Crime Weekly - S3 Ep145: Aliza Sherman | Husband Had Motive, Lawyer Had Opportunity (Part 2)

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

On a Sunday evening in March of 2013, 53 year old Aliza Sherman went to meet with her divorce lawyer in downtown Cleveland, just days before her long and bitter divorce was set to go to trial. She ne...ver made it inside. Instead, she was found stabbed to death on the sidewalk outside the office door. Her purse was still with her, her SUV was parked nearby, she was still wearing all of her jewelry. Nothing about it looked like a random act of violence, yet nothing about it made any sense. For years, Aliza’s murder lingered in that terrible space between mystery and suspicion, where answers feel close enough to touch, but never close enough to hold. But as time passed, the case began to expose something even more chilling than the attack itself. Little by little, the names and details surrounding two men emerged, two men Aliza should have been able to trust more than almost anyone in her life. One was tied to the home and family she had built. The other was tied to the legal fight that was supposed to help set her free. And in that realization lies the deepest horror of this case: that the people with the closest access to your life, your fears, your plans, and your vulnerabilities may not be protecting you at all. This story is not just about who killed Aliza Sherman. It is about what can hide beneath the surface for years. About betrayal wrapped in familiarity. About trust handed to the wrong people. And about the devastating possibility that the people standing in your inner circle may be the very same people who are quietly working against you.Try our coffee! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.comBecome a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeeklyShop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shopYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcastWebsite: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.comInstagram: @CrimeWeeklyPodTwitter: @CrimeWeeklyPodFacebook: @CrimeWeeklyPodADS:1. PocketHose - Text CW to 64000 to get a FREE Pocket Pivot and a 10-Pattern Sprayer with the purchase of ANY Copperhead Hose!2. https://www.BollandBranch.com/CrimeWeekly - Take 20% off sitewide and get FREE shipping!3. https://www.HelloFresh.com/CrimeWeekly10FM - Get 10 FREE meals and a FREE Zwilling Knife on your third box!4. https://www.SKIMS.com - Shop Stephanie's favorites at SKIMS! After checkout, let them know we sent you!5. https://www.MintMobile.com/CrimeWeekly - Get 3 Months of Premium Wireless for $15 a month!

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Lavasar. Okay. So last week, we laid the groundwork for Elisa Sherman. We got to know her not just as a victim, but as a woman who was loved, trusted, and deeply important in the lives of the people around her. We also saw the reality of her marriage to Sanford Sherman, who she was married to for 30 years, years of conflict, control, fear, and a divorce that had turned into Sanford. psychological warfare. Elisa believed Sanford was hiding money, manipulating the system, and she felt that he was pushing her to the edge. She even told people she feared he might kill her, but then she and a forensic accountant discovered new financial information that armed her for the coming legal battle. But then only days before the divorce went to court, Elisa was summoned to meet her lawyer, Gregory Moore, at his office. The office was locked. Gregory Moore never came out, and within
Starting point is 00:01:08 moments, Elisa was ambushed and stabbed to death. So by the end of part one, we had two names standing at the center of this case, Sanford, the husband that Alisa was trying to escape, and Gregory Moore, the lawyer who was supposed to be helping her break free from this marriage and stop this two-year-long horrible divorce. So that's kind of where we left off. And I'm sure based on what we talked about, a lot of people were like, dude, Sanford did this, right? Because It seems that way. And this kind of continues because it's not just what we already talked about. There's more.
Starting point is 00:01:47 So in June of 2014, Alisa's daughter, Jennifer Sherman, sued her father, Sanford, for $2 million. The lawsuit said that Jennifer, who was the co-executor of her mother, Alisa's estate, was seeking to recover money connected to that Merrill Lynch account that Sanford Sherman had opened in Alisa's name in May of 2000. The lawsuit accused Sanford of conversion, breach of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, and civil conspiracy. So basically, Jennifer and her lawyers were claiming that Sanford had wrongfully exercised control over money that did not belong to him. He had forged Elisa's signature on the power of attorney form, which had been used to open and access the account. He had unfairly and financially benefited from something that didn't belong to him, and he'd acted in concert with one or more individual. to conceal Elisa's assets from her.
Starting point is 00:02:38 The claim was that Sanford and other unidentified co-conspirators created a document that made him power of attorney, and he forged her signature. Elisa was completely unaware of the existence of the bank account, and Sanford had drained the account before Elisa became aware of it. So basically, Jennifer was saying that since there had at one time been a certain amount of money in that bank account, a lot of money, the account had been solely in her mother's name,
Starting point is 00:03:03 and Sanford had forged the documents, which allowed him to transfer the money out of the account, all of that money belonged to Elisa, and Sanford had essentially stolen it. So in 2016, Sanford and his lawyers responded, claiming that Jennifer's claims were factually and legally unsupportable, and they filed a motion for summary judgment. And that means if this motion was granted,
Starting point is 00:03:27 it would stop the civil lawsuit from going to trial. And now in these documents, in these documents, we find a wealth of information. And it's very interesting what we find out because first, it's revealed that in May of 2000, the power of attorney was executed and Sanford's longtime assistant, Gail Reese, signed the document as a witness to Elisa's signature. So during a deposition, Sanford was asked about the document in question. And he was asked a lot of questions about it. He was like, hey, were you present when Elisa signed it? Do you remember seeing her sign it? Did she give you the document?
Starting point is 00:04:05 did you give her the document? Was your signature on it first? He's very evasive. He's very evasive. He knows exactly what to say and what not to say. So Sanford said he was not present when Alisa signed it. He couldn't remember if he had signed it before or after Alisa. And he said the account number and the date and other details filled in on the paperwork were not in his handwriting. And when he was asked if he thought the zeros in the date looked like the zeros in his address that he'd already admitted to having written on the form, he said he usually wrote smaller than that. So basically, the form's got a bunch of other stuff filled out besides signatures. And Sanford is saying, I didn't fill this form out. And I can't remember who did. And they're like, well, is this your handwriting in the
Starting point is 00:04:52 date? Is this your handwriting here? And he's like, no, no, no. But then he had already admitted that near his signature, he had wrote the address where he and Alisa lived. And they were like, well, why did the zeros in your address look like the zeros in the date? And he was like, I don't know. I usually write smaller than that. So he's basically saying none of this stuff is in my handwriting at all. It could be Elisa's handwring, could be somebody else's. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:05:17 It's not mine. And this is something that doesn't usually result in a murder, right? But this is something that you do have occur a lot with disagreements, I guess, in a relationship where it's a he said, she said battle, literally. And what does it usually come down to? money money right the the the dividing of assets and with eliza no longer being here it's basically his story and that's all you have to go off of then if she were here obviously she would be able to dispute a lot of what he's saying well she kind of did right to a to a certain degree but but
Starting point is 00:05:49 the problem here is and i i i always profess this even in other cases where people who have something to hide have the selective memory common sensical things that you would remember because it's not like you're signing these types of documents every day. You would know who signed it first, when it was signed, whose handwriting was on. Exactly. These are basic questions that 99.9% of the population would be able to recall, especially in that short period of time. And yet you have this sudden case of amnesia. Or just more in general, Derek, like, who usually had the paperwork drawn up for you guys to sign? So there, you know, there could be one spouse who's usually bringing the paperwork to the other spouse, hey, this came from the lawyers or this came from
Starting point is 00:06:36 the accountants, can you sign it? And that's usually kind of one, the more organized person will do that. And the other person will just be like, yeah, I would usually just sign the stuff he put in front of me. Yeah, I'd usually prepare the stuff to put in front of her to sign, etc. Yeah, exactly. And all of this being true, we can agree on this. And yet, even with these questionable actions and the questions surrounding his memory, It doesn't automatically mean that he's responsible for whatever happened to Elisa. Or I should say, we know what happened to Elisa, but who's responsible for what happened to her? It doesn't look good, but it wouldn't be the first case where you have multiple people, let's just call them persons of interest, who have a potential motive and turn out to have nothing to do with what actually happened.
Starting point is 00:07:21 This is where you earn your paycheck as a detective, right? It's not always clear cut who's responsible. And it's also your responsibility not to get tunnel vision just because one person. particular person looks better than the others. So that's something where right now, at this point in the story, a lot is pointing at Sanford, but I haven't seen anything yet to connect him directly to her murder. So we need a little bit more here other than motive. So when Sanford was asked if he recognized his wife, Elisa's signature, he said, quote, that's sometimes how she'd sign, end quote. So Sanford claimed that this time Elisa was suffering from something called contracture. Now, this is like
Starting point is 00:08:01 a type of scarring in the soft tissues that causes the tissues to tighten or stiffen, and it most often affects the fingers, limbs, areas with scar tissue. But because of this contracture, Sanford said Elisa's signature would look different all the time. He said she had suffered from contracture since they were married, but it had gotten worse as they got older. He couldn't recall if she'd actually ever gone to a doctor for help with this or if she'd ever actually been diagnosed with contracture. He just said, she had it and that was it. And it would just get worse and she would do things and sign things differently and she had to do different things as the contracture got worse. But he also said
Starting point is 00:08:41 Alisa was bulimic and he said, you know, she thought she had told him she was on medications for anxiety and depression. And once again, this is all very speculative. Like you're her husband and you're saying she's got depression, anxiety and bulimia and contracture. But you also have no idea whether she ever went to any doctor to get help with this. So if your wife has bulimia, you'd probably want to know that she was going to a medical professional to get help for this. Yeah, be treated for that, yeah. You wouldn't just be like, I don't know, maybe she did. I mean, if you were that kind of husband, then you were not a good husband, which once again, like Derek said, it could just be him being a bad husband and not following up, not necessarily
Starting point is 00:09:23 that he's lying about these things, but there is no paperwork or like, paper trail that shows Elisa had any of these conditions. Not to go too much on a sidetrack here, but have you seen the movie, and this isn't an ad, by the way, have you seen the movie Mercy yet? No. With Chris Pratt? No. It's a good movie for everybody out there to watch.
Starting point is 00:09:42 I'm not saying it's the best movie I've ever seen, but to give you the 10-second elevator pitch, basically it uses AI to develop a probability of guilt instead of using human, like a trial. It's a more efficient practice. And Chris Pratt- like Minority Report, kind of? Kind of. It's not pre-crime. It's more after the fact taking the evidence and coming up with a statistical probability that you're guilty. And I don't want to spoil anything.
Starting point is 00:10:05 But in this in this story, based on the past behavior of Chris Pratt and the behavior leading up to the incident, it's highly probable that Chris Pratt is the murderer. That's all I'm going to say. But he's not, right? That's the logical conclusion. He's a good guy. He's a good guy in a lot of it. And I think even in the trailers, it's kind of suggested that.
Starting point is 00:10:26 But overall, when you watch it and you see the video surveillance, And you see all these things. If you didn't know who Chris Pratt was the actor and what his role is going to be in these movies, you would think a certain thing. And including that's what AI concluded. So, yes, there were character flaws in Chris Pratt in this movie that suggested certain things. But it didn't mean he was a killer, even though the AI had come to that conclusion. So very timely in what we're covering here to talk about it. I think very timely in general because.
Starting point is 00:10:56 Yes. Things aren't always what they appear to be. be. I actually just saw that people are using their AI to like ask about relationship problems. And this husband and wife showed that they were using AI separately and explaining the same scenario to AI. And AI, they're both like respective AIs were like, your husband is terrible. Leave him. And then the husband's AI was like, your wife is lying to you and manipulating you. Like, don't stand for this. But they, it was turning them against each other. That's a movie. AI's becoming a problem.
Starting point is 00:11:28 Do you know what Ryan Surnan is, the, the realtor that's on all the, the Bravo shows? You definitely know if you've seen it. Like million dollar real estate. Yeah. He was just on his Instagram story like two days ago saying, I just lost a $10 million deal because of AI because the seller and the buyer both went on chat GBT and asked if the sale was good for them. And chat GBT for the seller said, no, you can get more. And for the buyer, it said you're paying too much. And now he's trying to combat it.
Starting point is 00:11:58 Like this is an actual thing going on right now. So did both of them back out or did one of the other back out? The deal is dead right now. He's working on it. Because both of them are like, listen, AI says, you're trying to screw me. That's actually a good movie idea that this AI is like making a wife and a husband paranoid against each other. And then they become like Mr. and Mrs. Smith. This is my official trademarking.
Starting point is 00:12:21 All right. So anyways, Sanford's longtime assistant. Remember, her name's Gail Reese. She worked for him at his ophthalmology. practice. She was then brought in and she was asked about the power of attorney form. And she said she didn't recall signing it, but she was like, it's been 15 years, you know. This is my signature, yes, but I can't remember if Alisa was there when it was signed. And then she was asked during her deposition, quote, is it possible that Dr. Sherman would have brought this to you and said,
Starting point is 00:12:49 listen, you know, Alisa signed this at home. Would you witness this for me? And you would have done that if he'd asked, end quote. And Gail replied, quote, I probably would have, end quote. We see that a lot with notaries as well. After the fact, we've brought them into court and it's like, you notarized this. Were you there when they actually signed it? And they're like, no, I wasn't. I wasn't. It was just someone I've worked with before. Really? And I notarized it after the fact. And, you know, there's issues because now defeats the whole purpose of having a notary present. Exactly. And that's why some people get like really upset about notaries like oh my god why do i have to do it's so official but that's the only thing you really have to confirm it's your signature i i do i've had it's been like
Starting point is 00:13:29 months that i've had to have something signed in front of a notary yeah they keep emailing me and i'm like i just don't have time right now and i'm but i wish i just knew somebody over there who would sign it i got a little hack for you uPS does it uPS does what uPS store does uhs so if you want to go into uPS store this is also not an ad yeah not an ad i'm just plugging them today but uPS store anytime down UPS store notary and mercy. Yep. If you go to UPS store, they have notaries at the there that can sign, that can witness the signing of documents.
Starting point is 00:13:57 And you got to wonder, how many other documents would Gail probably have signed if Dr. Sherman had just been like, hey, you know, Elisa has signed this at home already. Can you just notarize this for me? You know, she's busy with the kids, blah, blah, blah, blah. Not that Gail's doing anything wrong. Gail's probably a mother too. She's like, yeah, who's got time for this? And now Sanford knows he can go to her and do it after the fact.
Starting point is 00:14:16 So he's going to, that's always going to be the witness. Yeah, because she's worked for him forever. Like, even the kids knew who she was. There's a power dynamic there as well, right? Like, I mean, that's her boss. So if he says, hey, can you do this for me? Are you going to say no? No, I don't feel comfortable doing that?
Starting point is 00:14:30 No, of course not. Probably not going to push back, yeah. So then a forensic document examiner reviewed Elisa's actual signatures. And then the signatures on the POA form and other disputed financial documents. And their expert opinion was that there was a strong probability that Elisa did not write any of the signatures or initials on these disputed documents, including the POA form. So this expert also said that Elisa's signature was consistent throughout her lifetime, unlike Sanford saying because of this contracture, Elisa signed her name differently all the time.
Starting point is 00:15:02 Now, Sanford testified that he did not recall ever signing Elisa's name to anything. And when asked if that meant he might have, because the lawyers were like, wait, you don't recall. Does that mean you might have? He replied, quote, I doubt it, end quote. But like I said, he can just say anything now. Elisa is not alive to dispute this. You don't have any pushback.
Starting point is 00:15:21 But she did tell her lawyers during the divorce, I never signed this POA form. So that is like on the record that she claimed before she died, I never did this. I wonder how that works though. Maybe some of the attorneys in the comments will be able to tell me because a lot of the times that would be, that would be struck from the record because it's hearsay. But it's her saying it about herself. But she's not saying it. So when someone gets on the stand and they say. No, but they have it in an email from her.
Starting point is 00:15:45 Okay. That's better. So I'm sure that could be admitted as evidence because a lot of the times if it doesn't matter if it's an attorney, best friend, mother doesn't matter. If they say, yeah, Stephanie told me this, it's objection. No, it's Elisa emailing her divorce lawyer and being like, why would I ever sign a POA for them? Like, I'm not disabled. There was no issues, yes. And it's to her lawyer.
Starting point is 00:16:07 So it's not just her writing to a friend. I also think a judge would look at that and say, because of the circumstances where I'm going to be a little bit more lenient in my admissibility as far as what we accept. She's dead. Yeah. So this is all we have. This is the best we're going to get. We can't bring her in. Or the opposite.
Starting point is 00:16:21 They might say, well, she was in the middle of a divorce and trying to get as many assets as she could. So maybe she was lying about never signing that POA form. You're not wrong. Yeah. You're not wrong. That's how Sanford's attorneys would have looked at it. All right.
Starting point is 00:16:33 We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by pocket hose, the world's number one expandable hose. Yep. The spring is here, which means that people are suddenly very motivated to go outside and fix the things that they ignored all winter, me being one of them. Somehow, the thing that portrays you every time when springtime comes is the hose. Hopefully you didn't leave it outside all winter like I have done in the past.
Starting point is 00:17:00 But even if you like wrapped it up and put it away, you pull it out now. It's kinked. It's twisted. It's like all messed up. It's cutting off the water right when you need it. Every single time doesn't fail. And that's why the pocket hose. Copperhead is such a big upgrade.
Starting point is 00:17:17 It has the pocket pivot. that swivels 360 degrees. You can actually have full water flow and you can move around without fighting the hose. Yeah, I'm not going to lie. I was a little skeptical about it returning back to its original compact size
Starting point is 00:17:29 like it was when I opened the box. So I'm like, all right, before we promote this, I got to try it out. So I turned on the water, sprayed a little bit, you know, into the grass, even though my water is basically everywhere at this point already.
Starting point is 00:17:39 It's like a lake back there. And as soon as I turned it off, boom, right back down to the original size. Super impressed. Like I was saying, the only problem is I need one for all my space. tickets now. The pocket hose, it's rust-proof, anti-burst. And like Derek said, when you turn off the water,
Starting point is 00:17:53 it shrinks back down to its pocket size, which makes it super, super easy to store. No winding, no wrestling it into place. And then when you bring it out for the following season, it's not just a completely useless mess. Yep, it's really lightweight and durable. And that's why it's backed with a 10-year warranty, which is awesome on a hose. Yep. And the brand new pocket hose copperhead with pocket pivot is a total game changer. I do love it. It has been amazing for me. I didn't realize how annoying my old hose was until I used this. So the way it expands when you turn the water on, then it shrinks back when you're done. It just makes everything easier. I will not be going back. And you can tell them how they can get a great deal right now. And then you can also take advantage of this deal and get another one for your other spigots.
Starting point is 00:18:36 Yeah. Simply put, it should take less time to unwind and wind up the hose than you actually using it. That has never been the case with my old hose. It is now the case with pocket. hose. And if you guys are looking to upgrade your hose as well for a limited time, our listeners and viewers can get a free pocket pivot and their 10 pattern sprayer with a purchase of any size copperhead hose, all you have to do is text CW to 64,000. Yep, that's CW to 64,000. So you can get your two free gifts with purchase. Once again, CW to 64,000 message and data rates may apply C-terms for details. Okay, so Sanford Sherman also claimed that this Merrill Lynch account in Aliza's name wasn't opened surreptitiously.
Starting point is 00:19:25 Okay? It wasn't something that was like, oh, I'm going to hide money from her. He said there was a legit reason. He said it was because he didn't have medical malpractice insurance. And an attorney had advised him to move half of his money into his wife, Alisa's name to keep the money protected in the event that he was sued. Which is interesting because, first of all, that wouldn't even matter. I looked into it.
Starting point is 00:19:50 legally lawyers, if he was sued by somebody, like let's say he did some ophthalmology thing and made his patient blind. And then the patient goes to sue him. And he's like, ha, that's what you think you're going to do. You're going to sue me and get money. But I don't have medical malpractice insurance. And it only looks like I have X amount of dollars. They would still, like the person who was suing him, their lawyers would still look into accounts that were affiliated with his wife. they would still look into that. And it would still, it would look at the fact that Sanford Sherman had a power of attorney over that account, right?
Starting point is 00:20:28 And he was married to Elisa. So effectively, that would still be considered his asset because he has power of attorney. So he can still, he knows about the money. He can manage it. He can access it. And he's married to the woman who's named the accounts in. So technically it would still be considered his asset because it wouldn't be like it was Elisa who had the only access to that account, Sanford had the power of attorney to the account.
Starting point is 00:20:53 So it looks like he hit it. I'm going off what you're saying because I'm assuming you've looked into it. I don't know the technicalities behind that. I know in just the corporate world a lot of the times people will put money into a trust, the businesses into a trust. And even though they're their businesses, they have power of attorney over that trust. But it's technically not viewed. is there money and therefore can't be attacked or gone after if there is a lawsuit.
Starting point is 00:21:19 I know that that's been suggested by my accountant in the past when it comes to my real estate property, putting it into a trust that I'll have the right over. But if they sue me for falling or something, they can't go after that. So I'm not privy to like the details of it. If someone's watching this episode going, that's not how it works, fill us in. Well, that's because it's a different entity. Yeah. It's a same entity.
Starting point is 00:21:42 So technically the trust would be acting. as like a separate entity. But you're saying because they're married. But because they're married and they're both, and this would be a civil lawsuit. Right. It's not like. He tried to hide it but just didn't do a very good job.
Starting point is 00:21:56 Because I don't think that's the reason he opened it. You know, I think that they're trying to make it sound like we weren't trying to hide money. It was because he didn't have medical malpractice. And this was suggested to him by a lawyer who also happened to be a family friend. So this wasn't given to him as like legal advice that was on the record. It was just like a friend who was a lawyer, said, why don't you do this? So the structure,
Starting point is 00:22:15 was not. It wouldn't have worked. It was not appropriate for what he wanted to accomplish. Exactly. And then the attorney, Sanford's attorney, was also like, hey, none of this matters anyways, because the money that we put in there or the money that Sanford put in there, that was his money. It came from his earnings at his ophthalmology practice and investments made from those earnings during his marriage to Elisa. Therefore, all of this money's marital property, and it couldn't be considered solely Elisa's, even though the bank account only had her name on it. So Sanford's defense leaned heavily on the idea that the money in question was marital property, that it was earned during the marriage, and therefore, in Sanford's view, it was still his. So it doesn't matter what account it was in and whose name was on the account. But the estate's
Starting point is 00:23:02 attorney, so Elise's estate attorney and Jennifer, her daughter, they pushed back hard on that argument, saying that Sanford was treating this like a divorce case, which it wasn't. Because by this point, there was no divorce to settle. There was only a civil lawsuit asking a very different question. Like, we're not trying to see how we divide the assets and the money fairly. That's what we would talk about during a divorce. We're trying to decide now whether Sanford, Sherman, wrongfully took or controlled assets that legally belonged to Elisa and her estate.
Starting point is 00:23:33 And those are two completely different legal standards. So Sanford then tried to claim that the money had been taken from the account. yes, but he had spent all that money on family expenses. And he was like, you know, Jennifer's school and this person's school and I had to get a car for this person. He's like all of it was spent on the money anyway. So now it doesn't matter. The marital property, okay, you're going to dispute that.
Starting point is 00:23:59 But I spent it on the family. So it really doesn't matter. But there was evidence that this wasn't true either. No. Yeah. And by the way, it really doesn't matter. if he's not entitled to the money, regardless of what he used it on,
Starting point is 00:24:12 it's not going to justify the actions, right? He could have taken it and donated it to St. Jude's, it's not going to mean that it's okay. It's not his right, his money to do that with. Well, remember, his two kids, Jennifer and Joshua, they're now co-executors.
Starting point is 00:24:25 So I think he's thinking, if I can convince them that this money was spent on you, your education, et cetera, they'll walk away. They'll be like, okay, dad, sorry for the lawsuit. But like you said, shocker, not all the money was used.
Starting point is 00:24:38 on the kids. I don't think any of the money was used on the kids. Oh, not even anything. No. So multiple friends of Sanford's testified that they'd been to strip clubs with him between four to 12 times between 2000 and 2016. Well, I mean, technically that could be for someone's education. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:24:54 They go to school too, Stephanie. He did bring his son, Joshua. Right. And by the way, the exotic dancers maybe get building up their college funds as well. Yeah. So you're joking here for anybody who's not picking up on my, Someone in the comments is not going to pick up on my sarcasm. So let me be clear here.
Starting point is 00:25:10 I'm joking. It's kind of like an education grant in a way. He's providing for the community. Now, listen, not only did Sanford bring his friends to the strip clubs and bring his son Joshua to the strip clubs. And you know how I said multiple friends said they'd been with him between four to 12 times between 2000 and 2016? It was made very clear in these documents that they all weren't the same times.
Starting point is 00:25:33 So it's not like a total of four to 12 times. It's like four to 12 times for each person. Yeah, wow. That's a lot of strip clubs. Yeah, he was going a lot of visits. He was going a lot of legs and eggs. You wouldn't know that. That's a local reference to a strip club here.
Starting point is 00:25:46 They have breakfast called legs and eggs. Legs and eggs? Yep. I've never been, but I've heard. Wait, so you eat breakfast while watching the dancers? Strippers, yeah. Legs and eggs. That seems a little much.
Starting point is 00:25:58 Is it in the morning? Or is it like a 24-hour breakfast option? I would say it's more brunch. It's more brunch. It's not like 8 o'clock in the morning, although some of them are like 10 o'clock in the morning. I remember it more. I don't know if they still do it, but it was like 10 o'clock in the morning. I truly have never gone, but I know many people who had.
Starting point is 00:26:15 I would, I'm not opposed to it. I just never, eggs and, you know, strippers. Legs and, yeah, I mean, it wasn't my thing. Yeah, I mean, I just feel like that's a little too early. It is. It's a little too much stimulation. I just want to enjoy my eggs. Unless you've been up all night.
Starting point is 00:26:28 And from, you know, I don't know how good the breakfast was. Probably not good. Let's be honest. You're not there. You're there for the legs. You're there for the legs. You're there for the legs, yeah. Now, listen, this is a crazy thing what I'm about to tell you next.
Starting point is 00:26:40 Oh, we haven't gotten to the crazy part of this story yet. We haven't gotten to the crazy part, man. Okay, Sanford's going to strip clubs. Okay, he's a man. I'm sorry, but y'all do that. I'm not opposed to exotic dancing. I think it's a great thing. It's a form of dance.
Starting point is 00:26:56 Why do we call it exotic dancing? It's such a stupid thing to call it. It's artwork, okay? It's a form of art. So y'all do that. We get it. this his like obsession with going to strip clubs it seems to be connected to a 2008 defamation lawsuit that was filed against sanford by his cousin morris dorfman so morris alleged that sanford had attended one or more gentlemen's clubs strip clubs while impersonating him okay impersonating his cousin morris sanford's pretending to be morris and on several occasions sanford pretending to be morris had sought out and made vulgar and suggestive comments to an exotic dancer known to be a friend of
Starting point is 00:27:38 Morris's family. Sanford told the dancer that he wanted to have sex with her while pretending to be Morris, but he also told the dancer that he wanted to have sex with Morris's sister and niece while he was pretending to be Morris. Oh, that's not good. He then threatened to kill the dancer and her father if she told Morris's sister or niece about his desire to have sex with them. Okay, so Sanford's saying, hey, I'm Morris Dorfman and you know my family. You don't know me, but you know my family. So you know my sister and you know my niece. And I want to have sex with them.
Starting point is 00:28:11 And I'll kill you and your father if you tell them that I want to do this. What the hell? Also not good for what we're talking about in this case as far as possibility of being involved in a murder. But just why would you do this? It doesn't make a lot of sense. What the hell is the motive? I can't rationalize the irrational. Like, are you saying this stuff because you want to say it and you just don't want anyone to know it's you?
Starting point is 00:28:36 Or do you have something against your cousin and you're trying to make him look bad out there? I think he just doesn't want people knowing it's him. I think he doesn't want people knowing it's him. Yeah, I think it's exactly how it looks. Weird. So Sanford was accused of carrying on like this for several months without his cousin Morris's knowledge or consent, obviously. Morris is out there building up a reputation and he doesn't even know it. Yeah, because Morris found out about this.
Starting point is 00:28:58 Obviously, months and months had passed. And he's like, what the hell? What? Yeah. And then he's like, why is Sandy doing this crazy Sandy? You know, I don't understand the logic to that. And I guess because maybe because Sanford's a kind of high profile, like he's got an ophthalmology practice.
Starting point is 00:29:20 That's what I was leaning toward. If it's not deeper than that, it's just he's. And he's married to Elisa, by the way, right? He's married. He's a doctor. and in those types of communities, the dancers and the bouncers and the owners, they all talk.
Starting point is 00:29:37 It's no secret who frequents those clubs. Even as detectives, we know the regulars at these locations, politicians, etc. So if you're not someone who's in the public eye, like on TV, it would be who of you to go in there and give a different name, especially if you are talking to a lot of different dancers inside the establishment because when they start to cross-reference information, they're basically referring to someone who doesn't exist
Starting point is 00:30:01 or is not actually going to the place. So if they're out there in their group chats or whatever, they're talking amongst each other, they're going to be referring to someone who's not you. So even if they do a quick search, your name isn't going to pop up. Yeah, and keep in mind, Sanford's using Morris's name, and he's threatening this woman,
Starting point is 00:30:18 don't tell anyone or I'll kill you and your father, and Morris still found out. So that just shows you how quickly the information about who's going to these places and what they're saying and what they're doing can get around. because she was threatened with her life and still somehow that that information managed to make its way back to Morris eventually. Yeah, and I mean, it's a common thing in gentlemen's establishments where you'll have both
Starting point is 00:30:41 the patrons and the dancers using fake names. I've seen it in different investigations that we've worked where it kind of goes back to a dance club like this and we're trying to track down certain people and it gets very difficult, especially if it's customers because a lot of them are in there, not telling you exactly who they are for whatever reason they may have. Well, there was several of Sanford's friends that were deposed. And they were like, hey, did you go to strip clubs with Sanford? And they didn't want to answer right away.
Starting point is 00:31:11 Larry Shanker, you remember Larry, right? Yeah. He's one of them. And he's asked, you know, did you go to gentlemen's clubs with Sanford? Or was Sanford known to go to gentlemen's clubs? And he's like, yeah, he went to gentlemen's clubs. And they were like, well, was he known to have a fondness for some of the women who worked there? and he's like, what do you mean by that of fondness?
Starting point is 00:31:30 And he's like, well, did he like the women? He's like, he liked all women. And he's like, and they were like, well, was he paying for dances? And Larry was like, what do you mean by that? And they're like, do you know what a gentleman's club is? Yeah. And he's like, he's like, yes, I know. And they're like, well, have you ever been to one?
Starting point is 00:31:46 And he's like, of course not, you know, but you know for a damn sure he had been. What is this thing that you refer to as a gentleman's club? He's like a gentleman's club? The women there were just serving drinks. Of course, he was very fond of them all. They were bringing him drinks. No, Sanford's friends said every time they went with him, he was paying, right? And he was throwing money out for these women, for private dances, all sorts of things.
Starting point is 00:32:10 And he would pay for them to go. And this would be right around the time that he's starving Elisa out during this divorce, saying he doesn't have any money and he's broke. All right. Additionally, Sanford outside of the strip clubs, was known to live the high life. he was a gambler. He liked to go to casinos. He liked to bet on horse races. And Sanford was also witnessed paying the bill when he was out with friends. And he would usually do this with cash. And the forensic accountant found a large number of unexplained cash transactions coming out of
Starting point is 00:32:43 that Merrill Lynch account. Right. So for Sanford to say, I spent this all on the family stuff. Now, those cash withdrawals that he makes, those are going to be hard for any lawyer to prove what that's for. For all they know, he could be pulling the cash out and using it for the family, but he's using it for whatever he wants to use it for, and he knows very well that they can't track it. It's not like there's a credit card saying, oh, I spent this on Misty Dreams at Legs and Eggs last Sunday. Yeah. That is also a way that a lot of times people will launder money, casinos and strip clubs, because it's a lot of exchanging of cash, right? And so you can go into a bar and say, hey, listen, I want to take a thousand bucks, give me a thousand ones.
Starting point is 00:33:27 And now you basically just laundered that money. Because they don't know if you lost it or what. Through the club. Yeah. Through the club. No paper trail. I feel like not anymore because everything's digital and track. Well, I mean, you're going to have to pull the money out of somewhere.
Starting point is 00:33:39 So yes, if you have to go back a little bit, but if you have the cash and you're looking to exchange it or get rid of serial numbers or whatever, that's a little bit more extreme. But casinos, strip clubs, that is a couple ways to do it. Well, it kind of seemed like Sanford was like taking money out, cash out. Yes. So they only allow you to take a certain amount of cash out, right, every day. So he was taking a little bit out as much as he could, like regularly. Out of this account.
Starting point is 00:34:06 Yeah. And then in cash. So who knows what happened. And if he's not entitled to that money, there's a little word we'd like to refer to that as embezzlement. Taking out small amounts of money that is not yours and trying to not be, you know, trigger or anything where people are going to notice, that is embezzlement. And then who knows? Yeah, who knows what he was doing with that cash?
Starting point is 00:34:28 Was he spending it at the strip clubs or was he just like putting it under his mattress and saving it up and then making a larger deposit into another account later so that those things can't be tracked. So from 2009 to 2014, Sanford gave a friend 20 grand. And the friend was like, yeah, it was kind of said like this was a loan, but then he never asked me to pay him back. And that same friend testified that Sanford loaned money to other people. And once again, this is 2009 to 2014.
Starting point is 00:34:58 He's doing all of this while he's talking to his friend Larry and being like, Eliza spends too much money on clothes and she wants to buy our kids a car. And he's just giving out 20 grand in loans and going to strip clubs every weekend. He's torturing Eliza during this divorce. He's freezing her accounts. He's crying broke to the judge. But he's just handed out money to every other single person. Now, additionally, Sanford was having an affair.
Starting point is 00:35:23 So a friend of his testified that Sanford had met a woman in Boca Raton, Florida in 2006. Can I guess was she a dancer? No, I don't know if she was. Oh, I'm surprised. All right. I missed. She was going through a divorce at the time when he met her in 2006. Okay.
Starting point is 00:35:37 But remember, Sanford's still married to Elisa at this time. They haven't even, she hasn't even filed for divorce yet. He's being here in 2006. This friend went with Sanford on a trip to Long Island in July of 2009 to meet with this woman. and they stayed with her. Sanford paid for his friend's trip to New York. Like I said, they stayed at the home of the woman. They spent three to four days there.
Starting point is 00:35:59 And during his deposition, Sanford admitted that at first, he and this women were just friends, but became more than that about a year and a half into their friendship. And the affair lasted until 2010 or 2011. And was he spending money on his affair and his girlfriend? Yes, of course he was. But he's complaining to Larry every day. What did Larry say? He was like rampant or something. Oh, Elisa is spending all this money. Elisa spending all our money. This isn't that. But you're spending money on everything and not on your family. All right. So now we talk about Larry Shanker, Sanford's old friend. And he was deposed during this lawsuit and he was asked about a lot of it. The money, the affairs, the strip clubs, the gentlemen's clubs. And of course, other information came out in the process. So remember, Alisa had claimed that Sanford had hidden a recording device in her home. He was listening. listening to her and he would torment her and raise her paranoia by randomly repeating things
Starting point is 00:36:54 she had said in conversations when he wasn't around. Now, this actually gets into some tricky legal territory because in a lot of states and in Ohio where this happened, you are allowed to record conversations that you're a part of without informing the other party. Yeah, and that's fine. But recording conversations you're not a part of, especially when you're going through a divorce with someone, well, that can fall under illegal eavesdropping or. wiretapping laws. Yep, yep. Because this protects something called a reasonable expectation of privacy,
Starting point is 00:37:26 and that's going to be protected even inside a shared home. So it doesn't matter if you're married, if you live together, you still can't just like plant recording devices and listen to people when you're not around. It's weird and creepy and illegal. Yeah, ethically, morally it's wrong. And yes, like you just said, it could be also legally wrong as well. Just because you're married to someone doesn't give you the right to record them without their consent. Yeah, and even though Alisa and Sanford were, legally separated and going through a divorce, it really could have backfired it on him in court if he tried to use something that he heard her say to her lawyer on the phone or if she's talking to a friend or a family member about what she's talking with her lawyer about. If he had prior
Starting point is 00:38:07 knowledge of that and it somehow was proved, that would have not been good for him in court. This is a, it's a case by case basis because I've had this go a couple ways, especially doing private investigating where we were looking into we don't do a lot of like marriage just divorce divorces or anything now in fidelity cases but there can be a world where if you're living in the home and you have internal cameras because they're part of your security system where it's in a common area like the living room and you ultimately catch your significant other talking on the phone with someone in that room while you're gone you could you could use that in court and say listen this is a security system She's aware of it or he's aware of it.
Starting point is 00:38:49 This isn't a common area. It's been there for years. I just happened to catch us on camera. Now, was I looking at the footage because I was concerned about someone breaking in? No, but I have the right to look at it. We both know it's there. We both have access to it. However, to what you're describing, if you're no longer living in that home or it's a
Starting point is 00:39:07 secret camera they're unaware of, the expectation of privacy is pretty clear where even if you live in the home with the other person, it doesn't afford you the right to violate any level of privacy they may have. Because a lot of times as a landlord or an owner of a property, I can't put cameras inside one of my tenant's houses at any point. They have an expectation of privacy. And if I made the argument, oh, I live with them so I don't have to tell them, just so everybody knows that's not going to hold up in court.
Starting point is 00:39:34 It never has, it never will. Or like this is my property. I legally own this home. Doesn't matter. No. And that's the same thing for a public. Like typically you don't have expectation of privacy in public, but in a public restroom, you do.
Starting point is 00:39:46 Yeah. You know, so. Even in Airbnb's now. Oh, Airbnb's. It's a big issue. But you can see it where if they disclose, hey, listen, there are cameras all over the inside of this home and on the exterior. You have a right not to stay there, but they do have the right to do it as long as they
Starting point is 00:40:02 disclose it. Now, if there's secret cameras and the mirrors and things like that, it's a problem. But if they have a certain camera sitting on, you know, a corner of the house or inside one of the rooms, personally, I wouldn't be staying there. but inside one of the right now one of the bedrooms like hopefully i mean if they told me hey there's cameras in every single room i'd be like yeah y'all are creepy i stayed in an air b which i still didn't like that they had one in the living room and it was more facing toward the entry door but it still picked up the couch and the tv that for my understanding that was the only one they had now if they had some in the
Starting point is 00:40:33 other rooms that's a problem yeah it's it's very clear don't think that because you had the right or once had the right uh to put a camera in a in a certain area because of your relationship with that person that that exonerates you from any type of criminal responsibility. Right. And now you have Alisa saying during her divorce, she's emailing her lawyer. And she's like, I think Sanford's recording me or something.
Starting point is 00:40:56 Like he must have a secret recorder hidden somewhere because he knows things I'm saying that I'm not saying to him. And I'm saying when he's not around. And that would be a problem if they could prove it. And during the deposition, Sanford was asked like, hey, were you recording her secretly?
Starting point is 00:41:09 And he said no. But, right? Larry's asked, did you ever have a conversation with Sanford where Sanford asked you to help him obtain a recording device? Larry said, yes. He said, quote, because of the issues with Alisa, the continuous fighting and things were getting out of control physically, and I advised him that he should protect himself, that he should record the conversations. She would bang on the door in his office and try to enter and a fight would ensue, and I told him he should record them so if there's an issue at a later date, he'd have it on recording, end quote. and get this, Larry suggested a voice-activated recorder, and he purchased one for Sanford online. Now, this happened a few months before Larry stopped talking to Sanford, which would have been a few months before Elisa filed for divorce.
Starting point is 00:41:57 And this is very interesting to me because, yes, we have evidence that there was a voice-activated recorder, but Larry's saying it was to, you know, capture their fights, which would be totally illegal. If Elisa comes into your office and you're having a fight in a conversation, you have the right as Sanford to record that. And you don't have to tell her you're recording. But if you're leaving it on voice activated mode in her room until she comes in and starts getting on the phone and talking, which will activate that recorder to start filming or recording, that's a different thing. And I guess you could say, yeah, I guess you could say, and it was an expensive one, too, it was like $300. a box. But I guess you would say they got a voice activated one because maybe, you know, the fights happen so quickly. You want to make sure that you're getting them. But. And again,
Starting point is 00:42:44 if she's aware of the camera system, it's a little bit more. There's no camera system. Well, the recorder. I'm sorry, the recording system, the quote unquote security system, if you will, if she's aware of it, it's a little bit more of a gray area, but you got to think about intentionality. I mean, I think at minimum, if we're just taking a quick audit of where we are, and just in the grand scheme of why we're covering this case, which is the murder of Elisa. At this point, when we think about persons of interest slash suspects, means motive opportunity. We have filled the glass of motive for Sanford above and beyond. It's overfilling at this point.
Starting point is 00:43:20 We still means an opportunity, but I think even Sanford would say optically, looking at this from an outside perspective, from the prosecution's perspective or from law enforcement's perspective, the motive box has been checked. There were some major issues between the two of them, and there would be multiple reasons why he may want her dead. Yeah, because imagine this is coming out in a civil lawsuit a few years after Elisa's already been murdered. Right. Imagine this comes out during the divorce because now Elisa's found the Merrill Lynch account, right? And just like Sanford's being deposed in the civil lawsuit, he's going to be deposed during the divorce about this Merrill Lynch account. And he's going to have to say, this is what I spent it on. And his friends and all of these people are going to be brought in. And they're going to be like, Sanford went to strip clubs.
Starting point is 00:44:06 Sanford has an affair. Sanford's gambling. He's loaning people. So now all of that's going to come to light during the divorce trial, which would have been very bad for Sanford. Very bad. For many reasons, his reputation, his kids. You know, now you don't look like this great guy who's just been trying to protect your money from your wife who has a shopping habit. you look like a hypocrite and a cheater and a philanderer and someone who's like pretending to be your cousin and telling exotic dancers you're going to kill them and their father if you don't look like a good person anymore and it's going to affect you negatively in many ways.
Starting point is 00:44:45 Right. See the irony there? Right. You spend so much time trying to hide your identity and the reality is it's going to come out and it's going to make you look worse than you even did in the first place. And just right before Alisa's murdered, Sanford and his lawyer. find out that she found out about this account. So like you said, the glass for the motive is filling. Filling. I would say it's filled. It's overflow. Our cup overfloweth. Yes. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. You know what's funny? Sheets don't usually go bad all at once. It's the little thing. So the corners stop staying in place. The fabric starts to feel thinner, maybe a little scratchy. The pillow cases wear out fast. You don't even realize how uncomfortable your sheets have gotten until you finally replace them.
Starting point is 00:45:33 Yeah, it's so funny, right? It kind of just like creeps up on you where one day it's good and the next day you're like, hey, what happened here? And that's when I realized it was time to upgrade to better sheets and I tried bowl and branch. Their signature sheets are made from 100% organic cotton. You can actually feel the difference immediately. They're soft, breathable, and they're made to stay that way. You're not waking up too warm or adjusting your sheets at night.
Starting point is 00:45:55 Yeah, and improving your sleep can sometimes feel like overly complicated. Like, do I need a complete new setup? And you don't. Honestly, the fastest way to upgrade your sleep is just replacing your sheets. No new routine, no guesswork, just better sleep the moment you get into bed. Yeah, and these don't wear out the same way that the other brands do as well. They actually do get softer with every wash, which I love. And because they're made from ultra clean organic cotton, they're breathable and gentle on your skin, which matters when you're spending hours in them every night. I genuinely didn't realize how much my old sheets were affecting my sleep until I switched. These feel more comfortable immediately. And I wake up feeling more well rested. I would. not go back. I will not go back. Nope, absolutely. So upgrade your sleep during Bowlin Branch's annual spring event. Take off 20% sitewide plus free shipping at bolandbranch.com slash crime weekly with code crime weekly. Yep, that's Bull and Branch. So it's spelled B-O-L-L-L-A-N-D,
Starting point is 00:46:48 branch, B-R-A-N-C-H dot com slash crime weekly and use code crime weekly to unlock 20% off site-wide. Exclusions apply C-Sight for details. Okay. We're back. So we're still talking about Larry Shanker and his deposition. Now remember last episode, I said that Larry and Sanford in the summer, when the weather was nice, they would take daily walks on the beach every single day together. Larry said that this conversation about the audio recorder, it took place during one of their daily summer walks. And then he was asked if Sanford on one of their daily walks had ever asked him something to the effect of if someone wanted to get away with murder, how would they do it?
Starting point is 00:47:33 And Larry said, quote, he wanted my experience. If I was going to commit a crime, how would I do it? End quote. When asked if by crime was Sanford referring to murder, Larry replied, yes. Larry said Sanford asked him this repeatedly. And he was asked, quote, when you say repeatedly more than 10 times, end quote. Larry said, quote, he'd repeat everything more than 10 times, end quote. So Larry was asked, what was it more than a hundred times?
Starting point is 00:48:01 And he replied, quote, not to my knowledge. end quote. So basically they, Larry wouldn't answer how many times it was, but they came up with a number between 10 and 100 that Sanford had asked him how to get away with the perfect murder. Larry said Sanford wanted to know how someone would commit the perfect murder and Larry gave him this scenario. Quote, pretty much the obvious. I think almost anybody would think of these. The fact that you don't use your car or don't let your car be seen. Don't use a gun because it could be heard. Don't use your street clothes. Use something that would cover up your entire body, your face, your hands. Don't use a gun because it would make too much noise. End quote. Larry was asked, given that Sanford was having constant marital issues, given that he was concerned about Sanford and had a conversation with Sanford's brother about Sanford needing help, did it concern Larry that he was being asked this particular question?
Starting point is 00:48:55 And he replied, quote, it may be worried me, but not concerned me. End quote. Larry, what the hell is the difference? what the hell is the difference between worried and concerned? Sounds interchangeable in my opinion. Yeah, the lawyer is asking him like, hey, given the fact that like you said Sanford was having a mental spiral, wasn't in his right mind, was having these horrible marital issues, you and your brother were talking about how he needed to like go to therapy and get help. And now he's asking you repeatedly, how would you commit the perfect murder given your experience as prior law enforcement? Did it concern you?
Starting point is 00:49:30 And he's like, I mean, I was worried. but not like concerned. And then they're like, okay, well, given that you were worried about it, what did you do to address that worry? And Larry replied, quote, I didn't do anything. I stopped being his friend, end quote. I think that they're trying to ask him like, hey, weren't you concerned? Maybe he would hurt his wife. Like, did you talk to anybody?
Starting point is 00:49:55 Did you tell the police about this? Did you tell, you know, Aliza that maybe you were concerned about her? he's like, I stopped being his friend. What else do you want me to do? I gave him the tools to commit a perfect murder, and then I stopped being his friend because it was weird. Larry was then asked, you stopped being his friend because in your view he had lost it? And Larry replied, quote, yes, end quote.
Starting point is 00:50:15 He was then asked if, in his opinion, Sanford had been in a three to four year downward spiral. And Larry once again, replied, yes. Larry was asked, you believed him to not be in his right mind. And Larry said, quote, that's true. End quote. Larry was asked if one of the pieces of advice that he'd given Sanford was to not get recognized because there would be surveillance cameras. And as Larry's lawyer objected, Larry answered yes.
Starting point is 00:50:42 Now, it's funny because it looks like in the transcript, the lawyer objects and Larry answers yes at the same time. And then the court reporter is asked to strike it, but it wasn't struck. Yeah, at that point, if it hasn't been taken out, that's basically, memorialized at that point. And that's a big, that's a significant answer. Yeah, because how was Elisa Sherman murdered? Well, somebody didn't use their car. They ran up to her. They made sure their entire body was concealed, gloves, face mask, because of surveillance cameras. And they didn't use a gun. They used a knife. So basically exactly the way Larry has told Sanford to commit a perfect murder
Starting point is 00:51:20 is the way that Elisa Sherman's murder went down. Now, it appears this wasn't the first time that Jennifer's lawyers, the estate lawyers, had talked to Larry Shanker because he was asked, quote, do you recall telling me on July 16th of 2013 that you believe that money was more important to Sanford because he had relationships with women who were not his wife? And quote, and Larry replied, quote, I never said that. And quote, Larry says this a lot. They'll be like, hey, remember when you said this? And he's like, no, no, I didn't say that because they were probably talking to him off the record at that point. And, you know, now they're on the record and he's not going to say that. So Larry Shanker was then asked if he knew of anyone who had provided Sanford Sherman with weapons. And he said yes.
Starting point is 00:52:01 But then he said, it's strictly hearsay. Quote, Sandy told me that he had two patients that were prior East Cleveland policemen. And I don't remember the one's name who provided him with weapons. End quote. Larry said that one of the guy's names was Jamie, but that wasn't the guy who had given Sanford anything. And he couldn't remember the other guy's name, the one who had provided Sanford with weapons. Larry was asked if he had any understanding of what kind of of weapons had been provided to Sanford, and Larry said, quote, there was a couple of guns and knives, end quote. When asked what kind of knives, Larry said, quote, specifically, I only have knowledge of one, and that was a Smith and Weston swat knife that usually policemen carry, end quote. Larry described this
Starting point is 00:52:43 knife as having a three and a half to four inch blade with a thick handle. It would be grooved and it would say swat on the blade. That's not what SWAT teams usually carry. But again, I know you're just reading verbatim, but that would be the opposite of what SWAT or law enforcement would carry. It's so tacky. So what's he talking about then? It might have been the type of knife that it was where it was a Smith and Wesson SWAT knife, like a version of it, but I can tell you firsthand, the last thing I'd be wearing would be a knife that said SWAT on it. Like you just, but the knife he's describing is very similar. We always keep a knife on our, it used to be a jackpocket. They have this little slit in your leg. It's like a black handle, right? Yeah. Well, they're used to.
Starting point is 00:53:26 It used to be a thing called a blackjack. Do you know what that is? So it's obviously not permitted anymore, but a blackjack, essentially law enforcement back in the day would have this leather like handle and it have like this little leather pouch. And inside the leather pouch, which was stitched together, would be like sand, compact sand. And they would hit people with it. It was almost like a baton. But obviously it was very dangerous. It could kill someone if you hit them with them the wrong way.
Starting point is 00:53:53 So if you look, a lot of times you'll see law enforcement officers. They have what's called a blackjack pocket on their leg. It's a little slit on their leg and they'll usually have their knife clipped into it. So that slit is still there, but it's for a knife now. And yes, we do carry three to four inches. It's used to, you know, if you have to cut into something, cut a seatbelt, things like that. But we're usually not buying the knife that says swat on it. Although Larry's might have, but that would be, that would fit someone who's not a police officer
Starting point is 00:54:22 buying a SWAT knife that says SWAT because that makes it official. Well, according to Larry, he... Hey, listen, it says SWAT on it. It says SWAT on this. And Larry was a former cop. So it's legit. You think you would know that. Well, according to Larry, Sanford got this weapon and many others, I guess, from a Cleveland
Starting point is 00:54:41 policeman who was a patient of his. Yeah. Which would make sense. Larry doesn't remember his name. Which would make sense. It could have been a knife that, and this is unlawful, obviously, but this officer seized on the street where there's things. thousands of knives. They're taken off. They leave them in their car. Their backpacks. I'm like,
Starting point is 00:54:55 hey, you want this knife? This is one. And maybe he told Sanford, hey, yeah, this is the one that we use. This is the SWAT version. It's special. And Sanford's sitting there swinging it around like, oh, man, this is what the bad boys use. You know, this is what the SWAT edition. It's a better, it's a better knife if it says SWAT on it. Anybody who's law enforcement in our comments right now is laughing their ass off because they know exactly what I'm talking about. So here's the interesting thing. It's never been said publicly what kind of knife Alisa was stabbed with. And this could be because, you know, sometimes they'll say, well, the autopsy makes it difficult to say, but they would know from the autopsy about how long, how thick the blade was. You know, they don't have to know what the handle looked like or if it said swat on it,
Starting point is 00:55:36 but they would know what kind of blade it was. They haven't revealed that publicly, which makes me think they haven't revealed that because there's some kind of evidence they have that they don't want to make this public knowledge in case. And by the way, you can look it up right now. I'll have it up on the screen for everybody on YouTube, but it's really easy. You just type in Smith & Wesson, which is a very good brand of firearm.
Starting point is 00:56:00 They sell this knife. It's called the SWAT knife. It actually has it on the blade, just like it's being described by Larry. It's a tactical knife. It's just a version of it. It's for marketability. It doesn't make it any better.
Starting point is 00:56:11 It's basically a long three to four inch knife. It's got a serrated blade for cutting, usually like seatbelts, things like that. So locking mechanism on the handle. A little thumb rest on the backside. Good knife, great knife. This one that I'm looking at here, you can get it in straight edge or partially serrated,
Starting point is 00:56:26 which I think is important in the context of what we're talking about. As you said, they've never revealed the knife that was used, although pathologists would be able to tell whether the knife was a straight blade or serrated. They would, yes. However, this knife is offered in both variations. So regardless of what they determine,
Starting point is 00:56:44 it still could have been this type of knife, although the one specifically described by Larry may indicate that it was, It was the serrated over the straight blade. Which is what a policeman would carry. I personally would carry the serrated, yes. Because you said like cutting seatbelt, stuff like that. You're not trying to go out there and stab people.
Starting point is 00:57:01 Yeah, the serrated blade to me always worked a little better. For a utility thing. Yeah, utility and also the straight blade can get dulled pretty quickly. So unless you're cutting through like, I don't even know, really, unless you're stabbing someone. Yeah, unless you're stabbing someone, it doesn't feel practical. As a seatbelt cutter would be the main reason that you would use the knife. you know, cutting open different items of evidence or whatever, you could use it for that as well. But mostly I had it on me for a second line of protection in case my gun was taken from me, but also for like, again, a tragic accident or a motor vehicle incident where I had to cut into something.
Starting point is 00:57:35 All right. So Larry's asked, hey, do you have a recollection as to when Sanford was provided with this knife or knives, right? And Larry said several times. So he said that Sanford was provided with a knife several times. And then he was asked, was it one knife or many knives? And Larry said, he didn't know. And then Larry was asked, quote, do you know what year, for instance, or within a year or two each way when it was he first obtained that knife? End quote. And Larry replied, he gave me a knife that was given to him. So now Larry's like Sanford's getting knives from these police officers.
Starting point is 00:58:09 And he gave me one. Yeah. Okay. And Larry said this happened probably six months before he stopped talking to Sanford, which is once again, six months before Alisa files for a divorce. Now, when asked, you know, was the knife given to you as a gift? Larry said yes. And then the lawyers are like, okay, well, like, what was the occasion? Birthday, Christmas. And he, he said, quote, just came over and says here, and he handed me it, end quote. So Larry was then asked if he knew whether Sanford had kept one of these knives for himself or if he had given Larry the only knife he had. And Larry said, quote, he said he received several so I didn't know which one he retained,
Starting point is 00:58:48 end quote, which is interesting to me because earlier in your deposition, like a few minutes before you said this, you were asked whether he was given one knife or many knives, and you said you didn't know. But now you just said that Sanford told you he was given multiple. He received several. So he just, he gave you one, but he doesn't, Larry doesn't know which one Sanford kept for himself. I'd have questions for that police officer as well. I mean, I know there'd be a patient the one that gave confidential. Yeah, because it's clear what's happening here. This officer is out there on the streets and he's stopping people or she's stopping people and they're obviously confiscating these knives, maybe not charging the person, giving them a break saying, hey, you know, it's an
Starting point is 00:59:28 inch over the legal limit, not going to charge you with it, but I can't give you, I can't give you the knife back. Instead of putting that into evidence as abandoned property, they're keeping them as keepsakes and they're probably got a ton of them. And so they're handing them out to their friends and family and their physicians apparently. So there's a big ethical issue there as far as chain of custody and properly disposing of seized evidence, even when charges aren't filed. I've seen this before for sure. So this isn't something that is a rarity. I've definitely seen it in the past. And that's clearly what's going on here. This officer is just handing out knives like tick-tacks. All right. Let me just give like a hypothetical, completely alleged theory.
Starting point is 01:00:07 All right. Let's say no such police officer patient exists. Because Larry doesn't know, like he's like, yeah, there's two of them, two Cleveland police officers who were patients of, of Sanford's and he said they were giving him knives. And he's like, one of their names was Jamie. I don't remember the one that was actually giving him the knives. What if they don't exist? And it's Larry who's getting the knives. Also possible.
Starting point is 01:00:32 Okay, just allegedly. I'm not accusing Larry of anything. I'm just saying allegedly. It would make more sense because the police officer would not have that SWAT knife. That would be one that you'd buy online yourself. Like you'd bought a recording, like a voice activate a recorder, you know, maybe even from the same kind of website. Somebody who is a wannabe cop or whatever would definitely buy the knife with the SWAT logo on it.
Starting point is 01:00:54 Yeah, somebody who wishes they'd always made the SWAT team but couldn't quite cut it. There was another, there's another knife right next to. If you're more of a military guy, you can get the Smith & Wesson Black Ops knife. Ooh. So listen, if you're like, want to be Rainbow Six over here, you want to be part of the SEALs. They have the Black Ops Knife. I'm going to be honest. I'm side-eyeing Leary a little bit for multiple reasons because he's an eye.
Starting point is 01:01:17 ex-police officer. He's taking secret walks with Sanford and talking about how to commit the perfect murder. And then he's aware that Sanford's like trying to get weapons from random, you know, police officers who are patients. And he's giving him a knife. Like, oh, yeah, he gave me a knife. For what occasion? He came over and said, here's a knife. I wouldn't take a knife from that dude. I don't know if you committed a crime with this knife. I already just said you were out of your mind and I stopped being friends with you, but six months before when I already told everyone that I thought you were on a downward three to four year spiral, but now you come over and you're like, here, here's a knife, take it. I'm going to be like, no, no. I'm not putting my fingerprints on that knife. Yes, no, I don't know what you did with this night. I'd be like, get the hell out of here, Sanford. That's when the friendship would have ended because I don't know what you're capable of. And Larry already said, yeah, Sanford was on a downward spiral for years. He was rampant. He was raving and ranting about Elisa and. And, you know, and asking me how to commit a perfect murder. And suddenly he's like, hey, I have this knife that I got from a patient who's also a cop.
Starting point is 01:02:18 Would you like it? Nope. Don't want that knife. Get the hell out of here. I'm calling the police several times by now on this guy. Only if it says swat on it, then I'll take it. He's like, it said swat on it so I couldn't say no. Couldn't say no.
Starting point is 01:02:30 It was sketchy. And you know he's going through this divorce with Elisa. And when you're like, well, what did you do? Nothing. I stopped being friends with him. Not when he asked you how to commit the perfect murder. The lawyer is like, but why would you take it? And he's like, come on, man.
Starting point is 01:02:43 I said swat on it. He said swat. What would you do? I mean, I didn't touch it. I carried it with a cloth. I may or may not have sat in front of my mirror and practiced with it a little bit. He took pictures. Yes.
Starting point is 01:02:57 Selfies. He's like, see, I have the date that he gave it to me because I took these pictures in the mirror in my bedroom. God, man, it's embarrassing. So I'm side-eyeing Larry a little bit because to me, Larry may not be responsible for anything legally or whatever, but morally, you had some sort of responsibility to start putting too and too good, especially as a past police officer. Yeah, and I don't want to be a hypocrite. I've definitely had people that are friends of mine ask me about murder investigations.
Starting point is 01:03:26 But were they also getting knives and giving them to you and like ranting about their wives and saying they weren't going to get money? There's a fine line between being curious, right? Like how do you solve a murder? What are the things you look for? What are some of the things that ultimately inhibiting? your ability to solve those murders. Like, those are common questions.
Starting point is 01:03:44 But if they're asking for specifics, like, okay, but hypothetically, if I were to say, want to kill my wife, what would, you know, or just like passively hinting at things like that, that's where, and I've never had that occur, but that's where it would cross a line for me. And I'd say, hey, man, listen, you're all right. Is everything good? You're asking a lot of specific questions and you seem like you're taking notes. Yeah, but we don't know that those specific questions weren't asked. We don't.
Starting point is 01:04:07 He could be giving you a watered down version. Yeah, he's giving you a version where he has plausible deniability. Right. Yeah. Exactly. So I'm side-eyeing you, Larry. So Larry was then asked in regards to the murder of Elisa Sherman, quote, did you have any concern that based on comments that Dr. Sherman had made to you on the beach
Starting point is 01:04:28 about getting away with a perfect murder that he may have done this? End quote. Larry replied, sure. And then he was asked why. And he said, quote, because Sanford was rampaged. He had a very, very hostile temper towards Elisa. anything's possible. End quote.
Starting point is 01:04:43 Larry was then asked what he meant by hostile and he said, quote, he was rebelled. He did not like Alisa. They were fighting constantly. He wanted the divorce. End quote. Larry used this funny words like rampaged and rebelled. It's like he's on Team Rocket. Oh, my God.
Starting point is 01:05:00 So this civil case that Jennifer and the estate of Alisa Sherman filed against Sanford Sherman in 2016, it never went to trial. The case never went to trial. trial because in August of 2016, Sanford Sherman paid $100,000 to settle the civil lawsuit, and this also released him from future claims. So that's interesting. Well, all that, he probably saw the writing on the wall and realized this isn't going to end well for me and it may be, it might have been closer to $200,000. So for him paying a hundred and, would you say it was $100,000? He just paid $100,000 to settle it. Yeah. In his mind, he's probably
Starting point is 01:05:36 looking at that as a win. Yeah. I mean, for sure. And it was a win. in all things considering. Right. Because remember at this time, to be fair and to admit outright, the Sherman kids were getting a lot of money from their parents, right? Their college education, their high school education, cars, these things were being paid for by Alisa and Sanford. You know, they were well taken care of children.
Starting point is 01:06:02 So when Elisa died and all of this kind of went down and Jennifer and many of her brothers broke off with their father, that money was cut off. Jennifer's still going to school. She's going to nursing school. She had to start working more than one job. She actually, you know, took her younger brother, the 17-year-old in and started caring for him. And then when her other brothers would come home from school on break, they would stay with her. And so she was basically taking care of her brothers. And so I think that any amount of money Sanford would have offered at that point would have been desperately needed for those expenses. Yeah, so take it. But they could have gotten more, I think, if they held out and went to trial. Right. Well, it's a risk, right? You go to trial,
Starting point is 01:06:45 just like in any trial. You could win more or you could also lose, lose it all. And it's going to be a long time because you know Sanford doesn't like to get legal things done quickly. Right. So you drag it out. You're paying all these legal fees. You hope that they're covered, but there's a chance you do it all for nothing. So if you have the guarantee, a lot of people are going to choose to take it. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Nothing hits like home cooking, but let's be honest, the hardest part isn't cooking. It's everything leading up to it. And then all the stuff.
Starting point is 01:07:17 Deciding what to make, going to the store, and then getting home and realizing you forgot the one ingredient you actually needed. And that's why I love Hello Fresh because it removes all of that. And it just lets you enjoy the part that actually matters, which is quickly cooking and then eating. Yeah. And it feels like a real meal, right? It's not just something that it's put together for you. and it feels like, okay, I have to eat this because this is how they planned it out. No, you cook it.
Starting point is 01:07:41 And then it feels like, okay, you know what? I spent two hours in the kitchen making a home-cooked meal, but you actually didn't. It's that balance with HelloFresh. The recipes are simple, but they still feel rewarding. Like you made something intentional, even on busy weeknights. And there are more than 100 recipes every week. So you're not stuck eating the same thing over and over again. You can try different cuisine, switch things up.
Starting point is 01:08:02 And honestly, it helps break that. What do we eat tonight? slump that you get into and it's depressing. Yeah. And the portions are great as well. Nobody's going to feel hungry after dinner, which is key because that's what leads to snacking. And if you're trying to be more intentional, they also have 35 plus high protein recipes every week, including a Mediterranean and GLP1 friendly options. And the ingredients are really, really good. Sustainably sourced seafood, 100% antibiotic and hormone-free chicken. And they've expanded their menu too. There's now three times the seafood with no upcharge. We love no up charge. Plus, they have amazing options like
Starting point is 01:08:37 grass-fed steak, ribai, and seasonal produce like pears, apples, and asparagus. Yep. So if you want to check it out, head to hellofresh.com slash crime weekly 10 FM to get 10 free meals plus a free Zwilling knife, which is a $144.99-cent value all on your third box. The offer is valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. Okay, we're back. So now we're switching gears. So Sanford and his daughter, they settle the civil lawsuit in 2016. But earlier that year, in January, Elisa's divorce attorney, Gregory Moore, was indicted on 16 charges, and seven of them were connected to Elisa's murder investigation,
Starting point is 01:09:29 tampering with evidence, telecommunications fraud, possessing criminal tools, forgery, falsification, and obstructing official business. The other charges were related to the three separate bomb threats that he was accused of making to courthouses. Here's the interesting thing. He initially pleaded guilty to all of the charges. But in May of 2017, Gregory Moore made a deal where he would plead guilty to two counts of inducing panic and one misdemeanor charge of falsification relating to his whereabouts on
Starting point is 01:10:00 the day of Alisa's murder. and in exchange, all the other charges were dropped. And he was sentenced to six months in jail, three years of probation, and 350 hours of community service. Now, I could not, for the life of me, figure out what was happening here. He initially pleaded guilty to all the charges. And then months later, he's making a deal with the prosecution where all of the charges are going to be dropped except for a few of them. And it's going to be reduced to a misdemeanor. and then he's going to get only six months in jail.
Starting point is 01:10:34 Why would that happen? Do you have any idea? I don't. You know how I feel about the justice system when it comes to these deals. I don't get it. I don't get it sometimes. Like you said, you were saying he was going to plead guilty to all accounts. Yes.
Starting point is 01:10:49 And he gets reduced to six months. No, he was going to plead guilty. And then he's making a deal a month later where in exchange for all the other charges being dropped, he's pleading guilty to two counts of inducing panic and one misdemeanor charge of falsification in regards to his whereabouts on the day of Elisa Sherman's murder. The only thing that I can think of, and I have nothing to confirm or substantiate this, is that something in the files, in the evidence, the prosecution came about or was brought to their attention. and kind of similar to what we were just talking about with the civil case where you go forward, you try to get them found guilty on all charges, but based on a certain piece of evidence that you uncover,
Starting point is 01:11:38 they could walk away Scott Free. So it's better to get something than nothing. If he was ready to plead guilty to all of them and something changed, it could have been on his side or the prosecution side where they're like, oh, we have this piece of evidence here where if we go to trial and it becomes an issue, he may get off Scott Free. Yeah, but if he's going to plead guilty, you don't need a trial. Well, that's what I'm saying. He was going to plead guilty.
Starting point is 01:12:00 But maybe his lawyers came out with something. That's what I'm saying. They were originally okay, but then they found something, brought to it to the attention of the prosecutors and said, uh, not so fast. We haven't signed it yet. And because we haven't signed it, it basically means nothing. And we have an issue here because there's something over here that we believe would be viewed as reasonable doubt in the court of law. So you have two options. Go forward with this at trial, run the risk of him walking away with nothing or we'll give you six months. Because prosecutor. Executions normally not going to take this deal if they feel they have a concrete case. There's a plea deal for both sides. They feel it's beneficial to both parties involved. Well, clearly at this point, they're looking at him, though, for being connected to or knowing more about Elisa's murder than he has said. Stephanie, based on everything you described so far, and this was after the fact, but everything in his behavior, before, during, and after, I don't know how you would not have him on your. very short list of people who could have done this.
Starting point is 01:13:04 So while he's in jail, the investigators attempted to question him about Elisa's murder, but Gregory Moore would not cooperate. Okay. And then he does his time. He gets out. He doesn't leave the state. He stays. He stays in the Cleveland area.
Starting point is 01:13:20 He's not doing anything suspicious. But then all of a sudden on May 2nd, 2025, a grand jury secretly indicted Gregory Moore for the murder of Elisa Sherman. Curveball. So you've been talking about Sanford for an hour and 15 minutes into this episode. I'm not sure that Sanford didn't have to listen. We have to talk about it. Yeah, we're going to talk about it.
Starting point is 01:13:42 This was something you talked about in the first episode with Gregory. And we haven't talked about them basically this entire episode, but we can't forget the fact that there was a specific meeting at a specific time that very few people knew about. And then after the incident, nobody can get a hold of Gregory. It doesn't give us a lot of motive yet, but again, we talk about the three pillars of what you're looking for, means motive opportunity. On one hand, you have Sanford, who definitely has motive. And the means, I mean, the means at this point, too. The means to a certain degree, but it looks like they may have had an alibi for him not physically being able to be there yet or no. They haven't substantiated that yet.
Starting point is 01:14:19 He never would talk to them. He would never talk to them. So we have him as well. But with Gregory, you talk about means and opportunity. This is a guy who may be one of like two people. who knew that Elisa was going to be there at that location at that specific time and would kind of be a sitting duck because if the door's locked, there's really nowhere for her to go. For sure.
Starting point is 01:14:41 And this is his office, by the way. So who's going to know that area better than someone who works in that area? Yeah. All right. So Gregory Moore is charged with aggravated murder and conspiracy. Let's go through the indictment. This is very confusing to me. So it says that Gregory Moore intended to kidnap.
Starting point is 01:14:58 Elisa Sherman, and he made an agreement with an unnamed accomplice that one or both of them would take steps to make this kidnapping happen. According to the indictment, the purpose of Elisa's kidnapping was to obstruct Judge Rosemary Gold from conducting the trial in the divorce case between Elisa and Sanford Sherman. Quote, the goal was designed to be achieved by causing Elisa Sherman to be unavailable to attend the proceedings due to serious physical harm and or death. end quote. The crime involved the use of telecommunications devices and services that were either assets of or controlled by the Stafford Law Company and its members, associates, and or employees to communicate with Elisa Sherman for the purpose of using deception to remove her from the place where she was found to cause serious physical harm to her and or to hinder, impede, or obstruct a function of governments. All right. So when they say that they use telecommunications devices and services that were, you know, assets of are controlled by Stafford Law Company, that's where Gregory Moore worked. So this scheme began on or about January 3, 2013, when Gregory Moore and at least one other unnamed individual learned that the Cuyahuga County Prosecutor's Office was investigating more cell phone usage in 2012 when these bond threats were called into courthouses where Moore was scheduled to be. be on trial. So the bomb threats on January 18th, 2012, May 30th, 2012, and July 10th, 2012 were part of a pattern of behavior more exhibited to delay court appearances he was scheduled to
Starting point is 01:16:35 attend in 2012, a pattern that members of Stafford and company were aware of on January 3, 2013, which continued from January 3rd up to and including March 24th, 2013, which is the day Elisa Sherman's killed. Within a day of when Moore and said other individual or individuals learned of the CCPO investigation, Moore obtained a new cell phone on the Stafford Law of Verizon business account and was given control of a 4G mobile broadband device that was also on the Stafford Law Verizon business account and it was put there by an individual with the authority to make such changes on the devices on the firm's account.
Starting point is 01:17:17 So a mobile broadband device is a hotspot. It's called a mobile hotspot. I used to work at a Verizon retailer. I was a B-to-B person, which means business to business. So I worked with a lot of these people. And what I can tell you is on the Verizon account, there's usually one to two people who are authorized to make any changes to that account. So there could be 75 devices on the account.
Starting point is 01:17:42 And the devices are going to be assigned to people, especially on a business account. It's going to save the number. It's going to say what device it is, whether it's a phone or a high-es. hotspot or a tablet and it's going to say which employee that hotspot or phone belongs to. But that employee can't come in and say, hey, I want to change my number or I want to change my phone or I want to add a hotspot. Only the authorized person on the account can do that. And it's usually only one or two people because it's a business account. There's tons and tons of numbers. When I say 75, that's on the low end. Actually, I've worked with companies that had like
Starting point is 01:18:17 hundreds of devices on their accounts so they can't keep track of what's happening. And so they only have like one or two authorized people that can make those changes. That way if something happens, they can go back and blame someone. It has not been revealed who this authorized person at Stafford and company was, but somebody knew and was adding this hotspot that Gregory Moore would use in this task of kidnapping and murdering of Alisa Sherman. So we learned that on Sunday, March 24th, 2013, Gregory Moore texted Alisa Sherman to meet him at the Stafford Law Office at 4.30 p.m.
Starting point is 01:18:58 And he told Elisa to let him know when she was leaving for the meeting, which she did at approximately 354 p.m. Elisa told Gregory Moore she would be there around 4.30 p.m. And Moore responded for her to take her time and to get there closer to 5 p.m. At 3.57 p.m., Alisa texted more that she'd already left and said, quote, I will wait, call me when you get there, end quote. The records also show that Gregory Moore arrived at the Stafford Law Office and accessed the front door of the building with his key card at 351 p.m. And at that point, he either did not enter the building at all, or he did enter the building, but he left before 407 p.m. In my opinion, he probably didn't enter the building at all. he just wanted it to look like he was entering the building.
Starting point is 01:19:47 The only issue with that is there's a camera in the front there. We don't have access to it, but wasn't, wasn't Elisa's murder captured on camera? Right. So you would have, yes. So you would basically see him walk up to the door and walk away. He could have walked in and walked out a back door or something like that as well. There is a back door. We'll talk about that.
Starting point is 01:20:02 There we go. There we go. So at approximately 4.15 p.m. Gregory Moore called Alisa Sherman, but he didn't speak to her. And he did not call back again. And at 4.19 p.m., Aliza texted Gregory Moore, quote, sorry, couldn't get phone. Got here quicker than I thought. Let me know when you are here.
Starting point is 01:20:19 I will wait in my car. End quote. This is at 419 p.m. And this is interesting because I think Gregory Moore is like, okay, Alisa is going to be there at 430. I'll have her tell me when she leaves. She says she's leaving at 354. He uses the key card to make it look like he's going into the office at 357. He knows that this is going to be investigated after the fact.
Starting point is 01:20:40 So he's got to try to give him a some time. type of alibi. So between 4.23 p.m. and 7.32 p.m., Gregory Moore disconnected his cell phone from the Verizon's cellular network. And the effect of this was to disable the phone from making or receiving calls and also to prevent the phone from creating cell tower location evidence within Verizon's cellular phone records. Normally, this would also prevent the phone from sending or receiving text messages. But Moore did send text messages. And the indictment says that he likely did this using the Verizon hotspots, right? So he connected his phone.
Starting point is 01:21:17 The Verizon hotspot is like a little box. Yeah, a little box. Right? And you can turn it on. And if you're in an area where there's no Wi-Fi, then you can hook up your phone to it or your laptop or a tablet, whatever. A little mini-router. A little wireless mini-router.
Starting point is 01:21:32 And it comes off the data that's on whatever the cellular account is. So it's not like Wi-Fi that you can just have complete access to. it will come off the gigs that you have access to on the business account. You'll have whatever plan you have there. You have a certain allotment. Yes. Now, this is interesting to me, though, because this is 2013. So you would have to be messaging on a device where you could talk to each other using
Starting point is 01:22:00 Wi-Fi, like two iPhones, right? And we know that Gregory Moore had an iPhone. So if Alisa also had an iPhone, then he would have been able to text her on Wi-Fi using iMessage yeah i was trying to remember i know the iPhone came out in 2007 so 2013 i message was a i believe it was a thing by then seems like it was so long ago but yeah we're just old we know he had an iphone because it was taken from him back in like i think 2014 or something yeah yeah yeah i knew it was an iphone just trying wondering if i message was a thing there where you could message other iphone users i believe it was yeah you wouldn't need cellular service to do that
Starting point is 01:22:40 that you can communicate via Wi-Fi. You can do Wi-Fi calling at that point as well. Yeah, but you can't do that from like Samsung's, unless you're using some third-party app like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger or something, then you could. But the iPhone messages will go through the I-Message will go through as regular text messages. It'll say I message. Right. Especially now, especially then, I should say, right? Like now it's in 2026, Android users do have access to the I message. I don't, I've never completely understood it. It's still the green versus blue bubble. But back back in 2013 for sure one of the selling points to convert to an iPhone was this iMessage access that was only available to other iPhone users exactly so at 513 p.m. Elisa sent a text to
Starting point is 01:23:26 Gregory Moore saying quote will you be here soon standing outside building if not we'll go back to my car end quote at 514 she sent another message quote will you be here soon kind of cold end quote now Moore did reply to this message at 515. p.m. And he said, quote, been here. End quote. The indictment says that this text was sent with the intention to keep Alisa standing outside the door to the building. Elisa replied to this at 5.16 p.m. telling more that the door was locked and as she thought he was going to text her when he arrived. She said she had been waiting in her car for 45 minutes and she asked how could she get in. Alisa sent another text at 522 p.m. quote, if you are here, why don't you come let me in?
Starting point is 01:24:10 I guess I will go back to my car too cold. Text me when door is open, thanks. End quote. So the indictment says that during this time frame, an individual, who is either Gregory Moore or a co-conspirator, approached Elisa, circled behind her, chased her from 55-eer-view to 75-eary view, and then stabbed her before running eastbound on Hamilton Avenue
Starting point is 01:24:31 through the East 12th Street intersection towards E-17th Street. After Elisa was assaulted and the assailant was out of view from surveillance camera, Gregory Moore texted Elisa again while his phone continue to be disconnected from the Verizon cellular network, which means you're not going to be able to figure out where he's texting from. Now, if he was using that hotspot, there has to be a way to figure out where that hotspot was connecting from. And I think that they probably have that information, which is probably it was probably presented to the grand jury, which is probably why they decided to indict him, right? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot here. I think about even Wi-Fi messaging, the access they have to these phone calls, right? Or I should say these text messages. Normally with Wi-Fi calling and Wi-Fi texting, there's not a log on your phone bill. Because instead of it being SMS, it's basically viewed as Wi-Fi data usage. You can still access the transcripts from the app itself. There's a way to do that through the physical phone. But if you go on Verizon,
Starting point is 01:25:38 or AT&T and you try to look at the messages or the content in those messages, you cannot do that if it's specifically going over Wi-Fi. So it would be harder, not impossible. Same thing goes for the hotspot. You have to have the hotspot near you. Correct. You have to be in a certain range of it. And so he's going to be, you're going to have all these data points and you're going to
Starting point is 01:25:58 be able to go back and look at the metadata of these devices to find out the access points for them and who or what I should say, what device was connected to them. at those specific times. Well, basically, an indictment is saying Moore was hooking up to that hotspot. Right, which was located at that location. They haven't said where the hotspot was located. Oh, I'm sure they know. But they would know exactly because the hotspot does ping two cell towers.
Starting point is 01:26:27 It's connected to a tower, correct? Because it's connected to it. It's a cellular device technically. Everything on a Verizon plan, whether it's a tablet, a phone, a hotspot, is connected. to the cellular network. Yeah. So let's kind of break this down a little bit more because it does to me sound like, I'm a nerd, but I think some people might be like, what the hell are you talking about?
Starting point is 01:26:49 When we say Wi-Fi, technically it's not Wi-Fi. It's going, it's a wireless connection, but it's an important distinction to make here that I think at the time it was 3G or 4G in 2013. Correct me if I'm wrong. But basically it's 3G or 4G data that's going over through the tower. So there's those 3G or 4G data towers, those little satellites on the towers. That's what the hotspot is connecting to. Wi-Fi a lot of the times would be a hardwired connection inside a building where it's hardwired to the internet service provider, the ISB.
Starting point is 01:27:23 There's a little bit of a, there's a device on the outside of your house, which is where the internet comes in from, whether it's a telephone pole or underground. Then you wired connect that into your router, which then transmits that signal. wirelessly through the house. This is technically a 3G or 4G data connection. It's a traveling hotspots. Traveling hotspot. It's a hot spot. We used to call them myfyes.
Starting point is 01:27:45 Myfyes. That's what they said on them. MyFi. M-I-F-I. So it wasn't Wi-Fi. It was my-Fi. That is the correct way to describe it. So it can get a little conflated when we're like saying the term Wi-Fi.
Starting point is 01:27:57 It's more of like what you described, more of a Mi-Fi, where there would be a data, there would be data traffic going back and forth to a specific. tower where that hot spot's connected. It's connected to the cellular. It's connected to your cellular plan. So it doesn't matter whether you're using the phone or the MiFi or a tablet. There's a paper trail. And it's got to ping to a tower because it has to use that connection from that tower. It's an intermediary, right? Yes, it is. To connect you to the tower. But it still has to be close to your phone. Right. Yeah. It's just like at home. Once you step outside the house, It's like, boom, you're done.
Starting point is 01:28:36 Where, like, the home Wi-Fi is going to make, they're going to make sure it's powerful enough and the signal transmits far enough, okay, so that everybody in the home has access to it. These Mi-Fi's, their range is not that great, actually. Especially 2013. Again, it's only, what are we talking, 13 years ago, but that's still technology-wise, there's been some major advancements. I mean, I'm actually here. It would be the same as, you know how you can, like, hook up, you can use the hotspot, the moment's hotspot. on your cell phone. And, you know, sometimes my kids will do that with their tablets.
Starting point is 01:29:09 If we're on like a road trip, they'll be like, can I hook up to your husband? I'll be like, yeah, just suck all my data, guys, absolutely. But if I got too far away from them, it would be, you know, not feasible. At that time, in 2013, they were called jet packs, too. We called them jet packs. They had a broadcast range of about 50 feet, roughly 15 meters for optimal performance. Yeah. And when they do that, it's probably a direct line of sight.
Starting point is 01:29:37 Add in some walls and, you know, sheet rock and things like that and floors, that range shrinks down a lot. Yeah. The point we're making is Greg had to be close to the, he was close to the hotspot. And if it was him who was attacking her, right, then it's possible he had it set up in a place he knew he could return to and then start texting. But his phone and the hotspot would have been roughly in the same. same area, not far from each other. So not a great intermediary if you want one that's, you know, really going to cover your tracks. This isn't what you do. But also, I will say, this was right around the time I worked for Verizon. And we were not being super honest about
Starting point is 01:30:20 what these Mi-Fis and jet packs were, right? We weren't saying like, hey, it's just another device on your account that's using your data because they really, they were pushing them hard at that time. And we were basically, like, yeah, I can do so much. Like, you'll never, you know, it's basically another number. And yes, somebody like Gregory Moore or even a business person on that account who was like talking to the Verizon rep at that time would have been under the impression that these two things were very distinct and maybe even using completely different signals, not like
Starting point is 01:30:54 using the same data on the same account and trackable. You know what I mean? It would have made it seem like it was just like Wi-Fi, but it's not being tracking. on your account, you know, that wouldn't have really been made clear at that time. Well, it's a selling point, right? It's a, yeah. So Gregory Moore sent Aliza text at 541, 547, 601, 616, 625, and 643 p.m. repeatedly asking her where she was.
Starting point is 01:31:23 Are you going to make the meeting? Are you meeting me? Call me, you know, all of these things. Like, he's completely in the, in confusion about how were you here, but you're not here. Are you coming? what's going on. He doesn't know where she is. Now, the indictment said that at the time of those texts, Gregory Moore was not inside the Stafford Law Building. But at approximately 7.30 p.m., Moore did enter the Stafford Law Building from the dock entrance, which was an area where he
Starting point is 01:31:50 couldn't be seen by law enforcement who were still conducting an investigation of the crime scene in front of 75 Erie View Plaza. So the Stafford Law Company was at 55 Erie View Plaza. And remember, they said that the assailant rounded Elisa chased her away from 75 to the building next door, 55 killed her in front of that building. So the police are over at 55, Eerie View, conducting their investigation at the front of the building. And at 7.30 p.m. Gregory Moore is entering from the dock entrance at 55, which is next door, but from behind the building. Yeah. And why would you do that? How often has Gregory Moore done that in the past? where he's used the dock entrance. Because he's going to tell the police he was inside the building the whole time.
Starting point is 01:32:38 So if they see him walking in at 7.30 at the front. Not good. Not good. Now once he was inside the building at approximately 7.32 p.m., Gregory Moore reconnected his phone to the Verizon Network and called Elisa's phone again several times between 732 and 905 p.m. This story has taken a turn here. We were talking about Sanford for most of the episode and some of the issues with him and possible motives. And then what I heard in between the lines here is initially with detectives, the belief was that Gregory Moore was more of a secondary offender than a primary offender.
Starting point is 01:33:16 And that's why you had talked about the initial charges. I believe you said there were 16. Seven of them were related to Elisa. And they were more so like tampering with evidence, destruction, things of that. Not being honest with the police. Obstructing official business. So what I see there is, hey, we don't think Gregory's. the guy with the knife, but we think he's involved. He's helping whoever actually did this.
Starting point is 01:33:38 That changes as they continue their investigation and they discover some of the things that you just laid out where now he goes from being a secondary offender, a co-conspirator, to the primary offender, the guy who actually had the knife in his hand, and that's when that indictment comes out where he's charged with the actual murder. However, as you said, he was also charged with conspiracy, indicating that he didn't act alone. And the question at this point is, who is this other person? Who are these other people involved? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:34:08 So we'll take a break. We'll be right back. Okay, I feel like this is something people don't talk about enough, but your outfit can look amazing. And if what you're wearing underneath is uncomfortable, it doesn't matter. It just ruins everything. Yeah, I've definitely seen it before. You see people adjusting all day long, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of it, right?
Starting point is 01:34:29 And that's why I love scams. Before scams, scams bra's and underwear. were kind of an afterthought for me. And it was more like, well, I need to make sure they make the clothes look good on the outside, even if they're super uncomfortable or not the most practical thing to wear. And now I realize that the base layer is actually what determines how you feel all day. And I feel like at this point, you've probably almost completely switched over to skims now. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:34:55 I mean, they have great, like, outer clothes too, right? I love their pajamas and their kind of lounge clothes. They've got great long dresses that I love for the summer. But yeah, at the end of the day, if you open up my underwear drawer, all you'll see in there is skims. The fabrics are stretchy, supportive. They actually hold their shape. They're not uncomfortable. They don't like cut into your skin, even if you're wearing a thong.
Starting point is 01:35:19 You know, sometimes that can be the issue with the thong. Relatable. I get it. I mean, you probably should try to wear a thong all day long. I mean, listen, we are dedicated to the sponsors here. So maybe for the cause. I think you should do it. Now, one of my favorite products that Skims has is their Fits Everybody T-shirt bra.
Starting point is 01:35:39 I love it because it does give you that lift, that support, but it's seamless. It doesn't feel bulky. I'm not constantly adjusting it to just stay comfortable. It's not cutting into me in different places. It's great. And the Fits Everybody underwear is the same exact way. Soft, flexible actually lasts. They do, like I said, they have the thongs, but you don't feel like you're,
Starting point is 01:36:02 just being cut in half all day. I've worn and washed mine so many times. They're still my go-to. Love them. It makes getting dressed easier because you know you're going to feel good and whatever you put on. Right. And you can shop Stephanie's favorite bras and underwear at skims.com. That's skims.com. And I think we have a little bit of a call to action on this one as well if you head over to the site. Yeah. So after you place your order, just be sure to let them know we sent you. Select podcast in the survey and choose crime weekly. And if you're watching, you can go directly to to skims.com slash crime weekly. Okay, let me ask you something.
Starting point is 01:36:40 Are you someone who actually likes your money? I mean, yes, I'm actually quite fond of my money, yeah. I think a little attached to it, right? Yeah. So unfortunately, big wireless carriers are also very fond of your money, which is why people end up paying way more than they need to for their own phone plans. Yeah, those bills, they can add up fast. And that's why Mitt Mobile exists to fix that.
Starting point is 01:37:02 Stop overpaying for wireless just because that's how it's always been. Mint Mobile is here to rescue you with their premium wireless plan starting at $15 a month. It's pretty damn good. And you're not going to be sacrificing quality here. I actually talked about in past episodes how I put two phones side by side to see if I was getting dropped service with the Mitt Mobile phone and I had no issues. You're still going to get high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Plus it's easy to switch. you can bring your own phone and number, activate with ESIM in minutes, and start saving right
Starting point is 01:37:36 away. So no contracts, no hassle. And a lot of people I know what they'll do is they have two ESIMs on the same phone. So you can have your Mint Mobile number and another number on the same phone. It's super simple now. You're not locked into anything complicated either. You're just paying less for the same thing. Yep. You can ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service for $15 a month. Yeah, we use this. You should as well. And if you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. shop plans at mintmobile.com slash crime weekly. That's mintmobile.com slash crime weekly. Up front payment of $45 for three-month five gigapag plan required equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full price plan options available.
Starting point is 01:38:18 Taxes and fees extra. See Mintmobile for details. Okay, so the following morning, Monday, March 25th, Gregory Moore arrived to work at the Stafford Law Office around 8.23 a.m. At 8.51 a.m., an employee of Stafford Law contacted Verizon and attempted to cancel the mobile hotspot on the business account. It doesn't say whether they were allowed to cancel or not, but here's what I will also tell you that people didn't really know when they were signing up for these mobile hotspots. They're in a two-year contract, just like your phone used to be. And this was before phone payment plans, and you'd pay like $99 or $200 for an iPhone, and then your phone was contracted basically for two years. you couldn't cancel, you couldn't do anything, and you had to wait for your two-year upgrade.
Starting point is 01:39:06 Do you remember those days? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So the Mi-Fi was the same thing. When you signed up for it, usually you'd be like, hey, you don't have to pay anything for this device, you know, $0, and it's only $10 a month. But then they would call to cancel them, and they would find that you were contracted to be under that number with that Mi-Fi for two years, and you'd have to pay the whole two years off, which was quite a bit of money. Okay. So it says they attempted to cancel it, and I guarantee you that they didn't cancel it because they were told it's going to be a cancellation fee and you have to pay it off. This, this and that. So that same day, an employee at Stafford Law deleted a voice message left by Elisa on the Stafford Law phone system from a call box outside the building the previous night. So Gregory Moore didn't do this because they don't say his name. They say an employee. Obviously, this employee did this deleting the message from Aliza.
Starting point is 01:40:03 without telling the police it existed and not showing it to any member of law enforcement. So it was probably Alisa outside the building, calling into the Stafford Law Office is like, hey, I'm outside. My lawyer, Gregory Moore, told me to meet here. What the heck? What's happening? I don't know why they would delete that because it would be pretty common knowledge that Elisa was meeting Gregory Moore for a meeting that night. There's text messages and the whole point of Gregory Moore texting her and being like, hey, where are you? So it's confused. using as to why that message would have been deleted. But obviously, it was for some reason. And it kind of shows you that someone's working in concert with Gregory Moore. Yeah, he's not acting
Starting point is 01:40:45 alone. Now, this was also the same day that Gregory Moore was questioned by police. And he told two homicide detectives that he'd been inside of his office at the time of Alisa's attack, which obviously now we know is not true. They've known this for a while, right? And that's probably why they charged him and made a deal with him in 2016. Yo, because initially when you talked about those six months, it was for... He'd been charged with like telecommunications fraud and yeah. The deals were off the table when it came down to the murder charges. Yes.
Starting point is 01:41:16 And then on March 29th, Gregory Moore filed a notice of suggestion of death in the Sherman v. Sherman divorce case, which was eventually dismissed on April 2nd, ending the case without a trial, because Elisa Sherman was dead and there was going to be no trial. That same day, the Stafford employee who authorized the change to the mobile hotspot on January 4th, 2013, authorized Gregory Moore to switch to a different cell phone while still being on the Verizon business account. More than transferred his Stafford lost cell phone number to a different cell phone than the phone he'd been using on March 24th, which is the day Elisa Sherman was murdered. So was the goal kidnapping or was the goal murder?
Starting point is 01:41:59 Because legally the prosecutors are framing it like this. Kidnapping was the method, right? Making Elisa unavailable for the trial was the objective. And making her unavailable could be achieved in more than one way. They're not saying that more planned a kidnapping and it accidentally turned into a murder. They're saying that there was a plan to remove Elisa from being available at the trial. And that plan included the possibility that she could suffer. serious harm or even death.
Starting point is 01:42:27 So they're not saying like, hey, Gregory Moore paid someone to kidnap Elisa so she wouldn't be available for the trial and then it turned into a murder and that was not his plan. No. They're saying that he knew that it could end with bodily harm or death. And that's the motive. That's the motive. Gregory Moore had, whether he did it himself or had somebody help him, Elisa Moore was
Starting point is 01:42:52 murdered so that she wouldn't be available for the trial. And at this point, we don't know why Gregory Moore didn't want the divorce trial to happen. It doesn't make sense. We know why Sanford Sherman wouldn't want the divorce trial to happen. But why would Gregory Moore not want the divorce trial to happen? You know, people are saying, like, well, he was chronically unprepared for these trials. He was calling him bomb threats and trying to have these other trials delayed. That was just like his pattern. Prosecutors have said that Gregory Moore had previously done things to avoid court dates, like pretending to be sick, getting into a car accident. He would call on these bomb threats to courthouses in 2012. But what's, that's the motive? This is what I'm saying. It doesn't
Starting point is 01:43:37 make sense. You weren't ready to go to trial so you killed your client. You had her stabbed 11 times because you weren't prepared for the trial? What? Yeah, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. It would make more financial sense for her to be around because she's a client and he can continue to overcharge her. Like a lot of these guys do.
Starting point is 01:43:59 But I don't get it. You kind of explained it in the way that I think would make the most sense that there's not necessarily an incentive for him for her not to be there, but the financial gain maybe on the back end for someone else could ultimately benefit. him. As far as going back to the original intention of this of this crime, was it a kidnapping or that went wrong or was it all the time going to be a murder? They said it's all the time going to be a murder. I'm there as well. I don't know how the way this went down that he would have gained control of her and been able to kidnap her and hold her at a certain location for an extended
Starting point is 01:44:38 period of time while the divorce proceedings took place. I think the time, the intention The whole time was the killer, for sure. That's what the prosecution is saying. Based on what they know about Gregory Moore and this unnamed co-conspirator or co-conspirators. It wasn't like, oh, well, just kidnap her and hold her. It was like she'll be unavailable because of bodily harm, serious, bodily harm or death. Yeah. She'll be dead.
Starting point is 01:45:03 And then you have to ask yourself why. Well, what's the reason for Gregory Moore? It doesn't make sense on the surface unless someone got to him and said, hey, listen, you're not going to win this case. You want this delayed. I don't want this to go through. Yep. And if it does go through, this is what you're looking at making based on your fees. However, if it goes our way and we get what we need, this is what we're willing to pay you.
Starting point is 01:45:26 Now, that sounds like we're talking about Sanford. And we could be, but it could also be someone else who has a financial gain as well. We do not know. And I don't know how the story is going to end. But for legal reasons, we have to obviously say that because it doesn't look good on the surface. It hasn't looked good for Sanford all along, but there hasn't been anything here, at least from what you've told us so far, that's connected Sanford to the murder other than the fact that he would be able to financially benefit from her passing. That's really it. And I think that for a murder like this, that had so much planning going into it, was so brutal, the motive for Gregory Moore to do it, at least the motive that they're stating in the indictment, it doesn't, you know, the ends doesn't justify the means.
Starting point is 01:46:12 Right. Kind of thing. I also do wonder if we could be looking at this the wrong way. Like, I know they're saying there's a co-conspirator and he may have been talking to someone and that's completely possible. I don't have access to the files. But I also want to put out there that sometimes these crimes occur and they don't make any rational sense. And you could potentially be looking at a scenario, although it doesn't look that way where Gregory Moore was out of his mind and was clearly conducting himself in a way that didn't make a lot of sense with the bomb threats and all these. other things. So like he's mentally ill.
Starting point is 01:46:44 Mentally ill. Could have developed a fascination with Elisa for some reason. Again, we can't explain it because it's not explainable, but for some reason, he wanted to kill her. Well, I guess the judge was telling him like, hey, you've, you've delayed this, you've delayed this, you've delayed this. Like, I'm sick of your shenanigans. This, this court date is happening on the 28th or whatever. Whether you like it or not, you better be ready. And that's kind of when this happened. So the judge had told us. There's some of the options. Just say, Your Honor, I'm not prepared.
Starting point is 01:47:15 I'm dropping myself as counsel. Right. You don't have to kill her. So for me, there's something more here. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's this big conspiracy where he was paid off to do this or he was going to gain something. It looks like that. And if I had to put a bed on it, that's what I'd be leaning toward. But it also could be something much more sinister in the sense where he's just like, I developed, you know, feelings for her.
Starting point is 01:47:41 and I didn't like how she was talking to me. And I decided that if I couldn't have her, nobody could. I don't know. It could be something so much more sick where it's not as deep as we think it is. Or he had maybe had this delusions of things that were between them and she had no idea. Because it doesn't make sense to kill her. It doesn't. And you would think at this point, and maybe you're going to hit me with a curveball,
Starting point is 01:48:05 we still have a little bit of the script left and I haven't read it. So far, you have to imagine that law enforcement. is thinking the co-conspirator is in some way, shape, or form Sanford. And yet at this point, they haven't connected those dots. So either a really good job was done or he's not involved. Okay. So here's what, I'm going to answer that now. Okay.
Starting point is 01:48:28 Sort of, and I guess. I'm going to answer it. So Gregory Moore was arrested by federal marshals in Texas on May 2nd, 2025. He was there visiting his father, allegedly. He pleaded not guilty. and a judge set his bond at $2 million after Alisa's daughter Jennifer told the court that her family had waited 12 excruciating years for justice. Prosecutor Kevin Fuletraught also announced that the evidence showed Gregory Moore had planned and then tried to cover up the kidnapping and murder of Alisa Sherman. And that same evidence also clears Alisa's estranged husband, Sanford Sherman, who had passed away in Florida in July of 2024.
Starting point is 01:49:05 He had moved to Florida shortly after Alisa's death and reportedly he never spoke to the. Cleveland police. He refused to cooperate for the remainder of his life. He never talked to them. So this prosecutor, fill a trout, he says this same evidence that shows it was Gregory Moore also clears Sanford Sherman. So he's saying basically the evidence is inculpatory when it comes to Gregory Moore and exculpatory when it comes to Sanford. So is he saying that the evidence clears Sanford because it's showing Moore did it? Or is he saying the evidence shows that absolutely there was no connection between Moore and Sanford, which could have made Sanford somehow involved with this.
Starting point is 01:49:44 That would be my follow-up question, where are you saying he in no way, shape, or form physically killed Elisa? Because we agree with you there. But are you saying in no way, shape, or form he had anything to do with her murder? That's a different question. Are you saying he didn't kill her because Gregory Moore did? Or are you saying that there's no evidence at all that shows these two men communicated, whether through, you know, other people.
Starting point is 01:50:07 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. That's two different questions or two different statements. Did Larry Shanker talk to Gregory Moore? Yeah. Frigan Larry. So that's kind of where I'm at where it's like there's so much, so much motive with Sanford and so little motive with Gregory Moore. Right. And the only motive that you would find would be him financially benefiting from Sanford winning in the civil trial. Or the trial in the divorce trial or the trial never happening. Yeah. Right. That civil trial not going forward where there's no divorce and no divorce proceedings and he gets everything. And Sanford gets all Elisa's. He gets everything. Right. But I think there could if, if, let's just play this out. If we could see into a crystal ball and Sanford truly had nothing to do with this or by proxy through anybody else, then that means that Gregory's motive wasn't financial in nature because we've already established that there's no financial benefit for his client.
Starting point is 01:51:07 dying. So then it goes back to what I was saying, where there's something here that he's mentally unstable and he was envisioning Elisa in a way that wasn't rational. And so that's why you and I are sitting here struggling to understand why he would do this. But if there's anything that we've been taught over the five years of covering cases on crime weekly is these murders don't always make sense. Sometimes evil people are just evil and they do things that are beyond comprehension for most of the people listening or watching. And that could be what we're looking at here. Either that or Sanford got extremely lucky.
Starting point is 01:51:42 Him not cooperating with law enforcement after the fact, that could be looked at two different ways. On one hand, you know that Sanford was being looked at for the murder, and he may have some resentment towards law enforcement saying, hey, F you guys, all this time you thought it was me, and it was this crazy person. On the other hand, it could be, oh, man, they weren't able to connect the dots.
Starting point is 01:52:01 I'm not going to help them. It's all depending on your perspective. and how you want to look at it. Yeah. I just, there's something nagging at me. I know. People always want to believe there's more to it. And that's understandable because people want to understand.
Starting point is 01:52:18 It's not just the Sanford had something to gain financially if Alisa was dead. It's like he's asking his cop friend, his retired cop friend. How would you commit a perfect murder? And, you know, like he's doing all these crazy things to her in the divorce. Like he doesn't seem like a good person. He doesn't seem like a person who would color within the lines, so to speak. Can I play devil's advocate? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:52:37 At this point, if I'm the investigator, I'm going to be able to find some connection to Gregory Moore or his colleagues and Sanford. And you have to ask yourself, how would you even approach this conversation where you're going to try to involve your ex-wife or soon-to-be ex-wife's attorney in a murder-for-hire plot? If this doesn't work, you're FUC-Cade. So how did this connection happen? And there's no trace of it whatsoever, whether it's digitally or in physical, like in a physical sense. Remember, this law firm is kind of doing sketchy things. Okay. We got the two founders of it.
Starting point is 01:53:18 Yeah. The brothers who are, you know, like basically being barred, you know, suspended because they're doing sketchy things. Yeah. And then that's the reason Eliza ended up with, with this Gregory Moore guy to begin with because her lawyer got suspended. because he was doing sketchy things. And now you've got the other employees at this law firm helping Gregory Moore do sketchy things. So it seems like a lot of sketchy people work there.
Starting point is 01:53:43 I'm not just going to say it like that. A lot of sketchy people work there. And Sanford's kind of sketchy. So I don't think when you know you're a sketchy person and you know sketchy people and you're approaching sketchy people that you don't know how to have your own language about sketchiness and say things without saying them. How about this? Maybe they all met at the strip club.
Starting point is 01:54:07 Boom. The strip club could be the key. Like drop. Yeah. That's the, legs and eggs. Yeah. That's the connection. That's the missing link here.
Starting point is 01:54:15 That would absolutely make sense. I know. I know. Because, you know, they're having conversations there. Yeah. They're drunk. Sanford sidles up to Gregory Moore. And he's like, hey, ain't you my wife's lawyer?
Starting point is 01:54:28 Gregory Moore's drunk. There's, you know, butts in his face. And he's like, yeah. And he's like, let me make a deal with you, you know? And then if Gregory Moore says something, Sanford will be like, what are you talking about? I wasn't at that strip club. That was my cousin, Morris Dorfman. You talked to my cousin.
Starting point is 01:54:44 That wasn't me. Maybe Gregory Moore owed somebody some money. I don't know. Sanford owed somebody some money. Well, Sanford definitely owed people money, but I'm saying Gregory Moore being willing to get involved with this, if Sanford had people who knew of him and knew he was in financial trouble, that would be his incentive to do this because. they would be able to make those problems go away by paying off those debts for him.
Starting point is 01:55:08 I mean, this is, this would be elaborate and I still, and maybe it's just the like black and white side of me where I need the evidence to support it. I don't go off theory or conjecture. It's like I need something more tangible than just this is what makes sense. To me, it's still very possible at this point in the story. Gregory acted alone and there was something direct with. Elisa that he had a problem with, although they charge him with conspiracy. Yes.
Starting point is 01:55:37 But it doesn't mean that the law enforcement agency work in the case wasn't wrong. They might have just thought he wasn't capable of doing it alone. But where's this other person? If that's the case. Why is it an unnamed co-conspirator? There you go. Yeah. If you know who it is and you're certain in that, who's the person?
Starting point is 01:55:53 You say their name. Exactly. And I don't go off of like theory or conjecture either. I love vibes, man. That's theory. I love vibes. Something about. That has to be on a T-shirt.
Starting point is 01:56:04 That has to be on a T-shirt. It feels wrong, okay? Unless he is, unless he is verifiably mentally ill, which could be, but he continued to live in Cleveland and work and he's got family and kids, unless he's like verifiably mentally ill and they can bring someone in to say that. I mean, he's doing bomb threats and shit. He's doing things that, like, are not necessarily. You could simply remove yourself from these cases and you're clear.
Starting point is 01:56:32 Why are you going to these lengths to cover up your inability? There must have been pressure coming from somewhere to stay on the cases, but delay them. Where's the pressure coming from? Detective Harlow, what is your reasoning behind this? Vives, well, Your Honor, it's not theory. It's not conjecture. I go off the vibes. I go off the vibes.
Starting point is 01:56:52 The vibes are wrong here. The vibes are off here, Your Honor. You have to admit, they're off. They're off. And the judge would be like, they are off. They are off. Something's not right here. I don't go off theory.
Starting point is 01:57:02 I go off vibes. That's a T-shirt for sure. Like, I just feel it. Like, in my stomach, it's not right. But if we had a dollar for every time something was off with someone and we would put it, you know, our life savings on the fact that they did it and we get thrown a curveball and it comes out that they didn't, even though they're a bad person. It wouldn't happen that much.
Starting point is 01:57:20 It wouldn't happen that much. No. There's been a lot of times where I've, we've covered cases, maybe not only on here, but just in general where the obvious answer is not the right one. Wait, you said a lot of things. You said, if we had a dollar for every time, we'd bet. better life savings, we'd be rich. We'd be, if we had a dollar. We wouldn't be rich because we bet our life savings. Oh, did I say that wrong? Yeah. So listen, we would have maybe $5, Derek.
Starting point is 01:57:41 If we, so you're, let me make sure, let's clear the deck here. I was basically trying to say that if we put money on the fact that we were very sure of it, that we were very sure we'd be poor. We have like $5. Okay, you're right. If we had a dollar for every time, if we had a dollar for every time we felt something was really, really certain and then we were proven wrong, we'd have like five bucks. It's not that much. I agree. Okay. That's what I was trying to say. Thank you for clearing that up because, yeah, you're right. I said we'd be rich. But we wouldn't. But there's something
Starting point is 01:58:07 off here. Okay, so, yeah. Bail's set for Gregory Moore. And then he posted a $2 million surety bond. And I think that basically means he doesn't have the money. He's getting it from like a bonds person, like a bondsman, right? Yeah, usually that's what will happen. The bondsman will put it up. If it's surety, you have to put up 10%. So for $2 million, he'd have to put up $200,000. Now, if he doesn't
Starting point is 01:58:29 show up, then it could be go after his house or things like that. Or he'd lose that money and they could also go after if somebody else is putting it up for him, like a bail bondsman or a family member or friend. Okay. So he, he posts bond. He gets out. He gets out. And then Elisa's family released a statement through their lawyer, Adam Frye. Quote, we are deeply concerned by the court's decision to release an accused murderer, especially someone with a documented history of evading court obligations without advance notice without GPS monitoring or house arrest. It's hard to understand how a decision like this aligns with public safety or the expectations of a reasonable justice system.
Starting point is 01:59:05 End quote, I agree. You don't even GPS monitor him. The dude's calling in bomb threats to the court to avoid just like representing someone in court and he's going to just show up like a good boy to his court appearances. What? But that's the unfortunate. That's the thing about bail, though, right? Bail's not supposed to be.
Starting point is 01:59:23 Yeah, it doesn't matter. So let him out on bail. You got a GPS monitor him. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that he's such a flight risk. I mean, $2 million is a lot of money for bail. So he came up with it. $200 grand, not a drop in the bucket, right?
Starting point is 01:59:35 It's a lot of money. It's not pocket change. No, but still, like what? He cares about money all of a sudden. He killed off his client who was paying him a lot of money to run her divorce case, that he could have kept going for two years, knowing Sanford. So does money matter to him? Or does not be accountable for things matter to him?
Starting point is 01:59:52 Yeah, that's the thing about this. It just doesn't smell right. I know. It's vibes. Vibes are off, man. But I think we're having different vibes, though. I feel like... I don't think we are.
Starting point is 02:00:04 There may be less of the story than we think. He'd have to be crazy. Looking at the brief history you've told me about, not going into his personal life like we did with Sanford, there's a lot of skeletons in this guy's closet. There's not really much to find out about him, yeah. I bet you there is. I bet you there is.
Starting point is 02:00:21 I mean, I'm sure it's there, but it's not there. You know what I mean? Like, ain't nobody's talking about him, really. No. Well, listen. He's using fake names in the strip club. Yeah, Morris Dorfman.
Starting point is 02:00:32 So Gregory Moore is scheduled to go on trial September 14th. And if he goes to trial, we're going to find out a bunch of stuff. I can't wait. But it was originally scheduled for March of this year. The trial was moved because the defense was like, we got a lot of materials to go through for discovery. And fair. Okay. And then the newest bump in the road focuses on calls Gregory Moore made
Starting point is 02:00:53 from a Texas prison after his May 2025 arrest. So the prosecution said that during that period of incarceration, Moore made several calls that were recorded on open lines, right? So you know the call. You pick it up, hey, this is a call. It's being recorded. They tell you before every call, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 02:01:09 Yeah. So the prosecution says, quote, three of those calls were made by more to an attorney or a number associated with that attorney who identified himself to the undersigned assistant prosecutor at the time as being Moore's defense attorney in this case. that individual is not the current defense counsel. The state of Ohio chose not to listen to those calls and placed them in zipped folders for discovery purposes
Starting point is 02:01:30 so they could be kept with the file given to the defense but conspicuously labeled so as not to be listened to by the prosecution. The state gives notice herein that it intends to listen to said calls because consistent with case law on the subject, the manner in which the calls were made defeats the privilege that could have existed had the call been made through more private means, end quote. All right. So this is, I'm actually,
Starting point is 02:01:52 this is a little, this is a little sketchy. So it sounds like Moore made these calls that were recorded. All right. Some of these calls were to an attorney who is not his defense attorney now, but was being identified as his defense attorney then. And initially, the prosecution treated them as privileged and did not listen to them, but later they were like, we want to listen to them. And they argue that because Moore made these calls on recorded lines after being warned
Starting point is 02:02:17 that they were being monitored and recorded, he essentially gave up that privilege. and because of that, they said they intended to go back and listen to those calls. And this is something that could potentially give them direct insight into what Moore was saying about the case. Or it could be him saying everything because he's talking to a lawyer. And obviously, Gregory Moore's defense does not agree. They say that when Moore was arrested, he was in Texas. And the phone was the only way he could communicate with his attorney who was a thousand miles away. And he requested additional privacy for those calls, but it was denied.
Starting point is 02:02:51 was told he could use the jail's phone system or not speak with his lawyer at all. All right. So in the recorded calls, according to the motion, more identified them as privileged at the start of each conversation. And the filing also warns of significant consequences if the prosecution accesses the recordings because it would violate Moore's right to counsel and due process and could warrant a complete dismissal of the charges. They're actually asking for those calls to be completely destroyed.
Starting point is 02:03:19 So there must be something good on them. But either way, I kind of agree with the defense. 100%. This is shady, man. 100%. If he has no way to access his attorney other than making a phone call using their system, he's been Mirandized, he understands that he can talk to his attorney. And that's his only means of communication, what other choices he have other than to use that system?
Starting point is 02:03:44 If he asked, hey, I got to call my attorney and I don't want to record it. And they were like, no, sorry, you either don't talk to your attorney. or you talk to your returnee when it's recorded. If that's true, that's sketchy. And that could be why. And Gregory Moore would know this as an attorney. Yeah. Is that why they waited until he was in Texas to arrest him?
Starting point is 02:04:01 Hmm. Because he's been in Ohio this whole time, right? But then you wait until he's visiting his dad in Texas to arrest him. Maybe so you can put him in jail there and tell him the only way he can talk to his lawyer is on the recorded jail calls. I'm not defending this guy, but. I don't think those calls will ever be admitted. I don't think a judge is going to say, yeah, that the attorney-client privilege does not apply here when he's directly speaking to an attorney and letting the facility know that's what he's doing.
Starting point is 02:04:31 So, I mean, if they had the ability to talk in person and they chose to still do the phone, I still think it would be protected. I think two things can be true. I could think Greg's guilty, but also believe he has a right to do process. I bet you they already listened to those calls. I mean, you could be right. You could be right for sure. Like we didn't listen to them. We securely and discreetly put them in a zip file that was inconspicuously labeled.
Starting point is 02:04:54 So nobody would listen to them. We did not listen to them, but we're notifying you now that we want to. You listen to them. You know there's something good in there. Or you wouldn't be fighting for them. And that's why you want them admit it. Now I want to know what's in them. You probably never will.
Starting point is 02:05:07 I probably never will. We'll see what happens. But yeah, like I said, at the end of the day, he's going on trial in September. I can't wait. If it even makes it, he might make a deal again. Who knows? I want to know about what you said. Is his mental status, if his mental status is okay and he's normal, would you then say, okay, there's something the vibes are off?
Starting point is 02:05:28 I don't know. We already know for certain that his way of rationalizing difficult situations, at minimum, his judgment is off, right? Hey, I can't make it to a trial. I'm not going to be prepared in time. Most rational people would say, hey, I'm going to need an extension or I'm going to remove myself from the case. Not Gregory. He's calling him bomb threats. So right there, there's something vibe-wise off with this guy mentally.
Starting point is 02:05:51 No, doesn't take a doctor to figure that out. Or he's sketchy. Like, there's some other motive behind why he wanted them. Something. Like, if you found out that it wasn't just Elisa's case and it was other cases he was trying to delay. And there was some motive where he was benefiting from delaying those trials. Would that make more sense to you?
Starting point is 02:06:08 Like, he was getting kickbacks from the other side, maybe. Correct. If we could prove there was a history of him doing certain things like this. But even more importantly than that. I would have to have a list of everybody else who would have a financial incentive for Elisa not to be there. Because if we're only honing in on Sanford, we could be missing the real target here. And it's one thing to say Gregory did this for financial gain. It's another thing to say that he worked in cahoots with Sanford or someone from his team.
Starting point is 02:06:38 That's a big allegation to make and you have to support it with evidence. You can't just assume because Sanford had the most to financially gain that it's, automatically him. So I would need some type of communication either directly or indirectly through a third party where there was some previous connection where Gregory Moore would have a way of communicating with someone in Sanford's circle. And it is such a risk because there's paper trails for everything. And I don't know how law enforcement would miss it. If there was something out there to be found and they basically had both ends of the of this connection, right, the Sanford and Gregory, all they got to find is the lynchpin, I would like to think they'd
Starting point is 02:07:20 have the ability to do so, and yet they haven't, or at least they haven't said it publicly. Exactly. So I don't think necessarily that they missed it. It's just that, you know, it goes to trial and that's when it's revealed. Like we found out so much more about Corey Richens after she went to trial. We found out all this other stuff. But if you, because he's calling him bomb threats in 2012, right? So this is before Elyzie even files for divorce. Yes. Okay. Yes. Well, technically not, but before he's her lawyer. Correct. She happened to happen in 2013. So we're talking at least six months or a year before. So we have to assume these are four separate cases because we know he was calling in bomb threats for three separate cases. Unrelated to Elisa. Unrelated to Elisa or at least not the same case. So if you were to find out that he was doing this because he was known by the other side, like whoever was on the other side of those cases, to be open to taking.
Starting point is 02:08:16 kickbacks or bribes and delay trials, would you then say, okay, there's a chance that Sanford could have heard or Sanford's lawyer could have heard through the grapevine that Gregory Moore is kind of open to putting, you know, putting delays on trials and stretching these things out if you present him with the right offer. Like he just maybe had a reputation for being somebody that would be open to do. Who could be bought? Yeah. I'm already open to it. I think, looking at it from the outside, that would be the obvious answer. And there's a real possibility that the conspiracy charge associated with Gregory Moore is stemming from the belief that there's no other reason that Gregory Moore would have done
Starting point is 02:08:59 this other than to financially gain from it. And the only person who would be able to provide those resources, the money, would be someone from Sanford's team. They might be making that connection without having all the pieces yet. Maybe that's TBD. But I think that's where they're coming from, where they're not. able to compute the idea that Gregory acted alone because there's nothing that makes rational sense as to why he would kill this woman. The conspiracy charge could come from the fact that there was clearly somebody else or more than one somebody else's at the firm who helped him carry out the murder.
Starting point is 02:09:34 So here's my question to you. And this is my question to everybody else who's screaming. If they are able to clearly identify that he conspired with someone else, what is it? a phone number, an email? I think it's just that they haven't identified that person. But what is it? I need to know how they were able to determine that he did not act alone. Was he in communication with someone via cell phone, email, smoke signals, whatever it was,
Starting point is 02:10:02 if you were able to determine that, how, what is it, and what is the evidence that you have? If it's a phone number or an email, we'd already have that person identified. So I need more detail on that. I think that person's probably identified to them. They just haven't charged them yet? Just not to us. Or maybe that person helped and made a deal with them with the police and the prosecution, giving them more information.
Starting point is 02:10:25 I think we would know. But maybe you're right. It's still an ongoing case. But they would know because they're basically saying, they're not even saying, hey, this person just like helped by, you know, getting the MiFi or erasing things. They're saying this person and Sanford both voluntarily together planned this kidnapping slash murder. When you say this person, you're referring to Greg? No, Gregory Moore.
Starting point is 02:10:49 You're referring to another person. Yeah, and this other person worked together to plan this murder. It's not like the other person was unknowing and just like, yes, okay, Greg, I'll erase that or I'll get you a hotspot. The person knew what the end goal was and what they were doing. Or if it is Sanford and they've already connected those dots, while you can't arrest a guy who's already dead. So they could be saving that for trial. they're going to they're going to paint the picture that Gregory Moore was in communication with Samford Sherman and that's the connection and the only reason he hasn't been arrested is because
Starting point is 02:11:25 he's no longer with us but we'll have to see we'll have to see what happens I am very intrigued by this case because you would think that they would have come out publicly and said yeah we charge him with the conspiracy because we believe he worked directly with with eliza's ex-husband and yet they haven't so they could be just keeping things close to the chest, which I fully support. I mean, it says that more and at least one other unnamed individual learned that the prosecutor's office was investigating more his cell phone usage in 2012 when these bomb threats were made.
Starting point is 02:12:00 Right. Okay. So that's when the scheme started to kill Alisa when they learned that the prosecutor's office was investigating more for the bomb threats in 2012. But these two things, Alisa's case and these bomb threats in the cases there, they don't seem to be connected. So maybe the person who's funding whatever operations or whatever the motive is behind Gregory's actions was the proxy in both.
Starting point is 02:12:27 Yeah. He could be the, this person could be the middleman. This person could be the middleman. Yeah. That's why we got to wait and see what happens. They're going to have to show us what they have at trial. And at that point, you know, either it's going to be during discovery or during the trial,
Starting point is 02:12:40 we're going to hear from everybody involved, including all the witnesses to support the individual charges from the murder down to the conspiracy. And there is a possibility he gets convicted on the murder and not the conspiracy if that charge is weak, right? So we'll have to see. I really want to know at this point just from a human level if Sanford was involved, not only for Elisa, not only for her children, but also for Sanford as well. If there's verifiable proof that he had nothing to do with what happened to Elisa, that needs to be disclosed as well, because there are many people, including people who are watching this episode right now or listening to it, who are going to leave it thinking that Sanford was somehow connected.
Starting point is 02:13:21 And at this point, it's a coin flip. So detectives have a job to find the guilty but also exonerate the innocent. And we'll see if they're able to do that at trial. Maybe we hear about a different person who we did not mention during this case who is connected and has yet to be identified. That could be, yeah. Okay, so I guess we'll have to wait until September. Wait and see.
Starting point is 02:13:41 Sounds like a crime weekly news for me. if I haven't heard one before. Yeah, I'll be keeping up on it. Fascinating case. Guys, let us know what you think in the comments. We talked about a lot.
Starting point is 02:13:51 We speculated at the end there. Gregory Moore currently waiting for his trial. There may be more people connected. Or do you think that he's a sole operator? I'm really intrigued to hear what you guys have to say about this. You can comment in the YouTube section. You can also leave a review on Spotify or Apple. We can see those comments.
Starting point is 02:14:10 Spotify, we can respond to them. Apple Podcasts. We can't. Love to hear what you think about this case, get your opinions on it. I'm trying to think if there's anything else that I missed that I wanted to run by you guys. I don't think so as I'm going through this. We have all that up and running. I think that's really it.
Starting point is 02:14:28 Is there anything else that you can think of as you're eating a peanut butter cup right now? The first one I had. Your sugar levels down. You're having to recharge. No, I think that's it. I am excited to hear what you guys think about this case in the comment section on YouTube. and if you want to, you know, message us separately if you're on Patreon, let's get a discussion going there too.
Starting point is 02:14:48 Yeah, Patreon's a great spot. We usually have a chat dedicated to whatever case we're covering. So if you want to follow us over there, you definitely can. That's going to do it for us, guys. That's the end of this series. We'll be back next week with a new case. Until then, everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you soon.
Starting point is 02:15:02 Bye.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.