True Crime Vault: Do No Harm

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Speaker 3 Welcome to the 2020 True Crime Vault, where heart-stopping headlines come to life.

Speaker 5 How big was flying in the life of Robert Bairnbaum?

Speaker 5 Flying was his passion.

Speaker 7 He He loved to fly.

Speaker 8 The airplane was a key part of his life.

Speaker 11 One of the first dates he took out on was a flight around Manhattan in the evening on the skylight. So romantic.

Speaker 10 Please be true.

Speaker 12 Bob Fitz the tall, dark, and handsome, this perfect Renaissance man, spoke several languages.

Speaker 13 The first date, he said, do you want to get high tonight? We flew around the lights of Las Vegas. It was sparkling.

Speaker 11 Pilot, surgeon, brilliant guy.

Speaker 12 The Guameshev.

Speaker 11 Expert skier, top of his class.

Speaker 14 A big catch, right, for any young lady.

Speaker 16 Yeah, well, you can look so good on paper and have a whole nother side that you can just erase it all in a heartbeat.

Speaker 5 Flying, it's the crux of the story. It's the method that he tries to cover up for his crime.

Speaker 18 Her disappearance made headlines in New York in 1985.

Speaker 11 I get a phone call. Turn on the TV.

Speaker 19 They've arrested Robert Bierenbaum.

Speaker 11 I start screaming. I'm so shocked, I dropped to my knees.

Speaker 20 You must have been blown away.

Speaker 13 I was. Shocked.

Speaker 18 Gail Bierenbaum banished from the apartment she shared with her husband, Robert, a Manhattan plastic surgeon.

Speaker 21 Bob Teles believes that they had an argument and she came here to the park.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 23 Never in a million years you'd think you'd be using cold calculated murder in the same description as Dr.

Speaker 24 Berenbaum.

Speaker 10 Just no way.

Speaker 7 No body. No forensics, no eyewitnesses.

Speaker 27 The investigative theory was that he wrapped the body up, drove it to his plane in New Jersey, flew the plane out over the ocean.

Speaker 29 You know, they've charged that you took her in an airplane

Speaker 30 and threw her out. Disbelief switched to, good God, this guy was a psychopath.

Speaker 31 My God, you gotta think it's a movie.

Speaker 30 Crime and punishment. That's the story.

Speaker 7 Dr. Berenbaum.

Speaker 15 I mean, that's stuff you see on TV.

Speaker 16 That's not real.

Speaker 30 The Biernbaum story, when you get right down to it, is Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde.

Speaker 5 As physicians, we all take that oath to above all do no harm.

Speaker 27 In the 1980s, New York City was a very different place. It was a grittier place.
It was a dirtier place. There was graffiti everywhere, covering all parts of every subway car.

Speaker 5 The homicide rate in the 80s was astronomical. I mean, there were thousands.
They have a lot of drug gangs. It was a very violent time in New York, the 80s.

Speaker 34 Throughout the city, there were bubbles of safety. On the Upper East Side, that was one of them.

Speaker 34 The Upper East Side was the place where you wanted to live.

Speaker 27 The Upper East Side was the music to the beginning of the Jeffersons when it was on TV.

Speaker 33 And on East 85th Street in that iconic high-rise featured on the Jeffersons, there lived a handsome doctor and his beautiful wife, a young couple with their whole lives ahead of them.

Speaker 33 From the outside looking in, Robert and Gail Birnbaum should have been the perfect couple.

Speaker 39 Tell me about your sister. What was she like?

Speaker 12 Gail was a very gentle soul. She was sensitive.
She was loving.

Speaker 12 She was creative

Speaker 12 and gorgeous in that damsel in distress way.

Speaker 12 My sister Gail, Beth Katz, was the first child in our family of three children.

Speaker 12 Born on March 8th, 1956.

Speaker 12 We were all living in Brooklyn. I was one year behind Gail in school.
We were best friends.

Speaker 12 We lived that idyllic, carefree life.

Speaker 12 We walked to the penny store. We could chalk the street and play hopscotch.

Speaker 12 And when she was in fourth grade, my parents moved to Long Island. It was really exciting for us.
All of a sudden, Gail and I were going further than the candy store.

Speaker 12 We went into the city, to Broadway shows. It seemed to us to be a very normal childhood.

Speaker 11 This is my yearbook from high school.

Speaker 19 That was Gail.

Speaker 22 It's me

Speaker 11 on the same page.

Speaker 11 Gail was kind of honorable. She was so smart, so bright.
She was soft-spoken. and yet very powerful presence at the same time.

Speaker 4 She was a very special person.

Speaker 12 She was beautiful, smart, and unfortunately anxious. There was a little bit of a depression early in life.
She never thought she was good enough. She never knew how good she was.

Speaker 34 After high school, she went to the State University of New York in Albany. While she was there, She fell in love with a musician in a rock band.

Speaker 12 I don't think I've ever seen Gail so happy. Gail fell head over heels.
She was going to design the costumes for the band.

Speaker 33 Gail moved to Manhattan to pursue a degree in dance at New York University and to try to help her boyfriend land a record deal.

Speaker 12 Gail's a single gorgeous woman in Manhattan, bartending, meeting rich and famous musicians, record executives, and the relationship ends.

Speaker 33 Elaine says things went downhill for Gail from there. She has an arm injury, drops out of school, and is drifting without a purpose.
It all comes to a head on a traumatic night in 1979.

Speaker 12 On a night that I'm supposed to meet her, I get a call.

Speaker 12 She's in the hospital. She's tried to commit suicide.

Speaker 12 In my heart of hearts, I believe it was more of a really, really big cry for help than a true suicide attempt.

Speaker 12 How did Gail recover from that experience? She didn't.

Speaker 33 Over time, Elaine says Gail appeared to bounce back, landing a job at an ad company and building her way back up.

Speaker 12 And that's when one of her friends decides that she's got to introduce Gail

Speaker 25 to Dr. Robert Birmbaum.

Speaker 44 Robert Birnbaum grew up in West Orange, New Jersey. It is upper-middle class, very nice area.

Speaker 26 His father was a physician.

Speaker 34 He attended local high school where he was brilliant.

Speaker 34 He was always interested in flying. In high school, he got a pilot's license and was allowed to fly out of a number of small airports dotting northern New Jersey.

Speaker 33 But he decided to pursue a career in medicine, following in his father's footsteps. He graduated from Albany Medical College and was a surgical resident at the time he was introduced to Gail.

Speaker 12 He's close to her age, Jewish, classical guitar player. He spoke several languages.
He was a gourmet cook, an expert skier. He wasn't just a pilot, he had mastered instructor-level piloting.

Speaker 11 He loved to fly, and one of the first dates that he took out on was a flight around Manhattan, you know, in the evening on the skylight and everything.

Speaker 11 She was so enamored with this.

Speaker 12 It was magical. It was romantic.
They could go anywhere. You know, they'd hop on a plane, go to a beach someplace.
She had a private pilot chauffeur. And Bob loved being in control.

Speaker 12 So this was a place where Bob really got to shine.

Speaker 34 However, in spite of all of his pluses, there were problems with the relationship. And it was obvious early on.

Speaker 11 There were red flags. When we would be together with them as a couple,

Speaker 11 he would be very controlling of her.

Speaker 11 Even if she had to go to the bathroom, he would be like, where are you going? And when are you coming back?

Speaker 12 The first time I went on a double date with the two of them, the four of us are in a sushi restaurant. And Bob starts using chopsticks and picking up food and shoving it in my sister's mouth.

Speaker 45 It was so odd.

Speaker 12 I was so embarrassed. And then he starts doing the same thing to me.

Speaker 4 He starts feeding you.

Speaker 12 He starts feeding me. It was

Speaker 22 so uncomfortable.

Speaker 12 He was such a weirdo.

Speaker 33 But Gail had made up her mind. Bob was marrying material and the two get engaged.
But then, all of a sudden, those red flags about Gail's seemingly perfect fiancé become forealarm silence.

Speaker 12 When I get the hysterical call from my sister, she gets into the car, holding her little cat in her arms, crying. Buck tried to kill the cat.

Speaker 24 What do you mean?

Speaker 33 By August of 1982, Gail Katz was flying high, engaged to her pilot boyfriend, Dr. Robert Birembaum.
Her mother couldn't have been happier.

Speaker 38 Voila, here it is.

Speaker 12 Young Jewish doctor from New Jersey is marrying her. What could be better?

Speaker 11 That's how he seemed on paper.

Speaker 11 In reality, the more I got to know him, the more I realized he was very awkward, very controlling.

Speaker 12 During the summer of 82, I get the hysterical call from my sister. I must come into the city.
I must pick her up.

Speaker 12 She gets into the car, holding her little cat in her arms, crying.

Speaker 11 What happened, Gail?

Speaker 12 Bob tried to kill the cat.

Speaker 12 He had the cat in the toilet, choking it with its head submerged underwater.

Speaker 11 He was offended because she seemed to love the cat more than she loved Bob.

Speaker 11 And so he wanted the cat dead.

Speaker 12 No, no, no, Elaine, we're going to get rid of the cat and then everything's going to be fine because he's going to believe that I love him.

Speaker 12 And I'm like, no, not really. You really have to get rid of Bob.

Speaker 34 It turns out that this wasn't the first cat that Bob had attacked. Earlier in their relationship, he had told a story about having accidentally, in his words, strangled a prior girlfriend's cat.

Speaker 34 Her cat got loose in the car, and he said he strangled and killed that cat in the car.

Speaker 12 This is nuts. This is scary.
And I'm like, you know, he's done this before. It's not about loving a cat.
It's not about you loving the cat.

Speaker 45 It's about being violent.

Speaker 34 No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 12 You know, she had two years of a psych degree. She knows better.
I'm like, I can't believe you're marrying this guy. And I was sworn to secrecy.

Speaker 12 I never told my parents.

Speaker 34 In spite of this extremely upsetting incident and warnings, Gail and Bob were married August 29th, 1982, in a Manhattan synagogue.

Speaker 12 She's wearing a white dress. She's gorgeous.
She was happy. We had great champagne.
We had, you know, a great band, but thought was awkward. Bob couldn't dance.
Bob doesn't drink.

Speaker 12 My sister told me, I'm smart, I'm loving, my love will cure. This is going to work out.

Speaker 33 The newlyweds enjoy an idyllic honeymoon on the island of Crete. When they get back to New York, they continue trying to live in an upper-class lifestyle.

Speaker 12 They are doing ski trips. There's beach vacations in the Caribbean with other couples.
that are doctors and their wives. She enjoys that.

Speaker 5 He also was still involved heavily with this passion of flying during that time. Whenever he could get a chance, he would head over to Jersey.
That's where he rented the plane.

Speaker 34 They, in January of 83, moved into a two-bedroom, 12th-floor apartment at 185 East 85th Street, a building actually that America knew from the Jeffersons sitcom. This was making it for them.

Speaker 39 He was a resident doctor.

Speaker 42 He didn't have a lot of money.

Speaker 25 How could they afford this?

Speaker 12 Bob's parents pay the rent.

Speaker 5 After they got married, he's in a residency at Maimonides. He was working very long hours with the intention of opening someday his own plastic surgeon practice.

Speaker 45 Back in the 80s, I worked at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn where I met Bob Girdbaum. Bob was socially awkward.
He was socially awkward with the patients as well.

Speaker 45 He did not have a connection with the patients. I think he was very into himself and I don't think he was really interested in his appearance all that much.

Speaker 45 He would have his pants halfway down in the back, very wrinkled shirt on.

Speaker 8 Gail

Speaker 34 was an undergraduate finishing her BA, taking classes at Hunter College.

Speaker 34 Money was tight and Gail decided that one way to make it was to try to be a personal assistant to women living on the Upper East Side. And so she put out an ad.

Speaker 15 I responded and, you know, in no time she was working for us.

Speaker 33 Francesca Beale was a high-powered attorney at CBS-TV at the time and she puts Gail to work as her assistant.

Speaker 15 She was beautiful, she was delightful, everyone who met her said how wonderful she was. She glowed with happiness at that point.

Speaker 30 Did she ever talk much about her husband?

Speaker 15 Not much, but when she did, it was in terms that I would say were affectionate and that she was proud of him.

Speaker 34 To people on the outside, It might have looked like the perfect couple had the perfect life in the perfect spot.

Speaker 34 But the reality was a lot bumpier than that. They were fighting a lot.

Speaker 5 Dr. Birnbaum's controlling nature was the prime mover which caused the tension in the marriage.
He wanted to control every aspect of her life.

Speaker 5 There was always screaming and fighting going on in the apartment.

Speaker 7 She came to my apartment and studied.

Speaker 7 because she didn't feel comfortable staying around the house. She would complain that he was verbally abusive, that he would put her down, undermine her all the time, tell her she wasn't any good.

Speaker 11 She lived by these laws he set up. She had to be home by a certain time.
She had to dress a certain way.

Speaker 12 My sister would go to turn on a light. He would literally hold her hand as she's moving for the light and with his other hand turn the light switch on.

Speaker 12 There wasn't a thing that was too small for Bob to control.

Speaker 11 We had a 30th birthday party in a restaurant and Bob and Gail were there. Bob insisted that she sit on his lap

Speaker 11 through the dinner. And at some point, I think that she was feeding him his food.
I said, Gail, why don't you sit down in your own seat? And she seemed intimidated. She said, no, no, this is okay.

Speaker 22 It's okay.

Speaker 11 I just got the feeling she didn't want to cross him.

Speaker 12 By the end of the year, she is certainly complaining to others. Bob is never home.
She's lonely. This is not a happy marriage.
And then

Speaker 12 it was like a house of cards.

Speaker 39 That house of cards would soon start to collapse following a shocking outbreak of violence.

Speaker 12 Bob sees her smoking, leaps over a couch to get at her as quickly as possible.

Speaker 33 And it would all lead to an alarming letter warning of imminent danger.

Speaker 11 I wish I hadn't known about that letter so way before.

Speaker 11 I think I would have scooped her up in my arms and taken her home.

Speaker 33 On the surface, Robert Birenbaum and his wife Gail seemed to be the perfect couple, young, attractive, with a bright future.

Speaker 33 But behind the walls of their Upper Eastside Manhattan apartment, the relationship had turned toxic.

Speaker 43 Their marriage went into a downward spiral of constant arguing, fighting over just about anything.

Speaker 25 Like a neighbor told us like cats and dogs, and it was constant.

Speaker 11 She definitely told me she was not happy. He pay attention to her.

Speaker 11 but more in the way of watching her, watching what she was doing, who she was talking to. He really was a cold guy.

Speaker 12 Bob had rules and you better follow those rules. Bob had this thing about smoking.
Nobody should smoke because it's bad for their health.

Speaker 12 Back in November 83, my sister was studying for graduate record exams, her GREs. She thought Bob had left to go to work that day.

Speaker 12 She was feeling nervous, and as she tells it, she went out on the balcony to smoke a cigarette.

Speaker 12 The door opens, and he smells the smoke, and he literally leaps over the living room furniture, strangles her to the point of unconsciousness, then revives her and

Speaker 12 apologizes, saying that it would never happen again.

Speaker 37 Gail would have gone into the 19th precinct and she reported the incident to a police administrative aide.

Speaker 25 If this had happened in 2021, Robert Birnbaum would have been in handcuffs immediately.

Speaker 43 The fact that this was 1983, nothing was done about it.

Speaker 12 This time she doesn't say, oh, he just loves me. This time she says, you're a sick bastard.

Speaker 29 Go get help.

Speaker 12 I am not staying in this marriage unless you get help.

Speaker 12 And Bob goes to see a therapist, Michael Stone.

Speaker 27 After Gail charged that her husband, Dr. Robert Birnbaum, had tried to strangle her in a rape.
So in the course of looking at the case, you know, I find Dr. Stone and I interview him.

Speaker 27 At the end of seeing him, did you have the impression that he was under control?

Speaker 25 No.

Speaker 25 I had the impression that he was not in good control.

Speaker 48 The more trivial the incident that sparked it, in my way of thinking, the more potentially dangerous the person.

Speaker 48 This was a minor incident, which means that he had a a hair trigger kind of temper.

Speaker 27 He says, I realized she was not going to be safe living with him. And he tells me, I wrote a letter memorializing this.
It's a letter of warning to Gail.

Speaker 23 The letter went as far as being a hold harmless letter.

Speaker 50 He didn't want to be held liable

Speaker 25 for not warning her

Speaker 25 about the danger.

Speaker 48 The letter says, I have been advised by Dr. Stone that for reasons of my own safety, I should, at this time, live apart from my husband, Dr.
Robert Bierenbaum.

Speaker 48 I further understand that if I do not heed this advice, I must accept the consequences, including the possibility of personal injury or death at the hands of my husband, and absolve Dr.

Speaker 48 Stone of responsibility for any such eventuality.

Speaker 4 This letter says that you are worried about her husband killing her.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 32 And that you're trying to warn her.

Speaker 10 That's right.

Speaker 27 Have you ever written a letter worded that strongly to or for another patient?

Speaker 48 It's the only letter I've ever written to a patient of any sort

Speaker 5 in all those years.

Speaker 27 When she left your office, the last time she left your office, did you feel then,

Speaker 27 even then, that she was in serious danger? Yes.

Speaker 48 And had rather a sinking feeling about the future because I had warned her

Speaker 48 every way I knew how, and she wasn't heeding.

Speaker 23 my warning.

Speaker 5 When Gail got the letter, I know that she, of course, she kept it. She didn't just destroy it or read it and throw it away.

Speaker 25 She put it away.

Speaker 10 Were you aware of the letter?

Speaker 12 Gail told me about it approximately a year after she got it. She's like, it says he's a psychopath and that he's going to kill me.

Speaker 49 Why in the world would she stay with this guy after she received that kind of warning?

Speaker 12 I think she didn't believe it. No, no, no, Elaine, you know, I'm just about finished with my PhD.
I understand psychology. I'm safe.
Don't worry about it. She said to me that I want to get divorced.

Speaker 12 You know, he really has to do right by me. And if he doesn't, I am going to publicize this letter and it's going to ruin him.

Speaker 5 After she received the letter, I mean, the marriage continued. They continued living under the same roof.

Speaker 34 The situation was calmer at home, but it was the calm before the storm.

Speaker 34 It was all going to blow up for them come the 4th of July weekend.

Speaker 12 I called my mom and she said, do you know where Gail is? And I said, what do you mean, do I know where Gail is? I think something terrible has happened to her.

Speaker 22 Gail has suddenly gone missing, vanished into thin air.

Speaker 33 Could that ominous warning in Dr. Stone's letter have come true?

Speaker 11 My heart went into my throat when I said he killed her.

Speaker 11 I knew it. I knew it right away.

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Speaker 18 Take that, chronic hives.

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Speaker 31 Coming to Disney Plus in Hulu. Cassidy, get us home.
Jonas Brothers, you got it. It'll be the best Jonas Christmas ever.

Speaker 25 Can't wait to see you guys. We love you.

Speaker 30 If they can only make it home.

Speaker 50 What's going on? Our tour plane burned? No.

Speaker 49 We cannot miss Christmas.

Speaker 8 Nothing can stop us from getting home now.

Speaker 6 Only

Speaker 6 it won't be alone this trip.

Speaker 16 You lost all three of your passports?

Speaker 40 It's Christmas. Anything can happen, right?

Speaker 31 A very Jonas Christmas movie, now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu with a TVPGDL.

Speaker 37 The dynamic in the relationship, I think, changed dramatically after the strangulation incident to the extent that she would go to bed fully clothed.

Speaker 12 We're talking about people who are in the third year of their marriage and they're not having sex.

Speaker 12 Gail admitted to me that she was dating a little bit.

Speaker 12 She told me how lonely she was.

Speaker 11 On July 6th, 1985, we took a walk. She liked to hang out by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
We sat down and we talked and she had a copy of the real estate section of the New York Times with her.

Speaker 11 She said to me, I'm going to look for apartments.

Speaker 11 And I'm going to tell Bob that I'm leaving him. I was like, yay, thank God she's going to leave him.

Speaker 50 Sunday, July 7th, was a turning point in this story.

Speaker 44 Sometime that morning, Francesca Beale, a sometime employer of Gail,

Speaker 50 called.

Speaker 15 I had not been in touch with Gail for a long time, and she was extremely happy to hear from me.

Speaker 33 But it turns out Francesca wasn't calling for Gail at all. She wanted Gail to ask Bob for a referral to a doctor.

Speaker 15 She didn't seem angry, but she just seemed quiet and sad.

Speaker 53 It sounds like she was deflated. Yes.

Speaker 22 It wasn't about her, but rather

Speaker 29 the doctor husband.

Speaker 15 And maybe she thought I needed her for a friend.

Speaker 43 It wasn't quite the phone call that Gail was looking forward to.

Speaker 42 What we do know for certain is that something sparked another argument, and we know from their downstairs neighbors that the argument was loud, and it continued for a while until there was silence in the apartment.

Speaker 5 Later in the day, Dr. Grimbaum left the apartment.

Speaker 5 Showed up in New Jersey at the birthday party for his nephew. We were telling people that she had left the apartment in a huff.
He doesn't know where she went.

Speaker 5 He hasn't seen or heard from her since she left. the apartment and he was worried about her.

Speaker 12 I call my mother and my mother says, do you know where Gail is? And I'm like, no.

Speaker 12 And she's like, Bob called. They had a fight this morning and Gail never came home.

Speaker 11 Bob calls me.

Speaker 11 He says, is Gail still with you? I said, what do you mean is Gail still with me? I left her yesterday at five o'clock. My heart went into my throat.

Speaker 12 She's not with me and she's not with my parents.

Speaker 12 And at that moment, I know that my sister's dead.

Speaker 11 I just put the phone down for a second. I said, he killed her.
I knew it. I knew it right away.

Speaker 38 And if she's not alive,

Speaker 12 there's only one person

Speaker 12 who is a likely suspect to murder her, and it's Bob. There's no other suspect.

Speaker 35 On Monday, July 8th, 1985, about 9 in the evening, Robert Bierenbaum came into the prison to report his wife, Gail, missing. I interviewed him at length.

Speaker 35 Robert mentioned that sometime that morning, Gail and he had an argument. She left to go to Central Park to cool off.
She was dressed to go lay out in the sun.

Speaker 35 pair of shorts, I believe a halter top, and a towel. And that was not unusual for Gail.

Speaker 21 Bob tells police that they had an argument and she came here to the park.

Speaker 53 Yes.

Speaker 12 And by the very following weekend, we had missing posters made of Gail. My family and my sister's friends all came to the park and plastered.
This poster. This poster.

Speaker 12 We plastered the entire loop of the park. We

Speaker 12 never spoke to a single person that said, I recognize recognize Gail.

Speaker 42 It was almost like pulling teeth to get Robert Birnbaum to help.

Speaker 37 It was almost like they had to drag him, kicking and screaming.

Speaker 34 Meanwhile, the tension is building between the Katzes and the Bierenbaums. The Bierenbaums are portraying Gail as a mentally unstable person who might be responsible for her own disappearance.

Speaker 12 In front of us, they're saying to the police, she was suicidal. She must have killed herself.

Speaker 12 Now, this is ridiculous. My sister has a therapist who says she's healthy.
The other lie that he starts to float is it must have been a drug deal gone wrong.

Speaker 12 My sister wasn't buying drugs on the street. They just kept floating alternate theories, and all of them defamed my sister.

Speaker 35 A search was made and every effort to locate someone that might have been a victim of a crime was made. There weren't any bodies.
There weren't any victims that were discovered in the park.

Speaker 35 Gail was not discovered. She did not commit suicide in the park.

Speaker 33 Weeks after his wife's disappearance, Birmbaum seems the opposite of a grieving husband.

Speaker 11 I heard he was out in the Hamptons

Speaker 22 partying with

Speaker 11 a lot of elite people.

Speaker 12 He's dating, he's bringing women back, you you know.

Speaker 33 But then investigators make a shocking discovery at a New Jersey airfield. A discovery that could bring Robert Bierenbaum back to Earth.

Speaker 44 They struck gold.

Speaker 39 This was a bombshell discovery.

Speaker 22 It was.

Speaker 42 It turned things upside down.

Speaker 33 Just weeks after his wife Gail vanishes in New York City, Robert Bierenbaum starts spending time in an exclusive spot out on Long Island.

Speaker 38 Gail and he had a share in a Hamptons house and Robert continued to go out there on every weekend he possibly could.

Speaker 50 He was seen partying in a notorious disco in the Hamptons called Marrakesh.

Speaker 5 Even his dress changed from LLB to Saturday night fever.

Speaker 5 This wasn't the concerned husband, and the summer house people thought that his behavior just was rather cold and dismissive of his missing wife.

Speaker 8 Bob's co-worker at his hospital, Karen Caruana, was also out in the Hamptons at the time.

Speaker 33 Some mutual friends suggest that the two of them meet for a date, even though it had only been a few weeks since Gail went missing.

Speaker 45 We went out to dinner. He drove back to this house.

Speaker 45 I remember sitting in his kitchen and asking him, you know, tell me what happened with Gail.

Speaker 45 And what he told me was Gail had left and flown out to California and gotten some kind of a waitress job. on the coast.

Speaker 45 He had hired a private investigator and this private investigator had found her out there.

Speaker 25 That wasn't true.

Speaker 50 What we know for a fact

Speaker 50 is after having spoken to the investigator that there was never any evidence of her in California.

Speaker 45 I asked him about the police. Have they gone and searched his apartment, etc.?

Speaker 45 And he told me the police had already been there. They had already searched his apartment and everything was clean.

Speaker 35 That was far from the truth.

Speaker 35 The scope of our search in that apartment with the forensic team was limited to finding fingerprints on personal items that Gail may have come in contact with in normal daily activities.

Speaker 35 I tried to get a broader scope to get evidence of any crime, and that was objected to by Scott Greenfield, Robert's attorney.

Speaker 45 How that I've progressed. Okay,

Speaker 45 I'm not sure how we got up to the bedroom, but we did.

Speaker 45 And we had, you know, sex quite a few times that night.

Speaker 45 I kind of questioned my judgment on, you know, doing that. And, you know, I had let my guard down, and that was probably not a good move on my part.

Speaker 44 He told that lie to Karen Carawana because he wanted to sleep with her that night.

Speaker 51 This is a man whose wife has been missing now for weeks. And at the first opportunity he has, he's jumping at the chance to get into bed with another woman.

Speaker 27 In August of 1986, so years gone by, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office decides to take a look at the case, and it goes to the chief investigator,

Speaker 27 Andy Rosenzweig.

Speaker 27 Andy Rosenzweig is a criminal's worst nightmare because he's extraordinarily intelligent. He's extremely detail-oriented.

Speaker 27 But when you looked for a case, what did you look at in the folder to say this one looks like it could go?

Speaker 32 Well, we looked at a case that presented a challenge that we thought perhaps other agencies wouldn't be equipped to do as well as us.

Speaker 5 What Andy Rosenzweck did initially to further this investigation was that they knew he was a pilot and they began canvassing various airports to see if they could find any evidence as to whether he had rented or flown a plane on July the 7th, 1985.

Speaker 42 They started out looking at private aviation companies in New Jersey.

Speaker 44 The second choice was Essex County Airport and they struck gold.

Speaker 42 So they came here, went through that door, went through that door, and they said, yes, as a matter of fact, we do know Robert Birnbaum.

Speaker 52 Do you have records of him flying?

Speaker 5 Yes, we do.

Speaker 43 Robert Birnbaum, the day his wife disappeared, drove to Colwell Airport sometime in the afternoon,

Speaker 23 flew a plane for over an hour and a half,

Speaker 43 returned to the airport, and then

Speaker 44 went to his sister's house for the party.

Speaker 39 This was a bombshell discovery.

Speaker 22 It was.

Speaker 42 It turned things upside down.

Speaker 51 He spoke to detectives and he told them, I stayed at home till 5.30

Speaker 42 when he knew that by that time he was already probably 75, 80 miles out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Speaker 41 Once they figured out he had gone up in the plane, how quickly did they say that was how he disposed the body?

Speaker 25 That was immediate.

Speaker 42 The working theory was that he folded her up, put her in a duffel bag, came out to where we are today, rented his plane, loaded her in the plane, flew out over the ocean, and dumped her in the ocean.

Speaker 12 My parents and I are like, Great, we've got that missing link. Now we can prove he did it.

Speaker 27 The existence of the airplane, the existence of the flight, it was all suggestive and circumstantial. So the DA's office at the time felt we don't have a murder case.

Speaker 12 And I

Speaker 12 remember the district attorney's office bringing my parents in and saying,

Speaker 12 it's not enough.

Speaker 39 How hard was it on your parents?

Speaker 12 It was a death sentence for my parents.

Speaker 33 Then in May of 1989, three years after the investigation goes cold, there's another heartbreaking development for Gail's family.

Speaker 5 A torso washes up. off of Staten Island, headless, legless, and armless.

Speaker 12 We found these x-rays, and an x-ray technician compared this x-ray with this torso

Speaker 7 and said, this is Gail.

Speaker 38 Now,

Speaker 12 we have a body to bury. We have some closure.

Speaker 33 While the discovery of the body still isn't enough for the police to press charges, Elaine's crusade to hold Gail's husband accountable hasn't been laid to rest.

Speaker 27 Elaine Katz was determined to get justice for her sister, and that meant staying after Robert Biernbaum.

Speaker 12 I would send clippings to the doctors that he worked with, to the people that lived in the building, and I would leave messages on his answering machine, you know, telling the woman he was living with, he's dangerous, you know, be careful.

Speaker 29 Your intent was...

Speaker 12 Well, my intent was to make every day of his life miserable, to make him walk down halls and have people think, oh my God, he's a murderer.

Speaker 33 Elaine's relentless efforts appear to pay off. In 1989, Robert Bierenbaum pulls up stakes and leaves New York City behind.

Speaker 12 I believe that I ran him out of New York.

Speaker 33 But the next chapter in the Birenbaum saga would come as a complete surprise.

Speaker 6 You are all I long for.

Speaker 33 It's a startling new life and yet another transformation.

Speaker 53 Apparently it had undergone quite a makeover and they started wearing fancy suits.

Speaker 13 Yes, he loved his Armani suits.

Speaker 39 Sometimes though,

Speaker 4 it's not so easy to bury the past.

Speaker 13 The rumors started coming in from New York that Bob potentially murdered her.

Speaker 5 Feels completely safe, completely confident that he's gotten away with murder.

Speaker 44 Robert Birmaum had absolutely no idea what's coming.

Speaker 33 What was coming was a startling demonstration in the sky, one that could prove the key to clipping Dr.

Speaker 46 Bierenbaum's wings for good.

Speaker 5 I don't think Spielberg could have done it better.

Speaker 18 Her disappearance made headlines in New York in 1985. Gail Bierenbaum vanished from the apartment she shared with her husband, Robert, a Manhattan plastic surgeon.

Speaker 22 Turn on the TV.

Speaker 11 They've arrested Robert Bierenbaum for the murder of Gail Katz. I start screaming.
Dr.

Speaker 29 Birenbaum, we have to ask you, did you kill your wife?

Speaker 13 Bob Bierenbaum is the last person anybody would think that would commit a murder unless you saw his other side. My life was flashing in front of my eyes.

Speaker 4 He was moving all over, maybe to get as far away from New York as he could.

Speaker 5 After he left, I'm confident that he thought the ball game was over.

Speaker 12 I didn't want him to get away with it. I wanted every day of his life to be miserable.

Speaker 14 I said, we ever married before? I thought, whoa, I touched a nerve.

Speaker 13 Did he do it? Could he have done it?

Speaker 28 Could it have been me?

Speaker 56 The first thing that stood out to me were the flight records.

Speaker 26 Oh my God, there's the explanation why Gail is not around anymore.

Speaker 12 I didn't want anyone to dig her up.

Speaker 33 Literally, they're going to have to exhume the body they think is Gail's.

Speaker 7 I am so devastated.

Speaker 8 What was in that grave?

Speaker 5 He has no idea what's coming down the road, and it's us.

Speaker 13 Las Vegas in 1989, 1990, there was a whole new energy occurring. We had dazzle, lots of glitz, lots of beautiful, beautiful showgirls.

Speaker 57 Cocktail waitresses.

Speaker 58 Plastic surgeons were starting to flock here. This was the wild, wild west.

Speaker 57 It was a feeding frenzy for plastic surgeons.

Speaker 58 That was December 31st, 1989.

Speaker 58 I decided to have a New Year's Eve party. It was a party, and my boyfriend wanted to bring a new plastic surgeon in town.

Speaker 13 I went around the corner to the party, and we were having a good time, and somebody introduced me to Bob.

Speaker 33 Your first impressions of him?

Speaker 13 I thought he was very nice.

Speaker 57 He was tall, dark, and handsome.

Speaker 33 It turns out Bob is none other than Robert Bierenbaum.

Speaker 33 He had been the target of an investigation in New York City after his wife Gail had gone missing in 1985 under highly suspicious circumstances.

Speaker 34 Birmbaum was a suspect because the police discovered that he had lied about where he was.

Speaker 34 They found out that he had been up on a plane and he had never mentioned it.

Speaker 26 The DA's office had closed their end of the investigation without bringing charges.

Speaker 12 I didn't want him to get away with it. I wanted every day of his life to be miserable.
I believe I ran him out of New York to Vegas.

Speaker 33 In Las Vegas, Birenbaum transforms himself from a surgical resident in New York to a hotshot plastic surgeon.

Speaker 33 He befriends colleagues like Dr. Julio Garcia, the man who reattached Evander Holyfield's ear after Mike Tyson bit it off.

Speaker 36 Keep your eye on Mike. Mike has just seen it.
Look at him.

Speaker 39 We all know he was from New York, but he played that card close to the chest. He did not disclose any chips on that table.

Speaker 39 He kept his secrets to himself.

Speaker 13 He called me up and asked me if you want to get high tonight.

Speaker 13 And I really didn't know what he was talking about.

Speaker 33 It's suddenly you were here, huh?

Speaker 13 Yes, this is the airport.

Speaker 13 We went flying on our first date.

Speaker 10 Fly me to the moon.

Speaker 16 It was fun.

Speaker 7 Las Vegas is fun to fly around at night with all the glits and lights.

Speaker 22 In other words.

Speaker 13 The first year was perfect. Fun, fun, fun.

Speaker 13 We went to social events all over town. We went to medical black tie events.
We went on a lot of ski trips.

Speaker 33 Vegas Bob 2.0 was certainly new and improved from the New York version he had left behind. He had traded in his wrinkled plaid shirts for Armani suits.

Speaker 13 He had a way of taking an Armani suit and making it look a little sloppy.

Speaker 33 He had a sports car and a Jeep truck.

Speaker 13 Las Vegas, we're big on vanity plate, so why wouldn't he have nip and tuck and nip and truck? It's the way we roll here in Vegas.

Speaker 34 In Vegas, there was another side that emerged to Bob, and that was a charitable side.

Speaker 34 He joined a group called the Flying Doctors, which several times a year would fly down to a specific community in Mexico and provide medical care to poor families.

Speaker 13 Bob was a perfect fit for this, especially being a plastic surgeon doing cleft palettes.

Speaker 57 He changed these children's lives forever.

Speaker 13 I loved going to Mexico and doing that work. It was kind of a glue that held us together.

Speaker 58 She did call me and said, you'll never believe it, but this guy flies to Mexico and helps children that are disadvantaged. I can't even believe I met a person that was so great.

Speaker 33 But one thing Dr. Bob hasn't been so eager to share with Stephanie are details of his previous life in New York.

Speaker 36 Stephanie says she found it odd that he was so reluctant to have his palm read by her close friend, a palm reader.

Speaker 59 He had this dark energy and his eyes, they were the strangest thing that I've ever seen. His eyes would go like this.

Speaker 59 Well, by then, he'd figured out what I did for a living, and so he didn't want to have anything to do with me. There was something

Speaker 59 secretive about him.

Speaker 13 One time I saw his luggage tags that said Gail Barenbaum on him. So I'm like, okay,

Speaker 19 maybe a cousin, no biggie.

Speaker 13 And then after a while, I'm just like, Bob, who's Gail Barenbaum?

Speaker 22 And then it took him a long pause

Speaker 13 and he got kind of emotional

Speaker 13 and he told me he had been married before

Speaker 13 and they had a big fight and she took off for Central Park. And she disappeared.

Speaker 33 Stephanie says Berenbob told her he had been thoroughly investigated by the cops and cleared of all wrongdoing.

Speaker 4 The way he told the story, it was believable.

Speaker 13 About a year and a half into the relationship, he gave me a fortune cookie and I opened it up and there was a diamond ring.

Speaker 13 And I'm like, Bob,

Speaker 13 we can't get married. Because Bob wanted kids, I did not.
So that's when our trouble trouble began.

Speaker 58 Bob's image on paper was real,

Speaker 58 but cracks started to appear.

Speaker 13 One time we went flying when we went down to Sedona with Dr. Thalgat.
It was a very intense landing.

Speaker 4 She simply bumped the door of the airplane when it was parked.

Speaker 31 Demeanor changed just like that and went into a rage.

Speaker 4 Tight eyes, tight mouth,

Speaker 35 focused, red in the face, screaming.

Speaker 49 I thought he was going to strike her.

Speaker 4 I thought, this guy's crazy.

Speaker 4 On another trip, this time on a boat, Stephanie says she feared for her life.

Speaker 33 There was an explosive incident after she asked the host for a glass of red wine.

Speaker 13 When he went to open that bottle of wine, it was like opening a bottle of champagne that sprayed everywhere. Bob went ballistic.
That's when I saw his laser eyes that just pierced my soul.

Speaker 13 He just raged on me like it was my fault and I thought, oh, this is not good. My life was flashing in front of my eyes.
That was like a tipping point in our relationship.

Speaker 33 Alarmed by that incident, Stephanie says she demanded they see a therapist, just like Gail had done a decade before.

Speaker 13 We only had one session and she goes, there are issues there, that my life could be in danger with him.

Speaker 57 And so I started to build a strategy to leave.

Speaker 58 I definitely said, Stephanie, you dodged a bullet.

Speaker 33 But Bierenbaum quickly bounces back, dating and proposing to one woman after another.

Speaker 34 Bob took the same diamond and set it in one ring after another after another until Bob finally met the woman of his dreams, Janet Chollett, a gynecologist in Las Vegas.

Speaker 34 And in June of 96, they were married.

Speaker 33 There would be a next stop and yet another transformation for Dr. Bob when his wife gets offered a new job out of Las Vegas.

Speaker 12 I learned that he was in some real rural place. Sounded like the antithesis of New York City life.

Speaker 33 But it turns out Dr. Bob was about to become a hero after a terrifying incident.

Speaker 24 The tiger reared up on his hind legs.

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Speaker 40 Audiences and top critics are celebrating. Rental Family is the perfect feel-good movie of the year.

Speaker 10 What do you need me for?

Speaker 40 We need a talking white guy. Academy Award winner Brendan Fraser delivers a masterful performance.

Speaker 7 This girl needs a father.

Speaker 22 I hate you.

Speaker 30 She hates me.

Speaker 5 It's worth being apparent. Yes.

Speaker 40 In this tender and funny film about the importance of connection.

Speaker 38 This is amazing.

Speaker 15 It's cool, but it's fake.

Speaker 7 Sometimes it's okay to pretend.

Speaker 40 Rental family, now playing only in theaters. Ready to PG-13.
May be inappropriate for children under 13.

Speaker 28 Mina, North Dakota is known as the Magic City. That dates back to the early days when the railroads came through and a city emerged out of the prairie and grew like magic.

Speaker 28 But when we talk about the magic city today, the magic in Minot is the people.

Speaker 28 How friendly everyone is and willing to do something for a complete stranger.

Speaker 62 People tend to just accept you and not ask a bunch of questions. If one was escaping something, perhaps that's a great place to go.

Speaker 8 Robert Bierenbaum came to Minot in the mid-90s and made quite a splash.

Speaker 62 When Bob was in North Dakota, there were, I believe, five plastic surgeons in the entire state.

Speaker 33 Biram Bob had followed his wife Janet from Las Vegas to Minot after she landed a job there.

Speaker 39 They both worked at Trinity Medical Center, Janet as a gynecologist, Bob as a plastic surgeon.

Speaker 33 They lived in a small condo.

Speaker 47 First time I spoke with him, he got real close, you know, kind of got into my space and touched my face because I had a mole on my face and I'm kind of backing up and he says I can fix that

Speaker 14 he didn't quite fit in his style was more New York than it was Minot so he stood out but he made an effort to be part of the community the Jewish community was very small we all knew one another I started a bagel shop in Minot He was a customer sometimes and he was also well known in the community for making his own bagels.

Speaker 14 He always came across as being a nice, kind of disheveled, not quite put together guy, you know, and smart. People in the medical community were impressed with him.
He had great credentials.

Speaker 10 I think people in Minot would have imagined that.

Speaker 8 Dr. Bierenbaum was a kind of gift.

Speaker 33 Then on July 30th, 1998, there was an incident at the North Dakota State Fair that thoroughly cemented Birambaum's reputation in Minot.

Speaker 28 Every year our biggest event in Minot in North Dakota is the North Dakota State Fair.

Speaker 28 You've got rides and carnivals and every kind of food imaginable.

Speaker 63 Okay let's hear from Mackenzie our tiger taber.

Speaker 51 There was a tiger exhibit at the fair.

Speaker 44 They were offering pictures on a table with a cub tiger.

Speaker 64 We had been extraordinarily busy. We had a vast large attendance on the day.

Speaker 64 In the photo ops, a cub was being fed a bottle of milk, and all the tigers had been overfed at that point, except for a roughly 280-pound tiger named Lutan.

Speaker 64 And I thought we were coming up to a break, but you know, the manager said, well, let's get this one family.

Speaker 33 The tiger Lutan was a last-minute substitute for this photo. It was taken with Ron Gottis' family gathered behind him.

Speaker 24 A trainer had the tiger by leash and the tiger was geared up on his hind legs, pulled my son back towards him into its mouth and commenced making a two-toy out of my son's head.

Speaker 24 My son was a fraction of an inch from losing his right eye and a quarter of an inch from losing his left ear. They were expecting to have to fly my son Medovac to Fargo,

Speaker 24 but there just so happened to be plastic surgeon that they were able to get a hold of, and it happened to be Dr. Birenbaum.

Speaker 24 He sewed his eye back in and tucked it nice and tight and put his ear back on.

Speaker 4 I believe Dr.

Speaker 22 Birmbaum saved my son's life.

Speaker 4 without a doubt, hands down.

Speaker 4 While the incident with that tiger makes Berenbaum a local hero, he's apparently still touchy about details of his past life.

Speaker 14 I just in passing sort of said, were you ever married before?

Speaker 14 His reaction was so immediate and so

Speaker 14 stiff, surprised, shocked, you know, that I thought, whoa, I touched a nerve.

Speaker 34 Soon after arriving in Minot, Janet decided to go to law school and she moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota, which was 200 miles away.

Speaker 30 He had his domestic situation with a wife in Grand Forks, but he had a patient base in Minot.

Speaker 34 He got into his plane and flew between the two cities. He'd be working in Minot

Speaker 34 and then see Janet on the weekends.

Speaker 34 In November of 98, Janet and Bob had a baby daughter.

Speaker 16 My name is Barb Cooper and I was one of the nannies for Robert Bierenbaum and his wife Janet in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Speaker 16 It looks like he must have come home from work. He has a suit on and just sitting down on the kitchen floor just right where he was and to play with his little girl and his dog.

Speaker 16 This is one where Bob would have come home. He's got a name tag on.

Speaker 16 His face would just light up when he would see her.

Speaker 16 He looked good, wore suits, loved his child, loved dogs, dogs, you know, just all overall things that you would think would be great characteristics to have in somebody.

Speaker 8 He becomes a family man, has a daughter.

Speaker 12 He has a child.

Speaker 9 At that point, do you think he may well live out the rest of his life, never having to pay for this?

Speaker 12 I think I began to feel even in Vegas that that was

Speaker 12 the life we were going to have to live.

Speaker 5 After he left Las Vegas and moved to North Dakota, I'm confident that he thought the ball game was over, that he's never going to have to deal with this ever again.

Speaker 22 And then one day, something really strange happens while you're at work.

Speaker 13 I had a strong, loud knock on the door. I opened it up.
There were a couple gentlemen standing outside. They wanted to talk to me about Dr.

Speaker 10 Robert Barenbaum.

Speaker 5 He has no idea what's coming down the road.

Speaker 33 One of the stops on that road would be the cemetery where Gail was laid to rest.

Speaker 53 And what they'd find in her grave would surprise everyone.

Speaker 9 In North Dakota, Robert Bierenbaum has created a new life for himself as a highly respected doctor and a pillar of the community.

Speaker 30 Dr. Biernbaum was a guy who did good stuff.
In New York, he'd be called a mensch.

Speaker 8 Here, he'd be called a good guy.

Speaker 30 Somebody that you might think is a little bit odd, but you appreciate because of the good deeds he's doing.

Speaker 34 While Bob was building a new life in the Dakotas, back in New York, there was somebody, somebody important, who couldn't forget the disappearance of Gail 14 years earlier.

Speaker 34 That guy was Andy Rosenzweig, the chief investigator of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

Speaker 28 How long did you guys work at this on the first go-round?

Speaker 32 Probably between nine months and a year.

Speaker 27 As Andy Rosenzweig is getting towards retirement, he's also looking at cases that are still haunting him. And the Barenbaum case was top among those.

Speaker 34 Within the DA's office, they had just created a cold case unit.

Speaker 34 And Rosenzweig decided to give this cold case to Steve Sorako and Dan Bitt, two seasoned investigators who he knew if anybody could find out if Birmbaum did it,

Speaker 9 they would.

Speaker 26 Andy came to Steve and I with a file and said, I want you guys to take a look at something.

Speaker 52 The first thing that stood out to me when I reviewed the file were the flight records.

Speaker 51 Oh my God, he flew for two hours the the day his wife disappeared.

Speaker 26 And the fact that he doesn't tell anybody, there's the explanation why Gail

Speaker 22 is not around anymore.

Speaker 5 That coupled with his visits to his psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Stone.

Speaker 5 His sessions with Dr. Stone were so intense and upsetting the psychiatrist was ethically bound to send his wife, Gail, a letter that warned her that she was in danger of her life.

Speaker 48 The letter says, if I do not heed this advice, I must accept the consequences, including the possibility of personal injury or death at the hands of my husband.

Speaker 10 I called Stone, cold called him, and I said, Dr.

Speaker 5 Stone, my partner and I are reinvestigating the disappearance of Gail Katz Birnbaum. And he said, of course he killed her.

Speaker 51 Dr.

Speaker 5 Birnbaum's a dangerous psychopath. This case has been burning on my brain.
Then I said to Dan the next day, I think we're onto something here, and that's when we started like rolling.

Speaker 12 Andy Rosenzweig calls me, and he says, I want to reopen Gail's case.

Speaker 12 And I had mixed emotions. I did not want my life turned upside down.
I didn't want the wound opened for nothing.

Speaker 33 And for Elaine, it would become even more difficult. Back in 1986, a female torso that washed up off Staten Island had been identified as belonging to Gail.

Speaker 33 Her family laid it to rest in a cemetery in Queens.

Speaker 5 In the summer of 1998, we decided to attempt to get Gail's body exhumed.

Speaker 52 Body had

Speaker 52 been identified through an x-ray.

Speaker 26 Of course, we had the technology now to do DNA.

Speaker 26 And to our surprise, it came back that Gail Katz had been eliminated as a contributor of that sample.

Speaker 12 I am so

Speaker 7 devastated.

Speaker 12 That little, little shred of closure that I had has now been ripped away.

Speaker 12 And I looked up at Dan and at Steve and I said,

Speaker 12 now

Speaker 39 you better get a conviction.

Speaker 33 Bibb and Zorocco decide to re-interview everyone associated with the case in person, including a woman Birenbaum dated in New York City after Gail's disappearance.

Speaker 34 One of the things she related involved a phone call that came in the middle of the night. The police called from the Port Authority bus terminal, thought that they had found Gail.

Speaker 34 Bob's initial response is, can I talk to you in the morning? He hangs up and he says, I doubt it's Gail.

Speaker 34 Go back to sleep.

Speaker 33 Bib and Zorocco also traveled to Las Vegas to interview the women Birmbaum dated there.

Speaker 54 You get a knock on the door.

Speaker 53 Investigators wanting to know about your old boyfriend.

Speaker 13 They were from the New York Investigative Bureau.

Speaker 20 You must have been blown away.

Speaker 4 I was.

Speaker 57 Shocked.

Speaker 13 Last thing I expected.

Speaker 26 In late November of 98, we decided to send investigators to North Dakota Dakota to see if we could get some kind of statement.

Speaker 5 He's feeling as safe as you possibly can.

Speaker 5 All of a sudden, now he sees these guys from Manhattan telling him, we're here because we're investigating, reinvestigating your wife's disappearance.

Speaker 50 Dr.

Speaker 25 Birmbaum reacted with shock and disbelief, saying it was a baseball bet upside his head.

Speaker 33 Then, in September of 1999, 14 years after Gail's disappearance, a grand jury indicts Robert Barenbaum for second-degree murder.

Speaker 56 Authorities accused a plastic surgeon of killing his wife Gail in this apartment, packaging her body, and dumping it somewhere over the Atlantic Manhattan Diaz office.

Speaker 16 To see your boss's face on the 10 o'clock news accused of murdering his first wife was pretty shocking. When that came on,

Speaker 16 I was standing and I actually dropped to my knees. I was just like, I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 10 Never in a million years do you think you'd be using cold calculated murderer in the same description as this guy, Dr.

Speaker 25 Berenbaum.

Speaker 10 There's just no way.

Speaker 30 The Barenbaum story, when you get right down to it, is Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Speaker 10 High, and that's a hell of a story.

Speaker 33 Robert Barenbaum will be returning to New York City, this time to stand trial for Gail's murder. But with no body, no physical evidence, will he be convicted?

Speaker 51 We knew it was going to be the toughest trial that we'd ever had.

Speaker 26 There was no foregone conclusion to this case by any stretch of the imagination.

Speaker 33 And there was a huge, unanswered question that would involve a demonstration in the sky.

Speaker 9 Was it even possible to toss out a body out of an airplane flying more than a hundred miles an hour?

Speaker 9 Give it up for Chicago.

Speaker 5 Sebastian Maniscalco's new stand-up special, It Ain't Right, is now streaming on Hulu.

Speaker 22 30 years ago, Jeff Bezos, complete nerd.

Speaker 60 Bezos now ripped to shreds on his super yacht, and the boxes keep

Speaker 6 coming.

Speaker 5 Watch Sebastian Maniscalco, It Ain't Right, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundled subscribers.

Speaker 50 Terms apply:

Speaker 50 Two rings surrounded by a steel cage.

Speaker 50 Oh my god, are you kidding me? This is gonna be a war.

Speaker 5 Stream Survivor Series War Games, November 29th at 7 Eastern on the ESPN app.

Speaker 65 44-year-old Dr. Robert Bierenbaum's dark secret has made national headlines.

Speaker 56 Biernbaum turned himself in to New York police this morning.

Speaker 11 I get a phone call from my sister.

Speaker 47 She says, turn on the TV.

Speaker 11 They've arrested Robert Biernbaum for the murder of Gail Katz.

Speaker 11 And I start screaming.

Speaker 56 Authorities accused a plastic surgeon of killing her in the apartment, packaging her body, and dumping it somewhere over the Atlantic during a two-hour flight in his private plane.

Speaker 34 It was such an unusual case. What doctor pushes his wife out of a plane from the Upper East Side?

Speaker 12 I'm delighted

Speaker 12 and happy that this day had come.

Speaker 12 I saw my mother, father, and sister cheering up there.

Speaker 17 Bob, why don't you tell the public that you're innocent?

Speaker 17 Why don't you tell me that you didn't kill my sister? 15 years I'm waiting to hear you say that you didn't kill my sister.

Speaker 12 It's the moment that I was waiting for that Bob knows you didn't get away with it. You were going to stay on trial for my sister's death.

Speaker 29 Dr. Birnbaum, we've been trying to talk to you.

Speaker 27 We'd spent a lot of time digging into this story, and

Speaker 27 I wanted to ask Dr. Bierenbaum

Speaker 46 in person, point blank, did you kill your wife?

Speaker 29 I have no comment, John. Thank you.

Speaker 29 And doctor, you have nothing to say about this?

Speaker 29 You know, they've charged that you took her in an airplane

Speaker 29 and and threw her out.

Speaker 6 He's in the middle of a prosecution.

Speaker 9 We'll say what we have to say in court.

Speaker 52 We knew it was going to be the toughest trial that we'd ever had.

Speaker 44 No forensics, no eyewitnesses, entirely circumstantial.

Speaker 27 On September 18th, 2000, there at 100 Center Street in Lower Manhattan, the trial begins.

Speaker 27 And on the bench, you have Judge Leslie Crocker-Snyder. Her reputation was no nonsense, tough judge.

Speaker 55 Well, it was an unusual case with a lot of difficult legal issues.

Speaker 55 And one of them would be, of course, that there was no body, because then you wonder how the prosecution is going to prove that there was, in fact, a murder.

Speaker 5 In the opening statement, I tell the jury right off the bat, I have no forensic evidence.

Speaker 5 But I said, nonetheless, it's going to point in only one direction, the guilt of the defendant in this case, Dr. Birmaugh.

Speaker 34 It was a key thing for the prosecution to let the jury see how Birmbaum had abused his wife during their marriage, including the 1983 choking incident, where it was so serious that she lost consciousness.

Speaker 33 Now, you would think that the prosecution has a huge card up their sleeves, that ominous letter from Dr. Michael Stone to Gail.

Speaker 33 It warned possible death at the hands of her husband, but it turns out there's a big problem with showing that letter to the jury.

Speaker 55 The prosecution wanted to admit as evidence this devastating letter, but the real issue here was a legal one, and that involved the doctor-patient privilege.

Speaker 55 And I didn't allow the admission of the letter.

Speaker 5 Although the jury couldn't see the exact letter, the witnesses, her sister, her friend were able to describe the letter, the existence of the letter.

Speaker 12 Dan had done a terrific job of preparing me to testify. He says, You're going to be able to testify to more than I thought you would be able to.

Speaker 5 It just helped the case to build and build and build. It was another factor that demonstrated the nature of their relationship.

Speaker 33 Another critical part of the prosecution's case, the discovery that Birenbaum had flown his plane on the afternoon of July 7th, the day Gail went missing.

Speaker 33 Remember, he told police he was alone in their apartment during that time.

Speaker 33 Prosecutors, though, are able to show jurors Birenbaum's own personal flight log, where the seven for July had been apparently altered to an eight

Speaker 5 and not very professionally either.

Speaker 29 It looked like a child had done it.

Speaker 34 A big hurdle for the prosecution was to persuade the jury that someone could actually fly a plane and push a body out the door and not crash.

Speaker 27 I was told by the defenders of Robert Bierenbaum that actually doesn't work.

Speaker 27 You're flying this airplane at 100 miles an hour through the sky. You have the 120 victim.
And somehow you're supposed to lean over and throw it out.

Speaker 27 The physics of it just make it impossible.

Speaker 52 We thought, what better way to show somebody it can be done than by doing it ourselves.

Speaker 52 We were going to find a plane at model and take 110 pound bags of dead weight and throw them out of the plane over the ocean.

Speaker 5 The sergeant showed that not only was it possible to to dispose of the 110-pound bag, that it actually was very easy. You could do it either from the pilot's door, which he did,

Speaker 5 or from the passenger door.

Speaker 5 The trailing helicopter actually filmed the bag going into the ocean. I don't think Spielberg could have done it better.

Speaker 55 I thought the demonstration with the airplane was extremely effective.

Speaker 29 Probably Probably one of the critical moments in the case.

Speaker 4 But it turns out the defense has its own ace in the hole. The defense has only one witness.

Speaker 10 If the jury believes him, it's a huge problem for us.

Speaker 4 A bombshell eyewitness who threatens to overturn the entire prosecution's case.

Speaker 33 Over the course of the trial, the prosecution calls 34 witnesses, including those close to Gail, who testify about how she had become fed up with her husband's treatment of her.

Speaker 11 I talked about his controlling behavior, and I talked about the fact that she was looking for another place to live. She was going to leave.

Speaker 11 It was imminent, and I think that that was part of the reason why he did what he did.

Speaker 34 The defense used cross-examination effectively to tarnish the reputation of Gail,

Speaker 34 to portray her as unstable, a risk-taker.

Speaker 5 The defense did go into other reasons why she could have gone missing other than our husband murdering her. They brought up mental health issues, the possible drug use or infidelities.

Speaker 42 Ultimately, I think what they did led nowhere.

Speaker 26 The evidence didn't amount to anything.

Speaker 55 The defense had one witness, Joel Davis, and I think they pinned their hopes for the entire case on him.

Speaker 34 Joel Davis was a retired textile manufacturer who told police early on that he had seen Gail in an H ⁇ H bagel shop near where she lived at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, standing there in shorts with a beach chair with a friend.

Speaker 25 He essentially blows up

Speaker 50 the people's timeline as to when she was dead.

Speaker 10 If a juror believes

Speaker 51 that sometime three to four that afternoon, that she's alive, that's a huge problem.

Speaker 5 What hurt Joel Davis the most was his description of the woman that he saw in the bagel store, that she was large, statuesque,

Speaker 25 full-figured.

Speaker 5 So you lead him even further down the road. You're saying like she had a big chest, yes, if she was voluptuous, she was.

Speaker 12 Steve blows up, like on poster board size, this photo of my sister. And I get to say,

Speaker 12 that's Gail. She was an A-cup.

Speaker 12 She barely filled that.

Speaker 55 I think everyone in the courtroom, and there was a lot of buzzing, that the defense case had gone down the tubes.

Speaker 26 The message I wanted to deliver to them in summation was that

Speaker 42 he's the right person. He's the guilty party.

Speaker 52 One of my favorite movies is North by Northwest.

Speaker 4 Alfred Hitchcock, tale of a businessman caught in an international intrigue.

Speaker 25 The movie, there is a discussion of how to get rid of a body, and James Mason says, This matter is best disposed of from a great height

Speaker 25 over water.

Speaker 25 That

Speaker 26 made it into my summation because I thought it was entirely appropriate.

Speaker 34 In their summation, the defense tried to take the prosecution's case apart piece by piece. No physical evidence at all.

Speaker 34 The body out of a plane, nice, but just a theory. Gail's own personal behavior could have been a problem that led to her own demise.

Speaker 4 15 years after Gail's disappearance, the case finally goes to a jury. After just five and a half hours of deliberation, there's a verdict.

Speaker 55 Once everyone heard there was a verdict, it was very, very tense.

Speaker 25 My heart is pounding.

Speaker 26 I can feel it in my chest.

Speaker 52 And I can feel the tension in the courtroom.

Speaker 55 The four-person stands up and says, yes, we, the jury, have reached a verdict. And then the four-person said, guilty.

Speaker 55 And there was

Speaker 55 a buzz in the courtroom.

Speaker 5 It was just a sense of complete satisfaction for not only justice, but for the sister and the family.

Speaker 47 Guilty verdict against plastic surgeon Robert Vierenbaum.

Speaker 10 When you heard that conviction, your reaction?

Speaker 12 I'll never forget squeezing my brother's hand and slamming it down on his thigh and saying,

Speaker 10 guilty,

Speaker 12 with a question mark at the end. Because did I just hear that? And then, of course, the reaction of my brother as he grabbed me and held me and we trembled and we cried, then I knew it was true.

Speaker 12 I was in shock.

Speaker 66 To finally see the handcuffs go on his wrists, to finally see him walk into a jail cell.

Speaker 66 The feelings are indescribable.

Speaker 55 A typical sentence for me would have been 25 to life because of the enormity of the crime.

Speaker 55 There are very few cases in which someone has been a law-abiding citizen and has done good things.

Speaker 55 So I gave him 20 years to life.

Speaker 4 Since that sentence in 2000, few people thought they would ever hear about Birenbaum again.

Speaker 49 But just recently, shockingly, Birenbaum would re-emerge, and what he would say would stun everyone involved in the case.

Speaker 52 Now it was like, holy,

Speaker 38 are you kidding me?

Speaker 22 The earth shifted.

Speaker 12 I was in shock.

Speaker 34 Since 2000, Bob Bierenbaum has been behind bars, serving that sentence of 20 to life.

Speaker 12 When Bob was incarcerated for many, many, many years,

Speaker 12 I stopped thinking about him.

Speaker 34 Bierenbaum offered no apologies to the Katz family when he was sentenced, insisting he was innocent.

Speaker 34 And he spent the first 10 years behind bars trying to prove his innocence and get his verdict overturned. He appealed in state courts, federal courts, got nowhere.

Speaker 4 Back in North Dakota, there are still those who believe he might not have been guilty of the crime.

Speaker 10 It didn't add up.

Speaker 8 You didn't think it would be possible for

Speaker 24 somebody that nice to do something

Speaker 10 that ugly.

Speaker 34 Just last December, after 20 years behind bars, Bob Birenbaum was up for parole.

Speaker 34 Parole board denied him freedom.

Speaker 33 There was no public reason given for the decision, but 2020 obtained this transcript of that parole hearing, and in it is a shocking revelation.

Speaker 33 For the first time in 35 years, Birenbaum finally admits. to killing Gail.

Speaker 46 To the parole board, Birenbaum said, I wanted her to stop stop yelling at me, and I attacked her.

Speaker 4 When he's asked, how did you attack her? He responds, I strangled her.

Speaker 33 Birenbaum goes on to say, I went flying.

Speaker 37 I opened the door and then took her body out of the airplane over the ocean.

Speaker 55 I was stunned when I heard he admitted it.

Speaker 4 I was like, are you kidding me?

Speaker 5 He admitted doing it just the way we told the jury that he did to it.

Speaker 22 The earth shifted.

Speaker 12 I was in shock. He admitted killing Gail.

Speaker 12 And I cried.

Speaker 33 He said he killed Gail

Speaker 33 because he was immature and didn't understand how to deal with his anger. The parole board noted that at the time he was a 29-year-old medical doctor.

Speaker 34 And you were immature, really?

Speaker 34 Said he was a danger to the community and needs to stay in.

Speaker 12 When I read those minutes, oh my god, this is exactly the same man that I knew 35 years ago. He is incapable of a shred

Speaker 12 of remorse.

Speaker 55 It's a very sad story because it's an unnecessary one. And this is what happens so often in domestic violence cases.
The victim could have been saved.

Speaker 12 This is the home of the Pace Women's Justice Center.

Speaker 12 20 years ago, ago, we named it Gail's House to raise awareness of the pervasiveness of domestic violence.

Speaker 12 The first time Bob strangled my sister to unconsciousness, we just

Speaker 19 so young, such potential.

Speaker 12 I would like to believe

Speaker 22 that

Speaker 12 my sister's energy has been out there for 35 years cheering me on.

Speaker 12 I feel my sister's spirit is here. It is warning others, inspiring others.

Speaker 19 Still to this day, I think about her constantly.

Speaker 11 So young, such potential.

Speaker 12 I would like to believe

Speaker 22 that

Speaker 12 my sister's energy has been out there for 35 35 years cheering me on, motivating me, encouraging me, holding me up.

Speaker 12 The world's a lesser place

Speaker 6 for the loss of my sister.

Speaker 1 You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault, Friday nights at 9 on ABC. You can also find all new broadcast episodes of 2020.

Speaker 10 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 2 It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at Whitehouse Farm. But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong.

Speaker 32 I know there's going to be a twist, won't they? A massive twist. At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover-up in this case.

Speaker 2 I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker.
Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed.