Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Husband murders wife to 'date other people?' Son murders mom when she says 'turn down Jimi Hendrix'

Episode Date: November 2, 2017

A 55-year-old Illinois man allegedly killed his mom and chopped her up after she asked him to turn down his loud Jimi Hendrix music at 3 o'clock in the morning. Divers found 76-year-old Gail Peck's dismembered remains in a Chicago lagoon. Nancy Grace digs into the case with forensic psychologist Dr. Daniel Bober, forensic expert Joseph Scott Morgan, and Crime Stories' co-host Alan Duke. Nancy also looks at the murder charge against former New York stockbroker Rod Covln in the bathtub death of his wife. Psychologist Dr. Chloe Carmichael, investigative reporter Art Harris and reporter Larry Meagher join the discussion. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free. F-R-E-E. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Nancy Grace. ZipRecruiter.com slash Nancy Grace. One more time to try it for free. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Nancy Grace. Thank you, ZipRecruiter. disappeared while walking her dog. He was his mother's only child and he lived in her basement. After being confronted with evidence by police, prosecutors say Peck admitted,

I put her in the bathtub and hacked her up. He's now accused of killing her. The defendant said that on Wednesday, he drove the bags that contained her head and arms to Montrose Harbor and threw those bags into Lake Michigan. Police divers searched Lake Michigan near Foster looking for the cut up remains of 76-year-old Gail Peck. The defendant said that his mother was furious that he was playing his music so loud. Did a man murder his mother because she told him his music was too loud? Now granted it was Jimi Hendrix so I understand why he needed it cranked up, but murdering your mom when she says your music is too loud? Joining me right now is Alan Duke, Dr. Daniel Bober, forensic psychiatrist and Joseph Scott Morgan, forensics expert.

Alan, what happened? Did I miss something? 55-year-old Brian Peck lived with his mom in Elgin, Illinois, and she went missing, and there was a big mystery about it, and so they were looking all over the place for her. He said that she just went out walking the dog. The dog came back, and no mom. Well, the investigation ens ensued they found a security camera video and everything and they figured out exactly what happened nancy and you will not believe what they figured out well let me ask you a question how did they figure it out from security cameras i don't understand if the dog was out wandering around by itself how did they see anything on surveillance video that helped them figure it out other than the dog walking story was a lie?

Well, they figured something was weird because this guy, Brian Peck, he's 55. His mom is 76. And they just didn't think it added up. So they started looking at bank account records. And they started following his footsteps. And they found where he went to a store and purchased luggage. Well, he wasn't going to make a trip and they didn't know where that luggage was. So what did he buy luggage for in the hours after his mother

disappeared? Wow. I'm just having a hard time taking it in. Dr. Daniel Bober, boy, do I need a shrink on this um i'm just trying to get my mind around it angered after he was told he was playing his jimmy hendrix music too loudly allegedly this guy kills his mom dismembers her body and disposes of her remains along Chicago's lakefront. And he did it over two days. He put the body parts in bags and nearly purchased luggage. Okay, so I'm sure they've got it on surveillance video of him buying the luggage. They always do. Here's my first question, Dr. Daniel Bober.

And men, people accuse me of being a man hater. That is not true. I just hate men that commit felonies. Okay, now, why is it you never read about a girl or a woman murdering her mother because her music was too loud? Or going off because the Christmas tree blinked wrong. I mean, what is it about men? I mean, no offense, because I know you are one of the species, but what is wrong with men? Nancy.

What? Nancy, men are more aggressive by nature, more testosterone. But there's already a red flag in this case. Wait, are you somehow blaming this on their pee-pees? Okay, is that what I'm hearing? It's about the testosterone? Because I and the rest of the women in this country don't agree. Is something about impulse control?

Yeah, I want to mow down a lot of people on the highway, but I don't do it. I don't even shoot a bird for Pete's sake because the children are watching. I control it. I suppress my demons. Why can't men do it? What's wrong with them? And another thing, why can't they even pick up their underwear? That's another good question, but I'll deal with that later. Let's deal with the homicide first. Nancy, there's clearly a red flag in this case, a 55-year-old male living with his mother, his 76-year-old mother. So he's either there for two reasons, either to take care of her, which it doesn't seem like that's clearly not the reason, or he's suffering from some form of chronic mental illness and social drift where he was never able to get out of the home and build his own life and live independently. So that, to me, is already a red flag.

But, you know, clearly the music playing loud is not the problem. It's the symptom of the problem. And the problem is most likely some form of chronic mental illness or and or substance use, which creates a situation where he has no impulse control, as you stated, low frustration tolerance, and he just went off and he did it and then tried to conceal the crime. I want to go through how the whole thing went down, but first to you, Joseph Scott Morgan, death investigator and professor of forensics at Jacksonville State University. Joe Scott, I mean, just the thought. I'm afraid to even hug my mom too tight because she's so frail. And P.S., I live with my mother, so I don't know what that says about me, bober. But to think, I mean, how do you get the frame of mind that you kill your mom, which is a very rare crime, matricide, a slang term for it, or parenticide, also slang.

And then you have the mindset that you can dismember her body, put your mom's body parts. I just don't even want to even say those words in the same sentence. Into plastic bags and then into newly purchased luggage. Help me out, Joe Scott. Dismemberment of a human body is not an easy thing to accomplish, Nancy, particularly when you've never done it. And then you're standing over the remains of your mother attempting to do this with rudimentary tools by surgical standards. From what I'm understanding, this fellow, their characterizement as a handsaw, now that can be any number of things.

You know, the first thing I think most people think of is like a carpentry saw. And also the word hatchet has been used as well. You're talking about someone that would utilize these hand tools essentially to pull apart their own mother and to dispose of the remains in bags, place them in luggage, this sort of thing. It's not an easy undertaking when you have no experience at butchering. It takes time. You have to have a location that's isolated. And then from a forensic standpoint, you have to be able to clean up. This is going to create an incredible mess. I can only imagine that the police department

is going to have what we refer to as an evidence-rich environment, particularly with blood, blood transfer, blood spatter, all of these sorts of things. So it's very difficult in order to facilitate this. And then, you know, the doctor could address this more, but this kind of overarching psychological theme of having to take apart this person that has taken care of you throughout your life, and you can just kind of mechanically go about doing it. This guy, he planned this. He went out, he purchased these items in order to stow her body. There's even one report that he tried to fit her into the refrigerator, which I found very curious, in order to store in there. And he disabled the refrigerator because he was using a hatchet to take the shells out of the refrigerator.

Wait a minute, Joe Scott. Did you just say he tried to remove the shelves of the refrigerator so he could fit his mother in there? Yeah, and that's disturbing. Why would you want to put your mother in the refrigerator? Why would you buy bags at the same time? I'm thinking that more than likely he had planned this to a great degree. And in order to try to put the police off, maybe he was trying to slow down the rate of decomposition by putting her in the refrigerator and then masking this. I've seen this in other cases involving dismemberment. And so no one really knows.

It's like he was organized on one side but then when he gets in the middle of this thing it becomes very frenetic and disorganized wow that was quite a mouthful joseph scott morgan i'm just trying to digest the whole thing to dr daniel bober forensic psychiatrist i'm thinking about what joseph scott Scott Morgan is telling me and the time and the energy and the planning that this guy went through, whether or not the initial shooting of his mom or the killing of his mom occurred on impulse. Then there was the cover-up, the dismembering of the body, the cleaning up, the trying to change the refrigerator shelves, the hours and hours it would take to dismember the body, going and getting plastic bags, going and getting suitcases. I mean, how does the human mind work during this very long and arduous process, Dr. Bober? Essentially, Nancy, you essentially have to disconnect yourself from your emotions.

It's really the only way you can operate in this type of a situation. You're basically on automatic pilot. We don't know the history of this individual in terms of what his relationship was like with his mother, but we know that he was living with her, so there had to be some kind of an intimate close relationship but the only way to be able to do something like that is to completely cut yourself off emotionally and focus on the task at hand whether this was a crime of impulse or maybe it was something that was brewing in his mind for a long time and this was something that just sort of put him over the top is hard to know but he certainly tried to spend a lot of time concealing it after the fact

alan do what do we know about him specifically and about his relationship with his mother if anything oh we do know some things that are coming out now in the documents not only does he have six felony convictions, that's aggravated battery, identity theft, computer fraud, possession of a stolen vehicle, theft by deception, but he also spent 100 days in jail in 2016. That was last year for punching his mother in her face, trying to choke her. He was locked up for a hundred days given two years probation when she visited him in jail she told him quote that he crossed the line when he became violent with me that he was no longer my son and I never

want to have contact with him again that's according to new court documents so she tried I'm not sure what happened after that, but she apparently tried. Poor thing. I feel so bad for her. I'm looking at a picture of her smiling, and I also learned that she had spinal fusion surgery, and so she was even more frail than she looked. Her body parts were found in duffel bags by a fisherman and divers at a Lincoln Park lagoon. So far, we've only found the pants and the torso of two of the legs. Apparently, part of the body was disposed at Montrose Harbor, where police were investigating on Tuesday.

We know that he pled guilty to a domestic battery and got a jail sentence. That was when he threatened to kill his mother. They had shared that home together in Oak Brook for some time, but according to Alan Duke, in his investigation, she had asked, basically told him to get out after the last time he attacked her. I wonder how everything went sideways. I know this, Dr. Bober, and I've only learned this, you know, in the last 10 years. There is nothing like a mother's love. You know, you think you're in love.

You think you've met Mr. Right. You think you love this and that when you have children it is the closest thing i've ever seen to unconditional love ever so she took him back dr bober she let him move back in it's interesting you say that nancy there's a book by eric from that's called the art of loving and in that book he says that the only truest form of love is the love between a mother and a child. So that is very true. And I think the maternal instincts are so strong to protect that even in the face of him being just absolutely horrific and predatory to her, she still took him back. Almost in a sense, a type of domestic violence relationship

where you keep making excuses for the person and you keep taking them back what we know right now is that this very loving mother is dead we know that he lied about where she was that she had gone out to walk the dog and never came back. Brian Peck is being held right now, held without bail. And if you take a look at this mom, she's just the cutest little thing. A 76-year-old mother, Gail Peck, no longer with us. Alan Dew, it wasn't just threats and a physical confrontation. There was also the siphoning and the using of all the money she had saved up over time. What do we know? Nancy, Brian Peck was living off his 76-year-old mother. Police say that he lived in the basement of her Elgin, Illinois house, but he was not her major caregiver. As Dr. Bober pointed out, there are only two reasons for a 55-year-old man to be living with his mom.

One, he's a freeloader who won't take care of himself. The other is he's there to take care of her. But police say Brian Peck was not a major caregiver of his mom. So that leads the freeloader theory. In fact, prosecutor Maria McCarthy says that Peck transferred $4,000 from his mother's savings account to her checking account after she disappeared. And he apparently used that money to buy the luggage in which he stuffed her dismembered body in and tossed it into a lagoon. And in court, Peck told the judge that he had no money now, and so he requested a public defender be appointed as his lawyer. And again, he is not given a bond, so he's in jail. Prosecutor McCarthy also said Peck, who was his mother's only child,

was a failed businessman. She said he operated a financial business until about two years ago. Now let's hear more of what the prosecutor told reporters about Peck and what he told investigators. The defendant said that his mother was furious that he was playing his music so loud. The defendant said that the victim told him that she wanted him to leave. The defendant said that he knocked the victim's leg out from under her and stomped on her head and neck. The defendant is 6'1 and 260 pounds, and the victim was 5'4 and 140 pounds. The defendant said that on Wednesday, he drove the bags that contained her head and arms to Montrose Harbor

and threw those bags into Lake Michigan. The defendant said that the next day, he purchased the suitcase and the duffel bag, put her torso and legs into those items, drove down to Chicago, and threw them into the water near Diversity Harbor. I pass records from I-90 Expressway corroborate the defendants' movements. Let's also listen to this short statement that the Elgin police chief

put on the police Facebook page after the son was arrested. On Friday afternoon, Brian Peck reported to the Elgin Police Department that his mother went for a walk and never returned home. This started a massive search for Gail Peck. Members of the Elgin Police Department were on foot and in ATVs. Members of the community came out to assist us. We also had assets in the air from drones to helicopters. Over the course of the next few days, detectives determined that Brian Peck was ultimately responsible for killing his mother and discarding her body, and that the remains found in the Chicago Lagoon were that of Gail Peck.

Brian Peck will be in bond call this morning, charged with first degree murder, premeditation, first degree murder, great probability of bodily harm harm and concealment of a homicide it was clear to us from the very beginning talking with family and friends that Gail Peck was loved by all that she knew members of the Elgin police department and the Elgin community send our thoughts and prayers to the family of Gail Peck and now we head across the country and the story of a man who allegedly murders his wife because he, quote, wants to date other people. But before I take you there, I want to thank our partner today making our program possible. It's LegalZoom. As a business manager, you know how important it is to keep moving forward.

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For special savings, enter code Nancy, N-A-N-C-Y, in the referral box at checkout. Code Nancy equals special savings only at LegalZoom.com. LegalZoom.com. Thank you for what you're doing for business owners across America and for being our partner today on SiriusXM 132. Did a stock trader murder his wife so he could, quote, date other people? Okay, let that sink in just a moment. Did a stockbroker murder his wife so he could date other people? You know what?

Just when you think you've heard it all, you find out you haven't, and not in a good way. I'm talking about 44-year-old Roderick Covland, who allegedly killed his wife. She is found, her body is found anyway, in the bathtub, despite having dry clothes on. When police arrive to their posh apartment, they find her with dry clothes on but dead in the bathtub and now a motive emerges. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thanks for being with us. Straight out to Larry Mayer, Crime Stories investigative reporter, joining me along with Emmy award-winning reporter Art Harris and psychologist Dr. Chloe Carmichael. Larry, what happened? How did she end up dead in the bathtub but with dry clothes on? Police say that Rod Kovlid has changed his story about what happened on the day that his wife,

Shelly Daniszewski, died. Now, according to one newspaper account, a law enforcement source says this case sounds like an episode of the show Law & Order. In that, Covlin, who was a failed stockbroker and was trying to make a living playing backgammon. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay, right there. You know, Alan Duke, are you there? Yes, I am, Nancy. Alan Duke, if my husband marched in and said that he was getting rid of his business so he could be a professional backgammon player,

I would change the locks so fast his head would spin, okay? Did I hear that right, Larry Mayer, that he gave up being a stockbroker to be a professional backgammon player? That's true. He had also given up on the marriage. He had actually moved out of the family apartment on the Upper West Side of New York and moved across the hall into another apartment. The divorce had already started and a lawyer who was involved in it has characterized it as a bitter proceeding that involved a lot of inflammatory back and forth over custody of the couple's two children. Tell me about the children. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. One thing at a time. Okay. Tell me about the children. The children were both young at the time.

They were 9 and 12, a daughter and a son. And the 9-year-old daughter found her mother's body in the bathtub and ran or called her father, who came across the hall to retrieve. Okay, hold on. I'm trying to pick it apart by what you're saying. Okay. Dr. Chloe Carmichael, it's bad enough when you lose a parent. I mean, I lost my father just recently,

and I'm still upset about it. But this nine-year-old little girl finds her mother's dead body? I mean, she's never going to forget that. No, absolutely not. The horror and the shock, it's just hard to even fathom. And then when we layer on top of that, that her father, who is supposed to be her protector, the protector of her and of her mother, could possibly have actually been responsible, it can be really morally disorienting, to say the least.

I just, I just can't imagine going through life that way, remembering that moment that you walk in and you see your mom dead. No, I mean, at first, you know, the little girl might think that, you know, it was a game or something like that. And probably, you know, slowly, she'd start to realize that something was was really terribly wrong. You're right, Nancy, it would absolutely be a lifelong issue where she would probably need a lot of therapy. So art, what do you know, Art Harris with me, Emmy award winning journalist, what is it true that the wife even though he's divorcing her, why not just let the divorce run its course, Art Harris? His love life was so hampered by having an ex-wife, he had to kill her? He was under a tick-tock deadline because she was going to a lawyer the next day to cut him out of her will, that would have meant that the several million dollars on the table that he

is scheduled to inherit, you know, was going to be gone. So he's a... Well, wait a minute. Art, Art, Art, Art, you're married, right? I am. At least last time I checked, Nancy. Now, what man in his right mind would think that after he asks for a divorce, he gets to have the wife's inheritance? I mean, he's the one that wants to date other people. He's the one that moves out. He's the one that wants a divorce. So he wants the divorce, and he wants half of her estate when she dies? Am I understanding correctly, Art? Yeah. He wants to have his backgammon and eat it too and you know he's a backgammon player uh by by a choice and uh you

know obviously he uh was running short on cash and and uh did not did not want uh to be cut out of anything so he sounds like a freeloader to me because alan alan come on the man quits his job, says he'd rather play backgammon, moves into a very expensive apartment across the hall from their current apartment, wants a divorce because he wants to, quote, date other people, and wants half of her estate when she dies. I mean, he's clearly already mooching off her like nobody's business, and now she's dead in the bathtub with dry clothes on, Alan? Yeah, i think an

extreme midlife crisis going on here i i can't understand it but but he was very good at back gamut that's that's to his credit you know what i don't think this is a time for joking alan duke although i appreciate your sardonic sense of humor at all times but sip zip it. Okay, back to you, Larry. What else do we know? The problems started almost immediately after Shelley Daniszewski's death when her parents refused to allow an autopsy. Now, they are Orthodox Jewish, and as a result, the faith does not permit autopsy. It took investigators about three months. Okay, let me understand something. Hold on just a moment. Hold on. Art, why is that? Why can't there be an autopsy? As a bad Jew who has done a little bit of studying way back, it goes back to ancient times

when it was not believed you should cut on a body after a death. And it's an old Orthodox tradition, as is the thing that she was supposed to, quote, get a Jewish divorce under Orthodox rules. A wife has to get permission for a divorce. And I think he protested that for quite a while. Well, I thought he was the one that wanted to date other people, Art. How am I getting my wires crossed? Well, he wanted to have it all. Wait, wait, wait. I think I understand it. He wants to date other people and stay married

and continue sucking the wealth out of her estate like a tick. Is that right? She was very successful as a banker, Nancy, and had amassed, apparently, a nice nest egg. He didn't want to give that up, but he wanted to play backgammon too and wanted to be kept as a kept man.

So this is a little reverse of the stereotype. Take a look at the picture of Shelly right now. Shelly Danishevsky. I think she looks like Reese Witherspoon. Do you see the picture of her wearing the bangs? She's so cute and so full of life. Very pretty. The mother of his children.

He wants to stay married to her then. I thought he wanted to divorce her because he wanted to date other people. So he wants to date other people. She wants the divorce. And then lo and behold, just before she changes her will will i guess that would have ended his backgammon day gaming days she ends up dead in the bathtub now larry mayor crime online investigative reporter so you were saying that because of her religion that her parents did not want an autopsy done so okay then what happens right it took investigators about three months to convince them that there was evidence suggesting that perhaps foul play was involved.

And then at that point, their parents, the Daniszewskis, gave permission for her body to be exhumed and for an autopsy to be performed. And during that autopsy, the coroner found a broken bone in her neck, which suggested to him that this was a case of murder, not a case of an accidental fall. One doesn't generally break that bone when falling. It's usually a sign of strangulation or some sort of trauma to the throat. Well, it was very convenient to psychologist Dr. Chloe Carmichael that when police arrived on the scene, he, the husband, already had an explanation. He says, quote, she was trying to grab something, a piece of wood broke, and she landed in the bathtub and hit her head.

He had it all explained for the police when they got there, Dr. Chloe. Yes, he certainly did. It sounds like he put a lot of cognitive energy into creating a narrative. And he probably understood that an autopsy would be unlikely because obviously he was familiar with this with this culture. And so he was probably feeling very powerful as if he could really control and totally objectify and completely control the situation. I'm so glad that they did ultimately persuade the family to do an autopsy. Well, catch this. Art Harris, it was right down to the wire because the husband, Covlin, this has been going on for some time just two months before he was set to inherit her half of her four million dollar fortune that she had amassed

from her own hard work just two months away from getting her fortune cops close in on him, and he is charged with what? He gets off the train in Scarsdale, I guess, to go see his kids, their kids, and he's quite surprised that he is arrested. And suddenly, with the clock ticking, when I guess the deal that was made, if he was not arrested or charged for six years after she died, he would get this money. So two months to go, Nancy. And he was looking at a nice either a Hanukkah or a Christmas gift, which he has not gotten, will not get. Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Larry Mayer, Crime Online investigative reporter. Isn't it true that his then-girlfriend goes to police and gives them what they need to indict him on charges? She says he, quote, made statements implicating himself

in his wife's murder. Do we have any idea what he said, Larry? I have not seen an explicit report of what she gave to investigators investigators but it was one of his girlfriends identified perhaps as his chief girlfriend and prosecutors say wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute did you just say this was his chief girlfriend are there other girlfriends there were at the time at the time of his wife's death, prosecutors say he had multiple girlfriends. Dr. Chloe, what woman in her right mind wants a man that, A, quits his job to live off of his wife's income,

B, quits a lucrative job in order to be a backgammon player, and then has multiple girlfriends? Why would you want that in your life? Well, Nancy, that's an interesting question. A lot of times, actually, a sociopath can initially come across as very charming and very charismatic. Obviously, this man was able to convince his wife to marry him in the first place. So I would be curious about what kind of underlying sociopathy is really going on there. And, you know, to your point, why would a woman be drawn to that? Again, a man like this oftentimes can come across at first

like a knight in shining armor, very dazzling, larger than life. Also, I don't know this woman, the chief girlfriend's personal background, but if this man was presenting himself as a man with considerable financial resources, that might have been very dazzling and almost blinding to her. However, it's certainly to her credit that once she realized that the situation was not what it seemed, that she went right to the authorities if that's what happened. Ar Arne Harris what do you know about another scheme he allegedly was involved in and that was trying to marry his daughter off to quote a Mexican man I don't know who the man is in an attempt to collect his daughter's part of the inheritance when she was just 13 years old each of the children

would get the other half of the money, which is a million dollars, each is two million bucks. So he was trying to marry his daughter off to some guy in an effort to get her money when she's just 13. Nancy, he was a schemer and he was probably, he was trying to get a little advance on his crime in the making. You know, this is someone who was obviously devious and had every angle figured out, or at least so he thought,

but he was not as smart as he thought. Oh, I just don't understand how he had so many schemes going at one time in that one brain of his. Back to you, Larry. Larry Mayer joining us. What more do we know? Well, one thing I wanted to point out is that there is a way to make money playing backgammon. It was not entirely in jest when

Alan pointed out that he was very good at backgammon. He is considered one of the best backgammon players in New York. And backgammon as a game comes with a gambling cube as one of its basically basic pieces of equipment called a doubling cube in which the bet on each game can double with each roll of the dice so backgammon has been a gambling game for thousands of years so yes there is a way to do it i'm not sure that he had discovered a way to make money at it yet. He was at that point still living on his wife's money. It's considered a very high-end, high-roller, high-society gambling game favored by a lot of wealthy types, wealthy men. And what's the difference between this and the stock market,

which he was playing? Well, here you can control it a little more. At least you've got the little pieces of dice or whatever the pieces are, and you can calculate the odds of stock market. He's probably an insider information type guy, and he liked more control. If he controlled the crime scene, he controlled the cops' information, he's going to try to control every aspect of this evil. Okay, guys, to Larry Mayer and Art Harris, I appreciate the two of you schooling me in backgammon.

But in my mind, it's just like every other gambling scenario because that's what he was doing. This is not, as you said, you have the chance role in backgammon, which is the gambling aspect. As a former prosecutor, we prosecuted everything from murder to arson to RICO to gambling that ended up in murder. So in my mind, you may call it intellectual, wealthy pursuit backgammon, but in my mind, it's gambling, just like everything else. And you can put perfume on the pig all you want to, but it still smells.

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You know, I think I had it wrong. The daughter comes in and finds mommy submerged in the bathtub. Her body was not dry. His body was dry, which says to me, Dr. Chloe, he didn't try to get her out of the bathtub and save her. Well, of course not. Yeah, it certainly sounds like almost like some kind of a fantasy of his, you know, with his gambling, as you were discussing, and his propensity for risk-taking and seeing himself as kind of an omnipotent character with a lot of grandiose fantasies about himself, almost like this was some kind of a James Bond scenario that he had put together in mind, you know, with his poor wife as the victim.

You know, I will give you this, Larry and Art. He was a pro he even helped found the U.S. Backgammon Federation now what is that I'll be honest I don't know about the U.S. Backgammon Federation or what it stands for or what it means that you're a co-founder of it but you are right about that Larry he was well well rooted in it I just wonder if he was making any money off of it, or was he still leeching off of her, Larry? Well, as far as I know, he was still in hopes of collecting at least part of her estate when he was arrested. As Art mentioned, he had a deadline. He was two months away from collecting $2 million from her estate

when he was picked up at the train station in Scarsdale after blabbing to one of his girlfriends about it. So as far as I can tell, he was still living on her income as a banker, even though she had been gone for some time. By that time, the trust funds had been set up for their children, so their children's inheritance had been protected at that point. And as soon as he was arrested, her estate cut him off cold, and her parents sued him for wrongful death. Well, there's another issue. Did you know this, guys? Did you know that

against the wishes of her family, he tried to take her body and have it buried in Israel, and that the family went berserk, crying, quote, hysterically, when they saw that he was planting the words beloved mother and wife on her gravestone. Now, how can you just take somebody, a child's mother's body, to another country and bury it? Art Harris, how does that work? Nancy, he would have had to jump through a lot of hoops. I have not heard of that. I mean, it's hard enough to get a dead American out of a foreign country back here to bury versus bringing someone or exporting a dead body to Israel. So I think that was not

going to be an overnight happening. They, however, put a stop to that. And one other point, Nancy, is that his lawyer claims that that didn't actually happen. I bet the family has a different story. You know, another issue, I find it interesting, Larry Mayer, that she was found dead on New Year's Eve. I don't know the significance of that, but I really do think that that is significant. And did you know that it was originally ruled an accidental falling? Yes.

The time, though, it's not like it was at the time when people were out celebrating New Year's Eve. It happened fairly early in the morning. Police arrived at the apartment about 7.30 a.m. I think what threw the family over the edge was him placing a stone marker on her grave that read, Beloved Mother and Wife, despite the fact that she had retained or already obtained a get a religious divorce from him before she was killed but he still had that on her her gravestone uh at which Westchester County Cemetery to me you know to Dr. Chloe Carmichael doing that to her in death you you know, putting that marker there, even after she had a restraining order against him.

She had gotten a religious divorce anyway and was suing for civil divorce as well. And that Jewish tradition you have to get, as Art told us, a get, which is a religious divorce and a civil divorce. And he still did that, put that on her gravestone. I mean, that's awful Dr. Chloe well it certainly is it's awful and it really just reeks of somebody who's extremely calculating it wouldn't surprise me if he wanted to get the body out of the United States so that he could prevent a scenario exactly like we're finally seeing now, which is that an autopsy was somehow finally done. It sounds like a man who's very, very concerned with outward appearances, who has a lot of

fantasies about himself and power. And so if he could arrange for this burial to occur that actually somehow painted him as a victim, as a loving husband who had lost his beautiful wife it really sounds like a calculated move to me and art what do you know about the fact that in april he filed papers at westchester county surrogate court asking to be named guardian of an etna life policy his had, and that she had left it for Anna and Miles, who were about nine and five at that time. Nancy, this is in keeping with someone who is looking for every loophole and would even use the Jewish religion as a loophole to get a body

out, you know, the get divorced to try to get around, all these things his wife had put in place. I mean, he was trying to get away from him. He was a violent guy, had just filed a restraining order against him. So the clock was ticking. You asked about why New Year's Eve. He didn't have much time to pull this off. He knew. And I think that that led to this cascading of events. And probably he made this mistake about not getting wet when he put the body in the tub. So where does it stand right now, Larry Mayer? This case was in court a few weeks ago for a motions hearing. They're still in pretrial motions at this time, and prosecutors are still putting together their case to take to a trial court. I don't know that

the trial date has been set yet. So the case is heading to trial to Art Harris' prediction? I think his backgammon game is about to come to an end, Nancy, unless he can find anybody in prison who plays, and that's doubtful because it's a different social strata, shall we say. So the mother was thrilled that they finally made an arrest, made the charges. Her divorce lawyer, it did not surprise him. When he learned that his client had been killed, he immediately thought that the husband did it.

Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.