusive interview with The World-Herald, Dwyer said he bears no ill will toward Spangler — the once-close friend who recruited Dwyer to relocate to Omaha and work at Securities America, a brokerage.

The two haven't talked since Finke-Dwyer died June 21 after being slammed into a dock while riding a tube pulled by Spangler's boat.

“I know he didn't mean this,” Dwyer said. “But there's something to be said about taking accountability for one's actions. And he needs to do that.

“The prevailing thinking is that this trial was unnecessary. Jenny's parents asked me, ‘Why do we have to go through this?' I told them, ‘I don't know why, but we will.'”

No one knows more about the trial, and the trials, of this case than Dwyer. The 36-year-old was on the boat and watched as Spangler made a sharp turn that inadvertently sent the tube carrying Finke-Dwyer and Kim Spangler careening into the dock. Finke-Dwyer died of massive injuries to her liver. Kim Spangler was seriously injured.

On Tuesday, John Dwyer brought the jury and spectators to tears as he testified of swimming to his wife's side, of trying to comfort her as she writhed in pain, of slipping her wedding ring back on her finger as she started to fade.

After that testimony — and the accounts of several boat passengers and neighbors and Spangler himself — Dwyer spent an agonizing two days waiting for the jury to return its verdict.

Prosecutor Matt Kuhse had argued that Spangler clearly committed manslaughter — the unintentional death of another during the commission of an unlawful act. Spangler's blood-alcohol content was .16 percent, twice the legal limit for driving.

And, Kuhse said, Spangler's drunkenness and desire to “show off” caused him to misjudge the distance and whip the tube into the dock.

But Davis, Spangler's attorney, argued that Finke-Dwyer's death was the product of a freak tubing accident, not Spangler's drunkenness. Davis had argued that the women fell off the tube and skimmed across the water before hitting the dock.

Juror Dayton Arthur, a computer technician, said that argument hit home with some jurors — for a while. Several jurors questioned whether Spangler had really misjudged the distance — and whether the tube actually had hit the dock.

Their first vote after getting the case yesterday afternoon: 7 to 5. To acquit, Arthur said.

Soon, jurors submitted a question: When it came to the unlawful act, did they have to find that Spangler was operating the boat both drunk and recklessly? The answer was no — they could find either. But the judge, as judges often do, merely referred jurors back to their instructions.

Slowly, Arthur said, the vote began to flip. Within a couple hours, it was 7 guilty to 5 not guilty. By the end of Thursday, it was 9 guilty and 3 not guilty. By noon Friday, it was 10-2.

By midafternoon, Arthur said, the two holdouts came around.

Arthur said he and others kept pointing to the fact that Spangler was drunk — and to the testimony of bystanders. Three passengers on Spangler's boat and a neighbor testified that they couldn't believe Spangler made the turn with the tube on a collision course towards the dock.

“We know he didn't mean to do this,” Arthur said of Spangler. “But it wasn't the tube's fault. It wasn't the dock's fault. It wasn't the boat's fault.

“He was the one driving the boat. He's the person who had their lives in his hands.”

An only child and a native of Brazil who moved to New York when she was 16, Finke-Dwyer was working on a doctorate at the University of Nebraska Medical Center after postgraduate studies at several universities.

Although this week dredged up the horror of that day, Dwyer said his mind was on all the good memories of his wife. The surprise weekend visits he made to Pittsburgh, where she studied after college. The Boston terrier, named “Taz,” they had just brought to their home in La Vista. Their discussions, just before her death, about starting to raise a family.

Her smile. Her strength. Her steady determination.

“She always told me, ‘Follow your goals but you have to make it happen,'” Dwyer said. “She certainly lived that.”

Dwyer, a native of Long Island, N.Y., said he wishes nothing more than that he and his wife and the Spanglers could return to June 21 and start over. That's part of the reason he circled towards the Spanglers in the courtroom after the verdict, he said.

“I wish we could go back to just being four good friends,” he said. “I wish it every day.”

He paused.

“I never want to be considered a pity case,” he said. “This isn't about me. This is about Jenny. She was so smart and had such a bright outlook on life.

“I just feel like she's always around. She's always in my heart.”

Contact the writer:

444-1275, todd.cooper@owh.com

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