The Girlfriends S2/E1: A Double Mitzvah

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Novel

Hey listener, I just wanted to give you a heads up on what to expect from this series.

As always, The Girl Friends is about solidarity, sisterhood, and uplifting women's voices.

But this is also a story about violence of the most terrible kind against women.

There's going to be mentions of murder, and we'll also reference drug and alcohol use.

Above all, we're going to talk a lot about missing and unidentified people.

But on the way, as we tread along this dark, uncertain path, we're going to try to find moments of light.

Because that's what life is: it's the good and the bad, the joy and the misery, all mixed up into one.

If you feel impacted by any of the themes while listening, I encourage you to check out our charity partner, DNA Doe Project.

They work with law enforcement to identify Jane and John Does using genetic genealogy in the hopes of reuniting the bodies of unidentified people with their families.

You can find them at dnadoeproject.org.

Oh, and just one more thing.

I still swear like a sailor, so if you're up for listening, you're going to hear a fair amount of, let's say, colorful language.

But come on, you know me by now.

Yes, this is it.

I think it might be that one over there.

Oh, you got the wine?

Yeah.

What's that old saying?

Men come and go, but girlfriends are for life.

Well, hi, girlfriend.

We are back.

Happy Hanukkah!

Happy Hanukkah!

Hi, hi!

It's a dark cold evening on the sixth night of Hanukkah in 2023.

Myself, my good friend Mindy, and my producer Anna are in New York visiting Elaine Katz.

This is the first time we've all been in the same room together, and we've got a lot of catching up to do.

So we'd best start pouring the wine.

Did you want me to open up something you bought, the red on the table or the pink in the refrigerator or both?

The last time I saw any of these ladies, we were recording season one of the girlfriends.

We told the story of how we came together and helped law enforcement solve a 15-year-old cold case.

And as a result, we put my fucking asshole ex-boyfriend Bob behind bars.

for the murder of his wife Gail Katz.

Now you can listen to that first if you haven't already.

After we wrapped the series, I felt like I finally put that strange part of my life in the past.

But that was wishful thinking, because it turns out that lurking within one cold case was another.

The case of our lost sister.

In 1989, a few years after Gail Katz disappeared, a woman's torso washed up on Staten Island.

She was then misidentified as Gail Katz, and after spending nearly a decade buried in the Katz family plot, she was exhumed for DNA testing in the lead-up to Bob's trial.

When the results came back and confirmed that she was not Gail, she just sort of disappeared.

It's been 35 years since she washed up on that shore, and we still don't know her name, which just doesn't sit right with us.

There is this Jewish belief that after death, your name is still connected to your soul.

And so saying somebody's name after they die is part of how we remember them.

We need to give our girl her name back so that we can honor her properly.

We owe that to her.

We owe it to every murdered and missing woman whose stories go untold because those stories matter and because no girlfriend gets left behind.

We've decided to come together again to try and find out who she is once and for all.

We've got Gail's sister Elaine Katz, who is a powerhouse of a lawyer.

Most importantly for this new investigation, Elaine spent nine years believing that our Jane Doe was her sister and has been wondering who she really is ever since.

When they told me that they had made the wrongful identification, that was a very low point.

Then there's Mindy Shapiro, my dear friend, who once, not so dearly, set me up with that aforementioned murderer.

I mean me at least I said he's perfect on paper.

See what you think.

I thought I was in the wrong.

Gail said this exact same thing about him.

Perfect on paper.

Exact same words.

Mindy's also a fabulous doctor and the girlfriends answered to Sherlock Holmes with the nose for digging into the unknown.

And finally, our most recent recruit, producer Anna, aka Anna the Vegan, aka the British one.

Anna wrote and produced the first series of the podcast and has been officially adopted as a member of our club and adopted in general.

I have no children.

You can be my daughter.

You can be my daughter.

Don't adopt you.

So where do we start?

This is a 35-year-old cold case, a case that couldn't be solved by the police, the medical examiners, or anyone else.

As I'm sure you've picked up, we're not professional detectives.

We're just three nosy Jewish ladies and one tofu eating producer, but we really, really care.

I'm determined that by the end of the series, not only will we know this missing girlfriend's name, but we will know her story.

So back to that question, where do we start?

Well, how about at the beginning?

I'm Carol Fisher, and from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts, this is the girlfriend's Our Lost Sister, episode one, the Double Mitzvah.

Okay, where are we?

Staten Island Ferry.

What are we doing?

I think we're going.

yeah.

This is free?

It's free.

Truth be told, I don't know how you're meant to open up a cold case, but in all my years working in hospice care, one thing I've learned is that there's a reason we often lean on ceremony and ritual when remembering the dead.

It brings order to what we can't understand.

Which is why myself, Mindy, and producer Anna are heading to Staten Island.

We're on a pilgrimage back to the place where our lost sister first appeared before she got irreversibly tangled up with the story of Gail Katz and our lives.

We get ushered onto the ferry and grab a seat downstairs, leaving the other tourists shivering on deck.

It really is.

We got really lucky it's not raining.

A little cold is an understatement.

But I will give New York its dues.

Despite the cold, it's a beautiful day.

There isn't a cloud in the sky and the water is shimmering, reflecting the Manhattan skyline back onto its own high-rise windows.

Just for a moment, we feel like we're on vacation with Mindy Shapiro in the role of tour guide.

Statue of Liberty.

Hey, hey!

New York, New York.

As we move past Brooklyn and then through the industrial parts of the bay, I wonder if we're retracing a journey our Jane Doe could have taken through the water before her torso washed up on the shore on May 21st, 1989.

It gives me a kind of spooky feeling to imagine we're following in her footsteps, so to speak.

Everybody seems to be going up.

Our boat docks at St.

George's Terminal on Staten Island.

We follow the crowd into a building which has the vibe of a small town strip mall.

And after an embarrassing amount of time spent trying to find the exit, we eventually make it out.

Okay, street.

We're on a street.

After a short drive, we arrive at Front Street, the location where the torso first washed ashore.

When we get out of the car, we emerge into a new industrial landscape.

There's apartment buildings, offices, and construction sites.

And in front of us,

here are the piers.

Most of the piers are fenced off due to building works, and we can't spot an entry point.

So I get creative.

As we're looking for a spot to enter, totally legally, we notice that none of these piers are matching the location we had in our minds.

We always imagined that she was found on the water's edge, but there's no beaches here.

It's just water right up to the ocean wall.

So we walk a little further out,

and that's when we see it.

Yeah, like this kind of beach area

looks more like what I imagined.

And I swear I heard that it washed

ashore.

Ashore, I remember those words.

Yeah.

This feels way more like it.

Yeah, this seems right.

We arrive at some railings fencing off a shingle beach with some old wooden posts jutting out of the water.

It's a remarkably peaceful scene.

with the waves crashing gently onto the pebbles.

And probably for the first time in our goddamn lives, all three of us shut up.

The whole thing is so horrific, but standing here, this is actually quite a beautiful scene beneath the bridge and the New York skyline and the sound of the water.

So

as violent and horrific as her death would have been, you know,

maybe there is some karma, that there's some calmness and beauty to where

her

her heart was found.

You know, it also makes me really think about Gail

and how she was just discarded into the water.

Bob Bierenbaum, my ex-boyfriend and Gail Katz's husband, threw Gail's body out of a plane into the Atlantic Ocean.

It's unlikely that Gail's body will ever be found, which only makes our investigation into our Jane Doe's identity all the more meaningful.

To think of someone's life taken not only way too short, but then disposed of the way

it was and then the torso washes up here.

I just find it incredibly sad.

It's almost like it's become this

moral obligation to find her.

Now that we're here, in this spot where it all began, we feel feel like it's important to mark the occasion with a ceremony of sorts.

It can often be hard to know what to say when you're dealing with death, especially deaths as tragic and brutal as these two.

So I thought I'd read something.

There's this beautiful poem that people often read at funerals called Remember Me.

And if you listen to the words, I think you'll agree that it's fitting.

To the living, I am gone.

To the sorrowful I will never return.

To the angry I was cheated.

But to the happy I am at peace.

And to the faithful I have never left.

I cannot speak but I can listen.

I cannot be seen but I can be heard.

So as you stand upon a shore gazing at a beautiful sea, As you look upon a flower and admire its simplicity, remember me.

Remember me in your heart, your thoughts and your memories of the times we loved, the times we cried, the times we fought, the times we laughed.

For if you always think of me, I will never have gone.

That's really pretty.

I think this was

perfect.

And Elaine would be pleased.

Yeah.

Well, we didn't do this for Gail.

Well, because we didn't have closure for Gail.

You know, and so this is

just a double mitzvah.

A mitzvah is a good deed, and we hope that this whole series will be a mitzvah.

A chance for us to not only identify this missing woman, but to honor her, to honor Gail Katz, and in doing so, to honor all women who are missing or unidentified.

I'm sure this won't be a seamless journey.

We're taking a leap into the unknown here and anything could happen.

But I can promise you one thing, it's going to be fueled by a whole lot of love and a bunch of food and good wine.

Which brings me to the next step in our investigation.

We're going back to Elaine's home for food and of course some wine, but also because she's managed to dig out a stash of files that may hold the key to identifying our lost sister.

Let's be real.

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Can you show you guys how I'm hungry at all?

No, no, I'm just gonna drink.

I have to food myself into a stupid

when you arrive in any Jewish mother's house.

She will always have more than you need on the table.

We can't help it.

And Elaine Katz is no exception.

So yes, I cry.

I'll take your many bottles of wine, your cheese, your chocolates, and crackers, even if I'm not actually hungry, because there's no better way of showing your love to a Jewish mother than consuming whatever she puts in front of you.

And there, nestled in among the appetizers is just what we came for.

The Holy Grail.

A two-inch thick folder of documents.

By the way, I made a second set of all of my documents from the medical examiner, which are quite extensive, I believe.

It's all of Elaine's files from her sister Gail's case.

You know, there's a lot there.

Jesus.

Look at all these notes.

Yeah, the postalios.

As we start flicking through them, it takes me and Mindy back to the 90s when a group of us girlfriends were investigating Gail's disappearance and drinking wine.

And now, 30 years on, we're round another table with more wine.

But our club has grown.

Our sisterhood is stronger.

This time we're joined by Anna, Elaine, and we're all here to do something momentous in honor of the women who can't be here.

I need to always feel like I'm doing

something

in memory of and in honor of my sister in order to

live with the sadness of all of it.

Does it come in waves or is it constant?

I hate to tell you it's constant.

It's always.

It's this constant pain that's driving Elaine to help us identify this Jane Doe.

After all, her torso spent nearly a decade in her sister Gail's grave, and Elaine doesn't even know her name.

But that's not the only reason she wants to help.

Elaine knows what it's like to have a loved one disappear and to be left so long without any answers.

That was something that was really important to me.

Reuniting the family with the torso, giving another family closure.

As another glass of wine is poured, we turn our attention back to the files.

We want to find out how our Jane Doe was ever misidentified as Gail in the first place.

In the box of files, we find a document that talks about a number of complaints from the Katz family to the Manhattan Medical Examiner.

It seems like in 1990, the year after the torso was identified as Gail Katz, that communication had really broken down between the Katz family and the office of the chief medical examiner.

The family, who were in deep grief at the time, wanted absolute proof that the torso belonged to Gail, which meant DNA testing.

And they weren't the only ones with doubts.

The police had them too.

So with growing pressure from all sides in 1990, the medical examiners decided to proceed with DNA testing.

They first asked the Katzes if they could exhume the body.

But then they go back on themselves and they say that actually they may not need to exhume the torso because they kept some bone fragments.

Without my knowing, they kept a piece of her for further testing.

Why?

Without our permission.

I had a little enough piece to start with, and you took a piece.

You kept a piece.

The DNA testing was inconclusive.

The science just wasn't there yet.

We find a handwritten note in the box of files that says, if DNA cannot be done, we'll stand by ID.

And so, that's how our lost sister continued to be known as Gail Katz for eight more years.

So, what evidence did they have to make such a big call?

Well, it all seems pretty thin to me.

Both women were light-skinned and slim, and each of them was around 30 years old.

They also both had similar back injuries, which the medical examiner highlighted by comparing an x-ray of the torso with an old x-ray of Gale's.

According to the medical examiner, this was the most persuasive piece of evidence they had to suggest that this torso belonged to Gale Katz.

But even the radiologists at the time said that definite idea is not possible, but that it was probably the same patient.

Probably?

Really?

But there's one major fact that they seem to have totally overlooked in all this.

In 1989, Gail had been presumed dead for four years.

Yet according to the medical examiner's own autopsy report, the torso had only been in the water for about two to three months.

We could spend a lifetime trying to understand why these decisions were made.

We already spent the whole first series scratching our heads about it.

We'll have to add this to our long list of questions for the medical examiner.

But it's getting late and that's a job for another day.

In the taxi home, Mindy and Anna are chatting away, excited to see what more they can learn from the files.

But I just keep hearing that phrase go around in my head.

Probably the same patient?

That probably.

It didn't just mess up Gail's case.

It also stopped any further investigation into our lost sister's true identity.

for years.

There could be a family out there looking for her and a killer getting away with it.

These mistakes have real-life consequences.

And if you can't rely on the authorities to get it right, then you should probably

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Visit washable sofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life.

That's washable sofas.com.

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How are you supposed to stay on top of it all?

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Where do you see the business actually heading?

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It's the morning after Elaine gave us the files.

Anna and Mindy are riding on the New York subway, each of them nursing a slight red wine hangover.

So what better time to read an autopsy report?

These documents obviously don't make for easy reading, not least because Dr.

Mindy's getting a taste of her own medicine.

This is not fair making me read another doctor's writing.

No, no.

Eventually, Mindy manages to decipher the reports.

They're from June 1989, one month after the torso washed up on Staten Island and was first investigated by the medical examiners.

On reading that autopsy report, it was

pretty

putrid, was it?

Yeah.

We're not going to share the more sensitive details about her remains because our girl has already had so much taken from her.

But there's one important detail we can share with you.

Just a heads up, the next section contains some details that might be hard to listen to.

It was clear that both her limbs and head had been deliberately cut off, meaning the end of her life was a violent, horrible act.

She didn't just fall off some boat into shark-infested waters.

And there's more.

So we're looking at the toxicology report from the New York City Medical Examiners data.

It's important to note that her torso has been in the water for a while.

So not everything will show up, but they do detect something.

Something that showed that our Jane Doe had recently taken cocaine.

But it's New York, in the 80s, so a bit of cocaine in the system, frankly, doesn't really narrow down our list of potential victims.

Our lost sister could still be anyone.

But if she was killed by someone or she's been registered as a missing person, then we might be able to find her case online.

And if there's one thing Mindy's good at, it's going deep into dark corners of the web.

So I go to a site unsolved murders.

Oh, God.

Yeah, but you didn't give me anything to go on, baby.

I have nothing.

I've got nothing.

I've got nothing, okay?

I got Bupkus.

I got Bupkis here.

So, unfortunately, there's no huge flashing website that says Staten Island Torso Cold Case Solved.

But Mindy's got a hunch that a vital clue about our lost sister's identity could be sitting somewhere in the archives of the New York City medical examiners.

And I think it's safe to say she's been pestering them.

I have written about 18 emails to the Office of the Medical Examiner, and they basically say, unless you're the family, you can't really get this information.

So I said, well, she's unidentified.

Could there be any family?

And how do you know that I'm not?

I don't know that I'm not the family.

What is family, really?

Because calling this Jane Doe our lost sister is no accident.

We've been thinking about her for a long time.

And at one point, Elaine Katz truly believed she was her sister.

She certainly feels like family to us.

I told them about Gail and how he got there.

And they said, well, do you want to speak with media?

And I said, no, I don't want to speak with media.

And you go, well, what are you going to do with this information?

Well, hopefully solve a 35-year-old cold case and talk about it on this podcast.

And they go, well, you need to speak with legal.

Okay.

So I'm waiting to hear from legal.

If I don't hear from legal because I'm pushy and I'm a New Yorker and I know where they live, I'll go and say, I want to speak to legal.

Guess what?

We never heard from legal.

So we turn up the heat and file a freedom of information access request.

But we're still waiting to hear back.

It looks like if we're going to get anywhere, we're going to need to start knocking on some doors, whether people want us to or not.

Coming up next on the girlfriends, our lost sister, Dr.

Detective Mindy Shapiro, takes to the streets.

Hi, it's Dr.

Shapiro and I'd like to speak with the deputy medical examiner.

I'd like all information that I can find about that torso.

Could you say perpetrator for me?

Perpetrator.

We're trying to identify this torso, which is maybe a fool's errand.

I don't think it is.

The Girlfriend's Our Lost Sister is produced by Novel for iHeart podcasts.

For more from Novel, visit novel.audio.

The show is hosted by me, Carol Fisher, and our chief investigator is Mindy Shapiro.

To find me on social media, search Carol A.

Fisher.

That's Carol with an E.

The season is written and produced by Anna Sinfield and Lee Meyer.

Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr.

The editor is Joe Wheeler.

Max O'Brien is our executive producer.

Our fact checker is Dania Suleiman.

Production management from Cherie Houston and Charlotte Wolfe.

Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Nicholas Alexander.

Additional engineering by Daniel Kempson.

Music supervision by Anna Sinfield and Nicholas Alexander.

Original music composed and performed by Louisa Gerstein and produced by Louisa Gerstein and Nicholas Alexander.

The series artwork was designed by Christina Limpool.

Story development by Anna Sinfield.

Willard Foxton is Creative Director of Development.

Our executive producers at iHeart Podcast are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etor.

Special thanks to Allie Cantor, Carrie Lieberman, and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcast, as well as Carly Frankel and the whole team at WME.

And a special shout out to Vince Hayward, who's my life partner in true crime, for taking on the role of girlfriend's confidant and lead tech support.

Got you,

I've got you.

Got you.

I've got you

Novel

This is an iHeart podcast.