Woman who seized female bartender's dentures says she was just trying to save her marriage

A Massachusetts mother-of-three charged with ripping out the dentures of a female bartender she feared was fooling around with her husband of 20 years insists she was just trying to save her marriage and never meant to hurt anyone. “I’m a lover, not a fighter,” said a teary-eyed Caterina Froio-Chaput, the Oxford woman accused of attacking bartender Susan Carlson with a beer bottle on Wednesday night at the local American Legion Post 58. Froio-Chaput says she’s embarrassed and humiliated by the fracas. “I love my husband. I love my family. We have three beautiful children,” Froio-Chaput said.

“All I’m trying to do is save my family. My first priority are my three children. They are my life and they love their dad. And they need their dad.” But Carlson insisted there was no affair. Carlson, 47, who has two children, said she and Ernest Chaput are good friends who have known each other for many years. The brouhaha began when Froio-Chaput, 46, said she caught wind that her husband was at the Legion post and she went there to bring him home. When she got there, she said her husband suggested she have a beer. Carlson, she said, came over and told her to leave, saying that she had been “scratched” from the post.



The women’s accounts differ. Froio-Chaput said she was defending herself and knocked over the beer bottle. Carlson told the police Froio-Chaput hit her in the face, pulled her hair, pulled out her false teeth and threw a beer bottle at her chest, according to the police report. When the police arrived, one of them asked Froio-Chaput where Carlson’s teeth were, and she told them she didn’t know, the police report said. Froio-Chaput then ripped off her vest and threw it on floor, the police report said, and the officers found the dentures in her vest pocket.

“I don’t have fake teeth they must belong to that bitch and she must have planted them in my pocket,” Froio-Chaput said, according to the police report. Police handcuffed Froio-Chaput and charged her with assault and battery, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon - a beer bottle. Froio-Chaput insisted Carlson’s fake teeth “fell out” into her hand. “I was in shock. I didn’t know she had false teeth,” she said. “I don’t condone what happened. I feel very badly about it,” said Froio-Chaput, who added she’s a former church and school volunteer who has never been in trouble with the law. Carlson said she wears a brace with fake bottom teeth after losing some in a car accident when she was younger. As for Ernest Chaput, he denied an affair and said he loves his wife.