16 Aug 15th-Aug 21st, 2024 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | neighborhood. They were raising two boys, born a year apart in 2010 and 2011. Adel’s Facebook page shows a happy family of four, eating out, attending Diamondback games, making cupcakes and dressing up in “Ghostbusters” attire on Christmas Day. But social media is hardly reflective of reality. Goddard said DeNitto had a temper he described as a “diffused anger,” while the friend who shared photos with New Times said he was “arrogant” and “very intense.” Both Adel and DeNitto drank — “Him more than her, actually,” Goddard said — though several people who knew the couple didn’t find that problematic at the time. “I thought they were a happily married couple with two great kids,” said David Gonzales, former U.S. Marshal for Arizona who socialized with the pair, “and it seems any issues they had were behind closed doors.” But in private, as the recordings and photos described above attest, Adel and DeNitto had a contentious relationship. In one audio recording shared with New Times, Adel asked DeNitto if they should curb their drinking. “I’m the one making all the money, staying in this world,” he responded. “So unless you want that to stop, you’re gonna knock it off and focus on yourself and not me.” In an undated text conversation between the two, which Adel shared with her friend, she had a similarly hostile reaction to DeNitto’s suggestion that she “sober up.” “Plz come rage on me,” she responded. “It just helps things, like the last three nights when you called me a cunt.” Adel eventually did seek help for her drinking, checking herself into a local rehab facility after an intervention was staged by her family in August 2021, according to a friend of the family who spoke with New Times on the condition of anonymity. Adel later transferred to a clinic in California. But taking that step to solve her addiction issues wound up creating professional ones. Then-Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone learned that she was running her office from rehab and threatened to inform the Board of Supervisors if she didn’t tell them herself and go public. On Sept. 10, Adel publicly revealed that she had sought treatment for anxiety that had led to an eating disorder and alcohol abuse. “The work we do at this office is hard and I am not immune to its effects,” she said in an email to county attorney’s office employees. After her death, and in the wake of evidence that DeNitto may have been physically abusive, a sentence in that message strikes the ear a bit differently. “Those who are suffering in silence,” Adel wrote, “should be able to ask for help.” ‘He had a temper’ The professional scrutiny aimed at Adel did not fade. She relapsed with drinking on more than one occasion after returning to the office and was sometimes absent from work without explanation. Ultimately, five division chiefs in her office — including Mitchell — called for Adel’s resignation in a February 2022 letter to Adel, the Board of Supervisors and the State Bar of Arizona. Initially, Adel defied the demand, telling her division chiefs to go pound sand in a letter of her own. “The fact that I have admitted an alcohol abuse issue, sought treatment for it and experienced relapses, is not an ethical violation,” Adel wrote. If her top prosecutors thought she was incapable of doing the job, then they could resign. Shortly after that, news broke that her office had dropped 180 misdemeanor cases because they were not filed on time. Adel tendered her resignation on March 21, 2022. Her battle with addiction was fodder for local pundits and media, but her alleged struggle with spousal abuse remained largely unknown. But not completely unknown. Rudy Dominguez, a former Phoenix police officer who served on Adel’s three-person security detail, suspected that DeNitto was abusive toward Adel. Dominguez, who regularly drove Adel to work and to various public events, remembered seeing red finger marks on her arm one morning when he picked her up. Dominguez asked Adel about the marks, which Adel claimed were from one of her sons. That explanation didn’t track to Dominguez. “I’ve been a cop long enough, and I’ve been involved in a lot of domestic violence investigations,” Dominguez said. “If a woman has marks on her arm like that, somebody held her pretty tight.” But he “didn’t want to embar- rass her,” and he let the subject drop. “But I wanted her to know that I’m paying attention,” Dominguez said. Dominguez also saw flashes of DeNitto’s anger, usually directed at the couple’s boys. Once, as the boys climbed into the car while arguing with each other, DeNitto yelled at them to “Shut the fuck up and sit down.” Dominguez recalled, “I turned around and gave him the look.” After that, DeNitto addressed the boys in a reasonable tone. “Allister was all embarrassed because he went from zero to a hundred for no reason,” Dominguez said. “So did he have a temper? Oh, yeah, he had a temper.” Dominguez wasn’t the only one close to Adel who noticed troubling things. The close family friend who spoke to New Times also remembered seeing bruises on Adel’s arms that Adel said were caused by blood-thinning medication she took since suffering a heart attack several years earlier. Goddard also recalled seeing arm bruises as Adel campaigned for election in 2020. She would preemptively raise the subject before anyone questioned her. Adel’s chief of staff, Candice Copple, now an associate vice president for educa- tional outreach and student services at Arizona State University, also recalled Adel’s bruises, which Adel associated with “some health challenges that she had” or some sort of accident. “But I had no indica- tion that there was anything going on at home,” she said. At one point, Dominguez said he confronted Adel about his suspicions. “I said, ‘Boss, my job is to protect you when you’re with me. I’m not going to let anybody hurt you. Not in my presence. That includes your husband,’” Dominguez recalled telling her. He said Adel thanked him and made a stunning admission. “She’s like, ‘I think I’m fine. He did hit me many years ago. But it hasn’t happened lately,’” Dominguez said. Dominguez said Adel made the same admission to another member of the secu- rity team, all three of whom he said harbored concerns about Adel’s possible abuse. Dominguez said the security team even met with a county attorney’s office superior in early 2022 to ask what to do if DeNitto threatened Adel in their presence. According to Dominguez, the super- visor agreed that they needed a plan to handle that scenario if it occurred, though one was never created. One county attor- ney’s office employee — who asked not to be identified — confirmed that the security detail suspected DeNitto was abusing Adel but said the team never had enough evidence to press the issue. That former employee also had seen bruises on Adel’s arms. “She had excuses for all of them,” he said. Dominguez said he hoped the super- visor, who was friendly with DeNitto, would warn DeNitto privately to watch his behavior. Adel also told a friend that, at one point, she and DeNitto sought counseling. But Dominguez said DeNitto’s behavior never changed. “He was still a loud, obnoxious drunk, and he just thought he walked on water,” Dominguez said. “One, because he’s rich, and two, because his wife is the county attorney.” ‘It’s certainty’ If Adel’s death caused her friends and colleagues to reconsider their memories of her, DeNitto’s demise cast things in a completely different shade. On Christmas Eve 2023, 19 months after Adel’s death, DeNitto exploded in a drunken rage, using a semiautomatic rifle to fatally shoot his girlfriend, Maryalice Cash, and her mother, Cynthia Domini, before killing himself. According to the Phoenix Police Department’s incident report, DeNitto had been hosting a Christmas party when, as one of his sons later told police, “things started getting out of control.” A drunken DeNitto got into an argu- ment with Cash that devolved into DeNitto throwing glasses, spinning Cash “head first into a wall” and pointing a gun at one of Cash’s sons as he drove away from the house. When that son returned to help his mother and grandmother, he heard three shots ring out as he pulled up to the garage. Police later found Cash and Domini dead on the floor of the garage, covered in blood. DeNitto lay nearby, dead from a self- inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He had fired more than 20 rounds, according to the police report. The toxicology report showed DeNitto’s blood alcohol concen- tration to be 0.266%. Cash’s son told police that he’d never seen DeNitto act that way “HE WAS STILL A LOUD, OBNOXIOUS DRUNK, AND HE JUST THOUGHT HE WALKED ON WATER,” DOMINGUEZ SAID. “ONE, BECAUSE HE’S RICH, AND TWO, BECAUSE HIS WIFE IS THE COUNTY ATTORNEY.” Bruises, Fights from p 15 >> p 18 Allister Adel and her husband, David DeNitto, embrace after Adel was sworn in as Maricopa County Attorney in 2019. (Photo courtesy Allister Adel Campaign Facebook Page)
