Murder With My Husband - 270. The Missing Gambling King - Bruce Weinstein
Episode Date: May 26, 2025In this episode, Garrett and Payton explore the mysterious case of Bruce Weinstein. When Bruce fails to open his gambling business one morning, concern quickly turns to alarm as loved ones launch a de...sperate search for answers. Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/murderwithmyhusband NEW MERCH LINK: https://mwmhshop.com Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/themwmh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@murderwithmyhusband Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-dark/id1662304327 Listen on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36SDVKB2MEWpFGVs9kRgQ7?si=f5224c9fd99542a7 Case Sources: NYDailyNews.com - https://www.nydailynews.com/2010/02/06/the-naked-the-dead-killer-amy-dechant-found-in-nudist-camp/ CaseLaw.FindLaw.com - https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/nv-supreme-court/1490589.html TampaBay.com - https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1998/01/29/show-leads-to-arrest-in-vegas-murder-case/ LasVegasSun.com - https://lasvegassun.com/news/1998/jan/28/fugitive-suspect-in-weinstein-murder-arrested/ Murderpedia.com - https://mail.murderpedia.org/female.D/d/dechant-amy.htm Oxygen.com - https://www.oxygen.com/sin-city-murders/crime-news/amy-dechant-hid-in-nudist-camp-after-killing-bruce-weinstein Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband.
I'm Peyton Morlin.
And I'm Garret Morlin.
And he's the husband.
And I'm the husband.
Another week, another episode.
Guess what?
This episode came out, is coming out, is out on May 26th, 2025, which is my birthday.
Oh my gosh.
Happy birthday, Sheila.
My birthday.
I am turning everyone.
Guess how old I'm turning 30.
Everyone except my wife.
Guess how old I'm turning in the comments.
Let me know.
I'm sure everyone probably knows I'm turning 31.
That's weird. 29. 31. I'm sure everyone probably knows I'm turning 31. That's weird.
29.
31, what do you mean?
21.
Turning 31 years old.
I was trying to get you lesser.
Oh, thanks, Wibby.
You're welcome.
Turning 31, I was born May 26th, 1924 at 11,
you remember what time?
It's like 11, 31 p.m. or something like that.
I was 10, 14 a.m. Oh
Job babe
Yeah, it's my birthday today. I don't know exactly what we're doing. I don't know if we have any crazy plans
It's also Memorial Day
So yeah Memorial Day my birthday. We're kind of just hanging out and what I got going that will be my 10 seconds as well
If you feel like wishing me happy birthday go ahead
But I will tell everyone my number one pet peeve
During this 10 seconds. It's when people sing happy birthday to me when we're in a public setting
Yeah, so doesn't like it. Don't like it. I hate sitting at restaurants and everyone's singing. Happy birthday to me
doesn't matter where it is my house restaurants anywhere I
just I Can't stand it.
It's probably my number one pet peeve.
It's not just you though.
You don't like when anyone sings to anyone in a public setting.
No, it makes me feel extremely uncomfortable.
Yeah.
I don't know why it just, I just, I'm like, we're all just sitting there
and then everyone's just singing happy birthday to you.
And they were just looking at all them like, Oh, thanks.
Like, that's so awkward.
That's just so weird to me.
You have like 10 people singing at you and you're just sitting there and you
don't know where to look.
So you look down, then you look up at a couple of people and then you look back
down and you're like, wow, this song is taking a really long time.
And then you blow your candle out and you're like, yay, you know, and it's like the worst is it's like this
staff you don't even know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah, it's yeah.
You get the staff involved and it's like they all hate it, but they're just
sitting there having to do it and then you don't even know them and they're
singing Happy Birthday to you. Yeah, I can't stand it.
So
that's my ten seconds. That is my rant. Love you guys.
But everything is going well and I hope everyone has a fantastic day.
Let's hop into, oh, my birthday if you want, you can check out our bonus content.
We got Patreon episodes and we have Apple subscriptions or Spotify subscriptions.
Ad free content bonus episodes. You can check it out.
Let's hop into this week's episode.
Our sources for this episode are nydailynews.com,
caselaw, findlaw.com, tampabay.com,
lasvegassun.com, murderpedia.com, and Oxygen.
We've said it before, but Garrett and I do think a lot
about how blessed we are to do what we do,
that we work from
our house, our studio, and that while we might be telling stories about dangerous people,
our line of work isn't inherently dangerous.
We're not out there putting our lives at risk every day to make a living, though that is
what some people do.
For some professionals, danger is a part of the job description.
Comes with the territory, right?
Whether you're maintaining the law, working as a police officer, or breaking it, like
working with the mob or doing illegal bookkeeping.
Some professions mean you don't know how the day is going to end.
But there's something else that's interesting about these dangerous
lines of work. You never know who will come for you. And if it does end in the worst case
scenario, say a murder investigation, your greatest enemies become suspects, even though
they may be a cover for the people closest to you. And that is what we will be talking about today.
So I want to introduce you to 46 year old Bruce Weinstein.
Now he was originally from Liberty, New York.
Bruce and his family moved to Los Angeles, California,
I believe sometime when he was a kid.
And that's where he spent much of his formative years.
And while I don't know a ton
about Bruce Weinstein's early life,
I know that he was the eldest of four siblings
and he and his family were really tight.
When his brother, Steven, got older,
he decided to start a little family business with his dad.
This is one that Bruce himself would join later,
though we're not talking about running a laundromat
or getting into real estate.
No, Bruce's family ran their own bookkeeping business,
AKA this is collecting bets and then paying them off.
So say there's a basketball game
you feel really confident about,
or a horse you wanna bet on,
you might seek out the Weinsteins to place a bet.
And this is especially in the days before apps
like DraftKings.
And Bruce was really good at his job,
mainly because he earned the trust of a lot of his players,
which let's face it, while this is legal in many states,
it can be a bit sketchy,
but Bruce probably had some wealthy people
making some pretty hefty bets
while he was living in Los Angeles because-
Mm, Daisy, come here, Daisy, come here, Daisy, come here.
Oh, holy.
All right, you guys, we're back.
We were filming and we have our back door all the way open
because Daisy likes to go play in the backyard
while we were filming.
And then Garrett looked over and there was the biggest deer
on our like concrete,
like could have walked into our house that close to the door,
the wide open door.
No, it was, it was a really big deer.
And Daisy just looked at it and didn't even come inside.
We see a lot of deers out here.
That was the biggest deer I've ever seen.
Just casually walking on our house.
And it did.
So I look up, I see the deer just staring at Daisy
and Daisy looks at deer and goes, Ruff.
That's it.
Like she didn't freak out, zero survival instincts.
And then the deer just looked away and walked down into the ravine.
Oh, he jumped.
Oh my gosh.
That was a big deer.
It was so close.
I wish we had a camera on the-
I know.
Right there, where the deer was at,
there was like a blind spot.
So I need to put in a new camera.
Okay, we are getting back into Bruce,
who has now grown up in LA with his family,
his brother and dad started a business
and he is now also working at this book,
keeping business as an adult.
And like I said,
Bruce probably has some pretty wealthy clients
because he ends up making a good living off this profession.
He drove a nice car, he lived in a beautiful house
and he knew how to have a good time.
Bruce was always the life of the party.
He lived life in the fast lane,
always out enjoying nice dinners with a few drinks. Plus everyone said he had this laugh that was just
infectious. Bruce sounds like the kind of guy you really want to be around. At least that's what
Elizabeth Tuch felt when she met Bruce. So the two of them meet and then they get married in 1990,
and they end up welcoming a little girl into their family.
It's Bruce's first and only child, Jacqueline.
But over time, things started to get rocky
between Elizabeth and Bruce.
And in the early 90s, they decide to call it quits.
But Bruce wasn't just moving past the relationship.
He actually decided after this divorce
that he wanted to move out of LA.
Though there was one thing Bruce wasn't willing
to be done with yet, and that was his bookie business.
So Bruce found a place where he could really build
his roster of clients
and still see his daughter on the weekends, which is why in the early 90s, he decides to move from
LA to Las Vegas. Now, a single dad in his early 40s, Bruce was excited about this brand new chapter.
He really embraced the gambling scene. He got to know the people around the hotels. He began entering poker tournaments at the casinos. That's where he meets 46 year
old Amy Deschantes. Now there's a little thing about Bruce that I haven't
mentioned yet and that is that he sticks out in a crowd, okay? Bruce is about 300 pounds.
He has a long silver ponytail, this big round belly.
And in 1995, while playing Texas Hold'em
at the Mirage Casino, he definitely stands out to Amy.
She's a petite brunette who sits next to him
at the poker table.
They get talking.
Bruce tells her, oh yeah,
I actually run a bookkeeping business.
She tells him she has her own upholstery cleaning business
and works for a lot of hotels on the strip.
And Bruce says, hey, I'd love to hire you for a job.
She probably gives him her business card
and a few days later, she shows up on Bruce's doorstep
ready to clean whatever it was he needed cleaned.
But it's clear Bruce wasn't actually really interested
in Amy coming over to clean.
It's more a personal thing.
So she comes over and they get talking
and he learns that Amy has lost both of her parents
at a young age before she even turned 10.
She was then raised by her aunt and uncle in New Jersey.
And when she turned 17, she ran off.
She married her high school sweetheart.
The two got divorced.
Amy got married again,
which was followed by a second divorce.
And that's when Amy decided she needed a change of scenery.
So in 1992, around the same time as Bruce,
Amy moved to Las Vegas and bought a condo.
She starts the upholstery business with some friends,
snagged some pretty big clients like MGM and Scenic Airlines.
And now here she was getting courted by Bruce Weinstein.
And seemingly, Amy's into it.
Bruce asks her out.
Things go from professional to romantic pretty quickly.
And within just a week or so of meeting Bruce,
Amy is selling her condo and moving into
his large Spanish style home.
Dang, I mean, can you blame her?
I mean, within a week, she's like,
let me dip in that pool.
So things were moving so fast that even Bruce's mother,
Sylvia, was like, bro, you've got to slow down.
She nearly fainted when she heard that Bruce bought Amy
a diamond necklace and a new Chevy Camaro
just weeks after they met.
But there were others who thought Amy was kind of a source
of light in Bruce's life.
She was helping him get back into shape.
She was helping him monitor his diabetes.
Bruce even started to slim down in the weeks
after meeting her, getting a little
healthier, and the two did seem to be in love.
They were planning for their future, booking vacations and doing things together.
So about a year into their relationship in 1996, they plan to take a little
trip to Lake Tahoe, California.
This is close to Vegas.
They're just going to go have fun.
So on July 6th, Bruce was going to leave work, meet up with Amy,
but fate had another plan for Bruce.
On that Saturday morning, Bruce's mother, Sylvia, gets a call that he never showed
up to open his office that day, which is strange to her because she knows this
business well, I mean, half of the family is in
the bookkeeping business. And she knows that Bruce has to be there at 6 a.m. to do what they call set
the line, which basically means he has to go in at 6 a.m. and establish the initial betting odds
for that day. And this is something that you cannot miss. Like it absolutely has to be done
and Bruce has to do it, which is why Sylvia then calls Bruce's girlfriend,
Amy to see why he didn't show up to work.
And Amy tells Sylvia, Bruce's mom,
that the last time she saw Bruce was actually around 11 PM the night
before. That was when he told her he had to go run off and do something pretty
quickly. But if he wasn't home by the morning,
he would just meet her in Tahoe after work.
Yeah.
That's weird, right?
Well, I think that to her,
because of the line of work he's in,
she maybe doesn't think it's weird
that he has to go do something at 11
because there could be maybe sketchy stuff going on.
And maybe if he does have to work
and they're gonna leave for Tahoe,
he's thinking you just go with my daughter
and then I'll meet you there.
Yeah, that's still strange to me, but I get it.
It's just, I don't know, something's off.
Well, so Sylvia is like, okay,
but Amy doesn't seem totally alarmed.
She's kind of treating it casually,
but Sylvia is like, I just don't, something's not right. Lately, Bruce had kind of been it casually, but Sylvia's like, I just, something's not right.
Lately, Bruce had kind of been a creature of habit.
Him going out at 11 p.m. at night
just didn't seem like something he would do anymore.
Like, yeah, he used to be a party guy,
but Sylvia just decides she's gonna call
Bruce's brother, Steven.
Now, I need to tell you that when Bruce decided
to move to Las Vegas, so did his mother, Syl Sylvia she moved out there as well to be close to him
So she calls Bruce's brother Stephen who still lives in LA tells him. Hey Bruce is missing
He never showed up to work today. Remember this is kind of like a family business across states
So Stephen flies out from LA that day to help her look for him
And of course their first stop is Bruce's house.
When they get there, Bruce isn't home,
which may be not be surprising, however, Amy is there.
And when they get there and go inside,
they realize that Amy is shampooing
the carpets at Bruce's home.
Oh my gosh.
I mean.
No.
The entire.
That's insane.
The entire house reeks of vinegar.
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So Steven and Sylvia show up being like,
hey, where's your, you know, our family member,
your boyfriend, Bruce, open the door
and his new girlfriend of a year is shampooing the carpets in his
home saying, I haven't seen him since the night before.
Now I don't know if Amy gives them a reason for why she's doing this in the
moment, but that's not the only suspicious thing they notice as they're going
through the house. They noticed that Bruce's cell phone and wallet are still
in his house.
Oh, you, 911 needs to be called ASAP.
We obviously know.
I mean, okay, it's 1996.
Cell phones aren't kind of like they are today, but for Bruce's business, they are.
And so this is never good, especially when you're a bookie.
And like I said, your entire business is done mostly through phone calls.
So they tell Amy,
hey, we're gonna go file a missing persons report.
But when they go to the police, the police are like,
so he's only been gone today.
And you're trying to say he's missing,
like he's a grown man.
They say-
He's only been gone today.
His girlfriend is shampooing the carpets.
The whole house smells like vinegar.
His wallet's left the house and his phone,
but yeah, no big deal.
They tell them, hey, we're gonna give it a few days
before we start using resources.
The families like this is not good enough.
So the following day on July 7th,
when they still haven't heard from him or seen him,
they hire a private investigator named Michael Wasaki.
And one of the first things Michael does
when the family tells him what's going on
is say, we gotta focus on Amy.
I mean, the shampooing the carpets doesn't look great,
but some of Bruce's friends also say
that this relationship, Amy,
there was just something a little bit off.
So Michael questions her a few times
over the next several days, but she maintains her story.
Bruce went out the night before and didn't come home.
And after some digging, he realizes,
obviously Bruce didn't make it to Lake Tahoe either,
but here's what's gotta be suspicious.
If Bruce told Amy, hey, if I'm not back in the morning,
I'll meet you up in Tahoe, why didn't she go to Tahoe?
Why was she at home shampooing the carpets?
Yeah.
These are all just things that Michael's curious about,
especially by Thursday, July 11th,
when Amy starts mentioning to Michael,
yeah, I would love to help you search for Bruce,
but I actually have plans to leave the country.
So the following day, Amy and Michael speak again, and this time she has a
different version of this is insane.
Michael goes to her and is like, listen, you're planning to leave the country.
You need to tell us what happened.
She's like, okay, okay, okay.
This is the truth.
She says that actually on the night of July 5th, four masked men came into the house.
She was in the shower,
but they pulled her out and blindfolded her
so she couldn't see a thing.
She heard them lead Bruce upstairs, beat him up,
and then she heard three gunshots.
And after that, all she heard was what sounded like
his body being tossed down the stairs
and dragged out of the house.
She said, before they left, the masked gunman
said something to Amy.
They told her to clean up the house.
And if anyone asked, tell them that Bruce left and said
he would be back soon.
They also threatened to come back and kill Amy
and Bruce's young daughter, Jacqueline,
if anyone ever found out the truth.
She needed to keep this a secret.
So this is definitely a little bit more than like, hey,
he went out at 11 p. 11 PM and didn't come back.
He's saying, hey, intruders broke in, tied me up,
murdered him, and then told me to cover it up
or else they would come back and kill me.
There's no way anyone believes this, right?
Well, Michael's talking to people, you know,
he's investigating, he's investigating, the cops are,
but Michael is, and there are some neighbors
who cooperate this story.
Get the get out of here.
So one of the neighbors said that on the
night of July 5th, they did hear three
loud popping noises that sounded like
gunshots coming from Bruce's home at
around 10 PM.
And you have to take into consideration
Bruce's line of work.
Sometimes it did involve shady characters,
even if it was legal.
So apparently there were some operations that he was running there too Bruce's line of work. Sometimes it did involve shady characters, even if it was legal. Though
apparently there were some operations that he was running there too that were a little below board.
So Michael at this point decides to take this information to police. He's like, hey, this is
what I found out. She lied, but then she tells the truth. And then I check with the neighbors
and they also heard the gunshots. And 10 days after Bruce goes missing, Amy is finally tracked down and brought into the police station to give an official statement.
And there, Amy tells police the reason she didn't come forward about all of this was because she was terrified.
She remembers the muffled voices, the filling of a gun pressed to the back of her head, and the memory of someone telling her if she talked, she would die.
The only distinguishing feature she could give police was that one of the men had a heavy New York accent. She said
she did what they told her to. She cleaned the carpets, kept her mouth shut.
Here's the thing though, Amy isn't recalling all of this from memory. She has
these handwritten notes with her during her statement. So when she comes into
police she brings paper and she's
reading this statement off of paper. Police are like, what is going on? So they decide at this
point, they have probable cause they're going to search Bruce's house. So keep in mind, Bruce has
been missing for 10 days at this point. And what they're looking for is basically any evidence that
can confirm Amy's story,
or at the very least a sign of what happened to Bruce.
What they don't find is any fingerprints
that seem out of the ordinary, but even more interesting,
there are no bullets, casings, or any impact sites
in the primary bedroom that they notice.
What they do find, after performing a luminol test though,
is a giant trail of blood leading from the master bedroom
to the front door.
So obviously when police discover this,
this turns this from a missing person's case
to a homicide case.
So Amy's version of events,
whether it was her who did it or someone else.
Sorry to interrupt, is it luminol who did it or someone else. I already interrupt. Is it Lumenol?
Yeah.
I'm saying that correctly.
Is it possible for it to, how do I say this?
Not not work, like can you clean up good enough
to where it doesn't work is what I'm saying.
Like if you use bleach, like do you know
how the technology works or no?
I don't know how it works.
I do know there is a way to like clean up enough to not have it show on a luminol test
because there's been times where they've like had to pull up the floorboards to find the
blood that was missed.
So are you asking?
Well, I was trying to ask a chat GPT,
but all it says is I can't help you with that.
If you're in a situation involving blood or harm,
I urge you to seek help or contact emergency services
or a trusted professional.
Great.
Your phone just got sent to the FBI for real.
I'm screwed.
I mean, I could look it up,
but I don't know.
I'll let one of you guys answer for me.
You literally chat GPT,
is there a way to pass a luminal test? Yeah, basically. And it told me that I need to go. I'll let one of you guys answer for me. You literally chat to your BT. Is there a way to pass a luminal test?
Yeah, basically.
And it told me that I need to go.
See someone?
Yeah, basically.
Okay, so at this point they're like,
hey, we do think murder happened here.
And when they check Amy's car as well as Bruce's,
which had been left behind,
they don't find any fiber or blood in either of the vehicles.
So they find this evidence in the house, but then where did the body go once it left if
it wasn't in either of their vehicles?
And so this is when they are like, wait, is Amy telling the truth?
Was there a third party involved in this?
There's no way that I can believe that there was a third party.
Police are still searching at this point and they find Bruce's hidden safe in his bedroom.
And when they get it open, they discover there's only $20 inside.
Now according to some sources, Bruce originally had $100,000 inside this safe in the 90s,
but upon further investigation, they also noticed something they missed.
Bruce's mattress had actually been flipped over,
and on the other side, there were bullet holes.
So it does seem like Bruce was shot while on or in his bed.
Police are thinking maybe this was part
of the Amy cleaning up out of
fear scenario because to them there was no way that she was able to go in here,
shoot her boyfriend and then drag him out of the house and dispose of his body all
on her own. She's very petite. He is huge.
Yeah, sorry. I guess I was going to say, I guess that's a good point.
She couldn't have like she couldn't have dragged or dispose of the body by herself.
Right.
Between that and the lack of evidence in their cars,
the police are like,
hey, there has to be something else going on,
which is when they start to wonder,
maybe she's telling the truth.
And when they dig deeper into Bruce's life
back in Los Angeles and the reason why he left,
that's when things start to make a little more sense.
So as I mentioned,
Bruce's bookie operation was legal most of the time.
There were apparently a few incidents back in LA
in the late 80s where Bruce was arrested
for illegal bookmaking though.
And during the last instance,
the LAPD approached Bruce with an offer.
They said, give us a few names of other illegal bookies in
town and we'll clear your charges. Now, Bruce, with a new baby at the time, was probably happy
to make a deal, but of course this comes with a risk. A lot of the guys he was working with were
involved in organized crime, but there was a benefit for Bruce as well. If he gives them the
names, then he clears out his competition. So Bruce wore a wire, he became an informant for the police,
helped them with their sting operation, and in the end, he helped the police arrest over 20 people.
Whoa. That's a lot of enemies. So naturally, when the Vegas police here, he's been murdered,
they, and they learn about this, they decide there's a group of people they're going to look at.
I will say all of those people Bruce busted were now in jail, but that doesn't mean they
didn't have connections on the outside.
I also, I just want to bring something up.
So say she was, you know, they tied her down, killed him, did all this stuff.
I know everyone reacts to trauma differently, but she doesn't seem distressed at all.
You know?
Like there's no way if some way if someone came in here, tied
you down, killed me, you would be freaking out.
Yeah.
Freaking out.
So, but also if they were like, Hey, you need to be on your
best behavior, clean this up or I'm going to come back and kill
you now, now I'd be like, yeah, okay.
And then the second they left, I would call the police.
Yeah. A hundred percent. Back in the nineties, would people have done like, yeah, okay. And then the second they left, I would call the police. Yeah, a hundred percent.
But back in the nineties, would people have done that?
I think so.
I don't think people have changed that much.
I think people just don't believe
that criminals are gonna come back
and kill them as much as they used to.
But she'd still just be like scared or, you know?
I get what you're saying.
Like there's no way she's just gonna be like,
yeah, life's amazing.
I'm going to Tahoe.
Well, she didn't go, remember?
Yeah.
The Las Vegas police start looking
into these people one by one.
And what they find is none of them even knew
Bruce was the one who ratted them out.
Apparently Bruce was a pretty flawless informant,
but that poses a different problem.
All of Bruce's enemies are now a dead end,
which means the investigation has to pivot. And that's when a new name is thrown into the mix,
the man named Ken Reich. Now, Ken was Bruce's roommate at his home before Amy moved in,
but he's also Bruce's business associate. And before Bruce died, the two had started a little
side hustle together. The two of them would take the cash from Bruce died, the two had started a little side hustle together.
The two of them would take the cash from their clients, the cash that was meant
to pay off lost bets, and instead of paying the winners of the bets with that
cash, they would take the money to a casino to see if they could turn a little profit.
They started gambling with their clients' money.
Turns out there were a couple nights when Bruce was in the red and he
borrowed about $5,000 from Ken to try and fix all of this.
Police think, well, 5,000 is like chump change to these guys.
Would someone really kill their business partner and friend over an amount that
small? Here's something else strange. Remember I said, Bruce, his daughter,
Jacqueline and Amy,
were all supposed to go to Tahoe with another friend that weekend?
Yeah.
Well, that friend was Ken.
Well, when Ken hears his buddy is missing and they're
not going to Tahoe anymore, doesn't really seem to care.
He heads to Tahoe without Amy, Bruce, and Jacqueline
and does the vacation anyway.
And when police try to question him, there was zero
sense of urgency to come down to the station to talk.
Plus it seems like Ken was one of the last people to actually see Bruce alive.
On the day before Bruce vanished, Ken and Bruce went to watch some horse races, and
then he dropped Bruce back off at his house at around 9 p.m.
Now remember, those shots apparently went off at 10.
But when the police finally do get a hold of Ken, he tells them this.
He went somewhere in the hours after dropping him off,
meaning Ken has a rock solid alibi.
He spent the rest of the night out with a friend,
which they cooperate with several witnesses.
So that brings them back once more
to the person closest to Bruce, Amy.
So after all of this,
they're like, we have circled back around her.
Yep.
But when the police decide to go question Amy again, they realize they can't find her.
She's gone.
Yeah.
She's out of the country.
So now they're thinking one of two things happened, either Amy skipped town or the people
came back and killed her like they said they would.
I guess I didn't think about that part.
Maybe whoever threatened her came back after she talked to police.
So they try to reach out to her a few times and nothing,
but then on August 11th,
a little over a month after Bruce disappears,
there's a break in the case.
A body is found in the Las Vegas desert.
A couple of hunters are out
in this isolated part of the desert
when they notice this strong chemical odor hit them all of a sudden.
And near that smell are a bunch of stones
on top of skeletal remains.
So the police are called out to the site,
but the remains are pretty decomposed.
It's kind of hard for them to make out
any identifying features.
All they can tell is that the body belongs to a man,
but they also notice the smell.
And they say it doesn't smell like the normal odor
of a decomposing body, as gross as that sounds.
They're noticing that it smells like a cleaning solution
of some kind, but that's not even the most shocking part
of this entire thing, is they're scanning the area,
looking for clues.
400 yards away, there's a second body.
No way, is it Amy? It has long reddish hair and appears at first glance to be a female.
So police have these bodies bagged, taken back to the lab,
and the Las Vegas police are feeling like they think it's Bruce and Amy.
Holy crap. No, I feel bad, but no way.
So no way.
They look at the first body, the one that's male,
and they find there is a bullet wound in the chest.
And after getting a hold of Bruce's dental records,
they do in fact prove that this body is Bruce Weinstein.
And Amy's?
Now we have the second body.
And when they examine it closely, they realize,
oh, this isn't a woman, it's a man.
Oh. they realize, oh, this isn't a woman, it's a man. And it's a victim of a completely unrelated crime.
A total coincidence that the bodies were so close together.
Police don't know, but what they do know is that Amy
might still be alive somewhere,
and Bruce's family is encouraging the police
to look for her.
Their guts are telling them
that she had something to do with this.
So the police issue a fugitive warrant for Amy, and about a month later, they get a hit
all the way in Maryland.
Turns out Amy has been pulled over for speeding.
She tries to get out of it.
However, there is something else in the vehicle that catches the officer's eye. The big bag of cash stacked with hundred dollar bills
amounting to about a hundred thousand dollars. There's also another woman's
birth certificate, a passport, a bunch of wigs, and at first the officer thinks the
road she's on is a well-traveled path for drug traffickers, so that's what they
think, but then he sees that she has a bunch of newspaper clippings
about Bruce Weinstein's case in her car.
And when he finds out there's this felony warrant
out for her arrest in Vegas, he puts her in handcuffs.
She's thrown in jail in Maryland,
and the Las Vegas police are working
to get her back to Nevada.
But before they can extradite her,
someone comes and pays her bail.
And she escapes before the LVPD can get her into their custody.
But there's still this big missing piece for detectives.
I mean, Amy did not do this alone.
At least she did not move this body alone.
So they are thinking that she has someone else involved.
And that's when they figure out a little bit more about this case.
In January of 1997, someone finds a.38 caliber pistol in the desert close to where Bruce's
body was found.
By the way, the bullet wound in Bruce's chest matches this.
So they run the serial number on the gun and they find it belongs to a 58-year-old man
named Robert Wayne Bobby Jones.
Bobby turns out is also on the run and he was employed by Amy's up whole street cleaning
business.
So the gun they find near the body belongs to one of Amy's employees.
Now when they see pictures of Bobby, they realize this is definitely the guy that could have helped Amy move a body.
So they get a warrant to search Bobby's property.
And then they get to his house
and they notice something odd.
It's that same weird chemical smell they noticed
when they discovered Bruce's body.
And that's when they realize it's a chemical they use
for the upholstery business.
But as I mentioned, Bobby's nowhere to be found.
He's also MIA. So the police issue a fugitive warrant for him as well. And to place even
greater attention on the case, they get America's most wanted to run an episode about Bruce's
murder. And shockingly, it works. In June of 1997, six months after they discovered
Bobby's involvement and knew who they were looking for, but couldn't find Bonnie and Clyde.
Someone reported seeing Bobby in New Mexico.
Turns out he'd been hiding out at his son's house there.
He's taken into custody, refuses to speak with police, which is why they think,
okay, we also need to find Amy so we can put all the pieces together.
I think I need to say something real quick too.
How do the neighbors go,
oh yeah, I think someone did come in, tie me down,
and a bunch of people came in.
Well, they just said that they heard the gunshots.
But, oh.
They didn't say that they saw people.
They're just saying, yeah, I mean,
if she's saying there were gunshots that night,
yeah, we did hear that.
Okay, so there was gunshots though, but. Yes, but I mean, they could just saying, yeah, I mean, if she's saying there were gunshots that night, yeah, we did hear that. Okay.
So they're probably, I mean, there was gunshots though, but yes.
Okay.
I mean, they could have been hers.
Yes, exactly.
So six more months go by, they can't find Amy.
So they decide let's reach out to the producers of America's most wanted and
see if we can run the episode again.
And it works again.
Someone says they know where Amy is currently.
She's bartending at a nudist colony in Fort Pierce, Florida.
So cops storm the campground, but Amy's already a step ahead of them.
They say she left mere hours ago.
Though it only takes a few more days to track her down, on January 28th, she is tracked
down to a friend's home 16 miles away and finally placed in handcuffs.
And this time, police aren't letting her get away.
She's sent back to Vegas where she tells the police
the same thing she originally did.
The same exact story.
She thinks the mobsters killed Bruce,
but they aren't buying it,
especially because they know that she had Bruce's cash
on the road with her.
So later that year, in October of 1998,
Amy and Bobby are tried together
for the murder of Bruce Weinstein.
The prosecution paints the story
as an extortion plot gone wrong.
Turns out, Amy had hinted to a few friends
in the week leading up to the murder
that she had actually wanted to kill Bruce,
but she wanted to find a way to keep his money after he was gone. So in order to do that, she needed a bit of help. That's when she
recruited her employee, Bobby, who she knew was already strapped for cash. She told Bobby he should
pretend to break in one night and hold Bruce at gunpoint until he gave him what he was looking for.
That evening, Bruce recognized Bobby. He could make out his voice. So Bobby panicked.
He shot Bruce, dragged him out of the house,
and the two used cleaning supplies to cover their tracks.
Amy came up with the fake story and mopped up the house
while Bobby brought Bruce out to the desert.
Then they took his cash.
Whether or not that's exactly what actually happened,
the jury believes it.
Amy was found guilty of first-degree murder and given two life sentences,
while Bobby was also found guilty for his part in the crime and given five years.
But it doesn't end there. Two years after this, both of their convictions are
overturned. Apparently during the trial, one of the former homicide detectives
called Amy's story a complete quote, fairytale, which Supreme Court justices agreed should not have been allowed during
testimony because that's a matter of opinion, but could sway the jury.
So as a result, Amy and Bobby were granted a new trial, but instead of risking her life
in the hands of another jury, Amy pled guilty to second degree murder and was given a new
sentence of 10 to 25 years.
She was actually released in 2011. Bobby was not retried at all. The judge felt he had already
served the majority of his time for the case, so they decided to release him. And while
both of them are back out living their lives now, the lives of Bruce's family are changed
forever. His daughter, Jacqueline, has made the most of this next chapter though.
She's decided to avoid the dangers of the family business.
She's gone on to become a doctor,
but I think there's definitely something heartbreaking
in these cases when killers get out
and the victims are still dead.
And that is the case of Bruce Weinstein. Thank you guys so much for listening to today's episode.
Garrett actually had to run out like three minutes ago to go jump in a meeting,
so I love it and he still hates it.
We'll see you next time.
Goodbye.