Crime Weekly - S3 Ep226: Dr. Thomas Kolman: The Love Triangle (Part 1)

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

On the morning of November 29, 2011, 44-year-old Dr. Thomas Kolman didn’t make it to work at his regular time, so his wife, Linda, went looking for him. She eventually found him reclined in his car, unresponsive, in the parking lot of Planet Fitness in Ulster, New York. After Tom was pronounced dead, an investigation into his death began and detectives soon uncovered an illicit affair and received a toxicology report that hinted at foul play. And as the case continued to unfold, the shocking reality of what happened to Dr. Thomas Kolman began to emerge. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. StitchFix.com/CrimeWeekly - Get $20 off your first fix! 2. TalkSpace.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code SPACE80 to get $80 off your first month! 3. TryFum.com - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY and get a FREE gift with your Journey Pack! 4. Thorne.fit/CrimeWeekly10 - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY10 to get 10% off your first order! 5. FactorMeals.com/CrimeWeekly50 - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY50 and get 50% off your first box, plus 20% off your next month!

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The UPS Store. Visit a store today. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we're diving into a brand new case. But before we introduce that, I know Derek has something he would like to say. Yes. So criminal coffee. Many of you guys have been asking about the next case that we're going to donate to. And I always want to be transparent with you guys. There were a couple of cases that were in the hopper where we were going to go forward

with them. And unfortunately, they fell apart. Why did they fall apart? Essentially, the law enforcement agencies just do not want us to share anything. They don't want us to say that we've donated to it. They don't want us to say that we're involved in the case. They don't want us to mention it at all. What's the problem with that? Well, you guys are buying coffee. Some of you are buying coffee

because you're contributing to a cause and you want to know where your money's going to rightfully so. So that's not going to work for us. We have been more than willing not to discuss the case, not to talk about it, not to mention any specifics of the investigation until there's some type of resolution, whether they solve it or not, doesn't matter. And still, there are officers who just, again, they just don't want any part of it. And it is what it is. I don't agree with that approach. I didn't agree with that approach when I was in investigations. I had butted heads with my chief numerous times about it. I feel like having the exposure from different platforms can benefit the case, especially if you're looking for funding, but yet there's this old school mentality with certain agencies that they just can't get past

it. And I'm not willing to conform to their rules in that sense, because you guys have a right to know where your money is going, period. So moral of the story is we're back to the drawing board. It's unfortunate, but it is what it is. And the reason I'm mentioning it here is not only to keep you up to date on what's going on, but also to say, hey, if you have a case in your hometown or your state that you're familiar with, and you have a police agency that is publicly put out there that they're looking for funding or trying to raise money for a specific case relating to DNA, would that be the best situation?

Let us know about it. Send us an email, write it down in the comments below. And if there's someone that you know that's working that case or someone that you know we can reach out to, we will do that. We have the money to fund at least two more cases as of right now because of your contributions. And the money's just sitting there. We want to spend it. We want to donate to these cases. We're not looking for any type of recognition that we're donating to them. We just want to be able to do what we did with Preble Penny, or as we know now, Albert Frost. We want to make sure that you guys know where your money is going and the progress of the case.

And I'll tell you why. For two reasons. Not only because you deserve to know, but also, to be frank, to hold these police departments accountable. When they know that someone's monitoring the money that they're spending, it puts a little bit more pressure on them. They can't just put it to the side and get to it when they want to, because I will be calling them and emailing them just like I did with Preble Penny. And some of them don't want that. I'm not saying that's all police departments, but some of them don't want the oversight. They don't want the responsibility of knowing that there's thousands of people who are now monitoring this case. And if that's the situation, that's very unfortunate because these cases deserve to be solved just as much as any of the other ones. And we're basically offering them the money to do the testing required to potentially

solve the case. So don't lose hope. I can promise you we will get a case. We will get multiple cases. This is just the growing pains that we're going through. But I wanted to make you aware of what's going on and also say, hey, listen, if you have a case that you're aware of that is potentially looking for money, we're open for business. That's all I had. Yes. And we're very excited to start working on that next chapter for Crime Weekly for Criminal Coffee. Yes. We're ready. And I've told, we don't have to talk about the case at all. We'll put out what's out there publicly already, and we won't mention it again until they have some type of result. And it doesn't make a lot of sense. We're working with the labs, and even the labs are like, yeah,

but they've already agreed they won't say anything until... No, we don't want them ever to mention it, because that way, if it goes one way or the other, we don't want them ever to mention it, you know, because that way, if it goes one way or the other, we don't, we don't want them ever to mention it at all. That's just not an option. That's not an option for us or for criminal coffee. If there's something that came up where it was an emergency that they needed some immediate funding for something that was quick and could solve the case, we would consider it. But for a case that may take a while to solve, we want to make sure that you guys know what's going on. You have the right to know. So we'll keep you up to date. And like I said, if you have anything, let us know. Should we start now? Yeah, I'm all fired up. But yeah, we can start. All right. So this is a very bizarre and odd case.

I can't wait to get into it with you, Derek, and with everybody. But Thomas Edward Coleman Jr., he was born on March 22nd, 1967 in Queens, New York, to his parents, Thomas Sr. and Marie. Unfortunately, we don't know much about Tom's childhood, aside from the fact that he had two brothers and one sister, and that Tom's mother said he, quote, just had a kindness about him. He was always there for everyone, end quote.

Tom graduated from West Babylon High School. Then he attended SUNY at Stony Brook before ultimately receiving his undergraduate and doctorate degree in physical therapy from Damon College in Amherst, New York. Tom's parents would later say that they were very proud of Tom and all of his success as any parent would be. He worked very, very hard. He was a good person. He focused on his studies. And then he began to focus on his personal life and sort of balance work with his personal. And in the early 1990s, Tom married a woman named Michelle. They had two children together, a son, Bradley, in 1994, and a daughter, Jillian, two years later. But in or around 1999, Tom and Michelle divorced,

but they remained friends and they co-parented well. Then, on October 26, 2001, Tom married a woman named Linda, and Linda had a daughter from a previous marriage. Tom and Linda went on to have a son, Ryan, together, and eventually the family settled down in Saugerties, New York. Linda worked as a hospital administrator while Tom worked as a physical therapist and volunteered as a little league coach for the Saugerties Athletic Association. Apparently, he was also a huge New York Giants fan, which isn't very common around this area. Me being from the New York area, I understand a lot of people are Buffalo Bills fans. I don't know why, but they are. I'm sorry. I know. No, they're actually pretty good right now. I like Josh Allen. I mean, they just constantly are continuing to disappoint over and over again.

But either way, he was a big New York Giants fan. But Tom ended up being not only a hard worker and a really good physical therapist for his patients, but he was a dedicated family man. He was more focused on spending time with his family than friends. However, he did have one very close friend, Dr. Gil Nunez, whose children attended the same school and karate lessons as the Coleman children. Gilberto Apollinar Nunez was born on April 19, 1967, in the Dominican Republic. After moving to the United States, he attended the New York University College of Dentistry, where he graduated with a doctorate in dental surgery. Gil then became a licensed dentist in multiple states, including New York and Arizona. He later went on to own his own practice, Gilberto Nunez DDS, in Kingston, New York, which is about 15 miles

away from Saugerties. Gil also became a volunteer firefighter in Kingston. By the time Gil met the Coleman's in 2010, he had five sons and his practice was thriving. One employee said that Dr. Nunez was one of the best dentists she'd ever worked for. She said she'd never heard him raise his voice. He is never angry and he never flew off the handle. So I'm already, this story has already taken a turn for me because- Are you thinking about Charlie Adelson? I'm thinking about Charlie Adelson first off, but also just because I'm accustomed to your, the way you kind of lay out a story. I don't know why we're talking about this individual already, Gilberto Nunez, but it sounds, from what you're describing right now, a great person, great dentist,

great overall guy. And yet I have a feeling that that's not, there's going to be some tie in here. So we'll see. This reminds me of another case recently, and I don't know his name right off the top of my head, but he's a doctor. And he ended up, well, he's being charged with poisoning his wife's protein shakes. And he was loved by everybody in his practice. And what happened with him? Is he on trial for this right now? Okay, so his name is Dr. James Craig. So he actually was in, well, he's in Colorado and he's a dentist. So he's accused of killing his wife by lacing her protein shakes with poison. And he was having an affair at that time. And police say that James Craig, who began an affair before his wife's March 18th death, he'd searched online for answers to questions such as, is arsenic detectable in an autopsy

and how to make a murder look like a heart attack. I don't know when these people are going to stop Google searching. I mean, I know you have questions, but it always is going to come back to you. Your internet history is tracked. Always. And you know what else?

Actually, you know what? Keep searching. Makes our job easier. Yeah, exactly. And then it's always very, very clear. He Googled a lot of stuff Actually, you know what? Keep searching. Makes our job easier. in her protein shakes. And it's a very sad case because the text messages between James and his wife, Angela, were released. And she's basically texting him from home and she's saying, I feel so sick. I can't get out of bed. And he's like, oh, honey, I'm so sorry. I'll come home and take care of you soon. What can I do? All the whole time knowing why she's feeling sick and all the whole

time he's carrying on conversations with this woman, another doctor in a different state that he's having an affair with. So yeah, it's pretty rough. So I don't know what's going on with these dentists. We got James Craig, we got Charlie Adelson, and now we've got Gilberto Nunez here. So a quick refresher, Gilberto Nunez, he's a dentist and Dr. Thomas Coleman, he's not a dentist. He's a physical therapist. Physical therapist. Okay. Okay. Got it. Well, before we continue on, because I feel like there's going to be a correlation, they're good friends, but the fact that you're bringing him up this early in the story is going to either mean that he's also a victim in some way,

or he's somehow connected to Dr. Coleman's death. So before we continue on, let's take our first break. We'll be right back. So while Dr. Gilberto Nunez was running his successful practice, he and Tom continued being the best of friends. They were always hanging out, texting and calling. They kept in constant contact with each other. So when Gil couldn't get a hold of Tom on the morning of November 29, 2011, he knew, too, that something was wrong, just like Tom's wife. Shortly after noon that day, Gil received a call from Tom's co-worker, who said Tom had never shown up for work that day. Gil immediately called Tom's wife, Linda, to see if everything was okay, but she didn't answer. Instead, a first responder answered and told Gil that Tom had been found unresponsive in his car at that Planet Fitness gym located in Dena Marie Plaza in Ulster, New York. So Gil headed straight over to the gym, and when he got there, he ran towards

Tom's vehicle with his arms flailing, and he asked, quote, what happened? What happened? He's my best friend, end quote. Now, someone then told Gil that Tom was unfortunately dead. There was nothing that they could do to save him. And at that moment, Gil dropped to his knees and let out a loud, long, drawn-out, no, that lasted three to five seconds, according to witnesses. Now, one paramedic later testified that they thought Gil was acting unusual, or he acted unusually when he was told that Tom was dead. The paramedic said, quote, Dr. Nunez was physically distraught and upset. He was jumping up and down, almost like he was on a pogo stick.

It was very unusual to me. In 28 years on the street, I've never seen anything like that, end quote. The paramedic's partner also testified that she found Gil's jumping up and down to be unusual, but unlike her partner, her recollection was that Linda was definitely more upset and Gil was more stoic. Gil calmed down after a while, then he went to console Linda, and that's when he learned more about what was going on. Apparently, at around 4.30 that morning, Tom left his house with a packed lunch and his phone. He was going to the gym before going to work. But Tom never showed up at work, which was completely unlike him.

He was very reliable, very dependable, always on time. So his co-workers called Linda and told her. She then called her husband, Tom, but he didn't answer. So she kept calling. But he never responded. He never called back. He never answered her calls. So her calls grew more and more frantic as time passed. Eventually, Linda did go out looking for Tom, continuing to call along the way. She knew that during most mornings, Tom worked out at the Planet Fitness gym at that Dena Marie

Plaza in Ulster, so she had it there. Shortly before noon, Linda found Tom's car in the gym parking lot, and it was parked super far away from the building, not where you'd expect someone going to work out before 5 a.m. to park, because, you know, when you get there super early, there's nobody. Well, what do we always talk about? Well, we talk about a lot of things always. Park close to wherever you're going. You want to park close to that entry, right?

You want to, male, female, I don't care. Especially at a gym, we give the example all the time with headphones. You're walking in, you're going to get enough workout inside. A lot of the times guys are getting out of their car, they got their protein shakes, they got their headphones, they're getting their notebooks ready with all their exercise, and you're distracted and you could be an easy target. So I do think it's very suspicious that he would park that far away because more than likely, as you mentioned, the lot was probably empty at that point. So the rationale behind that doesn't make a lot of sense.

And I mean, also, you want to park close to the gym during times when the parking lot may be not well lit. So super late at night when it's dark or super early in the morning when the sun hasn't come up yet. And if he's getting there at four, if he super early in the morning when the sun hasn't come up yet. And if he's getting there at four, if he left the house at four, the sun's not going to be up yet. Yep, exactly. So Linda goes to the parking lot and she does find the car. Yes, she found the car. And after finding Tom's car, Linda looked inside and she saw that her 44-year-old husband was reclined back in his seat.

Now, of course, when you first see something like this, your first thought isn't going to be, oh, my husband's dad in his car. You're going to think he was sleeping or just resting or listening to music and just kind of taking maybe a few quiet moments before heading to work. And Linda did at first think that Tom was sleeping, but then she opened the door. She tried to wake him up and he didn't wake up. So she shook him. She opened his eyes, slapped him and screamed, Tom, wake up. But he still didn't. So then Linda called 911. During the call, she was extremely distraught. She cried a lot, and she screamed, no, no, no. When officers arrived, they found Linda leaning in the car over Tom's body, visibly upset. They had to move her away from the car so that they could get to Tom. When officers looked inside the car, there were no obvious signs that Tom had been attacked

or that he'd had any sort of physical trauma. Tom's packed lunch and his cell phone were still inside the car. However, the way Tom's body was positioned in the car was unusual. He was in the driver's seat, which was reclined back almost flat, as if he planned to sleep. His shirt was undone at the neck, his belt and pants were also undone, and his zipper on his pants was partially unzipped. Something definitely seemed off. It didn't appear that he had just died in his sleep. Because of the circumstances of Tom's death, you know, the fact that he's pretty young, He's in his early 40s. He died at a young age. He didn't have any known health problems. He was alone.

He was reclined back in his car, the state of his clothes. The police opened an investigation. His body was sent to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy, and the autopsy concluded that there were no signs of trauma to Tom's body. But they also found that Tom had an enlarged heart and an enlarged liver. The pathologist further reviewed Tom's medical history, which showed that he had a history of high blood pressure and sleep apnea. And for those who don't know, sleep apnea, it can stop a person from breathing while they're sleeping. It's potentially very serious. And I guess when you're

sleeping, your breathing is going to repeatedly stop and then start. There's a few types of sleep apnea. There's obstructive sleep apnea, central sleep apnea, and treatment emergent central sleep apnea, which is also known as complex sleep apnea. The symptoms are loud snoring, episodes in which you stop breathing during sleep, which obviously another person would have to report, gasping for air during sleep. You wake up with a dry mouth or a headache in the morning. You have difficulty staying asleep, excessive daytime sleepiness, difficulty paying attention while awake. But obviously, at this point, we look at what's going on with Tom. He's got an enlarged heart, an enlarged liver, a little bit of high blood pressure, which is an uncommon, sleep apnea, which also isn't

super uncommon. And you don't really know exactly if any of these things were related to his death, because based on the information that the pathologist had so far, they couldn't really conclude how Tom had died. So they sent off for toxicology testing. And that toxicology testing would take weeks to come back, which is actually pretty speedy. That's pretty quick. Yeah. That's pretty quick. So just to go back here, let's talk about Gil's reaction in the paramedics' observations. I'm always a little apprehensive to take these statements at face value because

that's their perception of it, but everyone reacts to trauma differently. So for them to say they were acting unusual, what's your baseline, right? What's your baseline for that? How well do you know Gil beforehand? Is that how he reacts to these types of things? You wouldn't know that, you just met him. And just because you may react a certain way doesn't mean others will react the same. So it's something you can note, but I don't put a lot of weight into those reactions or at least the observations of people who are just meeting these individuals for the first time. But putting that aside for a second, when we talk about how Tom was found, I mean, he was 44 years old. He's on his way to the gym. So I'm assuming this is something that he does relatively often. And he's someone who's, he works out all the time. So yes, he has some health

issues. We all do, but nothing that's standing out completely. And here's the thing about it. If you're to think for a second, maybe based on what you're describing, that he gets to the gym and decides I'm going to take a nap for a second. And maybe he has an episode with the sleep apnea where he stops breathing. And unfortunately, he passes away from that. Okay, that's fine. But it wouldn't explain the undoing of the shirt. And it definitely wouldn't explain the zipping of the pants. I don't care how tough. If you're going to take a nap, you're not going to unzip your pants before doing so. You may recline your seat, but you're not going to do all these other things. So in totality, I can see why detectives would be suspicious of this because it doesn't sound like you would find this individual in this position and with this clothes and that type of condition if he was just taking a nap.

So I can understand why they would want to send this out for further testing and maybe put a rush on it through the medical examiner's office. I know when we have cases of sudden deaths, we'll go into the home. And if there's no specific medical condition that would explain why this person passed away, we will automatically do this out of an abundance of caution just to make sure we're dotting our I's and crossing our T's. And whenever you're unsure of it, you want to get that autopsy done because after the body is buried, yes, you can have it exhumed, but then there becomes all these issues as far as chain of custody and the different hands that the body will go through. We've talked about it in previous cases where now you have the embalming, now you have the funeral directors, you have all these people who have now had access after the body is now taken back up, it's always brought into question. So when in doubt, you always do the autopsy report. You want that initial observation from the medical examiner

so that if something does come up, you have that initial report. And then as you just mentioned, when nothing is obvious on the autopsy, you do the toxicology, which may reveal something else. I also want to talk about the relationship between Dr. Nunez, Gil, and Tom's wife, Linda. So it looks kind of like Tom and Gil became very close friends. But at first, Gil was a little bit closer with Linda because at the time when he met the Colemans in 2010, I believe, Gil was separated from his wife. And so he would kind of go to pick his kids up from karate. Linda would be there watching her kids do karate and they would just kind of talk and talk about, you know, relationships and marriages. And then through Linda, Gil became close to Tom. So when we see Gil calling Linda to see where Tom is and going over to comfort her, this is because they've had a preexisting

relationship that's kind of outside of Tom. It's not just Tom that binds them together or connects them. Okay. And there was no observations as far as their interactions. Everyone thought that was pretty normal. Nothing standing out there. As far as I know, they didn't say anything about it. Yeah. And that's fair. But I do want to say I'm not negating what people are saying when they see this because it is important to capture anyone's observations at the scene because it may be critical to the case. I just want to say that I'm always cautious about how people perceive someone else's behavior in a moment of trauma like this. This is not something you expect to see. So people will act out of character. And that is something that has to be considered. But in this specific case,

this may be something that leads to something further down the road. We will have to wait and see. Yeah. And like you said, you don't know meeting somebody for the first time what their baseline is. Dr. Nunez could have been a highly anxious person who just maybe, you know, didn't develop great coping mechanisms to stress early in life. And so when things happen, he just kind of reacts very intensely and dramatically at first because he doesn't know how to, you know, calm his own nervous system. From what I've heard of Dr. Nunez, he was a reserved person, friendly. He was very kind and charitable. He did free dentistry for a woman's shelter, free dentistry for the Boys and Girls Club. One of his patients said that she knew he would pick up elderly patients at home and then drive them back and forth from

their appointments. A very good dentist, his patients loved him. And he seemed to be just a generally good person. So maybe it's because he's just got a big heart. Maybe he's very close to the Coleman's. Maybe they've become like family to him because he is from the Dominican Republic. Maybe he doesn't have a lot of family in the States. And these people had become like his family. We don't know the context and neither did the first responders. And I think that's an important distinction that you just made. We're talking about first

responders who have never seen Gil before. Again, no baseline. Now, if you were to say, hey, his sister was there or his brother was there or a close friend was there and they observed behavior that was not normal for him in their dealings with him through many years, that would hold more weight to me. That's how I would calibrate how much stake I put in what their observations and their perceptions are of a specific person. So not the case here, something we would obviously note, but again, to just, you know, this person, this first responder, this paramedic making an observation. Yes, I'm going to jot it down, but I'm going to keep moving on with my investigation. Yes, absolutely. Let's take a death as if it could be a homicide. So they examined Tom's car, hoping to find, you know, DNA that didn't belong to him or or belong to somebody in his family.

You know, something that just didn't seem to belong in the car, was not connected to the Coleman's. Anything that would stand out to say that maybe there was a third party there or a second person who had done something to Tom Coleman. But there was nothing out of the ordinary, and they didn't even find any DNA except for Tom's, Linda's, and their son's. Which is weird to me because they had a daughter, too, who you'd expect to be in that car, but it just kind of shows you that either, because you know that that daughter was most likely leaving DNA, but it's just kind of speaks to the matter that when you're getting DNA off of any kind of surface, whether it's a hard surface or a fabric surface, you're just not getting all the DNA that's there because you'd expect that daughter's DNA to be in the car as well, right? Yes. That's the thing with all these cases, you have to know that there's going to be an excuse for a lot of people's DNA to be in the car as well, right? Yes, that's the thing with all these cases. You have to know that

there's going to be an excuse for a lot of people's DNA to be found in a specific spot. So you want to cancel them out, but you also can't because they could be the perpetrator. They could be the offender. I think it more aligns with first responders and investigators who are at the scene. If you find their DNA in the car, you could cancel it out. In this particular case, yes, you're going to find family and friends in the vehicle, more than likely trace evidence. What you're looking for is an unidentifiable DNA, something that doesn't belong to the normal characters in the story, a wife, a brother, a sister, a mother, someone you would expect to find in the car. If you have some unidentified DNA, that's the DNA you really want to send out and find out who it belongs to. Yeah. And I mean, it was 2011. So I think now they have that vacuum DNA thing. That's awesome.

Yeah. That thing is like next level forensic stuff. It's the coolest thing ever because they can use that on any surface and they can get a bunch of stuff and pull DNA. But at that point, they obviously, I don't believe they had that or if they did, it was in the early stages and not every forensic department or CSI department is going to have access to it. No, and they are expensive. The units, the units are expensive. I think they're like 40 grand or something like that. I think even more than that, dude. They might be with grants. Maybe it's at 40.

But yeah, no, it's a great tool. And it allows you to- 48,000. A starter package, which includes the equipment, a bundle of disposable supplies and training costs about 48K in the United States. Wow. Yeah. So you have the case, I want to say Crystal Beslana, which we did where there was the rocks and you had these crevices on those rocks where to the normal swabs that they were doing, they weren't able to find anything.

It was ultimately the MVAC that gave them the evidence they needed. whole interior of the vehicle. You can vacuum it all up and then you can bring it back to the lab and you're making sure that any amount of trace evidence that was in that vehicle has now been contained in a controlled environment that can be broken down and analyzed individually to determine whether or not you have some unidentifiable evidence there that may belong to the offender or offenders. And it's very cool. It works almost like a carpet shampooer. So it sprays the sterile solution onto a surface. And at the same time, it applies vacuum pressure to basically suck up the solution. And then whatever DNA material is present on that surface, that solution and whatever DNA they got are run through a filter or a micro centrifuge. And then you can separate these things and figure out what's in there. And then, and then you can, you know, separate these things and

figure out what's in there and it's going to get everything. It gets way more DNA than swabbing. Yep. Real great tool. Unfortunately not used here. So we're talking about how great it is. Also, unfortunately, incredibly costly. Very costly. And hopefully as time progresses and technology advances, as with anything, the prices will come down as it becomes more readily available. And it'll be a tool that every agency will have at their disposal. I know in Rhode Island, it's something where not every agency has it. But if we have a case that dictates maybe the usage of it, we can reach out to neighboring agencies to use their equipment.

And that's something that happens all the time. That's a great idea. So they didn't find any DNA, but then detectives looked for surveillance footage from near the gym. And they found that just before 4.37 that morning, a motion-activated camera at Kohl's, which is right next door to that Planet Fitness, captured an unidentified vehicle pulling into the gym's parking lot near where Tom's car was later found. Now, the footage was very blurry, but detectives were able to see the vehicle's lights. They could tell that the fog lights were on and that they had an unusual pattern. One light struck the ground much closer than the other. So when I say it was unidentified, I also mean it was unidentifiable.

It's not like you could see that it was a Dodge Neon, but you just didn't know who that Dodge Neon belonged to because you can't see the license plate. It was unidentifiable, as in I can't tell what kind of car this is. I can't tell what kind of color this car is. It's just we know it's a car because of the headlights. Yeah, I'm actually looking at the screenshot of the video footage right here. It's up on our screen as well. I'm sure you're looking at it if you're watching on YouTube.

And you can see, you can see that there's a vehicle in the background there. Unfortunately, if we had 1080p HD footage, you'd be able to see that vehicle, maybe even make out a potential plate. But again, we're talking about a time where not all surveillance footage is created equal. This is back in 2011. So what you got is what you got. And now I get this question all the time about enhancement. You can only enhance what you have.

There's only a certain amount you can do because at the end of the day, the pixels are the pixels. You can't make them something they're not. Now with AI, these days you might be able to fill in those gaps, to fill in the data, to maybe make the image a little bit clearer. But ultimately, what you have is what you have. And here, looking at this image, you basically have a shiny blur. You can tell it's a vehicle, but that's about it. And that's unfortunate, but that's the reality we live in, in a lot of these investigations, especially with lower quality surveillance cameras. And I also want to correct something I said earlier.

Tom did have a daughter, but he had a daughter with his first wife, Michelle. So he had a daughter and a son with his first wife, Michelle, and only a son with his second wife, Linda. But still, once again, you'd kind of expect maybe to see DNA from his older two children in the car, because I would assume that they'd be in his car from time to time, but obviously not enough to have left any substantial DNA that could be gathered in 2011. Got it. And so you said two children. So it's Bradley and Jillian. From his first marriage and then a son with Linda. Yes. Got it. got it. So 15 minutes after the police see this unidentifiable car pull into the parking lot on the surveillance footage, Tom's car pulled in next to the vehicle.

The cars remained parked side by side, but because of how blurry the footage was, detectives couldn't tell if any of the doors were opening or closing. You really can't tell what's going on at all. 28 minutes later, the unidentifiable car pulled away while Tom's car stayed put, never moving again. As the unidentifiable car drove off, detectives could see that it was a pale SUV of some kind. However, once again, due to the blurry footage, they couldn't tell what kind of SUV it was. Now, while reviewing

the footage, detectives recalled that Dr. Gil Nunez had shown up to the scene driving a white SUV, a Nissan Pathfinder. So they wondered if his Nissan could be the pale SUV seen next to Tom's car. And if it was Gil's SUV, then why was he meeting Tom in the gym parking lot the morning of his death? And why had he failed to mention that to anybody? Yeah, that is an interesting question. And just to go back to the footage, we can throw it back up on the screen here again. You were describing earlier about this parking lot. Now, I don't know where Planet Fitness is in relation to this footage, but to really drive home the point, if you're listening on audio, just to kind of give you a description of this, they are in not the middle know, the middle of the parking lot, you know, a little further

away from Planet Fitness. If you, it almost looks like, cause it's a dark image, it looks like a wooded area or something behind them. They are at the back of the, of the parking lot up against this wooded area where they're near some type of building. And it's nowhere near where, at least from this image, any establishment is. It's almost like you would be parking your car there because you didn't want to be seen or you were going to be there for a long period of time. And maybe I'm saying too much here about myself, but it kind of reminded me of something when I just got my license. If I was going to go hang out with my girlfriend or whatever, and we didn't have a place to go, we'd go park in the back of the parking lot with no intention on going into the store,

if you know what I mean. So it was one of those things where this really drives home the point of a couple things now, where it's parked and what you would do if you're parked in that area, unless you were going to leave your car there for a long period of time. And the way that Tom was found, okay. The unzipping of the pants and the fact that Tom never gets out of his vehicle and goes into the Planet Fitness. So we know Tom's vehicle drove into the lot. It parks back there. And after this suspicious unidentified vehicle leaves, Tom never goes inside. So you have to assume he was alive when he got there. And by the time that vehicle pulls away, he's either unconscious or already deceased.

Yeah. And if he was still alive or awake, he wouldn't have just stayed in the car. No, he got out of the car. Yeah. It's safe to assume that it was open at that time, which is why he was there. But again, you don't want to speculate too much when you're doing these cases. But I think as an investigator looking at it, you can say to yourself, Tom pulls into the parking lot. He's clearly alive. He was driving the vehicle. This car pulls away. He never exits his vehicle. So more than likely, whatever

happened to him happened in that time window. And if it wasn't something nefarious or malicious, why wouldn't this person in the other vehicle report it? So that's where the mindset is at this point. And I could definitely see how you wouldn't be able to make out individuals getting in and out of their vehicles because of the quality of this video, but it's more than likely that is what transpired, even though you can't see it. Well, obviously detectives are going to want to look further into this pale SUV.

You know, it's possible connection to Dr. Gil Nunez. And obviously whoever was in it was the last person to see Tom Coleman alive. So they obtained surveillance footage from businesses that were on the way from Gil's apartment to Planet Fitness. And this partly goes down Albany Avenue. So through this additional surveillance footage, detectives learned that

starting at 4.35 a.m., a white Nissan Pathfinder, which is an SUV, it could be seen heading in the direction of Planet Fitness, passing a series of businesses along Albany Avenue. The vehicle's fog lights were on, and they also had an unusual pattern, just like the pale SUV seen next to Tom's car. One light struck the ground much closer than the other. But unfortunately, because of how blurry the footage at Kohl's was, detectives weren't able to know for certain that the same Pathfinder seen on Albany Avenue was the same one that pulled into the gym parking lot. However, they could tell that a minute and a half after the SUV pulled out of the gym parking lot, a white Nissan Pathfinder with a defective fog light was back on Albany Avenue. So it did seem like they were looking at the same SUV in all of the footage. And would you consider this to be

circumstantial evidence because you can't clearly see that it's a white Nissan Pathfinder in the Kohl's footage, but putting two and two together, the white Nissan Pathfinder is driving towards the Planet Fitness. The white Nissan Pathfinder is seen driving away from the Planet Fitness on other surveillance camera. We can kind of put, you know, use context clues. And the time of the morning, how many vehicles are on the road. I think overall, as a detective, we're going to deduce that that is the same vehicle. Ask yourself, everybody out there, if Stephanie were to articulate what she just did to a jury, would they deduce the same thing? I believe they would. Yes. And that's what's important here. We're not saying definitively it is, but based on the circumstances, based on something that was identifiable to that specific vehicle, that being the fog light not being at the same height as the other fog light. Yeah. That is something that not only is there not a lot of vehicles on the road, not only is there not a lot of pathfinders on the road at that time, but there's also not a lot of vehicles on that road that look like a Pathfinder that happen to have one fog light lower than the other the early morning hours of November 29, 2011.

One witness said when he was leaving Planet Fitness, he noticed two vehicles, including one large SUV-type vehicle sitting in an isolated section of the parking lot. The vehicles caught his attention because they were in a place where, quote, nobody parks. He further told detectives that the vehicle he saw that night looked like one he passed frequently on Ulster Avenue near American Cleaners. Detectives spoke to at least two other witnesses who saw two vehicles parked next to each other in the gym parking lot. And one witness said they saw a light colored vehicle near Tom's. But another said they saw a dark colored vehicle. Here we go.

Good old eyewitnesses. Eyewitnesses, man. Muddying the water. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. At the same time, the detectives were looking at surveillance footage and interviewing witnesses. They were also hearing rumors. And this is very reminiscent of our last case with Marlene Warren, whose husband was, you know, doing some sketchy stuff on the side, including having an affair. So these rumors were about Tom's wife, Linda, and Dr. Gilberto having an affair.

So after hearing these rumors, detectives decided to bring Gil in for questioning on December 2nd. This was three days after Tom was found dead. They wanted to hear exactly what he had to say, even though detectives didn't even know Tom's cause of death yet because the autopsy was still pending. During Gil's interview, he was asked where he was at the time of Tom's death, and Gil said he was home alone in his Kingston apartment. Gil explained that he and Tom had texted the night before

while watching the Giants game, and at that time, everything seemed fine with Tom. Gil said he knew that everything was okay because if something was wrong, Tom would have told him. When Gil was asked why he was so confident that Tom would have told him if something was wrong, Gil answered, quote, I knew Tom. I knew he was okay because he would tell me right away, end quote. Gil continued on, saying he had tried to contact Tom several times on the morning of his death, but Tom never responded. He left several voicemails saying things like, call me, call my job, anything, please call back, love you. He also said things like, give lose weight. And Gil went on to tell detectives all about Tom's medical history. He said in addition to being his best friend, Tom was also a patient at his practice, so he knew everything about his medical stuff too. Gil told detectives

that Tom was always stressed out about his job and took Zoloft for anxiety as well as blood pressure medication. He also let detectives know that Tom had sleep apnea. Detectives later said they thought it was odd that Gil wanted them to know about the sleep apnea, but Gil explained it away, saying he wanted to share the information in case it could help the pathologist. Gil continued being pretty open during his interview. At one point, he told detectives, quote, I don't know if you guys know, but anyway, me and Linda have, we had a relationship. So, end quote. Detectives asked if it was a sexual relationship and Gil replied, yes. He explained, quote, I fell in love with Tom's wife and she fell in love with me, end quote. He said their relationship had started in December 2010. So this is the same year that Gil's meeting the Colmans. He's starting an affair with Tom's wife. And he said the last time they'd been intimate

together was about two and a half weeks prior to Tom's death. But after Tom died, he claimed that the affair stopped completely. Gil said, quote, I think the last thing she wanted was to be in a relationship with anybody, end quote. But despite Linda's feelings, Gil told detectives that he wanted them to know that he was still in love with Linda. He wanted to make that very clear. Detectives later said they felt everything about what Gil was saying was very unusual. It was rare for someone to be so willing to tell the police that they were having an affair with the victim's wife. Gil later explained why he'd been so forthcoming with the information. He said,

quote, I didn't want to keep something that I knew they were going to find out anyway to begin with. And second, it would make me look like I'm not being honest with them about anything I'm saying to them, end quote. And this is honestly very accurate. If you have nothing to hide as far as Tom Coleman's death, you wouldn't be hiding the affair because it's not a motive for the death. It's just something that happened along with the death, but those two things aren't connected. So he's being transparent about it instead of hiding it as Marlene's husband did in our last case. That is true. And this is just my personal opinion. But I do think now what I said earlier regarding the first responders observations of how Gil reacted to finding out that Tom was no longer with us now becomes more suspicious. Why? Well, this is just my opinion. But clearly, although they were friends, he didn't have

enough respect for Tom not to sleep with his wife. So although they were quote unquote close, clearly not close enough. So to have that type of reaction, maybe he's an outlier and he's just an emotional guy and that's how he reacted to it. But it does seem like it might have been. Could have been guilt. Could have been guilt. But to me, it just comes off now, having more context, it comes off as a little contrived, maybe a little over the top,

maybe a little embellished in order to really sell something. And now you can ask yourself the question, why? Well, it could be a simple explanation. He's sleeping with his wife and he really wants to put this forward, or there's something more. Both theories hold water, but now knowing this, it does make me question his behavior a little bit more because if he really loved Tom that much, he wouldn't have been sleeping with his wife for as long as he did. So that's my holdup now as I'm going forward. Now I'm wondering, is Gil being transparent because he just wants to be forthright with investigators? Or is he trying to get in front of a narrative because he knows the way investigators are

digging, they're going to find it out sooner or later anyways, and he's just trying to get in front of it. So as Facebook would say, it's complicated. It's not that simple, actually. So the police are obviously going to look into this relationship between Gil and Linda. And detectives learned that Linda, Tom, and Gil had met and befriended each other in 2010, as we talked about. Their kids all went to school together. And Linda and Gil were often the people who picked up their kids from school and took them to karate lessons. So they had a lot of opportunities to talk. And they confided in each other about

their problems because both Linda and Gil had a lot of stuff going on. Linda talked about how money troubles and stress had taken a toll on her and Tom and their relationship. Tom had to pay his ex-wife Michelle large divorce payments, maintenance payments, and Linda's daughter from an earlier marriage had health problems, so that's always difficult. On top of all of that, Linda and Tom's son was having difficulties at school. Now, at that same time, Gil was separating from his wife, so everyone was going through rough periods, and they likely bonded over that. But throughout their time getting to know each other, Gil became close to Linda and Tom, and they often got together with all their children. They grew so close that Gil even gave Tom money for his divorce payments.

Then in December 2010, Linda went to Gil's office for dental work. As she was sitting in the chair, allegedly, Gil kissed her passionately, and it blew her away. Linda later said she didn't find Gil particularly handsome, but he, quote, had a way about him. He had a very smooth, almost sexy way about him. His personality was sucking her in, end quote. She said, quote, the fact that this dentist, this smart guy, this, you know, smooth guy who seems to have everything would even want to kiss me or choose me, like, I just don't think of myself as someone. Why would he be interested in me? End quote. After Gil kissed Linda while she sat in his dental chair, the two began carrying on a sexual affair during her lunch hour. Linda said that while she still loved Tom,

she found herself falling in love with Gil too. And they began a passionate, you know, full-on love affair where Gil and Linda texted constantly when they weren't together. And they also celebrated anniversaries every month, sending cards to each other. So this was not just a sexual relationship. There was emotions here. There was feelings here. You don't send each other monthly anniversary cards when it's just sex. And Gil apparently was a very good affair partner. He lavished Linda in jewelry and clothes. He even built her a closet at his place and paid her credit card bills. And when Gil felt like he could fully trust Linda, he shared a major secret with her.

He told her that he was in the CIA. Now, we're going to get into this more as we go, but I think it will come as no surprise to anyone that Dr. Gil was not in the CIA. I'm not sure that the CIA has a habit of hiring dentists from the suburbs. I don't know what his CIA job would be in like this upstate New York place working as a dentist. Like who are you watching? What intel are you gathering? How many fillings the people of Kingston, New York have? Well, that's a different approach. I've never heard that one before.

Listen. Saying that you're in the CIA? I don't know how to tell you this, but I'm actually a secret agent. I mean, that's balls. I don't know how to tell you this, but I'm a member of MI6. MI6? Yeah. Like James Bond?

I'm 008. I'm 008. Well, listen, I guess she believed it. You know, he was smooth. There was something, just something about him. Yeah. I mean, listen, to each their own. But I think the overall takeaway from this whole relationship is what you said.

It's not just sexual in nature. Linda didn't find him necessarily that attractive. And he clearly was doing more than he would need to do if it was just a sexual relationship. He clearly wanted to be with her. He wanted to have a life with her. If he's building her a closet at his home. Built her a closet at his place. So paying her credit cards, like you said, there's a lot of other things going on there that does say it's deeper than just some type of transactional sexual relationship where,

you know, how some of these are where it's for the sex and they move on with their lives and continue on with their actual relationships. No, this was much more. So what I'm trying to get to at this point is it wasn't always going to be an affair for Gil. He's eventually going to want more and he's going to want Linda to himself and to also make a decision at some point. Like, is it me or is it Tom? How does that translate for detectives? What is their takeaway from all that? Motive. Bingo. So obviously, eventually, Gil wanted Linda to tell Tom what was going on, but Linda wasn't ready because she thought it would end her marriage.

No matter how hard Gil pushed Linda to come clean to Tom, she wouldn't do it. Then in early-ish 2011, Linda started receiving texts from a woman who claimed she was having sex with Tom, her husband Tom. After receiving these texts, Linda asked Gil, who remember she thinks is in the CIA, to help her by using his CIA powers.

Oh, man, that's that's that's that's uncomfortable. That's uncomfortable. She's going to her affair partner. She's like, listen, apparently my husband's having an affair with this woman. I need to know where these texts are coming from. Like, who is she? Is she real? What's happening here?

And Gil, of course, you know, he's he's a CIA agent. He's in love with her. He's going to help her. And he later provided her with a letter supposedly written by one of his colleagues at the agency. And this letter confirmed that Tom was having sex with another woman. Then it weirdly suggested that Linda should forgive Tom for doing that. Apparently, this was a two-page letter, and the letter detailed what was a relationship between Thomas Coleman and this woman, and it offered relationship advice recommending that these transgressions between Tom and this woman should be left in the past. The letter said, quote, we all make mistakes.

And later, Linda Coleman said she had doubts about the letter because it sounded like a two-year-old wrote it. But ultimately, she believed that it was true, that the letter was accurate and authentic. So despite Tom supposedly having an affair with another woman, Linda still did not tell him about her affair with Gil. And I guess she was going to take the CIA agent's relationship advice to put the water under the bridge, put Tom's affair behind her. Then over the course of two days in July of 2011, Tom Coleman started receiving texts. He received nearly 1,000 texts from a woman named Samantha. And these texts were all about how his

wife Linda was having an affair with their friend Gilberto Nunez. So Tom went to Linda and said he knew what was going on. And then she admitted to the affair. So he confronted her. He said, I'm getting these texts. What's going on? She can't keep the lie going. She admits to it. And Linda then went to Gil, and she was like, why did you send Tom these texts from this woman named Samantha? But Gil said it wasn't him. He said that it was possibly Tom who had sent those texts to himself. And shortly after this, Gil left a tearful message on Tom's phone professing love for both Tom and Linda. He also made a statement that made it kind of seem like he was going to take his own life. He further emailed Linda things like, I'm not leaving you, not today, not tomorrow, not ever, and I'm not going to just let you walk away from me. So Tom called the police and emergency services checked

on Gil. He told them that he'd had a moment of weakness, but he was fine now. So I want to discuss this further. Yeah, because this is this is odd behavior outside of any murder. This is just odd behavior in general. So let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. What I find odd is it appeared that Gil wanted Linda to tell Tom about their affair. Linda didn't want to because she thought it would end her marriage, which means she still wanted to be married to Tom Coleman. But she also wanted to carry on this affair with with Gil at the same time. She didn't want to lose either of those things. And it almost felt like Gil was okay with that as long as Tom knew that they were having an affair. Because he still did want Linda.

But he wanted to be honest and upfront with Tom and tell Tom that he loved them both. As if maybe Tom would just be okay with what was happening and everybody could go on with business as usual and Linda and Gil could have their thing and Tom, Linda and Gil could still hang out and, you know, play cards on Thursday nights and chat with each other at their kids' karate matches. I don't know. What do you make of this? The whole thing's odd the i'm having trouble following it because he writes this letter quote unquote from the cia agent and that's an opportunity to be like yeah tom's cheating on you here you go but instead in that letter he's almost advising her to stay with

him but to your point maybe there was a world where he thought that by writing the letter that way linda would not honor those wishes maybe he was just trying to soften the blow so it looked like it was coming from an unbiased person and not Gil. And maybe he was hoping that Linda was going to still go to Tom and confront him, but she didn't. So when that backfired and didn't play out the way he wanted it to, that's when he created this Samantha person and texted Tom himself. But as far as the whole dynamic between the three of them, yeah, I mean, just from the way you're conveying it to me, it sounds like he was in love with this woman, Linda, but he also really had a lot of love for Tom as a friend.

And he was trying to find a world where he could still have both of them in his life. Have it all, yeah. Yeah, which is just very odd. I mean, I guess it's not if you're somebody who's, you know, believes in open relationships and maybe even like this throuple thing. Like maybe it's not. And maybe that's what Gil was kind of wanting to do. But what I'll say is in July of 2011, this is when Tom confronts his wife Linda about the affair with her and Gil. Now, the previous February of 2011, Linda claims that Gil Nunez invited her to a hotel room. And when she arrived, he basically

had a briefcase full of $100,000 in cash. And he said, all of this is yours. You can leave with me. But Linda claims she was insulted. And then she left. And Gil Nunez later told her it was a test to see if she liked him only for his money. She forgave him for that. And I guess they just continued on until Tom found out about this affair the following July. But this is like game playing stuff. You know, he he's a game player. He almost seems like he like Gil maybe likes this tension and this like drama of hiding this relationship and, you know, having this like dopamine hit of sneaking around. And, you know, here's one hundred thousand dollars we can leave now. Oh, that was a test. Just like just kidding. Like messing with people's brains. Yeah, we always say the phrase trying to rationalize the irrational. I can't explain why he would do it. I think he was probably having an internal battle

with himself where he knows right from wrong, but the heart wants what it wants. And he's trying to find a way to get out of this and be happy with the person he wants to be with while also keeping a good friend of his. And he's acting irrationally, which is causing him to make mistakes and doing things like you said, the briefcase and stuff. It's just really not knowing how to approach this whole situation and clearly making the wrong decisions. But it gets even weirder. Okay. So

what would you think would happen not only between Tom and his wife, Linda, but between Tom and his friend Gil when Linda confesses to Tom, I've been having an affair with our friend Gil. And honestly, I still love you. You're my best friend. I want to be with you, but I don't really feel like I can let him go either. Like, what do you think in a common scenario is going to happen? What is Tom going to do? Not only just with Linda, but with Gil. I would think that he would cut them both off.

Right. Yeah. But I have a feeling you're going to tell me that's not what happened. Well, for the next three or four days after finding out about his wife and his friend's affair, Tom refused to speak to Gil. But eventually, Tom started talking to Gil again. He was heartbroken about it. He said he didn't want to lose Gil as a friend. He loved him. And so he was kind of willing to, I guess, forgive and forget and put it all behind them. But Tom was very interested to know what was going on here. Who was the Samantha person? How did she know about the affair between Gil and Linda?

How did she get his contact information? What was her place or her role in this situation? How did she get involved? So Tom said he was going to hire a private detective to try and figure it out. But Gil was like, no, don't worry, dude, because you've got the best private detective right here. I'm a CIA agent. I've been training for this my whole life. And I know a computer expert with my employer, the CIA, who could trace the origins of the texts. But then that connection, it supposedly fell through, you know, because Gil's just buying time at this point. He's like, don't hire private investigator, please, please let me get my CIA people.

And he's probably communicating with Tom every day like, oh, yeah, Roger over there at the CIA, he's working on it. You know, he's got firewalls. He's got a bypass. And this, this and that, making excuses. And finally, Tom's like, enough is enough. Who the hell is Samantha? So Gil went to Tom's office and said, OK, the gig's up. It was me.

I'm Samantha. It is me. Gil is Samantha. We're the same person. I'm really good at pretending to be somebody else because I'm in the CIA. But he said he did this because he felt bad. And he had been asking Linda to tell Tom and come clean for a long time and she hadn't wanted to. And he really wanted Tom to know about the affair.

Gil then literally begged on his knees for forgiveness. And according to Gil, Tom did forgive him. He told Gil to get up. He was like, get your ass up. You don't have to be on your knees. They hugged it out and continued on with their bromance. So it's interesting that you say they continued on with their bromance because I do not know anything about this story. But considering how Tom passed away at this point, we don't know if he was murdered. Obviously, we're here because it was a murder. But, you know, for the sake of this story, if it is Gil that shows up that morning because he has a similar vehicle, then why was Tom's pants unzipped? Was that staged or was there something more there? So that's just where my head is right now. What I'm basically saying without beating around the

bush is we know that Gil and Linda had a relationship, an intimate relationship, it almost sounds like maybe Tom and Gil were closer than just friends as well. That's just how it sounds on the surface. I could be completely wrong, but they seem they're awful forgiving of the whole situation. And I'm wondering why. Well, get this. It's not even about forgiving the situation, Derek. It wasn't like Tom was like, okay, Gilail. Okay, Linda, you're my best friend. I love you, Linda. You're my wife. I love you. I'm willing to forgive this as long as you guys stop. He was like, go on with your relationship. That's what, see, this is what I'm saying. It sounds like there could be more here because what is he getting out of it i just i mean i don't know weird really weird so after

this not only did linda and gill's relationship continue but it got stronger and gill and tom's friendship continued and got stronger they all got closer gill said that he and tom would talk and joke about the affair, and Tom would ask things like, did you see Linda today? And Gil would answer truthfully. Gil claimed that all of that had honestly brought them closer together. And this sounds super far-fetched, but Linda would later testify that Tom seemed to be okay with the affair. And text messages between Gil and Tom actually corroborate the idea that Tom was fine with it. Tom and Gil continued calling each other. They would call each other bro, and sometimes they told each other that they loved each other. In one text, Tom referred to Linda as Gil's girlfriend, and he said, quote, your girlfriend is baking. And Gil responded, great, I love her so much. At times, Tom, Linda, and Gil would go out together, but occasionally Tom would watch the children while Gil and Linda went out. Gil also set Tom up on a few dates. So it looks like they were kind of going into the open marriage territory.

Yeah, there's definitely something there. And this is not the most orthodox thing, but it does happen. And so maybe I'm speculating that there's something going on between Gil and Tom, but maybe it is just a situation. It's exactly how it sounds where there's this open relationship where they're both sleeping with the same woman. Yeah. Well, in September, so they, Gil and Linda are exchanging notes still, okay, that they love each other. It's all good. On September 10th, 2011, Gil proposed to Linda with a diamond ring, like asked her to marry him. And Linda was like, no, I don't know if you know this, but I'm already married. She said she felt it was inappropriate. She wanted to remain with her husband and kids and just kind of have Gil as her side piece, which once again is very odd. What did he expect? Did he tell Tom? Did Tom

help him pick out the ring? What was expected here? So Gil and Linda's relationship continued well into the fall of 2011. And in November, for Linda's 11-month anniversary card to Gil, because remember, they write each other monthly anniversary cards, she wrote in part, quote, I love you and will always love you. I had no idea 11 months ago that my life was about to change in the way it has, but look at us today. So much love and passion and compassion for each other, end quote. On November 12th, Linda, Tom, and their kids went to spend the weekend at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut, and Linda texted Gil throughout that weekend. But when Linda and Tom returned home, Linda sent emails to Tom talking about wanting to break it

off with Gil, but also being afraid of how he would react. In one email, she wrote, quote, I told him we have to talk, so he's been begging and pleading for me not to leave him, end quote. November 24th was Thanksgiving, and Gil joined the Coleman family celebration. Everything was totally fine that day. Gil and Tom even discussed starting a business together. A few days later, Tom, Linda, and Gil all took their children to Olive Garden. Then, on November 28th, Gil and Linda had an early dinner date before returning to their own homes. Later that evening, Tom and Gil texted each other while watching the Giants game on TV from their own houses, but they always talk to each other while they're watching the Giants game.

And in their text messages, they called each other bro. Gil and Linda texted each other that day as well. The next morning, as we know, Linda found Tom dead in his car in the Planet Fitness parking lot. And after that, her relationship with Gil came to an abrupt end. So what does Linda know that we don't know? Because why would her relationship with Gil come to an abrupt end after the death of her husband? Because he's been such a support system for both of them throughout this. Why wouldn't you just keep that going unless you thought he was involved?

Yeah, exactly. That's probably where she was at. Either she's involved and she's responsible for it and she's cutting off ties with everyone, or she believes, as you just said, Gil is somehow involved, whether it's directly or indirectly. At this point, does she really think he's a member of the CIA? And if she does, it would be pretty easy for him to have Tom taken out. I also want to be clear before you move on. When I said Linda was afraid of what Gil's reaction would be if she tried to break it off, she wasn't afraid he would get violent or angry because that was not in his nature. She was afraid he would become suicidal and try to hurt himself.

Okay. Okay. So at this point, if she's willing to break it off, why is that? There's obviously something where at this point she's saying, whatever happens, I'm fine with it because Gil, before I was concerned about you hurting yourself. Now I'm not so much. If you hurt yourself, so be it. So why the change of heart? And I think most people are going to come to the conclusion that that's because she believes Gil killed Tom. But why was she wanting to break it off even before Tom died, right?

Well, I think it was getting weird, right? You said he proposed to her. I mean, obviously, there's this understanding and there's probably conversations happening between Tom and Linda as well, where they're agreeing. You can still see Gil. You're going to sleep with them. You're going to do whatever you want to do. I'm fine with that. But they're clearly, there's more of an emotional connection between the two of them, Tom and Linda. I want to go over the timeline really quick with you and get your opinion on this. So Gil proposes to Linda in September. Then in November for their 11-month anniversary, Linda says, I love you. I'll always love you.

So much about my life has changed because of you. So much love and compassion for each other, blah, blah, blah, blah. Love, compassion, and passion. Then November 12th, Linda, Tom, and their kids spend a weekend away, and she's texting her affair partner or her other boyfriend at this point during the weekend. Then when they get home from this weekend, Linda's now emailing her husband, Tom, and saying, you know, I think I want to break this off. In those emails, Tom was like, if that's what you want, that's what you should do. You should tell him when you have dinner with him on November 28th. So this is the day that Gil and Linda have an early dinner, and then she goes home,

and then Tom and Gil are watching the Giants game that night. This is the day before Tom shows up dead. They're texting each other. Everything's fine. Did Linda try to break it off on the 28th? Most likely, which in her mind, that timeline is going to be relevant to her. She's connecting the dots. The day her husband dies that night before, she tried to break it off with her boyfriend. And now her husband, which Gil would perceive as being the one thing blocking his ability to have a happy life with Linda, is dead.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say. It's one of those situations where I think Gil assumed that their relationship was closer than it was and maybe the emotions were mutual. He's realizing directly and indirectly that Linda still loves Tom, regardless of what has transpired between her and Gil. She still loves Tom. And if she has to choose, she's going to choose Tom. And clearly that wasn't the case, or at least Gil didn't think that was the case beforehand, which is why he proposed to her. He felt like maybe they were on a trajectory where eventually it would just be them. And these indicators to him are showing that's not the case. And that's what Linda's putting together as well, saying, you know what? He realized that push came to shove. I would choose Tom any day of the week

over him. And that's why he decided to kill him. At least that's what she's assuming at this point. And he's probably thinking, I'm going to act cool about this. Like, I don't care if you're still with your husband, whatever, but you wouldn't be proposing marriage to her. He wanted her. Yeah. If you want her to still be married and you didn't care. So he's probably saying, I'm just going to play the long game. I'm going to show her that at the end of the day, I'm the better man. I'm paying her bills and I'm, you know, showering her with compliments and gifts. Custom closets. And he's hoping that she just eventually, you know, the right, the best man wins. But apparently

Linda felt her husband, Tom, was the best man. Was the best man, yeah. Gil realized he was losing. And so I think, we don't know. I don't know where this is going to go, but it sounds like there's only a few players in this game. And if it's not Linda, then it's Gil. Now you could be throwing a red herring at me here, and maybe we're going to find out that Linda was the one that did it. But based on the timeline you just laid out, that wouldn't make a lot of sense.

She just ended things or at least suggested things were over with Gil. So why would she kill Tom if that's the guy she wants to be with? That doesn't make sense. She doesn't have a motive. At this point, Gil does. Yes. And after Tom's death, Tom's family found out about the affair and about Tom's response to it. And his daughter from his first marriage with his wife, Michelle, or his ex-wife, Michelle, she had a difficult time believing that he was that OK with everything. But Tom's ex-wife, Michelle, said Tom probably would have done anything to keep his family together. He likely thought being OK with the affair would somehow pay off in the end and Linda would want to stay with him, which, I mean, he was kind of correct about that. Either way, it was a very complicated situation. With Gil and Linda's affair confirmed, the investigation into Tom's death continued. Two weeks after Tom was found dead, toxicology testing concluded that he did have some substances in his system. He had caffeine. He also had something called midazolam. There was an antidepressant, an antihistamine, and ibuprofen in his system. And all of these things seemed normal and prescribed, except for the midazolam, which is a sedative commonly used in surgical settings. It's not typically found outside of a doctor's office, but here's the thing. The amount of midazolam in Tom's system

would not normally kill someone. In fact, the amount wasn't consistent with enough that would even render someone unconscious. However, the effects of the sedative differ with people who have certain medical conditions, including sleep apnea, which, as we know, Tom did have. Unfortunately, there was no way to tell when or how Tom had ingested the drug because the pathologist threw out the contents of Tom's stomach before the timing of the ingestion could be determined. Why did they do that? I don't know, but they did.

There was also no explanation for why that drug would be in Tom's system. He wasn't prescribed midazolam and he didn't use it at his office as a physical therapist. And it looks like this is something that's usually injected. It's really not something that you can just kind of take in pill form. Maybe you can, but it's definitely usually an injection. It can cause really life-threatening breathing problems such as shallow, slowed, temporarily stopped breathing. And when somebody's got take before surgery, which you always have to worry about somebody having breathing issues when they're going under the needle. So because

of all these suspicious circumstances, Tom's death was classified as acute midazolam poisoning, and detectives concluded that he had been murdered. So they were now officially investigating his death as a homicide, which is crazy. That's where we're going to wrap up today. But yeah, that's something else because unfortunately, with the stomach contents not being available, not knowing when he took it, what the half-life would have been, how quickly it would have processed through his system, or what time he would have been taking it, which would show where he was at that time. Like if he had taken it 10 hours before,

then they would be able to prove where Tom was at that point and they'd have a better indication of how he may have gotten access to that or who may have given it to him, but they have no timeline for when he took it or how he got it. Yeah, the Mendazolam is a problem.

And I am still, as we're wrapping up this episode, not completely sure how I feel about for text messages, emails, and phone calls, because I don't understand whether it's Gil, whether it's Linda, or whether it's someone else that you haven't brought up yet. Whatever the case may be, this person who had parked in the back of this parking lot before Tom got there, they were already there in the back of this parking lot before Tom got there. They were already there in the back of the parking lot. So they knew Tom was coming. And when Tom pulls in to go work out, which he normally does, he knew to park in the back of the parking lot. So I'm assuming that Tom went there under a false pretense, thinking he was going there to meet someone for a different reason. What that reason is at this point, I don't know. If it's Linda,

it makes no sense. He lives at home with her. Why would he leave Linda to go meet Linda, right? No sense. If he's meeting Gil, is this something that he normally did in the past? Would he go meet Gil at the gym? And if so, was it common practice for them to park together in the back of the parking lot before going into the gym? That seems odd. Or was it someone else? Was it someone else that he may have actually been having an affair with or a relationship with?

And it was normal for him to use the gym as an excuse to leave the home. But in reality, he was going to meet this person in the back of the parking lot for other reasons. So if it is Gil that is ultimately responsible for this, which, you know, let's just call it what it is as we're wrapping up this episode, being a doctor, knowing what midazolam does and the effects it could have on someone with sleep apnea. And also the fact that at this point in the story, he has the most motive. You would think it's him, but I still don't know how we bridge the gap of, okay, Gil's

the person. He was able to set up a time to meet Tom at the Planet Fitness under this, whatever reasoning in order to administer this midazolam in a lethal way. I just don't know how we get there. That's what I'm really interested to find out because regardless of what you think, it still doesn't explain why Tom would voluntarily go to the back of this parking lot

and park there with this individual, whoever it is. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, was he known to meet a partner or a friend at the gym in the morning and they would work out together? And we know that Tom and Gil had been texting each other the night before, right? So I think there was something like 60 text messages between Tom and Gil. And what was said? So here's the odd thing.

There were just regular conversations that we know that people, you know, they were saying bro and talking about the game. But the police did find that Tom Coleman had deleted several text messages that night. And it doesn't look like those were ever recovered. So what was said in those text messages between Tom? Did he delete them? Well, that's an interesting question. They were deleted from his phone. Okay. And his phone was found in his car. That's what I'm saying. So the

phone could have been unlocked and this person could have deleted those conversations. I'm just telling you, there's something up here. There's something that's not making sense to me yet. There's something that's not making sense. I don't know what it is. It was deleted from Tom's phone, but the question is, did Tom delete it or did this other person delete it? And if those messages were deleted, what messages were deleted? Who were those messages from? If they're from Gil, that obviously doesn't look good for Gil. And if they're not from Gil, who are they from and why were they deleted? That's important. And I still, if it is Gil and the messages were deleted, what did Gil say to him that

morning? Like, hey, listen, I need to talk to you about something. Can I meet you at the gym? It's about Linda. Or did Tom say, listen, I know my wife tried to break things off with you and you're not listening. So we need to talk man to man because you're not respecting what she wants. Let's meet up this morning.

Something like that as well. Yeah, there's something there. We don't have the whole story yet. We don't have the whole story yet. And I know I've given a couple ideas, theories of what it could be. Was there a relationship between Tom and Gil? Was it something where it's just exactly the way it looks, where Gil

had found a way to convince Tom or Tom to convince Gil to come meet him that morning, and one of them had different intentions? I'm really interested to know what you guys think. Please don't go look it up. Obviously, the story's going somewhere. I don't know if this is a solved case. Is it a solved case? Dr. Coleman's death is not solved. Okay. There's a trial. If you want to go along this ride with me, don't go look it up. Way down in the comments below, if you're watching on YouTube or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, make sure you go and leave a comment there or review there. But let me know what you think. They made a TV series about this, actually. That wasbo and pedro pasquale you know who pedro pasquale is obviously yeah the mandalorian yeah he played um

he played gail what was i gonna say what show was i gonna say what show were you gonna say not the mandalorian no he's great in mandalorian but yeah the last of us oh you know i haven't seen it wow i know i like the i like the video game a lot, so I didn't want to like. Last of Us is, yeah. I didn't want to ruin it, so. He's great in that. He's great in that. But we're getting off the track.

I'm leaning towards Gil, but I feel like at this point, without having more information, I wouldn't feel confident in charging him with a crime. There's definitely facts of this case that you haven't conveyed to us yet. And obviously you're telling a story, but there's just a lot of, there's more questions than there are answers after part one. And so I need more because I feel like there could be a curve ball here that could change my perspective completely. But I really want to hear from you guys on this one. Yep, and we will talk more about this next week. We will.

Can I say one more thing? It's come to my attention, if you're listening on audio, that Apple has changed their settings, where if you haven't listened to one of our episodes in the last two weeks, it will automatically unsubscribe you from Apple Podcasts. This is something they did to make the download numbers more accurate,

which I don't necessarily disagree with. I appreciate it, to be honest. It gives a more accurate representation of what you're getting. But if you're someone who kind of builds up the episodes, especially someone like us, where we do a show where we do sometimes five, six, seven, eight parts,

you may be saving parts before you come back and listen to the whole series, which is great, but not great for Apple. So if you're someone who's catching up seven, eight parts, you may be saving parts before you come back and listen to the whole series, which is great, but not great for Apple. So if you're someone who's catching up, just double check, please. If you're listening on audio that you're subscribed to Crime Weekly because the episodes are not automatically downloading anymore, that's something they've changed. So I just wanted to throw that out there. I guess it happened back in September. I wasn't completely aware of it. I'm learning more about it now. And it does look like our subscriber count can be affected by that. It seems like everything's good. But for those of you who didn't know, I know some of my shows

that I don't listen to all the time. I'm now currently unsubscribed from all of them, which is why I'm bringing it up here. So that's all I had. Guys, we appreciate you being here. Everyone stay safe out there and we will see you next week. Bye.