DEBORAH ANN KOEPKE, 42

Mother of 2 lost her zeal for life

A flash of nostalgia coursed through Charles Koepke as Led Zeppelin's
"Stairway to Heaven" started playing on the radio during the motorcade to
Gate of Heaven Cemetery in East Hanover where his ex-wife, Deborah, was to
be buried on March 4.

"It had been one of her favorite songs. I thought, `Maybe she's climbed
those stairs,'" he said.

Deborah Ann Koepke died at age 42 on Feb. 28, succumbing to the lethal
combination of heroin and alcohol despite warnings from doctors treating
her for a chemical imbalance that she was not to touch liquor, much less
drugs.

Her ex-husband and his new wife -- also named Debbie -- said they were not
surprised to hear of the death of a woman who seemed to have long before
lost any zeal for life.

"She wasn't a happy camper. I think she knew better than to do drugs, but
she didn't care," Charles Koepke said.

Even if it meant using her 17-year-old son in a drug distribution scheme.

On Jan. 23, 1992, Koepke was charged in Morris County with possession and
distribution of less than a half-ounce of cocaine to an undercover
narcotics detective the previous November. She also was accused of
conspiring with her son in the scheme.

The charges of using her son in a crime was dropped when Koepke pleaded
guilty to distributing cocaine. In June 1992, she was sentenced to the 4
1/2 months she had spent in jail, fined $1,000 and placed on probation for
two years.

"The defendant has served a substantial period of time on this charge and
her attitude has been such that it offers hope for a change in her life,"
the sentencing judge noted in remarks justifying the sentence.

A meaningful change was not in store.

Twenty-four days before her now-16-year-old daughter, Stacey, found her
unconscious on a sofa in her grandparents' Lake Hiawatha home, Deborah
Koepke spent an evening drinking with an ex-flame, a man she once accused
of threatening to shoot her.

Koepke's Feb. 3 reunion with her former boyfriend ended in trouble.

At 1 a.m. the next day, after a 5 1/2-hour drinking binge, Koepke summoned
police to the Ridgewood Avenue home in Parsippany that she shared with her
parents. She told them that she and James P. Scully had quarreled and she
wanted him to leave.

On Feb. 28, police were again called to Koepke's home. This time, the 12:35
p.m. call came from Koepke's father, who reported that his daughter was
unconscious. One hour and three minutes after the call, she was pronounced
dead at St. Clare's Hospital/Denville.

The divorced mother of a 23-year-old son and daughter died of an adverse
reaction to heroin and alcohol, according to the Morris County Medical
Examiner's Office.

Koepke's parents, Frank and Sophie Jozapaitis, declined requests for an
interview. "I just want to put this behind me," Frank Jozapaitis said.

But glimpses of a woman shadowed by trouble are found in court records and
in interviews with her ex-husband and his wife.

Three months after burying his only daughter at Gate of Heaven Cemetery,
Frank Jozapaitis was visited by an officer trying to serve Koepke with a
notice to appear in Superior Court for a review of the restraining order
she obtained against Scully eight months before their rendezvous at her
home. Officers had tried to serve Scully but couldn't find him.

Koepke got the restraining order by asserting that Scully in June 1997
threatened her by saying: "You know the gun I have buried? Well I got the
gun and you know I know how to use it."

Born in Nanticoke, Pa., on March 17, 1955, the outline of the destructive
path Deborah was walking first emerged in court papers filed in 1988 by
Charles Koepke. Estranged from Deborah, he was protesting child support
payments he believed were excessive. The couple met at the General Motors
plant in Linwood -- where Charles still works today as a fork truck
operator -- and got married around 1971 in a civil ceremony performed by
the mayor of Roselle.

The couple's first child, the son Deborah Koepke in 1992 was accused of
employing in a drug transaction -- was born on Nov. 5, 1974. A daughter,
who was living with her mother when she died and is cared for now by her
grandparents, was born on May 29, 1982.

The son, Jayson, recently married, is serving in the Marines and is
stationed in California, according to his father. He could not be reached
for comment.

"He's gotten his life straightened out, thank God," Charles Koepke said.

At some point in 1987, Deborah Koepke began an extramarital affair with a
co-worker named Kevin at General Motors. It was around this time, according
to Charles Koepke, that his wife began dabbling with heroin and other
drugs. General Motors sent the woman and her boyfriend to a drug
rehabilitation program but they were removed for not following program
rules, the ex-husband said.

Then in March 1988, Deborah Koepke accepted a $40,000 voluntary termination
offer from the company.

In 1988, Charles Koepke wrote the court to protest certain child support
payments: "My wife decided that our marriage was over last year when she
began an affair with a co-worker at the GM plant where we both worked. At
the time we lived with Deborah's parents in Lake Hiawatha. She moved out
eventually with the other guy. The children stayed with me at my
mother-in-law's house."

However, the mother was eventually awarded primary custody of the two
children, subject to liberal visitation by their father. He was ordered to
pay $100 a week in child support.

It is unclear whether Deborah Koepke ever worked full-time again after
accepting the General Motors buyout. In some court records she refers to
herself as disabled and unemployed. Charles Koepke, 47, who now lives in
Beachwood, said Deborah Koepke for a while tried to make a living running a
hot dog truck, but the enterprise fizzled out.

After the break-up in 1991, the new and former wives formed a friendship of
sorts through telephone conversations that occurred when the ex-spouses
conferred on parenting matters.

"Deb didn't want to work, and I'd tell her, `Deb, if you don't want to get
up and go to a job why not get a computer and work from home?'" the second
wife remembered. "I did grow to like Debbie over the years because I guess
I could understand where she was coming from since I put myself through
rehab. I was shocked when she died but not surprised."

On Aug. 29, 1989, Deborah Koepke was arrested by Montville police and
charged with stealing a diamond ring, diamond pendant, other jewelry and
more than $500 in coins from the mother of an acquaintance. On Sept. 6,
1991, she was charged with stealing an Oldsmobile Cutlass in Boonton.

Indicted on theft charges, she pleaded guilty in October 1991 to an amended
charge of joyriding and theft of the jewelry. She was placed on probation
for two years, ordered to perform 50 hours of community service and pay
$2,698 in restitution.

"She was an acquaintance of my son, but I never laid eyes on her," said the
victim of the jewelry theft, who asked not to be identified. "I got some of
the jewelry back but some she fenced to a jeweler in Lake Hiawatha."

Once her relationship with the GM co-worker ended, Koepke moved back in
with her parents.

Unemployed, she managed to make restitution payments of about $25 a month.

After the charges in January 1992, Koepke's probation was extended in 1994
for another two years so she could pay off court fines.

Living apart from her parents for a while in 1995 and 1996, Koepke was
charged by Parsippany police on Jan. 1, 1996, with assaulting Scully by
punching him in the face, causing cuts to his nose and blackening his right
eye. She later pleaded guilty to simple assault and was fined.

Thirteen months later, her life was over.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski