Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
BYLINE: By JOSEPH BERGER
Anne Scripps Douglas was an heiress with the cushion of the Scripps newspaper
fortune, but she struck her friends as someone who needed their protection.
"I always wanted to fold her in my arms and pat her," said Dorothy Brennan, a
friend and neighbor in Bronxville. "She was a beautiful person with an air of
innocence. She was not of this world."
Indeed, her life, beginning with her schooling in an upstate convent school and
almost until she was bludgeoned to death in the village of Bronxville in
Westchester County, had an aura of having been a sheltered one. Well into her
40's as a suburbanite, she never even learned to drive, escorting her children
to and from school and doing her errands on foot. And she was so private, a
friend said, that it seemed to take all of this newspaper heiress's courage just
to write a letter to a local newspaper protesting the renovation of her
neighborhood park.
It was that vulnerability, her friends speculated, that led her to be overly
trusting of her second husband, Scott Douglas, a 38-year-old home-remodeling
contractor who has been charged with her murder. The 47-year-old Mrs. Douglas
was discovered New Year's Day lying unconscious in her home on Avon Road. She
died Thursday without regaining consciousness.
Car Found on Bridge
Her husband's 1982 BMW was found abandoned on the Tappan Zee Bridge with the
engine running and the keys in the ignition. Police have not located his body,
and they have issued a warrant for his arrest.
"We are proceeding as though he is alive," said Jeanine Pirro, the Westchester
County District Attorney, but she acknowledged that she had no proof that he was
alive.
The Douglases had separated more than a year ago, but reconciled. Then in the
last month, neighbors say, they noticed police cars in the driveway of the
Douglas house on a half-dozen occasions after she accused her husband of
threatening or harassing her. The neighbors also learned that Mrs. Douglas had
gone to Family Court Dec. 6 to obtain an order of protection for herself and her
3-year-old daughter, Victoria, but they are mystified now as to why she agreed
to permit Mr. Douglas to remain at the house.
"She was very trusting and maybe a little naive," said Sharon Boles, a friend
for 20 years. "I think she thought he wouldn't do anything to her."
Friends say the two met five years ago when Mrs. Douglas, then a divorced mother
with two teen-age daughters, hired the 6-foot Mr. Douglas to paint her house.
Although they were struck that she married a man on such a different social
level, they said, they were not entirely surprised.
"I think she didn't have a great deal of confidence after her first marriage,
and he was very charming, very charming," Mrs. Boles recalled. "And he presented
himself as being very concerned about her. He was very handsome and when we met
him he seemed very solicitous of her. When I first heard that it was not an
ideal situation, I was very surprised."
Few Details About Husband
Both Mrs. Brennan and Mrs. Boles described Mr. Douglas as "preppy" in
appearance, though Mrs. Brennan added, "You couldn't engage him in conversation
of any kind." But few said that they knew much more about him. For a time early
in the marriage, said Mrs. Brennan, the Douglases "seemed quite happy, like a
couple of kids in love."
Mrs. Douglas might have been in emotional turmoil during the last few weeks of
her life, but, Mrs. Boles and Mrs. Brennan said, she always presented herself as
cheerful, and both were struck by her sense of humor.
Mrs. Douglas, her friends say, did not reveal herself as rich and many knew
nothing about her roots in the family that founded the Scripps Howard
communications company. A small woman with dark hair that was often swept back
in a bun or ponytail, she wore modest clothes and only hinted at the elegance
within her reach by dressing stylishly for a rare party.
"She was very unostentatious," said a neighbor who spoke on condition of
anonymity. "She didn't get involved in the social whirligig."
During snowstorms, she shoveled the sidewalk in front of her house and she did
much of her own gardening. For a time after the end of her first marriage, she
even worked as a salesclerk at a village shop.
"She was very quiet, very self-effacing," said Larry Boles, Mrs. Boles' husband.
"She didn't talk much about herself. When you talked to Annie you felt she
didn't have a bad bone in her body. She never said anything bad about anyone,
never gossiped."
If she used her home as "a retreat," Mrs. Brennan said, it was because she
didn't have a "coterie of girlfriends."
Father Was Ship Captain
Mrs. Douglas, who was born Nov. 18, 1946, was the great-great-granddaughter of
James E. Scripps, the founder of The Detroit News. Her father, Capt. James E.
Scripps 3d, was a former merchant marine skipper who directed the Tracy
Foundation's alcoholic rehabilitation center in Ravena, N.Y., south of Albany.
The family lived in the Albany suburb of Loudonville -- Mrs. Douglas's brother,
James, and sister, Mary, still live in the area -- and Anne attended the Convent
of the Sacred Heart school in Albany, a school known for its academic demands
and rigorous discipline.
After graduation from the high school, she came to Manhattan to study at the
Duchesne Residence School, a two-year college largely for well-off Catholic
women, an educator said. It was run by the Religious of the Sacred Heart until
it closed in 1967, the year after Anne graduated. She majored in interior
design. A comment on her record by Mother Clare Krim, the director, described
Anne as "very attractive, pleasant, very active on the social service committee
and always willing to help others."
She was a society debutante, coming out at parties at the Schwarzenburg Palace
in Vienna and at a Manhattan cotillion.
In 1969, when she was 23, she married Anthony X. Morell, a Rye stockbroker, in a
wedding held in the St. Regis Hotel. The couple settled in Bronxville in the
early 1970's and had two children, Alexandra and Ann.
The marriage fell apart, but she derived her happiness, her neighbors said, from
her children. Rain or shine, she would walk them to school in the morning, walk
back to pick them up for lunch, and walk back to school to pick them up at
dismissal. An ardent Roman Catholic, she made sure her children attended
religious school, and she escorted them there as well.
"She spent so much time with the kids," said Mrs. Boles. "I'd say to her,
'You're doing the kind of thing I wish we had done. You stop and smell the
roses.'
"She truly loved those kids. She couldn't love them enough."
