Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore - The Disappearance of Gail Katz-Bierenbaum: A Letter That Predicted the Future

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

In July 1985, 29 year-old Gail Katz-Bierenbaum told a friend she was leaving her husband. She had apartment listings circled, money borrowed, and a psychiatrist’s written warning that her husband might kill her. The next day, she vanished. Her husband, Dr. Robert Bierenbaum, claimed she went to Central Park after an argument. But a secret plane rental, an altered flight log, and a history of domestic violence would unravel that story: leading to one of New York’s most notable no-body murder cases. In this episode of Clues, Morgan and Kaelyn break down the disappearance of Gail Katz-Bierenbaum, the evidence that pointed skyward, and the confession that came decades later. Head over to our Clues YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@CluesPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Clues to never miss a case! For Ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Clues is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.  🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals including Crime House 24/7, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow us on Social YouTube: @CluesPod | @crimehousestudios Instagram: @cluespodcast | @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia Clues is hosted by Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore  Instagram: ⁠@morgsyabsher⁠ | ⁠@itskaelynmoore⁠ TikTok: ⁠@twohottakes⁠ | ⁠@heartstartspounding⁠ Episode Sponsors: A year from today isn’t that far away. Get started now at https://www.HelloAlma.com/clues To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Dr. Hrini-Bot, host of Hidden History. Every Monday, I go where history gets uncomfortable, banished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, and events that science still can't fully explain. Listen to and follow Hidden History, available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is Crime House. He's a doctor.

She's training to be a therapist. They live in a luxurious Manhattan apartment. Until 1985, when Gail Katz Bearinbaum disappears. But finding out what happened to her and actually proving it, will take 15 years, and it means exposing every skeleton in their perfect life. Hi guys, welcome to Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases. I'm Kaelin Moore. I'm going to be the one digging deeper into the timelines,

the backstories, and the court files released on these cases. And I'm your internet sleuth, Morgan Absher. I'm the one who's diving into Reddit forums and everything else I can find online to pull out those lesser-known details and see what threads just aren't adding up. And don't forget to share your thoughts on socials. Want ad-free listening and early access? Subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts. And make sure you go back and listen to our previous episodes wherever you get your podcasts.

Now, let's get into the case of Gail Katz-Beer-enbaum and the clues that defined it. This episode is brought to you by Quince. So lately, I feel like I've wanted to be more intentional about the stuff that I've been wearing every day. I want to lean into pieces that feel effortless and comfortable, but still look put together. That's the key. It just makes getting dressed simpler. And Quince is a go-to for all of those things. The fabrics feel elevated. The fits are very flattering. And everything really works without having to overthink it. Yeah, these are pieces you're going to have in your closet for years to come. They stand the test of time. And I needed a closet refresh. So I've got my Quince bodysuit on some of the softest, most flattering body suits. I know. I was just rubbing your arm. And I felt how soft it was. I also love my linen dress for summer. It's so lightweight, breathable, is cute with everything. I just put in a new order. I'm so excited. I'm getting the Bella Stretch Relaxed Straightleg jeans and also the 100% organic cotton boyfriend crew sweater, which looks so soft and like slouchy.

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in suspicious circumstances. Snapple Real Fact 1013. It is illegal to sing off-key in North Carolina. Snapple Real Fact 233. Americans consume 150 million hot dogs on July 4th. Snapple Real Fact 705. Every ton of recycled paper saves about 17 trees. So grab a Snapple, take a second, and enjoy the moment.

Because let's be honest, this might be the most refreshing part of your day. Snapple. Make your break more interesting. All right. Now let's get back to clues. Here we go. Here we go. It's our first one back recording in a while.

I'm like, here we are three months since our last recording session. You've had a whole ass baby. I had a whole baby in that time. A whole baby. A whole an entire baby. Oh my God, the cutest little baby. Yeah, I just want to say thank you too. I heard from a lot of listeners who actually reached out.

Even listeners because, you know, we've been putting out episodes that we recorded back in December. November, December. And there were listeners that have kids that reached out and were like, make sure you're not overextending yourself. Like I know how hard it is like in those first few weeks. Especially you. Your workhorse. Thank you so much. But even the fact that they thought to check in with me. And luckily, like I did get some time off. Like we had pre-recorded those episodes, which was really nice. But no, just thanks to everyone who reached out. It really meant a lot. I know. The cutest little guy. You guys, if you ever go to Caitlin's Instagram and like go look at what she's posting, like this little baby is the most aware of the world baby. I think. I've ever seen. He's really awake. Yeah, it's kind of freaky. Well, did I tell you when he was born, the nurses were like, oh, he's been here before. This little baby has seen this hospital. He's got the chills. Yeah, I know, I know. I was like, whoa, what's the story there?

I can feel the hair standing up. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. He was looking around like an old man. Thank you so much. It's so exciting. Yeah, not much is new for me. Just turning 32, basically tomorrow. I know. How'd be early birthday. Are you doing anything fun? I'm going to Disneyland. Yes. It's like I'm like one of those people that like when you win the Super Bowl, where are you going? I'm going to Disneyland.

That's me. Yeah. That's just easy. I don't cry. They give you the little birthday pin too to celebrate. They make it about you. Thanks. Yes.

But okay, without further ado, let's get into today's case because it is a bit of a doozy. Yes, yes. This one is I still can't really wrap my head around it. So I'm very curious to see what everyone thinks. and again, share your thoughts on socials. Also, a quick reminder. If you're watching this episode on YouTube, we're going to put up some maps, some pictures,

assets that will help you visualize the case. And if you want to see those same photos, you can check out our Instagram. That's at Clu's podcast on Instagram. Yeah, and just a warning before we begin this episode, it does contain descriptions of domestic violence, murder, dismemberment, cruelty to animals, as well as mentions of drug use, suicide and suicidal ideation.

It is a bit of a heavy one, so please listen with care. So this case starts on. Saturday, July 6, 1985. 29-year-old Gail Katz Birambomb meet up with her friend Denise at this New York City hair salon. And in Gail's hand, she's carrying a newspaper,

and she specifically has the part out where they show ads for apartments. And there are dark circles around a couple of the listings. And that's when Gail drops this huge bombshell on her friend. She tells Denise that she's leaving her husband, 29-year-old Dr. Robert or Bob Birenbaum.

That weekend. She says that she'll force him to agree not only to the divorce, but to her preferred terms for settlement. She's already borrowed the money she needs to rent an apartment. And if she can't find a place in time, she says she's going to stay with a friend in Connecticut until she does. And Denise, after they have this whole get-together as friends, she watches as her friend leaves the salon that day, totally transformed. Gail has a new haircut. She has this new lease on life. And Denise is really happy for her. However, that will be the last time that Denise ever sees Gail. She had no idea what was to come. So let's go back a little bit in the story and talk some more about who Gail was. She was born on March 8, 1956 in Brooklyn, New York. She was the first of three children to Manny and Sylvia Katz. The family was, at least from what we read about, always under financial stress due to Manny's business ventures. It wasn't necessarily an easy environment to grow up in, but Gail seemed to have taken it the hardest. She was described as being this sensitive, anxious kid. And her parents fought constantly about how to handle her low self-esteem and her emotional

outburst. Her parents also fought with her as she got older about the boys that she would bring home. She had what was described by her parents, this long string of messy relationships. She seemed to fall for her next boyfriend before she would even break up with the last. And most of the guys that she dated had their own baggage, too. Her parents referred to them as, quote, Gail's Reformation Projects. And that's because Gail would try to fix these guys. And it seems like she would do that to keep her mind off of her own problems.

She struggled with depression on and off throughout her life, especially during college. And that's when she started using cocaine. She dropped out of college twice at that time, too. And in 1979, when she was 23 years old, she did attempt suicide after she had a really bad breakup. A friend arrived at Gail's apartment just in time to save her life. But after the fact, it seems like Gail just really felt even worse about herself. Her mother, Sylvia, believed that the solution to these problems was to stop dating guys that she needed to fix and instead, quote, find someone more impressive like a nice Jewish doctor, which that actually eventually did come to fruition in 1981 when Gail was 25. Mutual friends set her up with this guy named Bob Burenbaum.

He was a year older than Gail. He worked as a medical resident at Maimonese Medical Center in Brooklyn. He made about $35,000 a year during his residency, and that was 50% more than the average salary in New York at the time. And as the son of a wealthy cardiologist, he had pretty expensive taste. His favorite hobby was flying small planes, which he rented by the hour to take Gail on dates in. He lived in an expensive Manhattan apartment, which his parents helped him pay for. But they weren't really worried about bankrolling their son forever because Bob wanted to be a plastic surgeon. And that was definitely going to pay him pretty well in time.

He had his eyes set on that as his profession. Really, the only distraction that he had in his life seemed to be Gail. From the beginning, he did absolutely everything to sweep her off her feet. The feeling wasn't necessarily entirely mutual at the beginning. Gail kind of had to convince herself that she liked him. Yeah, I think she could see the potential that Bob had on paper. Yeah. Surgeon, pilot.

I mean, one of the very first dates, he took her flying around New York. York City as the sun was setting, he was pulling out all the stops for her. So she saw this and was like, yeah, maybe not my ideal guy, but good potential. Yeah. Are you watching the Carolyn Kennedy? No. And you have to watch the love story on FX. But it kind of reminds me of that a little bit in the sense of like average girl being swept off her feet by this incredibly wealthy socialite, like son of a rich family kind of person. Yeah, he was really perfect on paper. And And obviously, Gail's parents loved him. Like, finally, she was dating this guy that she didn't have to fix.

But there were a lot of things about Bob that did bother Gail. One of the things was that he would overreact to tiny criticisms, which that is such a red flag. And people, I don't know, when you start dating someone and they can't even take, like, a little bit of a joke. And they just immediately, like, are really defensive. Defensive about it. Exactly. And so that's, like, something Bob would do that Gail immediately flagged as just being kind of. of odd. He was also known to not really like tuck in his shirt. That was like a quirk of his

that she just didn't really. Appearance was always described as a bit disheveled. Like didn't really care about his appearance that much. Yes. Which, okay, that on its own, not necessarily a red flag. There's also the fact that he was conservative Republican and Gail was liberal Democrat, which they could not agree on anything over. And they still chose to date, but they really did not get along when it came to politics. Still, Gail decided she was going to overlook it all and less than a year into their relationship, Bob proposed to Gail, and she said yes. And then they were married in August of 1982. After their honeymoon, 26-year-old Gail went back to school and she got a bachelor's degree in psychology from Hunter College in the city. She then studied a PhD of clinical psychology at

Long Island University. And then she started seeing her own patients and began her own business outside of therapy. It was a service for other women. It was called Help, where Gail ran errands for wealthy clients in between her classes and patients. Both she and Bob were living busy lives with separate careers, but they seemed to be making it work. That is until about three years into their marriage when Gail walked into that salon and said she was getting a divorce. Let's fast forward again, though, back to the day after Gail's hair appointment. That's Sunday, July 7, 1985. And that's when she mentioned she was planning to tell Bob that she wanted out of their marriage. That night, around 6.30 p.m., Bob showed up to his nephew's birthday party in New Jersey

alone. When people asked where Gail was because it was odd to see him without her, Bob said that they had an argument that morning and he was going to just give her some time to cool off. After the party, though, Bob went to a friend's house, which was also in New Jersey, and he told that friend that that Gail stormed out of the house at around 11 a.m. wearing shorts, sandals, and a halter top, saying that she was going to go work on her tan in Central Park and that he was. hadn't heard from her since. So from his friend's place, Bob calls his apartment a couple of times. Gail doesn't pick up, though, and that's when Bob starts to panic, and he heads back into the city. He returns to an empty apartment at almost midnight. So he calls Gail's friend, Dr. Yvette Fice,

to ask if she had seen or heard from Gail. And after Yvette said that she hadn't, Bob decided that he was going to go to bed and just try again the following morning. The next day, Bob knew that Gail had a therapy appointment scheduled, so he called that therapist to see if she showed up. But that therapist said that she hadn't. So then Bob starts calling a few other people that day to see if maybe they had spoken to Gail. But no one had seen or heard from her since Saturday. So at around 9 p.m. that night, which was July 8th, Bob went to an Upper East Side Police Station and he filed a missing person's report. The officers taking Bob's report had quite a few questions for him. and his answers are actually our first clue.

He said he last saw Gail at 11 a.m. the day before when she left their apartment after an argument. But he also mentioned that Gail got a disappointing phone call from someone earlier that morning before their argument had even started. He doesn't give police any other details about the call, but he does tell them something different than what he said at his nephew's party. The main difference was that he claimed Gail was wearing a T-shirt when she left for Central Park, not the halter top that he had mentioned before. But other than that, the story is pretty much matching everything that he's told his friends and family already.

Bob also said that his wife was in good physical health, but poor mental health. He shared her history of depression and her suicide attempt from six years earlier. Bob also told the police that they were in marriage counseling. They were having weekly sessions with a psychiatrist in Greenwich Village. Even though it seemed like he came from a place of worry, his behavior over the police of, the following days would prove otherwise. This episode is brought to you by Instacart. I have a four-month-old at home, which means I don't leave the house unless I absolutely

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So let yourself run, lift, fail, try, and go. Explore the new Peloton cross-training tread plus at OnePeloton.com. So on Wednesday, July 10th, that's three days after Gail was last seen. Bob called a detective to ask for a progress report on the case. But he also wanted to know if he could do anything. to help them find Gail. Another detective on the case, though, finds this odd because he tried to call Bob a few times over the last several days, but Bob didn't return any of those phone calls. Then on Friday, July 12th, Bob went to the local news to ask the public to report any sightings of Gail.

And in this TV appearance, he said that he now believed Gail was a victim of foul play and that she would never have abandoned her patients that she was treating. This is pretty much news to the detectives that we're working on Gail's case. Because Bob had indicated to them that Gail might harm herself, but he had never told them anything about someone else potentially being involved. So it was shocking for them to just hear it in the press conference. Yeah, I feel like to them it could have looked very performative. Yeah.

Wait, what? Or just like a weird pivot, too, to totally change your story. Okay, first the shirt she was wearing is different. And now your theory on what happened is totally different. And don't you think the police would have been the first he would have approached about this foul play theory? Yeah, and he's already not calling. them back whenever they call him. So the detectives decide that they're going to interview Bob again, but this time it's

going to be as a potential suspect because not only was he behaving strangely, but the more they talked to Gail's loved ones, the more they learned that they're also concerned with Bob's behavior. By now, police had begun establishing a timeline of Gail's last known whereabouts, and they found someone who had actually spoken to Gail on the morning she disappeared. A regular client with her help service, a high-powered corporate attorney named Francesca McCartney Beale. Francesca's story is actually our second clue.

At 10.20 a.m., the morning Gail went missing, Francesca called her with a question. A friend of Francesca's needed surgery and was wondering if Bob could recommend a good doctor for her. Now, this might be the disappointing call. Bob said that Gail got that this morning. You know, I watched an interview with Francesca, and she said that Gail sounded really excited initially when she called her. But when Gail found out that the reason for the call was related to Bob, she kind of seemed down and not as uppity. Yeah. And Francesca takes this further.

She actually tells detectives something else that's troubling. Two years earlier in November, 1983, Gail asked to stay in Francesca's guest room for a while. When Francesca asked Gail why, Gail said that it was because she was afraid of Bob and thought that he might harm her. Francesca told Gail that she didn't think it was a good idea, figuring she had family that might take her in instead. but after that, Francesca said that it seemed like things went back to normal between the two of them. When Francesca made that call on July 7th, she had no idea that it was the day Gail planned to ask for a divorce.

In fact, Francesca didn't even know Gail was missing until the police told her. But Francesca's account lined up with something else the detectives had been hearing about Gail's life. A story that was told to them by her sister, 27-year-old Elaine Katz. At first, Elaine thought that Gail had just left Bob without saying anything about a divorce. But now, Elaine was fearing the worst. And she was very forthcoming with detectives about all of her suspicions, which brings us to our third clue. Elaine told the police about a disturbing incident from early on in Gail and Bob's relationship. Bob and his lawyer have since disputed this story, but we're going to tell you Elaine's version of events.

She said that Gail reached out to her for help in August of 1982 about three weeks before their wedding. She had called her crying, begging for her to come into the city and pick her up. When Gail got into her car, she had her little cat in hand, and she told Elaine a disturbing story. Again, you guys, we are going to mention talks of animal harm, so please skip if you can't handle that today. Gail had apparently caught Bob trying to drown their peasant. cat in the toilet. When Gail confronted him, Bob said that he was angry and jealous because Gail loved the cat and cared for the cat more than him. And Bob didn't even seem sorry about this. More sorry that he got caught. And he even went so far as to imply that this isn't the first

time he had tried to harm their cat. And it wouldn't be the last. Gail even shared with Elaine that Bob had mentioned strangling a previous girlfriend's cat. There was a story about the cat being loose in a car and he strangled it. And it was clear at this point to Elaine that he had a history of harming animals and this deranged behavior. Oh, it's so horrible to hear about. But to be jealous of the cat, too, oh, God, what kind of person do you have to be? To be jealous that your girlfriend likes the cat. Insane.

Yeah. And Elaine was just trying everything she could to support Gail through this. She told her to call off the wedding. You know, we can get you out of this. Yeah. It's fine. Let's pack up your stuff. You know, she was really trying to be like, Bob is the problem, not the cat.

No, that's a great sister, too, to immediately go to her. That's good out. You can't not be with this person. Yeah. And, you know, instead, Gail had Elaine driver to the animal shelter where the cat was surrendered for its own safety. And Gail felt that this was better. You know, the invitations had already gone out. It was going to be too embarrassing to call things off.

And at that point, Gail swore Elaine to secrecy. You cannot tell anyone about this. You cannot even tell our parents. You cannot say a word. And now, at this point, with Gail missing, this was a detail Elaine could no longer ignore and keep to herself. Yeah, of course. And we looked into it more, too. So we found that a lot of violent criminals also kill or abuse animals.

But there's a little bit more context, at least in regards to this story. So according to the FBI, 75% of abused women who have pets report that their pets are also abused. And here's a really scary quote from the FBI. The majority of IPV victims who report co-occurring animal cruelty are also concerned the abuser eventually will kill them and should be considered at extremely high risk of suffering severe injury or death. There was a 2021 systematic review of 30 studies on animal abuse and intimate partner violence that confirmed that violent partners who also abused, abuse pets are more likely to seriously harm their human victims. Severe violence towards women by male partners was especially significantly associated with physical harm to pets and abusive partners who also hurt animals did so primarily to

control their human victims through fear. All of these studies came out after Gail disappeared and back in 1985, the link between animal abuse and intimate partner violence wasn't widely known, but still her sister had the spidey sense to be like something's not right here. And also, I think it's just important to bring this up because Morgan, I know on your show you talk a lot about, like, just signs to look for an abusive relationships because sometimes it really is like that pot of water boiling and you don't even know when the temperature is risen too high. Yeah, absolutely. But if you notice weird things with your pets and your partner, like that could be something to also look out for. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to be honest, like before researching this case, I didn't really know about the connection.

Yeah. Like, obviously, you know, we've done episodes now where we've talked about serial kids. killers who harm animals growing up. It's like we know that. But this link between domestic violence and harming animals, not everyone knows about it. I didn't know about it. And I have, we have this podcast. Yeah, definitely. It's good to highlight. And it's so hard, you know, when you're in a relationship like this to know what's normal, what's not? What is just a one-off? Right. And it seems like that was Gail's situation too where she was like, well, let's just not tell anyone about it because maybe this will just go away.

Yeah. When detectives heard Elaine's story about this cat incident, they knew it was a pretty big red flag. But Gail had shared a lot of red flags with Elaine over the years. Those warning signs are actually our fourth clue. After Gail married Bob, Elaine saw him take charge of nearly every aspect of her life. He decided what she would wear, how she would style her hair, he urged her to lose weight. and they fought constantly. Usually it was about money.

Bob wanted Gail to bring in more into the household. If the arguments didn't go his way, Bob would even threaten to harm himself. And something that's really interesting that Elaine mentions that speaks to Bob's control is a double date. She actually went on with Gail and Bob. And the entire time,

Gail, like, wasn't allowed to feed herself. What? They went and got sushi. I didn't read about this. They went and got, got sushi and Bob was the one constantly using the chopsticks to put the sushi in Gail's mouth. She wasn't allowed to feed herself. And Elaine says he even took it further and started to feed Elaine. No. He was that controlling about every circumstance. Gail wouldn't be allowed to turn on

light switches herself. Bob would like race over and then turn the light switch on. There were so many aspects of her life that were truly controlled beyond wild imagination. A friend's birthday dinner, he forced her to sit on his lap the whole dinner. It's weird because it's control, but it's also control that makes other people feel uncomfortable, like intentionally makes other people feel uncomfortable as a way to also control them. Yeah. It's, that's really scary behavior. There was one instance where he acted like he was going to jump out of their moving car to get away from Gail on another occasion. He grabbed a kitchen knife and threatened to harm himself. And multiple different neighbors report that they screamed at each other at all hours. Like this was kind of just a normal occurrence to

hear them fighting. And kind of as a way to escape this, Gail began having affairs. In a couple interviews I've seen, family just described that, you know, Bob was working all the time and Gail was dealing with this abuse and also not having any of her needs met. And so she just looked for an escape. Yeah, while they were married. Yeah. And it's unclear if Bob knew about these affairs, at least to police, he wasn't mentioning them in these interviews, but it wasn't a well-kept secret from those close to Gail. Gail had told Elaine and her friends about the two other men that she was seen in the weeks leading up to her disappearance. When Elaine told their parents all of this, their mom, Sylvia, was at that point just convinced that Bob had murdered.

Gail. And there was like even a delay in Bob reporting Gail missing. And her family kind of saw this as like him just not caring because maybe he knew what happened to her. Yeah, he decided to keep searching in the morning after she didn't come home all day or night. You haven't heard a word? Yeah. Calling her family, you know she's not with them. She's not with you. She left in just a halter top according to you. So like she definitely didn't bring enough stuff to be gone for that long. And then you're just going to sleep on it. No, it's like so suspicious from the jump. Yeah, and Gail's mom even left messages on Bob's answering machine saying, quote, I know you killed my daughter.

So by the time Gail's parents were then interviewed, they had absolutely no desire to protect him, which obviously is good for detectives because they had a lot of questions about one incident in particular. It turns out they had located an old police report accusing Bob of third-degree assault. It was filed back on November 12th, 19th. by Gail herself, and this is our fifth clue. That day, Gail had told a civilian police aide that, quote, her husband did strangle her to the point at which she lost consciousness. But nobody ever followed up.

The case had been, quote, referred to family court. This is what the NYPD did with family violence reports that they didn't deem worthy of an investigation. Gotta grab the botch board for that. Yeah, botched. Not following. up on a very serious domestic violence report. Very serious. Being strangled to the point of losing consciousness and you just kick it to a family court. Yeah. And you know, I've, I've seen some interviews where detectives say, yeah, this was 1983. No wonder why I didn't get followed up on.

If this happened in 2021, Bob would have been in handcuffs. And as much as I would like to think that that's true, I'm not so sure. Yeah. Yeah, we've heard too many stories. We have a lot of these stories. And we need to really make some changes in how we handle cases like this. So in 1985, the detectives had to piece together the rest of the story from Gail's friends and family. And here's what they learned. Four days before the report was filed on November 8, 1983, Bob came home early and caught Gail smoking cigarettes on their balcony. Bob absolutely hated smoking and insisted that Gail quit when they actually got together. It was always kind of a big point of contention between the two of them.

And that night, Bob became enraged over it. In a way that Gail herself had never seen before. He threw her cigarettes off the balcony, climbed over the railing, threatening to jump himself. And after Gail had literally talked him off the ledge... Like literally off the ledge. Literally. Oh! The argument still continued.

Bob lunged at Gail. In one account, I heard from family, he got her on the ground of the balcony and started strangling her until she lost consciousness. And when she woke up, Bob apologized and just begged Gail not to tell anyone. That's just a, that's a control thing. Because why don't you want her to smoke cigarettes? You know, like, it's bad. I mean, it's bad. It's bad for you. But you know what also is bad for you getting strangled to the point of losing consciousness. So obviously he wasn't like worried about her health. No. I think it's just like a thing she did to relax that he just didn't want her to do. Yeah. I mean, it was a really, really stressful.

time for Gil at this moment. She was taking her GRE the next day, the test that would basically determine if she could get into grad school and she didn't want to miss this. This is a huge pivotal point in her career in life. And so she took a break while she thought Bob was going to just go have a smoke. And he came home a little earlier than she expected. So, you know, at this point, she's really stressed. She's nervous about these exams. Yeah. And she didn't call 911 that night. After her test, she went back to the apartment while Bob was at work, packed her things, and left for her grandfather's house. The police matched up the timelines and realized that this must also be when Gail called her client, Francesca Beale, and asked her to stay in her guest room. Later that November, Gail moved back in with Bob on the condition that he seek counseling.

You know, her sister Elaine describes it as like, she knew he was unhinged. And the only way she was willing to stay and work on their marriage was if he got the help he clearly needed. And Bob at this point, he appeared willing to do anything to save their marriage, even go to therapy, separately and together. And Gail seemed to believe that he was going to be a changed man. She was so confident things would be okay that she even got two new cats. Oh, that's heartbreaking. It is. But, you know, the Domestic Violence Services Network kind of they see this, this.

cycle of abuse and it's this repeating pattern in relationships where this intimate partner violence is present and it's often in these four phases which are the tension building phase where distance and strain create a sense of walking on eggshells around the abuser, the explosion phase when violence occurs, the denial phase where the abuser either acts like the violence didn't happen or promises that they've changed. It'll never happen again. And then the honeymoon phase where the couple reconciles and the abuser may be extra loving and a tentative for a time until it repeats itself again. And this is kind of where Gail found herself and it's a very difficult position to be in. It's hard to break out of that cycle. It is. So after detectives in 1985 heard about the choking incident, they decided that they were going to bring it up to Bob again in an interview on July 13th. That's six days now after Gail's disappearance.

One of the first questions that they asked was, did Bob ever strangling? Gail. And his response was that he didn't want to talk about it. He did admit to threatening to jump out of a window during an argument, but then he said he didn't want to talk about that either. They then asked Bob if he had abused Gail's cat. And again, his response, he didn't want to talk about it. They tried to rattle Bob by asking if he knew about the other two men that Gail was sleeping with, Ken and Anthony. But Bob didn't take the bait this time. He just said that he had seen those names in Gail's address book, and eventually the interview just ended. But it did end on a really strange note. I'll read you a quote from the report. Quote, as we concluded, Dr. Behrumbaum said,

this doesn't look right and people are going to start to wonder. And when I asked him what he meant, he said, it's obvious, isn't it? He refused to clarify that statement, but the implication was pretty clear. Bob realized that he was in trouble. So the next day, July 14th, another detective met with Bob for a voluntary interview. Again, all of these are voluntary. This one mostly focused on Bob's movements leading up to and right after Gail's disappearance. So Bob painted them this picture of a pretty normal weekend until it wasn't. There was dinner in a movie on Friday night, shopping for lingerie and cat food with Gail on Saturday, before cooking a romantic steak dinner which they ate by candlelight that same night. And then on Sunday morning, the argument,

followed by Gail's disappearance. Bob didn't explain why he never looked for Gail before leaving at 5.30 for his family party in New Jersey. The exact thing that we pointed out to is just being very strange. But Bob's father did confirm that he arrived at that party at 6.30 p.m. Bob also couldn't really explain why he went to work on Monday like everything was normal and why he didn't report his wife missing until that night. Detectives asked Bob if he would agree to. a voluntary search of his apartment.

He didn't agree right away, but he promised that he was going to think about it. And then not long after these two interviews, Bob gets a lawyer, and he decides that he is done playing nice with the police. Without enough evidence for a search or an arrest warrant, the investigation into Gail's disappearance was really slow-moving. Even though Gail's family suspected Bob had done something to her,

they decided to stay close to him because they figured that that was the only way that they were ever going to get any answers. Maybe he would slip up in something and maybe give something away. And at the same time, Bob knew the cat's family thought that he was a murderer. But if he pushed them away, it wasn't going to look good for his case. So the cats has used this as an opportunity to get inside Bob's apartment and look for evidence on their own. According to Gail's sister, Elaine, that's how they found something interesting. Insurance isn't one-size-fits-all.

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After seeing crime impact my own family, I've learned how overlooked moments, missed red flags, and unanswered questions can change everything. Together, we're bringing those lived experiences into the work. This is the final hours, a crime house original powered by Pave Studios,

a podcast that puts the moments before a disappearance under a microscope. Listen to and follow the final hours wherever you get your podcasts, new episodes every Monday. Gail's purse was hanging on a door. It contained her credit cards, wallet, and cigarettes. Elaine knew even if Gail wasn't going to smoke,

she would never leave them behind for Bob to find because of the incident that happened prior. Elaine saw the cigarettes as really being a critical piece of evidence, but it never became a big part of the official investigation. And most of the time, these sneaky searches didn't find anything at all. No, nothing. And I did see an interview with her brother where, you know, he's describing going into this apartment. And he's like, my mom even told me to check the drains in the bathtub. Yeah. Just for anything. For anything. He's like, he's like at this point, I knew that I was looking for something to show that my sister's remains had been here. Right. And that, like to have to be your own investigators and sneak and coerce your way into your sister's apartment. to look for evidence. It's just sad.

It's so sad. And this is one thing with our legal system where it feels like there's enough of a suspicion to get a search warrant here to at least just look for any sign of her. I mean, the fact her purse is still there. Yeah. Come on. I know the fact that they had so much history of Bob being an abuser. You have a police report from Gail herself describing domestic violence. she's gone. Husband doesn't seem to care, doesn't report her missing right away. And yet you can't get a search warrant?

Well, I guess there's just nothing. This is, again, the phone of scientists. There's nothing that indicates she's been murdered at that point. So can you, you know, if it's an abusive marriage, maybe she fled on her own. And then you can't get a warrant. And without a warrant, you can't do that search. But I, it's just sad that it was like up to her brother to really, like, look for stuff. This is where I need my lawyers to chime in. I've been seeing you in some of the comments on our other episodes. And I need you to just please, in love. me about like more of the criteria for a search warrant and if you think they could have justified it in this case at this point. Yeah, maybe it was different in the 80s too. Yeah. Yeah. So nothing that Katz's got from Bob's apartment was a smoking gun that was enough for police to get this warrant. In fact, it would take another two months for the police to get Bob's permission to voluntarily search his home. His attorney, though, worded the approval very intentionally. He only authorized the police to look for things that might help

identify Gail if her body was found. So they could look for things like fingerprints, anything that like, yeah, if she was found, they could use that to identify her body. Listen to that back. You can only look at things in my apartment that would help you if her body was found. I know. Yeah, that's so telling. What? That's so telling. In other words, the police weren't allowed to dig for any evidence that a crime had been committed in the apartment. So it's feeling botch. I don't know. They can't look for blood. Lawyers chime in. they can't look for really like anything that would say what happened to her. And so at that point, it's like, what's the point?

This is two months. He's probably cleaned whatever up. No, exactly. Yeah, you can't do a luminal test for anything. Yeah. And without a proper search warrant, which, again, they couldn't get without any evidence, detectives had to abide by those very specific terms. And when they finally did get inside, they didn't see any obvious signs that a crime had been committed there. After that voluntary search, the investigation only gets more frustrating, unfortunately.

Tips from the public were coming in thanks to the missing persons' posters that were all over Central Park, but none of them led to any useful sightings or evidence. By week three of the investigation, the Katz's were over this charade. They totally stopped speaking to Bob and they began just searching separately. Now, Bob's family perpetuated the narrative that Gail likely died by suicide or ran away with another man. Meanwhile, Bob starts telling different stories to different people. He told one business contact that Gail disappeared because of her relationships with drug dealers. He pulls that out of nowhere. I mean, we had mentioned earlier that Gail had used cocaine before, like previously, and they did have evidence that she had used cocaine with one of her affair partners.

It was the 80s, though, like, everyone was doing cocaine. It's New York City in the 80s. Oh, my God. But he's like saying that to be like, oh, she was probably like in with some bad drug dealers. and like ran away or like got murdered by one of them. Her sister Elaine was like they were throwing everything they could to make my sister look like the problem here. To destroy her relationship. Destroy her.

Or her like reputation. Yeah. And we see that so many times, especially when women disappear. Like you just have to throw them under the bus to make yourself look innocent. It's horrible. And he, again, in the spirit of telling different people, different stories, he tells a friend of Gales that she ran off and was waitressing by the beach. somewhere. So he somehow knew that she'd become a waitress. Yeah. Right. She's studying and getting a Ph.D. in psychology and has patience that she feels that she needs to care for and she's going to run off and be a

server on the beach. She left all of that. And also like, how do you know that? How do you know this? Then he tells someone else that he found Gail's towel and sun tan lotion and Central Park. But of course, he never relayed that to the police. Yeah. Why wouldn't you hand it over for evidence? Nope. He just apparently found that and then decided that was all he needed. And he told a different acquaintance that Gail's therapist warned him that she was suicidal just before her disappearance. So it really feels like he's just trying to cover every base with every story he's telling. When police spoke to the therapist, she denied ever talking to Bob and said that Gail was not suicidal. And given Gail's history, that's something that a therapist would have been tracking. Yeah. Now, it's at this time,

it's not really just what Bob's saying that's suspicious. It's also what he's doing. In October of 1985, that's four months now after Gail disappeared. Elaine went to Bob's to collect Gail's things, finally. And when she showed up, everything was packaged in garbage bags. On top of that, he had already moved in a new girlfriend into the apartment. That's four months. It was an anesthesiologist named Dr. Roberta Carnovsky. And Roberta, get this, was actually the second person that Bob had dated since Gail vanished. Yeah. He started dating, I think, in one source I saw just a couple of weeks after Gail went missing. And we talk about this in missing persons cases, but it's always so suspicious when someone

acts in a way that they know that person is not coming back. Yeah. And it seemed like he knew she wasn't coming back. I mean, he spent the summer, the rest of the summer, partying in the Hamptons. Yeah. I mean, he was going, the one person described it as he went from wearing LLB to disco clothes and just kind of popping off. We talked about it in the Susan Powell case that we just did, too, where something like 10 days after she disappeared, her husband fully cleans out all of her accounts, just spends all the money and, like, takes her retirement out.

Yeah. Come on. The first person that he started dating was a nurse educator at the hospital where he worked, and he started seeing her just three weeks after Gail disappeared. Yeah. But a few months after Roberta moves in, something interesting happens. The police call Bob in the middle of the night to say that they're holding a woman at a bus terminal. who matched Gail's description, and they wanted him to come down and identify her. According to Roberta, Bob was not excited about this.

In fact, he was actually annoyed about being asked to get up at 3 a.m. to go to a bus terminal. Yeah, he actually asked, can this wait until tomorrow morning? Yeah, it was very inconvenient for him, apparently. Very inconvenient. Which, so suspicious. Unfortunately, the woman was not Gail, but it is pretty, odd behavior and the police acknowledged that it's odd behavior for someone whose wife had been missing. And there was a similar incident in July of 1986, which was a full year after Gail disappeared,

when an investigator called at 2.30 in the morning to say that they'd found someone they thought was Gail. And this time they wanted Bob to come to the World Trade Center to identify the woman there. Once again, Bob did not seem interested in doing this. He just was annoyed about being woken up in the middle of the night again. And then also in July of 1986, Gail's parents asked the Manhattan District Attorney's Office to take over the case. They agreed and began a new investigation. And once they get started investigating, it turns up a new and very important detail. So in September, 1986, 14 months after Gail went missing, investigators began digging into Bob's movements at the time of Gail's disappearance, which it took you 14 months to look at Bob and his movements. I'm just going to

market on the botch board. We're just going to write that one down. People have hold babies in that time less. The following month, they actually found something that the first investigation had missed, which is our sixth clue, a plane rental. As we know, Bob is a private pilot, but he didn't own his own plane, so he would typically use rentals. And so they went looking for any rental history they could find. They got records from a at the Caldwell Airport in Fairfield, New Jersey, and one date jumped out, July 7, 1985. The day that his wife, Gail, went missing. And this is where they noticed that Bob had rented a small plane, a Cessna 172, Skyhawk. He never told the original detectives that he even flew that

day. On top of this, his flight started at 4.30 p.m. and ended at 6.25 p.m. So Bob lied when he first said that he was at his apartment until 5.30 p.m. that day. And he couldn't possibly have been at his nephew's birthday party by 6.30. Like his father had told police, he couldn't have. He was flying until 6.25 p.m. Unless he can teleport, I don't think he got there in time. And so as these new investigators were digging, they spoke to Bob's now ex-girlfriend, Dr. Roberta Karnovsky. Roberta said that about six months into their relationship, she had become suspicious of Bob

after hearing accusatory messages from Gail's family on his answering machine. And as we know, Roberta was there that night, one of the nights that Bob got a phone call, hey, can you please come down? And after he hung up, Roberta says she got nervous. She's like, your wife is about to come home and here I am, moved in, and I need to go. And at this point, Bob turned her and she just described it as basically, you have nothing to worry about. It's not her. He knew.

He knew. And so in her head, she's like, how would he know unless he was the one responsible? Of course. And so Roberta's a smart woman. Funny how she put that together faster than any police officer. Yes. And so she came up with a theory that maybe Bob used an airplane to dispose of Gail's body. in the ocean. The wheels are turning for her. And so when Bob was out one day, Roberta and a friend

actually went and peeked at Bob's handwritten flight log. And a flight log is a notebook that pilots will keep to record all of their flying hours. They have to keep their license current. They need a certain amount of hours. And also, I was going to say the Epstein files are out. We know what flight logs are. We know what flight logs are. And there's a saying where it's like, you don't have to ask if someone's a pilot, they'll tell you. Like, pilots are very, they're very proud of being pilots and they keep detailed logs. And this is when Roberta and her friend discover an altered entry. Where the log originally showed a flight on July 7, 1985, it had been changed to read August 7th, 1985. And you'll see a picture here. If you're watching, check our Instagram for it. It's not like he wrote out

August, it was supposed to be July, so seven, and the seven got turned into an eight. It's very clear to me if I'm looking at it, but please let me know what you guys think. Maybe, I don't know, maybe there's an alternative reason for it. And again, it's Roberta who figures that out. It's Roberta. But Roberta didn't go to investigators when she was first discovering this. Yeah. In February 1987, a DA's team oversaw a forensic search of the exact plane that Bob had rented. as well as two cars Bob had borrowed the week Gail disappeared, one belonging to his father and one from someone else. Investigators use Luminol to look for blood evidence,

but nothing shows up neither in the plane or the vehicles. And again, Gail had been missing for 19 months at that point. The plane had been cleaned many, many, many times in between renters, so they're not really surprised that nothing shows up. No, and imagine, imagine if they had looked at where he really was that day. The plane might have not have even been rented by other people at that time. No, of course. It would have been a completely different investigation. So there's another one for us on the botched board.

So this is a total dead end by the time they even get here. And in April of 1987, nearly two years after Gail went missing, her case is officially closed. They decide that there's like nothing else that they can look into. It looked at this point like Gail's family was never going to get justice or any closure even. That is, until May, 1989, when an unexpected clue washed up on a remote Staten Island beach, which brings us to our seventh clue, a torso. It was badly decomposed, but they noticed that there were still surgical cut marks visible where the arms and legs had been detached.

The torso appeared to match Gelsai's age and race. And then three months later, in August, 1989, a radiologist determined that it matched previous x-rays of Gail's spine. The torso was officially determined to be Gail's. Her case was reclassified from missing person to homicide. That same fall, it was turned over to Gail's family for burial. They held a small private funeral and made sure Bob knew that he was not welcome. Good.

The torso didn't yield any useful evidence beyond that, though, which meant that the case stayed closed despite her partial remains being found. And I know a lot of you are, you're like, DNA, what about the DNA? You guys, you talk about the DNA. We will get there. But at this point in time, no DNA testing was done. Yeah, I guess it's like early on in the life of DNA. It is. I mean, DNA profiling wasn't really used until 1986. They weren't really using it in this way to identify people commonly, right? Like, I think it was out there a little bit, but not, not widespread. Even though he had never been charged for the crime, Bob was looking for a fresh start at this point. So in late 1989, more than four years after Gail vanished, 34-year-old Bob moved from New York to

Las Vegas and he opened a plastic surgery practice there. Then in 1990, he met a 31-year-old chiropractor named Stephanie Youngblood at a New Year's party. Stephanie told her friends that she was seeing a jet-setting doctor who took her on ski. vacations. He even said he made regular trips to Mexico to do volunteer work providing medical care for underserved children. Bob proposed to Stephanie, but they never actually got married. By 1993, three years after they met, she found out about Gail's disappearance and that Bob was a suspect. She initially believed he was innocent until she saw him flying into a terrifying rage on two separate occasions. Stephanie did say that Bob never hit her, but she was very

worried that he might. Like Gail, Stephanie made Bob go to therapy, and his therapist warned Stephanie that she should leave Bob because he might harm or kill her. His therapist warned Stephanie that she should leave Bob. And luckily, she did listen. Not long after, 39-year-old Bob got together with a 36-year-old woman named Carol Fisher. She was a divorced mother of one. Carol opened up to him about her past marriage. But when she asked if he had ever been married before, he was reluctant to answer. So Carol, kind of making a joke not really knowing what was going on, said, what'd you do, kill her? And Bob did not take that as a joke.

He demanded to know what Carol had heard and who told her. After she convinced him that she was just kidding, she had no idea what he was referencing. Bob calmed down and he actually told Carol the story. He said that Gail was a depressed drug addict who walked out after an argument and then never came back. Carol at this point believed Bob and she thought that he did deserve a fresh start in Vegas. So she kept this secret about Gail walking out of their relationship for their entire six-month relationship. But by the time they broke up, Carol wasn't so sure about Bob's innocence. She claimed that he had threatened to kill her dog during an argument.

He got enraged at her for breaking a glass from the dishwasher. And he also falsely accused her of giving him syphilis, which is wild. Yikes. That's a wild one. After they broke up in 1996, three of his Vegas exes, Stephanie, Carol, and a third woman named Mindy that he dated, all got together and they started comparing notes on Bob. Meanwhile, the now 41-year-old Bob moved to Minot, North Dakota, and married Janet Sholeigh and OBGYN. He had no idea that his exes had gotten together to compare notes and also gave themselves an adorable nickname, the Harriet the Spy Club. And they had spent hours going through library arc. archives to find coverage of Gail's disappearance. Holy shit. They all got together and formed a club, like a little detecting society. I love it.

And eventually, the New York City detectives heard about these women, and they wanted to see if they could help solve Gail's case. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off-campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more.

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and he didn't want to leave with Gail's case still on his contract. So he went to the team to look into it. And the investigators realized something. Gail's torso was discovered before forensic DNA testing was common. So it was never confirmed with DNA. With the Katz's permission, investigators exhumed the torso to do a test. They just wanted to be sure. And this was a really, really hard thing for her family to agree to.

I can't even imagine. This was like, as Elaine describes it, like this was the, most horrible gut-wrenching decision to make. Because you've already, I mean, to bury a loved one is already so upsetting, but it's like let them rest. And then the police come. They're like, we want to, we just want to be sure. They exhumed the body.

And when the results came back, they found that the torso was not in fact gales. Not only did the investigators no longer have a body at this point, but because of the lack of technology at the time, they had allowed the cats to bury the wrong person in their family plot. And now at this point, like they've completely upended people's lives. The DA's team was really determined to actually solve this case once and for all. Yeah. Elaine says that she told investigators, like, you took her from us. Like this is how she was kind of grieving this loss. And she's like, you took this from us.

And now to make it right, you better get this guy. Yeah, you have to, you have to solve this. Now, at that time, Bob was in Minot, North Dakota, living with a second. wife Janet, and the couple had welcomed a daughter. And Bob was making headlines in Mina, too, but not exactly for what you would expect. Apparently, he had saved a child's life after a tiger attack at the state fair. And because of it, his new friends and colleagues were really considering him to be a hero, at least until 1998 when the Manhattan investigators came sniffing around the area, and they began talking to everyone in Bob's life, including those three X's from the

Harriet the Spy Club. Investigators noticed that everyone Bob had spoken to over the years got an incredibly different story about Gale. But they had also all gotten stories about Gail. He was still telling people what had happened, but all these different stories about it. And by now they were feeling like they had enough circumstantial evidence to prosecute him. They had a parade of witnesses willing to testify to his abuse patterns. And in 1999, the investigators were working to bring charges against him. And that was when one final witness came forward to seal the deal. And that was Bob and Gail's former psychiatrist. Now, doctors and therapists usually can't testify against their patients because of doctor-patient privilege. But Dr. Michael Stone hoped that the judge would make an

exception. And his testimony is our eighth clue. If you recall, after the choking incident, Gail insisted that Bob see a psychiatrist. He chose one. but the doctor found him to be a very difficult patient to treat. So he referred Bob and Gale to Dr. Stone. After speaking with a colleague and before meeting Bob, Dr. Stone believed that he had a treatable case of borderline personality disorder. But after he met Bob, Dr. Stone concluded that he was actually a dangerous psychopath who was on the verge of harming Gail.

And now, psychopathy is not an official DSM diagnosis, and professional opinions on its validity as a psychological condition do vary. However, many psychiatrists view it as a real mental illness. And that is coming from Dr. Stone. Like, that is his wording. That is what he believed. And after a few more sessions, even Dr. Stone began to not feel safe with Bob. He didn't even feel safe enough to reject him as a patient, though.

So he came up with a list of treatments that he believed Bob would refuse, putting Bob in the position of giving the rejection, rather than receiving it. The conditions were the following. First, Dr. Stone would record their sessions on two separate tapes, giving one to Bob and mailing the other to Dr. Stone's own attorney. Second, Bob would have to pay for a life insurance policy for Dr. Stone, providing $2 million for each of Stone's two sons if Bob murdered him.

If Bob murdered him? And third, Gail and Bob had to divorce. Wait, so these were the things that the psychiatrist said Bob had to do in order to keep seeing him. In order to keep seeing him. Wow. And as Dr. Stone expected, Bob turned these down. And Dr. Stone was relieved to never see Bob again. But there was still one thing Dr. Stone felt that he had to do. Dr. Stone felt that he had this legal obligation to warn the person he believed his patient intended to harm. or kill. So that same month, November 1983, Dr. Stone handed Gail a letter saying she needed to move out and stay away from Bob because he might kill her. It actually read more like a liability release, though, and we'll include a picture of this note, and we have some quotes from it. Quote, if I do not heed this advice, I must accept the consequences, including the possibility of personal

injury or death at the hands of my husband and absolve Dr. Stone of responsibility. Gail refused to sign this letter, and she found herself a different marriage counselor. Even so, though, she still held on to it. And according to her friends, she planned to use this as leverage when she demanded a divorce. Gail saw it as, you know, the secret weapon to use that if Bob didn't want to separate on her terms, she was going to send this letter to all of his colleagues at the hospital, essentially ruining his medical career before it really got off the ground. But on the day she planned to threaten him with this, she vanished.

And now that the case was open again, Dr. Stone believed he should be allowed to testify. In an interview, someone asks him, did you ever write a note like this for any of your other patients? And he said no. He goes, I'd never, ever, ever felt the need to. to. And that just shows you how serious this was. I know we have therapists that watch too. I'm so curious what you guys think about this letter. Like, have you ever felt that unsafe with a patient that to ask your patient to pay for your life insurance because you're so convinced that they're

going to kill you? I know. And in his interview, he says, you know, the reaction Bob had to Gail smoking the cigarette is what really freaked him out the most because if he's so willing to explode over such small things. He has a word for it, but he was like, this is, it's volatile, unpredictable. And so Dr. Stone really believed it was almost his obligation to testify. And the prosecution was willing to give it a try. With no physical body or forensic evidence, they would take any help they could get. Finally, on December 8, 1999, now 44-year-old Bob Beerenbaum, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

He was arraigned and then released the same day on a half-million-dollar bond. both Dr. Stone and two other psychiatrists who had warned Gail about Bob testified before the judge. However, when the trial actually began in October of 2015 years after she disappeared, jurors were only allowed to hear third-party testimony about Dr. Stone's warning letter. The judge did not let Dr. Stone himself testify. In addition, the prosecution argued several important factors, including Bob's inconsistent stories and strange behavior over the years. his lies about renting an airplane and the change to his handwritten flight log.

But the biggest piece of evidence was a recreation of the crime using an actual Cessna 172. And that just gave me full body chills. Yeah. The theory was that Bob had dismembered Gale's 110 pound body, placed it in a flight bag or suitcase, flown over the Atlantic Ocean, and pushed the bag out of the plane. And again, they are recreating this crime for the jury so that they can see how he would have actually. done that. Yeah. They had to prove that Bob could have physically kept the plane airborne while pushing the bag out without any help. So they had a pilot do exactly that on film using a flight bag stuffed with 120 pounds worth of sandbags. And they did prove that after takeoff, a pilot

can leave the controls unattended briefly without any danger. And that made the theory more bulletproof than ever. Yeah. And I talked to multiple different pilots about this. My dad's a pilot. Yeah. One of my husband's best friends as a pilot and they did have autopilot invented back then. I looked everywhere to see if Bob's plane had it. No mention anywhere. Yeah. But then I asked like, how would you do this? And they basically just said an experienced pilot like Bob who like Bob is a big deal pilot. He got to instructor level. That's how good he was. Yeah. So he's not some little enthusiast. Like let's be clear. And they said, yeah, you know, once you get up, feel it out, feel the wind, kind of set your yoke up. the steering wheel, like in a place that feels good. And you got enough glide to open your door.

The pressure is not hard against it. And you can do it. And clearly that recreation showed that you can. Yeah. Yeah. Undeniable showed that you can. And we talk about it in the lazy Peterson disappearance where like the recreation is so important in a case like that because you have to be able to prove someone can physically do the crime. Now the defense leaned mostly on what the prosecution didn't present, rather than poking holes in the evidence that they did actually have. They only presented one witness. A man who said he saw Gail Katz, the afternoon she disappeared, he described seeing Gail at a bagel shop with another woman wearing pink shorts and a t-shirt that said operatos on it. And this matched Bob's description of what Gail was wearing when she disappeared that day.

However, the defense attorney wasn't able to find anyone else who said they saw Gail, neither that day, nor in the 15 years between her disappearance and the trial. And they poked a lot of holes in this witness because of Gail's physical appearance. This witness described the woman he saw as very, I think the word was, voluptuous. And Gail's family and friends, you know, they didn't describe her body type as being that. They talk about her chest size and so many other of these sources that I've seen. And I don't know. It was odd to bring up in court.

It was just interesting. But that was like to them, like, clearly the wrong woman because my sister is not volumptuous in the chest. And we already know, right, because there are people saying that they saw him at the party that he couldn't have been at. Yeah. So, like, he definitely is like colluding with people. Yeah. Shot. Defense attorneys also floated the theory that maybe one of Gail's affair partners had killed her.

But they had no evidence of this. And I will note here in one of the sources I saw, you know, we mentioned that it's unclear. if Bob knew about her affairs or not. But one source I saw does say that one of her affair partners goes to investigators and tells police that Bob had confronted him. So again, Bob cannot be believed. Yeah. But throughout their presentation, the defense attorneys just reminded the jury that there was no body, no blood, no DNA, no forensic evidence at all. And they hoped that it would create enough reasonable doubt for the jurors. After seven hours of deliberation across two days, on October 24, 2004, 45-year-old Bob was found guilty of second-degree murder.

His second wife, Janet, was in the courtroom, but stepped out when the verdict was read. She was there again on November 29th for Bob's sentencing hearing, this time holding hands with Bob's ex-girlfriend, Sandy Schiff, and that's because the two of them believed in Bob's innocence and became close friends because of it. The judge, however, was not as supportive. She sentenced him to 20 years to life in prison. Bob maintained his innocence and filed several appeals over the years. All of them were unsuccessful, though. After serving 20 years of his sentence, Bob was eligible for parole.

And in December of 2020, he appeared before the board for a hearing. And to the shock of everyone there, he did confess to killing Gale. He said, quote, I wanted her to stop yelling at me and I attacked her. That's what he said about it. Still like not taking any accountability, kind of like placing it on her. Well, I just wanted her to stop yelling. Also like the simplicity in that statement.

Yeah. I just wanted to stop yelling at me so I killed her. Yeah. It's so simple. Taking her life was so simple for you. As for the means of death, Bob did say that he strangled Gail just like he allegedly had in November of 1983, but only this time he didn't stop. and then he went on to describe how he got rid of her body.

Quote, I went flying, I opened the door, and then took her body out of the airplane over the ocean. It's all very clinical the way he describes everything. His confession finally gave Gail's family some semblance of peace. I mean, there is a chance that, guilty or not, Bob repeated the prosecution's exact theory of the crime in this confession, simply because his lawyer knew that was what the parole board wanted to hear, as if that would maybe help him in his parole resentencing. Yeah. It's an interesting strategy. Yeah. On the other hand, though, Elaine, Gail's sister, the full transcript, according to her,

the full transcript of Bob's confession read exactly like the voice of her former brother-in-law. She recognized the tone, his bragging, his lack of real emotion while talking about it. And she believes that Bob composed the confession himself and he did confess truthfully. And that, you know, at least was some closure for Gail's family. As of this recording, though, Bob remains incarcerated. rated in Otisville, New York with his next parole hearing scheduled for June of this year, 2026. Scary thought.

Yeah. When it comes to loose end theories, the big one is the identity of that torso. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of people that, you know, early on assumed it could be linked to the Long Island serial killer. But thanks to DNA testing, it has been revealed that the torso belonged to Heidi Bulk, the first victim of another serial killer, Joel Rifkin. Heidi's severed head was discovered on a golf course in 1989, the same year her torso was found in the East River and then mistakenly identified as Gales. And this detail has been publicized more recently through a podcast hosted by Carol Fisher, one of Bob's exes.

Wow. Oh my gosh. As for Gail's sister, Elaine, she is now a family lawyer. So it meant a lot to her in 2001 when Pace University's law school named the main office of the Women's Justice Center. Gail's House. They provide a free walk-in legal clinic and free civil law service to survivors of domestic abuse, sexual violence, and elder abuse. They also host trainings and community events that help people learn to recognize the signs of intimate partner violence, as well as human trafficking, sexual abuse, and other forms of violence. Elaine is currently chairperson of the Center's advisory board. And if you would like to join Elaine in her advocacy and you're near Westchester County, New York, the Pace Women's Justice Center does accept volunteers. Some positions are specifically for lawyers or law students, but others are open to the public. Otherwise,

look for law schools near you because a lot of them do have domestic violence legal clinics if you need help. And if you're experiencing intimate partner violence yourself, or if you just want to talk to someone about possible warning signs of abuse in your relationship, you can text start to 8-8-788 to reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline. And they're also available via live chat at the hotline.org and 1-800-799 safe. 1-800-7-233. In many U.S. cities, you can also dial 311 to reach city representatives who can refer you to local domestic violence resources.

Intimate partner violence can happen to anyone, regardless of any factor like gender, sexual orientation, education, or age. There is absolutely no shame in admitting that you are not safe at home and need help getting out. And in fact, it is one of the best ways you could honor Gail's life and memory. I do just want to talk about one other resource because I've mentioned it on this podcast and I mentioned it on Tuat takes quite a bit. But there is a quiz on love is respect.org that even if you don't know if you're in a relationship that is toxic or abusive, you can go and take this

quiz and it provides all these questions and it gives you a result at the end. And I had a listener or reach out to me recently and said, I had a friend who was in a very abusive relationship. And it was clear she wasn't ready for me to point it out. And so she sent her the link for the quiz. And after taking that quiz, the friend started to get help. That's amazing. So it could be a good resource to share with people and just be like, hey, yeah, blah blah, blah, seems great. Like, you should take this quiz. I just think I can get the wheels turning and not put you in a bad position to where that person doesn't come to you then for support or help. And it's another good resource that we will share and make sure is in the show notes. And with that, let's talk about

the missing person of the week. This is Vanessa Morales, who went missing at just 14 months old in 2019 when her mother was murdered. And this was in a town 10 miles west of New Haven, Connecticut. There has been no sign of her since. As of April of this year, Jose Morales has been sentenced to 65 years in prison for beating her mother Christine Holloway to death and for tampering with evidence, though he has maintained his innocence. At his trial, the 48-year-old claimed that on the night of the murder, he and his daughter were with Holloway in her apartment when two intruders broken, beat Holloway, assaulted him, and then kidnapped his daughter Vanessa. While he is considered a suspect in his daughter's disappearance, he has never been charged.

Vanessa at this time would be seven years old, female, at the time of her disappearance, had dark hair, and again, we will include the age progressed picture. Anyone with information on Vanessa's disappearance or who may recognize the age progressed photo is urged to contact the police department. Anonymous tips can also be left online with the following link. Anonymous tips can be left online to the Ansonia Police Department as well. And that is all we have for this episode of Clues. Now we want to hear from you guys, your thoughts, your theories, your feedback. All of this is what makes the community so special. At Crime House, we value your support.

So again, share your thoughts on social media. And remember to rate, review, and follow clues to help others discover our show. Thanks, guys. Bye. Bye. Capture your favorite summer feeling with Pandora jewelry. Discover a collection inspired by the sunshine, freedom, and moments that make the season unforgettable. From sun-kissed metals to personalized pieces, ready to be included.

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