>Alexandra Romeo and Annie Petrillo

A MOTHER MOURNED

THE NEW YEAR'S EVE 1993 BEATING OF Anne Scripps Douglas (she died six days later) shocked the nation. The 47-year-old heiress to the Scripps newspaper fortune was bludgeoned with a hammer at her Bronxville, N.Y., estate by her hard-drinking carpenter husband, Scott Douglas, 38, who then leaped to his death from a nearby bridge. The murder was the nadir of an abusive four-year marriage that filled Scripps Douglas with shame. "Where we lived, nobody was coming out about domestic abuse," says Alexandra Romeo, 27, the older daughter from Anne's first marriage (Anne had one daughter, Victoria, now 7, with Scott). "Everybody wanted to make a perfect picture."

With the stated aim of helping battered women, Alexandra and her sister Annie Petrillo, 26, cooperated with the USA Network on Our Mother's Murder, a two-hour drama airing on July 16. The decision has further divided a distant family. According to Annie, her mother's sister Mary Scripps (who has custody of Victoria) "is absolutely fumed about the movie." Adds Romeo: "Mary was afraid it would hurt Victoria." And, says Petrillo, Anne's brother James "thinks we're exploiting Mom." Still, the sisters are not apologizing. "If the movie gets information out there and saves women, that's good. Mom would want us to do it."