True Crime with Kimbyr - Part 2 Continued: Broadway Dream Ends in Murder: A Fingerprint Left in Blood

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

As the case unfolds, True Crime with Kimbyr dives deeper into Catherine Woods’ final days, exploring new witnesses, phone records, and the people closest to her. Kimbyrleigha examines the complicated relationships surrounding Catherine’s life, the media’s portrayal of her story, and the emotional aftermath left behind for her family. With every revelation, the question remains: was the answer hidden in the evidence all along? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And for the record, contrary to what Paul told investigators, Catherine never once told anyone she loved Paul, not even close. November came. The calls continued. Paul told Stephanie, his client, that he was hoping that him and Catherine would reconcile. He told his friend Spencer he couldn't get her off his mind. He told anyone who would listen, he was heartbroken. And he kept calling.

Now, not as many as October, but he kept. kept calling. But Catherine was pulling away even more. He even said she was shorter with him. When they spoke, she was less available, less willing to extend the conversation that had previously given Paul something to hold onto. Investigators could see it in these records. The calls from her side were more and more rare, and Paul was still calling. On Sunday November 27th, the day Catherine Woods was murdered. The phone records show Paul had started calling Catherine as her early as 6 a.m., which he even admitted to, saying, oh, we saw each other the day before at the gym,

and she said we should hang out soon. Actually, she switched gyms, remember that, to one further way from where she lived and more expensive. Why do you think? According to Paula, it was because he got a job with the new one. Hmm, so he went from a personal trainer to a receptionist, taking a pay cut and a lower position before Catherine moved gyms. Or was it the other way around?

Investigators asked the staff and patrons that frequented Equinox gym where Catherine had been working out, the same gym that, according to Paul, she'd been working out at the day before her murder when she told them they should hang out soon. Several of these eyewitnesses said they had seen Paul and Catherine arguing on a number of occasions at this gym. It sounds a little more like he had been going there and ended up working there for a reason.

And it wasn't one that Catherine was happy about. But just wait, because there's more. After a number of calls that Sunday on November 27th, Catherine finally returned Paul's calls at approximately 5 p.m. And her call lasted three minutes, and we won't know what was said. But after that call, something shifted on Paul's part.

He called her back. She didn't answer. He called again. She didn't answer. the calls started coming in faster and faster. They were more urgent. Paul called Catherine 17 times that day. 13 of those calls came in the 90 minutes before investigators believed she was killed. 13 calls in 90 minutes going unanswered.

And then right in the middle of a critical window when Catherine was killed, the calls to her stopped completely. Paul went silent. For the length of time, it would take to commit a murder. And then, his calls resumed, but not to Catherine. Never to Catherine again.

Think about that. If he didn't find out to the next morning that Catherine was dead, why did he suddenly stop calling her? After exactly 6.33 p.m. on November 27th of 2005, Paul Cortez never called Catherine Woods again. Now the investigators need to know where, to know where Paul exactly was when he was making those 13 calls.

They needed to scour the cell tower data to figure it out. Meanwhile, investigators were also falling up on something that had come from Alex, the guitarist in Paul's band. He said that rehearsal had been scheduled for 6 p.m. on the evening of Sunday, November 27th. And guess who didn't show up? Paul. And Paul always showed up.

His absence was immediately noted. When Alex called him later around 8 p.m., Paul said he'd been home and that he just overslept. Alex said that Paul sounded normal, not like someone who had just woken up. You know what they sound like when they just wake up. That's not how his voice sounded. Normal. And here's the detail that made Alex's account significant for investigators. The band had actually been planning to have a very difficult conversation with Paul that night.

His performances had been getting eradicated. Things had been off for weeks, and Alex had intended to address it. One of the few times Paul ever missed a rehearsal happened to be the same evening that Catherine Woods was murdered during the same window of time. Alex was really worried when he later found out that Paul had been making calls to Catherine that evening because Paul said he was asleep. If he was home asleep, how could he also be calling Catherine? version of events, another admission that the first version had not been accurate. And then there was Paul's neighbor, Jacques. Now, he had something for investigators, too. He told them that sometime around four or five in the morning on what he thought was Monday of that week, couldn't be sure. He had seen

Paul outside of their building. That's not very unusual on its own, except Paul was wearing nothing but boxer shorts in November, in New York City. He walked to the front of their building. He walked to the front of their building, and he threw something in their garbage, in the trash cans outside. What do you think it could have been? Evidence, bloody clothing that he changed out of inside of Catherine's apartment before leaving, boots that he disposed of. And then he saw Paul go back inside. And Jacques found it very strange. It was strange enough for him to remember it, specifically strange enough to mention it to investigators when they came asking. Investigators log it, and they keep going. And Paul's first personal

training client on the morning after Catherine was killed was a man named Brian Sampson. Brian arrived at 7 a.m. for their session, but he noticed Paul was late, and he was never late. But that wasn't it. Paul seemed to go out of his way to tell Brian everything he did the day before, particularly in the evening, and he would not stop talking. He was talking about the Giants game, about his friend. He never once talked about sports. Brian described it as rambling. He wouldn't stop.

It was like Paul needed Brian to believe that Sunday had just been an ordinary day. Brian left feeling unsettled. And when investigators came to speak with him, that's exactly what he told them. Now, while all of this is accumulating, investigators also began reaching out to women that had known Paul in a more personal capacity.

Former girlfriends, women that he was close to, people that had been in his orbit in a romantic or personal way at some point. And the picture that came back was consistent, remarkably, almost uncomfortably consistent. Across the board, the women investigators spoke to described him in the same way. Charming at first. But genuinely so. The kind of man who made you feel seen, he was interesting, he was special,

and underneath that charm, when things got complicated, when a moment tried to create distance or end things or simply say no to something, Paul didn't handle it well. He became controlling. He became angry. Rejection wasn't something he processed and moved past. It was something he pursued, something he tried to fix,

something he treated as the temporary condition that just required a little more effort on his part to correct. Then investigators found Kara. Now, Kara is not her real name. I'm using a different name for privacy, but her story's real, and it's very significant. Because Kara had known both Catherine and Paul independently. Neither one of them were aware of the connection. She met Catherine at Privileged Gentlemen's Club, but she met Paul earlier before Catherine worked there.

Kara met Paul at a yoga studio where Paul worked at the time, and Kara was a member. When Kara heard about Catherine's murder and saw the coverage, she recognized both of them, and she came forward with something investigators had not been looking for, but could not ignore. Paul had exhibited similar patterns. Everything leading up to the murder, his actions, they were consistent, the charm, the attachment,

the expressed concern about Kara dancing, the interference that looked like care, the refusal to accept no. Investigators listened to Kara described Paul, deploying the same playbook on her that he used on Catherine, word for word, move for move. The concern for her safety, discouraging her from dancing, the way his attention went from flattering to suffocating. So gradually that by the time she realized what was happening, it was already really difficult for her to get out of the situation. She said that the friendship or whatever they had between them ended when Paul showed up at her apartment

and tried to force her to do something against her will. She said no. She pushed back. And his response to being told no was to go to the staff at the yoga studio and tell them that she was a dancer. To humiliate her, to try to make people judge her the same way he called Catherine's father, the same way he called her house mother where she was dancing, using private information as a weapon, framing punishment as concern.

Shea changed her phone number and he kept calling anyway. And here's the detail that connected everything for investigators. Paul had told Kara at some point that he was dating a dancer whose drink had been laced and she was violated at the club. And Kara recognized immediately that he was talking about Catherine because Kara was working that night. The same night that Paul claimed this incident happened. She knew Catherine had not been feeling well, but that was it. The rest of Paul's account was a lie.

She knew what the security was like at that venue. She knew what had happened and what had not. Paul had actually taken a real moment and built an entire false narrative around it. A narrative that made him look like the hero and justified everything that followed. Same story, same structure, different woman. In the weeks before her murder,

Catherine reportedly told a friend that Paul had called her threatening to take his own life if you couldn't have her. That's not love. That is a man using his own pain as a weapon to prevent a woman from walking away. It was starting to look like. If Catherine ever even dated Paul officially,

it was only a date or two. That's it. In the very beginning when they met, this wasn't a true romance. That was clear. It was more of a true obsession. Catherine had to be a true obsession. said it herself. When she told David, according to him, that Paul was crazy, that yes, she knew him,

they met at the gym, and in the beginning they grabbed food occasionally and they were friendly. But that was all it was. She told David that her and Paul were not together and had never been together. So now, think back to everything Paul said. The year-long relationship, lie, that she loved him, lie, that he had been inside her apartment 50-something times, well, he may have been outside of it, and maybe she let him in a handful of times in the beginning. But all the rest, the intimacy that he described at her place, that didn't make sense. Paul couldn't keep his mask on long enough for women to actually fall for him. Investigators had the pattern of a man who couldn't stop reaching out to a woman who had stopped responding.

And now they had cell tower data too. And here's something worth understanding, though. Before we get into the specifics of it, in 2005, cell phone GPS technology was not like today. Investigators cannot pull up a precise map and watch a blinking little dot move through the streets of Manhattan in real time. But what they could do was something just as powerful.

Every call made from a cell phone would route through the nearest available tower. And every time a call connects, the tower creates a record, a timestamp, a location, a trail of breadcrumbs that tells you not exactly where someone was standing, but it does tell you which neighborhood they were in when they picked up that phone. In Manhattan, where the towers are dense and the neighborhoods are small, those breadcrumbs mean something. A few blocks in any direction can be the difference between being home and being at least.

someone else's door. Paul had told investigators that he was home. At East 106th Street that afternoon, home when he was making those calls. He told his bandmate he was asleep until he left to meet Spencer that night at 8 p.m. And in fact, earlier parts of that day did support that account. Several of Paul's calls in the afternoon, including the calls he made before Catherine called him back at five, routed through the tower near his apartment. So he was home. during that window. The cell phone data put him exactly where he said he was. But then, as I told you, something shifted after Catherine called him at 5 o'clock. That three-minute call, something changed. Because Paul's next call to Catherine placed at 527 did not route through the tower near his apartment.

It routed through a tower at 50 East 86th Street. That's in the direction coming from his apartment and going to hers. On East 86th Street, that's Catherine Street. Paul was no longer home. Paul was moving south. Then between 5.36 p.m. and 6.33 p.m., Paul made 10 more calls to Catherine and to other people, and every single one of those calls was picked up

by a tower at 354, East 84th Street. Between 1st and 2nd avenues, that is right next to her building. Here's a map if you're watching on video. The yellow square is the approximate location of the tower, and the red circle is Catherine's apartment. So that's how close his phone was pinging. Catherine's building was at 355, East 86th Street,

also between 1st and 2nd avenues. The tower that was picking up Paul's calls during this window was essentially in the same two-block radius as the building where Catherine was getting ready for work. Two blocks. That is not a coincidence of geography in a city the size of Manhattan. That's placement.

That's a purpose and it's intentional. And there was something else in those records that caught investigators' attention. Between two of Paul's calls during that window, there was a gap of approximately 13 minutes. 13 minutes of silence in the middle of a period when Paul had been calling repeatedly.

13 minutes is consistent, almost exactly consistent, with the time it would take to travel, from Paul's apartment on East 106 Street to Catherine's neighborhood using the subway with the quickest route available. And if you were in a hurry, you would choose the quickest route. But now here is the window that matters most. Between 5.56 p.m. and 6.33 p.m. The window in which investigators believe that Catherine was attacked and killed

based on her neighbor Andrew's ear witness account of the screaming at 6.25, Paul made zero calls to Catherine, not one, in a period of 37 minutes after calling her repeatedly for 90 minutes before that. But the cell data didn't stop there, because after 633, investigators could watch Paul's calls start to move, moving north, away from Catherine's building, going back towards his home.

And at 6.50 p.m., Paul made two calls, and those calls routed through a tower. near 95th Street and 1st Avenue, further north from her building, moving. Kind of interesting, the phone goes near her place and then goes right back to his. At 716, he made another call, and it routed through a tower near 1774 Lexington Avenue, further from her still. By 755 and 757, his calls were paying off the tower at 179 East 105th Street. That's nearly back to his apartment now.

The trajectory was a straight line. South towards Catherine's building, in the hours before her murder, silenced during the window when she was killed, the north going home, as if retracing steps. And Paul was no longer talking to investigators, but his phone had already said everything they needed to hear. And there was something else they uncovered in this data poll.

Right at 6.53, Paul's phone makes that final call to Catherine. It lasted one second. Now, it appeared on Catherine's call records, but investigators noted something unusual, that one second call did not appear on Paul's records. When you make a call from a cell phone, and it connects even for a fraction of a second, it creates a record on the receiving person's call log. But as a call is terminated so quickly, it barely registers on the network. Sometimes it appears on the recipient's log, but not on the callers. To investigate, this actually showed something very chilling. And if you think about it, which I will explain,

it's like muscle memory. It's almost like Paul out of pure habit, since he had called her so much. He called her after he killed her, but then he immediately stopped because he already knew she was dead. So investigators had these phone records. They had the tower data,

placing Paul two blocks from Catherine's building during the exact window she was killed. I know she was killed. They had a pattern of calls. The problem was, it wasn't enough. Not yet. Tower data tells you which neighbor had someone's in. It does not put you inside a specific apartment.

But to the investigators, it was close enough. They knew they needed to keep looking at Paul. The fingerprint on the wall was the piece that could do that. Place him inside of that room or rule him out if he hadn't been. That was the piece that could put Paul Cortez in that bedroom in a way. that could not be argued away because it was in blood, her blood. But without his fingerprints to compare it to,

it was just a print that didn't belong to anyone. And Paul had made very sure, beyond the wall of his attorney, that investigators were not getting those fingerprints. The case needed a break. And breaks and murder investigations rarely come from the direction you are expecting. On December 16th, 19 days after cancer, Catherine's murder, a young woman called the NYPD.

She had been following the coverage of the case. She had seen Paul's name in the papers. She saw his face. And something about seeing that face connected to a story, about obsession, and a woman who couldn't get away, had unlocked something in her, that she tried for almost a year to kept buried. We're going to call her Michelle.

And what Michelle told investigators happened on New Year's Eve of 2000, for. Michelle had been out that night with a friend who was dating Alex, Paul's guitarist and his band. And the band had a show, and Michelle and her friend went along. In between sets, Michelle found herself talking to Paul. He was charming, he was confident, and he was intriguing, the kind of person who knows exactly how to hold your attention in a crowded room. By midnight, they had shared a kiss. Michelle gave Paul her number. She and the friend headed home, expecting maybe a call from the band about catching up later that night.

The next thing Michelle knew, 4 a.m., her phone was ringing, and it's Paul. She'd fallen asleep, but at that point, she said, sure, you can come over. And when Paul got there, things moved way too fast. Michelle said she was consenting at first, but the situation escalated quickly in a direction that she was not prepared for or had not agreed to.

And he became rough. He wasn't using protection. he initiated something that she explicitly told him to stop, and he didn't. And when he demanded Michelle do something else that she didn't want to do, she was scared. Paul was physically on top of her, and she felt she had no choice, and she complied, because in that moment, she genuinely believed she didn't have a choice. And then he just left. And Michelle was left, trying to make sense of what had just happened to her.

She went through everything. A victim of this kind of violation goes through. Would anyone believe her? She had let him in. She had consented initially. She had kissed him at midnight. She knew how people talked about situations like this. She knew the questions that she would be asked

and the conclusions that people would jump to. So she decided that saying nothing was safer than saying anything. So she said nothing. And she carried the weight of it and she kept going. And when she saw Paul's face in the news, connected to a murder, connected to a woman named Catherine, who had also been trying to supposedly get away from him from what she read about, Michelle understood in that moment,

staying quiet was not something she could justify anymore. So she told the investigators everything. The full account of that New Year's Eve, every detail. And investigators listened carefully. Not because of what had happened to Michelle, though. even though what happened to Michelle mattered. But because of what her coming forward made possible, they could arrest Paul for what he had allegedly done to Michelle.

And that's what they wanted to bring him in. Because bringing him in finally meant they could do one thing that had been denied to them since the morning of November 28th. They could fingerprint him. And there was nothing he was going to be able to do to stop them. On December 19th, Detective went to Paul's apartment and placed him under arrest for the offenses against Michelle. Paul's attorney, of course, immediately pushed back, argued that the case wasn't strong,

suggested Michelle had only come forward because she had seen Paul's picture and she was trying to cause trouble. I mean, no wonder people don't want to come forward. He requested bail and Paul was held and Detective Michael Ihern walked into that room where Paul was being processed. When Paul looked up, The detective said it was a moment he would never forget. He said, Paul had a look on his face like the Grim Reaper had just walked through the door. The detective looked at him and said, I'm here to print you. And the following day, a fingerprint analyst sat down with Paul's freshly taken prints, and she placed them alongside the photograph of the latent left index fingerprint

that had been lifted from the blood smear on Catherine's bedroom wall, the print that Detective Enteman had been careful enough, to cut out of that dry wall three weeks earlier, and she was looking for eight points of comparison to make a positive ID. She found 13. It was a match. Even their supervisor reviewed her findings,

and he verified it. The fingerprint on Catherine's bedroom wall, the one pressed into her blood, belonged to Paul Cortez. And just like that, the wall that Paul had built between himself and this investigation came down. The same day, investigators executed a search warrant

on Paul's apartment. And what they found inside would give prosecutors something they had never been expecting, something that would end up being one of the most discussed and debated evidence of this entire trial because Paul was going to trial. On Paul's bed was a red journal, and nearby was a bag containing several more journals.

And then when they looked at the last one, looked under his bed, they found more. 24 journals in total. Years of private writing, diary entries, sketches, poems, song lyrics, the unfiltered interior world of a man who had been putting his most private thoughts on paper for a very long time. Investigators began to read what he wrote. And what they found inside was nothing like the gentle, spiritual, yoga, practicing soft-spoken man that some of Paul's friends had described.

What they found was rage, obsession, an obsession with Catherine that had been building across dozens of those pages, entries about women who he felt wronged him, entries about misogyny and violence, language that was dark and specific, and went well beyond anything that could be explained away as artistic expression, at least in the detective's minds. Now I'm going to read you a few entries that they were focusing on, and then I will give you their interpretations. One entry that was written after Catherine had gone silent on Paul for calling her father behind her back read like a man in genuine anguish. He wrote, and I quote,

I wake with sadness in my heart every day for the loss of Catherine. Let her go. She said she hates you. She wants you out of her life. So let her go. You can't save her. She doesn't want to be saved. She doesn't understand your love.

She said she despises you. You hurt her more than you loved her." I think that one's pretty clear. And he even stated, she despised him. The whole thing about her being saved has to do with his perspective that dancing is wrong, particularly for other men.

And he was almost trying to convince himself to let her go. to let her go. And then there was an undated entry, but the title says it all. It was the beautiful Catherine. And he wrote, quote, beautiful Catherine, love of my life, how can I make you understand? This erotic subjection to lusty men hurts you more than you know. I just need you to quit the sex for money life for good, as well as your ex. Then our relationship can grow for real. And, quote. And here it's even more intense. He can't take the fact that other men are looking at her. And by the way, there was never any proof that she had done anything beyond dancing.

No films or other kind of work at all. That got into his head on its own. But clearly, he had this ongoing obsession with trying to get her to quit something that he did not approve of. Dancing and her ex. He believed those were the things perfect. preventing her from growing their relationship. But that's not it. And then there was an entry dated October 12, 2005.

Just weeks before Catherine's murder, Paul had written it under the heading that he called the Kill-in Machine. Now this is where things take a violent turn. Paul wrote about a woman being violated and ripped apart by a gang of lunatics. And it went like this. Quote, Girl, the way you move your hips is so wicked to try to hold us down, but you can't crown the mastermind. Hell hounds want to pounce and rip you apart with a scream.

That you get violated gripping on the killing machine." End quote. Yikes. This is the same man who had violated women in his recent past. I don't think I need to explain that one to you. And then there was what Paul had written after Catherine's murder, an entry that he called Cosmic Disturbances. And in it he wrote, quote, I never wanted for you to die.

I only wanted to follow you. The swan is gone. I'm not the one trapped in hell. I can't believe I'm in the cell, end quote. He only wanted to follow her. Seems like that's what he has been doing an entire year. He even said 50 times he had been in her apartment, probably lurking outside, watching her,

getting to know her schedule and understanding how to slip in and out. Another entry was entitled Gardens of Kamala. It was also written shortly after Catherine's murder, and it went like this. Quote, she wipes clean the shaft that cuts her throat and returns back to her day. Her shoes, her home away from her home, somewhere out in the Midwest, where boys are dirty and the girls are princesses. End quote. A girl from the Midwest, whose throat was cut, written by a man in custody for cutting it. And there were tons of entries that,

focused on images and themes of violence that were not specific to Catherine, and they were all circumstantial, but they were profoundly disturbing, nonetheless. On December 23rd of 2005, Paul Cortez was formerly charged with second-degree murder. He was held without bail, and he entered a plea of not guilty. And I know that some of you might have just thought yourself second-degree murder. From everything that you have heard, many of you could conclude this was completely intentional. and premeditated. And you would be right. It's just that in New York state, the distinction between first and second degree murder is very specific. And it does not work the way that people assume

from watching television or following cases in other states. In New York, first degree murder requires what the law calls special circumstances. It is an extremely narrow charge. And those special circumstances include things like killing a police officer, murder for hire, killing someone in exchange for money, killing a witness to prevent them from testifying, or killing while serving a life sentence, and the list goes on. So despite how calculated and brutal the killing appeared, New York law did not allow prosecutors to charge first-degree murder. Second-degree murder in New York covers intentional killings without those special circumstances,

and that is exactly what this appeared to be. For the first time, since three Columbus police officers had knocked on their door, on the worst night of their lives, John and Donna Woods had something to hold on to, a name on a charge sheet, a man in a cell, and the promise of a courtroom. And Catherine never made it so Broadway. But her case was about to take center stage.

26-year-old Paul Vincent Cortez went on trial for the murder of Catherine Elizabeth Woods on January 22nd of 2007. More than 13 months had passed since his arrest. More than 14 months since Catherine had been found on the floor of her bedroom. John and Donna Woods had been waiting for this day. They were in the courtroom every single day. They had not come as far to be anywhere else. The trial was held at the state Supreme Court in Manhattan

before Supreme Court Justice Carol Birkman. Prosecuting the case was assistant district attorney Peter Casillaro, and defending Paul were two female attorneys, Laura Miranda, and Don Florio, which sometimes is positioning. Or at least, that was the plan. Because before a single witness was sworn in, before a single juror was seated, before the case that had consumed the Woods family

and the 19th precinct and the Upper Side, for over a year could formally begin, his defense attorneys were nowhere to be vowed. They were not in the courtroom, neither of them. It later emerged, Both defense attorneys, Laura and Don, apparently had two separate family emergencies at the very same day, the first day of trial.

Laura's mother was said to have suffered a medical emergency requiring her to fly to Puerto Rico, and Don's uncle had passed away. Eventually, Laura, this is one of his defense attorneys, is held in contempt of court after not showing up a week later. But finally, she came back and was president in the courtroom, just before jury selection.

And now I really want to finally give you the theory of the prosecution's case. ADA Peter Casillaro opened saying that Paul Cortez believed that he had been in a relationship with Catherine Woods, but she made it known she was not interested. And Paul could not accept it. After months of watching Catherine pull away, stop answering and move on, and continue to dance,

which remember, he did not approve of even though it was none of his business, and Catherine even told him that by his own admission, Paul had reached a breaking point. He was like a volcano, Casillaro told the jury, ready to erupt. And on the evening of November 27th of 2005, he had gone to Catherine's building, waited for David to leave, and then slipped inside. This was obsession. And the evidence would prove it was threefold. Paul's lies about where he was that evening, his fingerprint left in Catherine's blood on the bedroom wall, and the journals. 24 journals, full of rage and violence had been revealed. And Paul's own handwriting, exactly who he was when no one was watching. But of course,

the defense had a different theory entirely, and it pointed directly at David Hahn. David, the defense argued, was deeply and devastatingly in love with this woman who ended their relationship and was refusing to support him financially any longer, a woman who had been seeing other men while he was still living in her apartment, a woman who had moved on while David had not. The defense described David as nervous and apprehensive with the investigators, lacking remorse, and not crying once. And they argued that Paul, he was educated, articulated, It cultured someone who cried freely during his police interview. He was everything a guilty man was a knot.

And they asked the jury to consider whose behavior in the aftermath of Catherine's murder looked more like guilt? Paul or David? And then they reminded the jury about the hair. And you might have forgotten this, but there were these short, light color hairs. They were found clutched in Catherine's left hand. The hairs that didn't belong. It didn't belong to her, and that had never been matched to anyone. So whose hair was it?

Well, it had never been tested against David's. So they wanted to insert reasonable doubt. And if you're asking why they weren't tested, I cannot give you an exact reason. But what I could gather is that there was so much other compounding evidence pointing towards Paul, it became unnecessary. And everything you analyze costs more money. Hairs can be a bit tricky because if you don't have a root, you're not going to actually be able to get DNA from it.

And then to the testimony, and a lot was revealed here that you have not heard about yet. First, John Woods took the stand. And as Catherine's father, he was the one truly concerned after Paul's phone call. But Catherine quickly confided in him about how scared she was about Paul, how he had been calling her nonstop,

that he had even tried to get her fired from her job. Sound familiar? He did this to other women as well. Everything Paul had told him was a lie according to Catherine. And most importantly, she told her dad she was planning to get a restraining order against him. And then I want to talk about substances. Her father testified that not once

during any of their conversations, during any of their visits, that they made to see Catherine in New York or any of her trips back home, had he or his wife ever seen any signs of drugs or alcohol dependence whatsoever? No paraphernalia, no concerning behavior. None of the things Paul had described to him on that phone call. And most importantly, Catherine had never once mentioned Paul's name to her parents,

especially someone she was dating. The only reason John knew his name was because Paul had called him and given it to him himself. And next to the stand was David Hahn, who bravely got up there and told the jury what Catherine meant to him. He spoke about their years together, about how devoted he had been, even after the romantic relationship had ended, about Thanksgiving that they shared four days before her murder, and about the moment he walked into that bedroom and found her. He said he was so scared.

He did not know what to do. The defense came at David hard on cross-examination. They pushed on money. They asked whether David had been using Catherine's funds to buy drugs. He denied it. They pointed to his phone call to Paul in July, painted it as an action of jealousy and possession, of a man who couldn't accept that Catherine had moved on with Paul.

David was so calm. He looked at the defense attorney, and he said, I called Paul because Catherine told me that Paul was constantly calling her, and she wanted it to stop. He was doing what she asked him to do. And now we get into more about what Paul was wearing, not just doing the day of the murder. Stephanie, his client that he hung out with,

not only told the jury about Paul's continuous complaints about Catherine in the weeks leading up to her killing, but also a discrepancy. Paul had told the investigators he was wearing Johnson and Murphy loafers on November 27th. He wasn't. according to Stephanie. He had on a black leather jacket, jeans, black boots with his hair gelled back. Boots, not loafers. And his friend Spencer, who hung out with him later that evening,

confirmed it. He too told the jury, Paul had been wearing a black leather jacket, jeans, and black boots with his hair gelled back. And when the prosecutor showed Spencer drawings of various styles of boots and asked him to identify which ones Paul was wearing, Spencer pointed to the model that matched the boot prints found at the crime scene. The defense went after Spencer aggressively on cross-examination. They pointed out in prior statements to police, he couldn't remember what kind of shoes Paul was wearing. They were attempting to undermine his credibility,

but Spencer held his ground firmly. He said, well, he's saying it now under oath. And then lead detective gets talked in depth about the 50 pages of entries in Paul's journals, found underneath his bed. Entries about rage and obsession. Entries, going back years, directed at women that he couldn't have, including Catherine.

When Detective Gets read the lyrics to Killing Machine out loud in the courtroom, it got so quiet because it was that telling. As far as the fingerprint was concerned, which was honestly the most compelling part of physical evidence left behind, and the defense wanted to act as though it had been left there by the so-

called 50 times that Paul had been in that apartment. We know he hasn't. Technically, the fingerprint analyst said, they can't tell you when it was put there, but that the blood had already been on the wall, so it kind of narrows down to the night of the murder. The Amito Black reaction proved that. And then Paul took the stand.

Of course he did. I wouldn't have expected anything less from him. He was composed, measured. He spoke clearly, and at length about his relationship, his journal entries, his movements on the day of the murder, he was in many ways exactly the man his friends described. Articulate, thoughtful, sincere. At least he seemed that way.

He talked about his perspective or delusion, however you want to see it, and he told the jury that he had been journaling since he was a teenager, that the entries containing violent or angry language towards Catherine or other women were not expressions of genuine intent. but emotional recall techniques, a method used in acting, training, to access your authentic feelings. He acknowledged that the language was dark, but it wasn't literal. When the prosecution pressed him on the misogynistic context of his journal entries and the song lyrics, Paul turned to him.

And he pretty much was like, you know what? You're too old to understand my generation. generation and how we write rock music. Well, Paul, most of those writers are not on trial for murder. And then with the judge's permission, Paul recited the killing machine lyrics out loud in court. In a way that several people who were watching described as less of a legal explanation and way more like a performance. When asked to explain the meaning, he told the jury was about a hypothetical

adult toy, that his drummer had made this joke about a machine that could satisfy women beyond any man, and that they made a song around the concept, that the violence in the language was the point to hold up a mirror to how men exploit intercourse. He acknowledged, yeah, it was graphic, but that was just his kind of humor. The casual way that he was explaining lyrics about violation and ripping apart a woman, while just feet away from this family of a woman who had been stabbed over 20 times, was just stunning in its audacity. And then he altogether denied that Gardens of Kamala was about Catherine, even though lyrics talk about a girl from the Midwest, and he used the references to women being princesses, which he called Catherine himself to the police.

She wipes the shaft that cuts her throat, and that's supposed to signify what, Paul? And then he admitted he had not been completely honest with investigators from the beginning about his movements on the evening of November 27th. And it was because he was scared, because he didn't want to get involved in a murder investigation, and he was in shock.

But those moments just happened to be near her apartment at the exact time she was murdered. Kind of more than a coincidence. don't you think? And probably, in my opinion, the worst explanation about his fingerprint being in blood on Catherine's wall, which, by the way, the defense on the witness stand agree with the prosecution that this was indeed Paul's fingerprint. So that wasn't in question. Paul's only choice was to explain it a way. So he told the jury that he had touched many surfaces in Catherine's apartment during his visits and that sometimes when Catherine, was on her period, he would get blood on his hands when they were intimate. Really? And that he possibly touched the wall during one of those times and left his print innocently, long before the night of the murder.

I'm sorry, Paul. You might be smart, but that was a dumb explanation. The smear on the wall was fresh when it was discovered. The fingerprint was in blood. The fingerprint was smeared in. into the blood. Blood that was already on the wall. It wasn't a fingerprint dipped in blood

and then pressed into the wall. At another point, and let's just say it was, for the sake of argument, you really think Catherine would have left that on her own wall? And the cross-examination kept going. The prosecutor brought out the phone log,

the 292 calls. The 57 in one day, the 47 on another. Paul looked at the records, and this was a direct quote. She called me, just as much as I called her, sir? I am not good at math, but something isn't adding up there. She didn't call him anywhere near as much as he called her.

And this goes to show you how he probably was doing this automatic, like muscle memory, something to maybe ease his anxiety, pressing her number again and again and waiting, hoping she would give in. After three weeks of testimony from 45 witnesses, the jury retired. to deliberate. And here's where something almost extraordinary happened. During the trial, the defense had realized they had forgotten to present a piece of evidence

that they believed was crucial to their case. Surveillance footage from PC Richards, the electronic store that Paul and Stephanie had visited on the afternoon of the murder. The footage showed Paul and Stephanie approaching and entering the store. The defense believed it clearly showed Paul wearing his Johnson and Murphy,

loafer, which was definite proof he had not been wearing the Skechers' boots that left those prints of the crime scene. And I'm just going to stop really quick and say, can't someone change their shoes between, I don't know, the time they're at a store hours earlier, and then the time they go home and they take the subway to the victim's home? It doesn't take that much effort. So I really don't think this would have proven anything if he wasn't wearing the boots. But this was to impeach the statements by Stephanie and Spencer, who said he wasn't

was wearing boots and not loafers. The judge did something. She allowed the jury to view the footage during deliberations even though the defense had failed to present it formally during trial. This was a very unusual accommodation, and the defense was so grateful for it because they were convinced this video

was going to create the reasonable doubt that their client needed. Oh, when the jury watched that footage, and here's what's so ironic, they, saw boots. The same style Spencer had pointed to when shown the drawings. The same style that matched the impressions left in blood. The defense had spent weeks arguing their client had been wearing loaferes.

And their own surveillance footage showed something completely different. The evidence the defense was fighting to get in front of the jury had just become the evidence that convicted their client. After just two and a half days of deliberation, the jury returned to the courtroom. On February 15th of 2007, Paul was found guilty. And he showed no emotion when the verdict was read. Catherine's parents had flown back to Ohio by this point. They chose not to stay. Following the verdict, Donna told reporters

that Paul's journal entries revealed who he truly was, saying the violence in them, the disdain for women. I was appalled. It was hard to hear. Her husband, John, added, this is a no-win proposition for either of the families. We've lost a daughter, and now the Cortez family has problems with their son.

So this is hard on everybody. Paul's lawyer, meanwhile, was maintaining that he had been wrongly convicted, that Catherine had been killed by a customer at the Gentleman's Club who developed an obsession and planned the murder. Victim blaming at its finest. It was actually not Catherine's job

that got her killed at all. But they were right about the killer being obsessed and planning her murder. But interestingly, four of the jurors spoke to the media afterward about what happened in that deliberation room. They said when they first sat down, some of them genuinely believed David was the killer. The timeline, the motive, the calmness, they had a real discussion, a real debate. But every time they came back to one thing that they couldn't get past, Paul had lied to investigators and about being home when his phone placed him within two blocks from Catherine's building.

Plus, he never called Catherine again after 6.33 p.m. Not that night, not the next morning, not ever. He had no alibi that held up. And then they watched the video. Those were Skechers' boots. The holdouts finally made up their minds, and it's funny. I used to work in corporate for Skechers right here in Manhattan Beach, California at their headquarters,

and to think that that's what sealed the deal in this case. The designers that I know would be proud to know that their distinctiveness in design elements is what mattered most to catch a killer. And on March 23rd of 2007, Paul Vincent Cortez stood before Justice Carol Berkman for his sentencing. John and Donna Woods were there, Victoria was there, and sitting alongside them was the man who found Catherine,

who had been interrogated for 20 hours. who had been pointed at by the defense in open court as her, quote, real killer, who had traveled back to Columbus and stood alone with her in her coffin while the rest of the world kept its distance. David Hahn. Whatever had happened between all of them was in the past. They were in that room together because Catherine deserved to have the people who loved her present for this. The prosecutor requested the maximum sentence 25 years to life.

He told the court that Paul engaged in savagery for the sake of savagery, the neck wounds that had been fatal three times over, the boot print pressed into her back after she had already fallen, his indifference to the suffering of others. And then John Wood stood up. John told the court that Catherine had not only lost her life, she had been robbed of her dignity by the coverage that followed her murder. He said the family's only consolation was that they had known the real Catherine for 21 years,

that the pain of the loss had touched their family every single day since November 27th, and would continue to for the rest of their lives. He said that nothing could bring Catherine back and that their hearts would never be the same and that John turned his words directly at Paul. He said most of us have learned that when we make a mistake, we should promptly admit it and accept responsibility and consequences of our actions. Clearly, this philosophy was lost on this criminal. Paul savagely ended the life of a young woman

who was responsibly pursuing her lifelong dream of being a professional dancer. We hope he will be kept off the streets forever. He's a murderer, deserving nothing less than life in prison. Paul didn't address the court. In keeping with the version of himself that he presented throughout this entire trial, that he was wrongly accused.

He was the man that cooperated, who cried, who had nothing to hide, and always let his attorney speak on his behalf. Don Floreo said simply that Paul would like the family to know. He did not kill Catherine, and that he was very sorry for their loss, and all I could think of was yuck. It's just so cowardly.

Judge Berkman sentenced Paul Cortez to the maximum, 25 years to life. And outside the courtroom, David spoke to the report, he said, I'm happy it's over. And Donna said, now we have to try to go home and live without Catherine. I do have to quickly mention something, Michelle, her case specifically.

She was the woman who came forward and told investigators what happened to her and how Paul got arrested in the first place. But by April of 2006, those charges against Paul were not pursued. Some reports I read said that Michelle just never heard from authorities again after giving her initial statement. But her courage in coming forward made possible Paul's arrest. And the fingerprints that finally matched that print on the wall, all that changed everything.

And I don't need to tell you this. You could have guessed. But Paul appealed. He was very persistent. One was conflict of interest because apparently his defense attorney was also being prosecuted by the same DA's office. She had smuggled drugs in for a different client. But twice his conviction was upheld, and he even argued for a new trial, and that was denied. Today, Paul Cortez is 45 years old, and he resides at the Sing Sing Correctional facility in New York, still maintaining his innocence. And he has supporters, people who knew him, people who encountered his story online, some people have just been charmed by the version of Paul that Paul was so good at presenting. And there are a lot of people who are still advocating for his release. He will be eligible for parole in December of 2030.

I wouldn't be giving you an entire story if I didn't tell you that there are still questions in this case, and I'm sure you have some. But I think there was more than enough evidence to show that Paul was the killer. But something that his supporters point out is that he wasn't on any of those 13 cameras around the area where Catherine's apartment was located.

He was not on any of those whereas David was. He was caught in Catherine's street. coming from the direction of their apartment and going towards his car that evening with timestamps. But remember, they couldn't be confirmed as accurate. But let me point something out, critical thinking, and an argument I thought of. It cuts both ways.

The defense used it to argue Paul was never there. But from the prosecution's perspective, it can suggest Paul specifically chose a route that avoided being seen. Thirteen cameras and still he wasn't caught, that's a level of being invisible in a dense Manhattan neighborhood on a Sunday evening that doesn't happen by accident. It actually leans more towards someone who had been to that building many times knew the layout, knew the entrance was off the alley, set back, knew the locks,

and planned accordingly. Till this day though, Paul uses this as proof that he's innocent. Probably the best quote for the scenario is from Carl Sagan. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. His phone data placed him in that location regardless if he knew how to avoid cameras. A jury found him guilty. They saw more than we have, so I deferred to them. Whether he gets parole or not will depend on a lot of things, but one of them will be that parole boards in New York look unfavorably on inmates who refuse to accept responsibility for their crimes. And Paul has never accepted responsibility for anything. Both Paul and David have done interviews on true crime shows

and both talk about how much they loved Catherine. I don't doubt it. Catherine was easy to love, but only one of them actually knew what love was. Love is not self-centered. Love does not retaliate or seek revenge. It doesn't call your father to tell on you or try to get you fired from your jobs. That's not love.

It's control. And Paul wanted control over Catherine's So much so he made sure she could never tell him no again. I want to end with a few important things. In the two years following Catherine's murder, John was given one of the greatest honors in the world of college music. In 2006 and 2007, he was invited to lead

the great American marching band at the head of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, the parade that runs right down Broadway, the street that Catherine had given anything to reach. John walked that route as he directed the most celebrated marching band in the country, and he said he thought about his daughter every step of the way. He would have given it all back in a second to have her by his side. Sadly, John Woods is no longer with us.

On September 12th of 2015, John passed away at the age of 76. But he got to see justice served for Catherine, and that matters. But before he died, John became a grandfather, And his granddaughter was given the name Reese, Catherine Woods. Catherine's name carried forward in the next generation. She lives on in that little girl, whether she ever got to meet her or not. And David never forgot Catherine. How could he?

After her death, he got a tattoo in her memory. On his arm, heart, and arose with Catherine's name, her birth date, and the date that she died. He carries her with him every day in the most permanent way he can. In 2007, Ohio State University established a Catherine Woods dance scholarship to help aspiring young dancers pursue their dreams. Catherine Woods was not a cautionary tale. She was merely working out at a gym when Paul spotted her like a predator. Catherine was only 21 years old.

She was still learning about the world. She moved to New York City at 17, a professional trained dancer from a college. Columbus, Ohio. She didn't deserve what happened to her. And nothing about her choices got her killed unless going to the gym is somehow reckless. What got her killed was a man's ego. This case is one of the cleanest examples I probably have ever covered of what obsessive pursuit looks like from the inside. Paul did not look like a monster to the people around him. He looked like a sensitive, of spiritual, educated gentleman who just loved a woman so much. His friends believed him, and some of them still do.

That's the thing about this kind of danger. It doesn't announce itself. It could show up wearing the face of devotion. For anyone watching that recognizes any of these patterns in your own relationship or in the relationship of someone you love, take it seriously. If you are in a situation that feels unsafe, please, there are resources. I will leave them below. they're available to you 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They can help you figure out what your

options are. Thank you so much for being here for Catherine's story. She deserved to have it told. I'll see you in my next video. Bye.