Speaker 1: Novel.
Speaker 2: Hey listener.
Speaker 3: In this episode, there are mentions of domestic violence and
Speaker 3: how it's treated in the justice system. We also take
Speaker 3: on eighteen Holes of Golf with two poker plane prosecutors.
Speaker 2: If you do listen.
Speaker 3: And are impacted by any of our themes, you can
Speaker 3: reach out to No More, a domestic violence charity we've
Speaker 3: partnered with. They have lots of great resources to help
Speaker 3: you or your loved ones. You can find them at
Speaker 3: no More dot org. That's n mor dot org. In
Speaker 3: the spring of nineteen ninety six, Bob had the audacity.
Speaker 2: To call me for advice.
Speaker 3: It was really strange because I hadn't talked with him
Speaker 3: in months since our messy breakup. But Bob goes on
Speaker 3: to tell me that he had met someone in Obgyn
Speaker 3: named Janet, and in true Bob's style, they were already
Speaker 3: engaged and due to be married within the next few weeks.
Speaker 3: He also said that Janet was getting cold feet and
Speaker 3: he wanted my advice on how to reassure her. I mean, really,
Speaker 3: a guy dumps you and then calls you up for
Speaker 3: advice about his new fiance. Anyway, the reason she was
Speaker 3: getting cold feet is because in order to register their marriage.
Speaker 3: Bob had to order a copy of Gail's death certificate,
Speaker 3: and when it showed up in the mail, Janet.
Speaker 2: Was really shocked to read the cause of.
Speaker 3: Death as undetermined and in bracket torso with homicide written
Speaker 3: and circled underneath. I'll admit I was a little taken back.
Speaker 3: I mean, first, I'm hearing that he's marrying a woman
Speaker 3: that he met only a few months before, and then
Speaker 3: he wants advice on how to tell her about his
Speaker 3: missing wife. Bob also tells me in this strange at
Speaker 3: fuck phone call that he's moving to Mino, North Dakota.
Speaker 3: He's gotten some lucrative job in a hospital up there,
Speaker 3: So look, anyway, I tell him, tell her the truth, Bob,
Speaker 3: whatever that meant. And I hung up and immediately reached
Speaker 3: out to the club. I mean, in a way, it
Speaker 3: was really funny, but I also wondered if we needed
Speaker 3: to tell Janet what we knew.
Speaker 4: We were around the table at the Mayflower and Stephanie said,
Speaker 4: do you think that we should warn her? And I
Speaker 4: think we just sat with that a little bit and
Speaker 4: unanimously we sut, no.
Speaker 3: I wonder if that would be different today, I might
Speaker 3: do it different today.
Speaker 4: If it was today, I don't know if I'd offer
Speaker 4: that speculation because it was speculation.
Speaker 3: Mindy's right, we didn't want to go barging into Bob's
Speaker 3: fiance's life with our theories. You and I know so
Speaker 3: much more than we ever did back in the nineties.
Speaker 3: Back then, we were still a bunch of grown ass
Speaker 3: women using a code name to discuss our ex over
Speaker 3: Asian noodles. This was still just a glorified game of clue.
Speaker 3: But soon we'd find out that we weren't the only
Speaker 3: ones trying to solve this murder mystery. I'm Carol Fisher
Speaker 3: and from the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: You're listening to The Girlfriends.
Speaker 3: Episode five, The best job.
Speaker 2: A lawyer could.
Speaker 1: Have got you.
Speaker 3: Bob married Janet on June twenty third, nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 3: and it couldn't have been more different than his wedding
Speaker 3: to Gail. This time it was in Ithaca, New York,
Speaker 3: and instead of the dancing crowds of family and friends,
Speaker 3: there were less than a dozen people. But I since
Speaker 3: found out that going back to New York for the
Speaker 3: wedding was a very clever decision because it meant the
Speaker 3: Gale's death certificate, which had to be filed with the
Speaker 3: marriage license, was kept in the New York public record
Speaker 3: and wouldn't follow him to his new home.
Speaker 2: Mine, not North Dakota.
Speaker 5: Now your local.
Speaker 6: Weather with the k X new Storm team, welcome back,
Speaker 6: and it is snowy, snowy, snowy out there.
Speaker 5: This sure looks like it's going to be a big.
Speaker 2: One, heavy snow falling thing.
Speaker 7: Mine.
Speaker 2: Not to the uninitiated. Mine. Not North Dakota.
Speaker 3: Couldn't be further from the big lights of New York
Speaker 3: or Las Vegas. It's a small, agricultural Midwest town close
Speaker 3: to the Canadian border, and yet it is cold. At
Speaker 3: the time, I didn't know much about Bob's life in
Speaker 3: North Dakota back in the nineties. I mean, there weren't
Speaker 3: all these resources that make it easy to cyber stalk
Speaker 3: your ex. We couldn't keep tabs on Instagram or Facebook.
Speaker 3: So my producer Anna reached out to a bunch of
Speaker 3: local Facebook.
Speaker 2: Groups to see if anyone remembered Bob.
Speaker 8: I expected to get five or so people saying, oh,
Speaker 8: I've heard about him, but I actually got something crazy
Speaker 8: like it was between fifty to one hundred individual comments.
Speaker 8: There was this big camp of people who thought he
Speaker 8: was the best doctor that they'd ever worked with or
Speaker 8: ever been treated by. There was this one woman whose
Speaker 8: husband had injured his hand in a chainsaw injury, and
Speaker 8: he was in so much pain that he went back
Speaker 8: to his German Russian dialect and was starting to speak
Speaker 8: and like mutter and German because he was obviously very distressed.
Speaker 8: And the wife said, oh, speak in English so that
Speaker 8: the doctor can understand you. And Bob goes, He's like,
Speaker 8: don't worry, I can speak German and then does the
Speaker 8: rest of the consultation in German.
Speaker 3: Well, right, he spoke five languages. I mean, it was
Speaker 3: part of the attraction of how smart he was. Yeah,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: And what do they say about his marriage? Do they
Speaker 2: mentioned Janet?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 8: I think the only things that people already said about
Speaker 8: the marriage were how he would bring her these fresh
Speaker 8: homemade bagels, because that was his whole thing. He baked
Speaker 8: a lot of bagels in North Dakota. Apparently, who's quite
Speaker 8: known for that.
Speaker 3: He had to bring the Jewish heritage in North Dakota.
Speaker 8: He was really establishing himself as the local Jew. Yeah,
Speaker 8: and he would drop them into her office, and apparently
Speaker 8: she spoke about him with a lot of affection and
Speaker 8: he did the same, so they seemed like a real unit.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 8: But I did speak to one woman on the phone,
Speaker 8: and I really want to play you this clip because
Speaker 8: she had a very specific and unique experience with Bob
Speaker 8: that I think speaks to what we've heard other people
Speaker 8: talk about when you're a patient of his, or you're
Speaker 8: in care of another patient of his and his anger
Speaker 8: starts to come out.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Okay, I'm interested.
Speaker 7: He was my son's plastic surgeon. My son was born
Speaker 7: with a class look in palate. I remember one specific
Speaker 7: time my son had just had surgery. He was probably
Speaker 7: six months old. We were in the hospital and came
Speaker 7: to check on us, and my son was holding his
Speaker 7: own bottle because he knew when it hurt and I
Speaker 7: didn't know when it hurt him. And he came in
Speaker 7: and chewed me out up one side and down the other,
Speaker 7: yelling at me till I was in tears. Why was
Speaker 7: he yelling at you? Because my son was supposed to
Speaker 7: have arm braces on that kept their arms straight so
Speaker 7: they didn't pull out the stitches. Or pull at their lip.
Speaker 7: So I took those arm braces off and let him
Speaker 7: hold his own bottle, and it was very upsetting to him.
Speaker 7: One of the nurses was sitting at the nurses station
Speaker 7: and realized that he was yelling at me and came
Speaker 7: in and said, that's enough. I think you need to
Speaker 7: leave now. We'll take care of it from here. And
Speaker 7: I was eighteen at the time.
Speaker 2: That sounds like bob to a t.
Speaker 3: Highly unpredictable, could go from you know, zero to one
Speaker 3: hundred in terms of anger, and very judgmental of people,
Speaker 3: so judgmental.
Speaker 8: There were quite a few people he said stuff like that,
Speaker 8: who was going in for I think a breast reduction
Speaker 8: and he made her cry And I think, you know,
Speaker 8: the way some people rationalized that was that that's what
Speaker 8: doctors are like, that's what doctors are like.
Speaker 2: But I don't think that's true. I can't believe that
Speaker 2: you talked to all these people.
Speaker 8: So actually I met up with a minor local who
Speaker 8: was visiting London for a theater tour and her name
Speaker 8: was Harry Epstein.
Speaker 3: You met her, yeah, I did, and she's Jewish.
Speaker 2: She is Jewish, yeah, because that last niw.
Speaker 8: And she got to know Bob after he started working
Speaker 8: in the same clinic as her husband, so they hung
Speaker 8: out a lot because of the medical community and the
Speaker 8: Jewish community.
Speaker 2: So here is a clip.
Speaker 6: He was just smart guy, you know, good doctor, but
Speaker 6: women found him creepy. I don't know what other adjective
Speaker 6: to use to describe him. You just got it could
Speaker 6: be feeling when you would talk to him, and his
Speaker 6: eyes it was sort of like he would look right
Speaker 6: through you kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those purecing eyes.
Speaker 3: It was as if he could stare at you, but
Speaker 3: he wasn't connecting with you.
Speaker 2: He was looking through you.
Speaker 8: There was another similarity that you had with Harriet that
Speaker 8: I wanted to play you as something that she said
Speaker 8: that reminded me of something you said on your first
Speaker 8: date with Bob Kate.
Speaker 6: I remember one time we were going to a function
Speaker 6: at the synagogue and he was helping me unload my car,
Speaker 6: and I said, oh, Bob, have you ever been married before?
Speaker 6: Because he was of the right age that maybe this
Speaker 6: was going to be a second marriage. And he said,
Speaker 6: why would you say that. It was a very visceral
Speaker 6: immediate response, and I said, I don't know. I was
Speaker 6: just curious and he just didn't respond. If there was
Speaker 6: nothing questionable about his previous marriage, you would have thought
Speaker 6: he would have said, yes, but my wife died something
Speaker 6: like that, but she didn't.
Speaker 3: Well that's crazy that she had that same experience and
Speaker 3: he had that same defensive, non committal answer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he hadn't straightened it out.
Speaker 3: So did the community of mine not welcome him in
Speaker 3: with open arms?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 8: He was a big part of the flying community. And
Speaker 8: he made bagels, which Harry Epstein actually ran the only
Speaker 8: local bagel shop there. So they're really fulfilling the roles
Speaker 8: of the only two Jews pretty much.
Speaker 2: I don't know that it's hysterical. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: Okay, from what I've learned, it seems like Bob really
Speaker 3: settled into this new stage of his life and mine not.
Speaker 3: He contributed to the local paper offering articles on how
Speaker 3: to avoid snowblower injuries. He even became the talk of
Speaker 3: the town after he performed emergency surgery on a young
Speaker 3: boy who was attacked by a tiger. Oh yes, you
Speaker 3: heard me write, a tiger. Apparently it happened when the
Speaker 3: young boy and his family were posing for a photo
Speaker 3: with a tiger in a visiting exhibit at the North
Speaker 3: Dakota State Fair. It was at the end of a
Speaker 3: long day and the tiger lashed out, clawing the five
Speaker 3: year old's face. He was fine in the end after
Speaker 3: Bob patched him up. But that's not the kind of
Speaker 3: content we were looking for.
Speaker 4: There was a period where there was a lull where
Speaker 4: and he was writing snow blower injuries in the minor newspaper,
Speaker 4: and then there was nothing For a while.
Speaker 3: Bob was living that good Midwestern life. He was married,
Speaker 3: he had a Golden retriever. But back for us in
Speaker 3: Las Vegas, it felt like an era was over until
Speaker 3: the actual detectives showed up.
Speaker 5: Being a homicide prosecutor is probably the best job a
Speaker 5: lawyer could ever have in my view.
Speaker 3: Meet Daniel Bibb and his partner Steven Sirocco.
Speaker 5: Steve and I we were friends when I first started.
Speaker 5: We're still friends today, which is a knock around kind
Speaker 5: of guys.
Speaker 3: Dan and Steve headed up the Manhattan DA's Cold Case
Speaker 3: homicide unit together, and they are everything you want two
Speaker 3: homicide prosecutors to be. Dan is a huge guy, easily
Speaker 3: six foot seven and built to own it. He's got
Speaker 3: a thick serious mustache that's designed to strain Italian wedding
Speaker 3: soup and copp bistros all around the West Village. And Steve, well,
Speaker 3: he's about as New York as it gets, half Italian,
Speaker 3: half Irish, but a little smaller than Dan.
Speaker 4: I'm not a shrimp, I'm like five foot nine. But
Speaker 4: this guy as the monster.
Speaker 3: They formed their new cold case unit in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 3: which meant that Dan and Steve could come out of
Speaker 3: the usual grind of active homicide cases around the city.
Speaker 3: They were living the dream.
Speaker 5: It was like working with my best friend. We could
Speaker 5: work with the detectors that we wanted to work with.
Speaker 5: We could refuse cases if we wanted them. We could
Speaker 5: pick and choose, and we picked a lot of good
Speaker 5: ones and picked some lemons too.
Speaker 3: When you're dealing with old cases, you end up with
Speaker 3: a lot of witnesses dotted around the country, and so
Speaker 3: Dan and Steve traveled extensively to interview people on cases,
Speaker 3: people who'd often aged and retired to warmer states, which
Speaker 3: must have been really hard.
Speaker 5: We went in Florida so much that I got to
Speaker 5: be good friends with the concierge at the Royal Palm
Speaker 5: Crown Plaza in South Beach. We found hotels that eighteen
Speaker 5: holes of golf was included in the room rate.
Speaker 9: You know, I'm not staying at Motel six.
Speaker 5: A pool, a beach, a golf course, a casino to
Speaker 5: play poker and steaks.
Speaker 9: We liked to have three hour lunches, we liked to
Speaker 9: have a cocktailer after work, and we'd like to invest
Speaker 9: to getting homicides.
Speaker 3: Dan and Steve were getting a reputation as people who
Speaker 3: win cold cases, so the DA's chief investigator, Andrew Rosenswig,
Speaker 3: decided to bring them something personal, a case that had
Speaker 3: been weighing heavy on his conscience. Gail Katz Beerrenbaum. Andy
Speaker 3: led the DA's original investigation into Gail's disappearance from nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty six to eighty seven, and he had become totally
Speaker 3: convinced that Bob was responsible.
Speaker 2: For her death.
Speaker 3: Though we couldn't mount a case against him, he concluded
Speaker 3: that Bob was the most dangerous man he had ever known.
Speaker 3: With only a couple years left before retirement, it was
Speaker 3: now or never.
Speaker 9: He came into my office one day and put a
Speaker 9: box on the table well the paperwork of the Burnbaum
Speaker 9: case and said why don't you and Dan take a
Speaker 9: look at this and see if you can go someplace.
Speaker 5: He said, it's a missing person's case. There's nobody.
Speaker 3: I know what you're thinking the torso we'll get to it.
Speaker 2: Hold tight, And both.
Speaker 5: Steve and I looked at Andy and said, you know, Andy,
Speaker 5: those cases are really, really hard to do, and we
Speaker 5: agreed to review the case. We picked up a file.
Speaker 9: I took some of the material home that night to review.
Speaker 9: The thing that struck me, It would struck anybody. You
Speaker 9: don't have to be a homicide investigator. And there is
Speaker 9: a what's called the DD five. DD five is a
Speaker 9: Detective Bureau document that synopsizes an interview, and there's an
Speaker 9: interview with doctor Birnbaum's psychiatrist, doctor Michael Stone, and doctor
Speaker 9: Michael Stone was so upset with his session with his patient,
Speaker 9: doctor Birrenbaum, that he's required to fire off a letter
Speaker 9: to Gail that she is in danger and should get
Speaker 9: out of the house. It's called the Tarasov letter.
Speaker 3: This was the mysterious letter that Gail told Denise and
Speaker 3: Elaine about the one she was going to use to
Speaker 3: manipulate Bob in getting a divorce.
Speaker 9: That evening, I called doctor Stone, fully expecting him to say, well,
Speaker 9: you know, I can't really discuss this, when I.
Speaker 10: Said, I've reviewed some documents here and it appears to
Speaker 10: me that Gail Cats was murdered and that your patient,
Speaker 10: doctor Burrenbaum, probably killed her. Yeah, I think i'd say about.
Speaker 9: That, he said, and I pretty much quote.
Speaker 10: Of course he killed her. Doctor Birrenbaum is a dangerous cycle.
Speaker 9: This case has been burning on my skull for the
Speaker 9: last dozen years. Then I figured, I think we should
Speaker 9: take a closer.
Speaker 5: Look at this.
Speaker 3: By nineteen ninety eight, Gail's sister, Elaine Katz, had become
Speaker 3: a very successful family lawyer. She had two kids, a husband,
Speaker 3: and a nice house out in Westchester. I don't want
Speaker 3: to say she had moved on, but her life just
Speaker 3: couldn't revolve around Bob anymore. And then she got a call.
Speaker 11: The phone rang, and my secretary said, it's the District
Speaker 11: Attorney's office. And I said to myself, oh crap, one
Speaker 11: of my clients got in trouble. But I answered the
Speaker 11: phone and it's Andy Rosenswag. Although I might have chosen
Speaker 11: not to think about these things, it took me a
Speaker 11: half a second to realize it was on the phone,
Speaker 11: and I will never forget him saying, we have a
Speaker 11: cold case bureau in the DA's office and we've had
Speaker 11: a lot of success, and I'd like to open up
Speaker 11: Gal's case. And I mentioned, you know, the Torso, and
Speaker 11: I'll never forget him saying what torso. So the body
Speaker 11: was found in Staten Island. That made it a Staten
Speaker 11: Island investigation apparently, And this Staaten Island police department, another
Speaker 11: borough of the City of New York, didn't talk to
Speaker 11: the Manhattan Police Department, And the medical Examiner of the
Speaker 11: City of New York didn't talk to the police department
Speaker 11: or the district Attorneys. No, they didn't. So Andy and
Speaker 11: his assistant came up to see me. We went through
Speaker 11: my files. I had the autopsies, I had all of
Speaker 11: the records, and they began the process of reinvestigation. Andy
Speaker 11: Rosenswig wouldn't retire without getting him without at least trying.
Speaker 3: Andy took up the role of investigator again. He was
Speaker 3: responsible for finding early leads and handing over investigative and
Speaker 3: to Dan and Steve, who would then build the case
Speaker 3: towards prosecution. It wasn't going to be easy opening a
Speaker 3: cold case comes with some really clear obstacles like fading memories,
Speaker 3: dead witnesses, or a lack of fresh forensic evidence, But
Speaker 3: there are multiple reasons why Dan and Steve had much
Speaker 3: better odds solving this case. A decade later, attitudes towards
Speaker 3: domestic violence and how to police it were changing dramatically,
Speaker 3: which was making prosecuting domestic violence cases easier, even cold cases.
Speaker 3: Take that time when Gail went to the police station
Speaker 3: and reported that Bobbitt strangled her after he caught her smoking.
Speaker 5: That police report sat in a file cabinet. This is
Speaker 5: nineteen eighty five. Domestic violence wasn't a big deal. Unfortunately,
Speaker 5: if that happened in twenty twenty two, that police report,
Speaker 5: that complaint report would have made its way to a
Speaker 5: detective and Barnbaum would have been arrested the next day.
Speaker 5: But the awareness of domestic violence and the cycle of
Speaker 5: domestic violence certainly didn't exist in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 12: When somebody went into a precinct and made a complaint
Speaker 12: like that, when there weren't necessarily dedicated domestic ballence police
Speaker 12: officers who would take the complaint or follow up on it,
Speaker 12: it would sort of languish there.
Speaker 2: This is Cindy Kinischer.
Speaker 3: She joined the Manhattan Die's Office as a prosecutor in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight, a year after Andy shelved Gale's case.
Speaker 12: The problem was, domestic bolence cases are not exactly like
Speaker 12: your run of the mill other cases. The complaining witnesses
Speaker 12: or the victims that you're working with or dealing with
Speaker 12: trauma and dealing with history of violence, and dealing with
Speaker 12: so many other things in their lives going on as
Speaker 12: a result of the abuse that are very different than
Speaker 12: the average crime victim.
Speaker 3: I've thought a lot about how you become Gail or
Speaker 3: someone like her when things are clearly so toxic, so violent,
Speaker 3: Why don't you just walk away when is enough enough?
Speaker 3: But I know it's never that easy. You already know
Speaker 3: that I stayed longer than I should have. And Gail,
Speaker 3: she did try to alert her situation to the police,
Speaker 3: but she wasn't listened to, and that is not her fault.
Speaker 12: I don't think that the cases were getting the attention
Speaker 12: and being handled the way that was best for the
Speaker 12: victims and layered on that is. Historically, women who came
Speaker 12: and made complaints of sexual assault or domestic violence were
Speaker 12: looked at as women who were scorned or making it
Speaker 12: up or you know, wanted to get money. And I
Speaker 12: mean some of that still exists today, right, but I
Speaker 12: do think it's rooted in that.
Speaker 3: Then in nineteen ninety four, Congress passed a Violence Against
Speaker 3: Women Act, putting one point six billion dollars towards the
Speaker 3: investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women. It was
Speaker 3: the year Nicole Brown Simpson was violently killed, and the
Speaker 3: case against her husband, the football player OJ Simpson, riveted
Speaker 3: the nation. Little by little, the public's understanding of domestic
Speaker 3: violence was changing. While it wasn't perfect, things also started
Speaker 3: to improve within the justice system. Police departments got training
Speaker 3: on how to deal with spousal abuse. DA offices around
Speaker 3: the country introduced victim impact prosecutors attorneys who were specially
Speaker 3: trained to deal with domestic violence cases. And with all
Speaker 3: that going on, there was a feeling in the late
Speaker 3: nineties that maybe Gail's case would go differently if it
Speaker 3: was given another go.
Speaker 2: So Dan and Steve started with.
Speaker 13: The basics oh looking over the files in detail, getting
Speaker 13: in touch with key witnesses from the past, and booking
Speaker 13: luxury hotels in the gambling capital of America.
Speaker 3: Next time New York comes to Las Vegas and our
Speaker 3: investigations collide.
Speaker 5: When you pick up a cold case, the first thing
Speaker 5: you do is you redo everything that's been done in
Speaker 5: the past, and that's what we did.
Speaker 9: I think he was engaged to like three or four
Speaker 9: different women in Las Vegas. He dated the entire Jewish
Speaker 9: professional community.
Speaker 5: We interviewed every single one of the girlfriends out in
Speaker 5: Las Vegas.
Speaker 4: She said there's just something wrong with him.
Speaker 5: She actually accused him of killing Gail, and he remained silent.
Speaker 9: He never mentioned that he had rented that plane that afternoon.
Speaker 11: After a string of curses, I said to them, you
Speaker 11: have ripped the shred of closure that I have away
Speaker 11: from me.
Speaker 3: The Girlfriends is produced by Novel for Ourheart Radio. For
Speaker 3: more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The series is
Speaker 3: hosted by me Carol Fisher and produced by Anna Sinfield.
Speaker 3: Our assistant producer is Julian Manyu, Gera Patten, and our
Speaker 3: researcher is Madeline Parr. The editor is Veronica Simmons. Max
Speaker 3: O'Brien is our executive producer. Our fact checker is Valeria Rocca.
Speaker 3: Production management from Sharie Houston and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design,
Speaker 3: mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempsen and Nicholas Alexander. Music
Speaker 3: supervision by Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Luisa Gerstein.
Speaker 3: Story development by Isaac Fisher. Willard Foxton is creative director
Speaker 3: of Development. Special thanks to Shan Glynn, David Waters, might
Speaker 3: Le Raw, Katrina Norvel, David Wasserman.
Speaker 2: And beth Ann Mcalouso.
Speaker 3: We did reach out to Bob and his legal team
Speaker 3: to ask if he'd like to comment on the podcast,
Speaker 3: but we never heard back.
Speaker 2: Novel