This is his new wife, I feel bad for her.
'Other woman' is
frightened prisoner
BY HELEN KENNEDY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
CLEARWATER, Fla. - The other woman in the Terri Schiavo case has been trapped in her house for two weeks, desperately worrying about the safety of her children and their father, Michael Schiavo, who is away at his dying wife's side.
Protesters who vilify Jodi Centonze - and warn her she's 'next' - come to the house regularly. So do reporters, including one who has been sitting outside the house for three days straight, though she grants no interviews. There have been death threats, and cops now patrol around the clock.
'It's stressful. She is a prisoner. She's very concerned about Michael and the kids,' said family friend Russ Hyden. 'But she and Michael are trying to maintain whatever's left of Terri's privacy and dignity, so they are staying private.'
Steve Schiavo, one of Michael's brothers who drove down from Levittown, Pa., as the family gathers to see Michael through his wife's death, put it simply: 'She's afraid.'
Centonze, 40, who shares Terri Schiavo's one-time dark good looks, met Michael Schiavo at the dentist's office about 10 years ago. They live together in a quiet suburban development with their two toddlers, a boy and a girl.
She is the Florida-born daughter of an auto mechanic and made her living working at insurance companies.
When they met, Centonze had been divorced after two car accidents in eight months left her in pain and a third car accident killed her father.
Schiavo was about to give up on years of trying different therapies for his wife, whose brain was severely damaged in 1990 when she went 10 minutes without breathing after her heart stopped.
Back then, Schiavo was still on good terms with his in-laws, Bob and Mary Schindler.
'It took Michael a long time to consider the prospect of getting on with his life,' wrote Jay Wolfson, a court appointed guardian for Terri, in a December 2003 report to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. 'He was even encouraged by the Schindlers to date, and introduced his in-law family to women he was dating.'
Through the years of ensuing court battles and recent media hoopla, Centonze stayed in the background, supporting her boyfriend and visiting his brain-dead wife, even doing her laundry.
'Sometimes I feel as if it's almost a spiritual thing, like Terri sent Jodi to him,' another Schiavo brother, Scott, told The Tampa Tribune.
Originally published on March 29, 2005
