The Girlfriends S1/E7: Cowabunga

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 5 On Fox One, you can stream your favorite news, sports, and entertainment live, all in one app.

Speaker 6 It's fing roll and unfiltered.

Speaker 3 This is the best thing ever. Watch breaking news as it breaks.

Speaker 2 Breaking tonight, we're following two major stories.

Speaker 3 And catch history in the making.

Speaker 4 Gibby, meet Freddy.

Speaker 2 Debates,

Speaker 10 drama, touchdowns.

Speaker 3 It's all here, baby. Fox One.
We live for live.

Speaker 8 Streaming now.

Speaker 11 This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal.

Speaker 12 Are there two sides to every story?

Speaker 11 Academy Award nominee Robin Wright stars in The Girlfriend on Prime, a psychological thriller that will make you question everything. Laura has the perfect life and a son she'd die for.

Speaker 11 But when he brings home his new girlfriend Cherry, played by Olivia Cook, something feels off.

Speaker 11 Also starring Lori Davidson, The Girlfriend is a twisted game of cat and mouse where nothing is what it seems. Don't miss the girlfriend, streaming now exclusively on Prime.

Speaker 11 Sometimes the truth is just a matter of perspective.

Speaker 15 Not all group chats are the same, just like not all Adams are the same.

Speaker 15 Adam Brody, for example, uses WhatsApp to plan his grandma's birthday using video calls, polls to choose a gift, and HD photos to document a family moment to remember, all in one group chat.

Speaker 2 Makes grandma's birthday her best one yet.

Speaker 15 But Adam Scott group messages with an app that isn't WhatsApp. And so the photo invite came through so blurry, he never even knew about the party.

Speaker 16 And grandma still won't talk to me.

Speaker 17 It's time for WhatsApp.

Speaker 15 Message privately with everyone.

Speaker 18 Who knew you could get all your favorite summer fruits and veggies in as fast as an hour with Walmart Express delivery?

Speaker 18 Crisp peppers, juicy peaches, crunchy cucumbers, and more at the same low prices you'd find in store. And freshness is guaranteed.

Speaker 18 If you don't love our produce, contact us for a full refund. You're definitely definitely going to need a bigger salad bowl.

Speaker 19 Order now in the app.

Speaker 18 The Walmart you thought you knew is now new.

Speaker 18 Subject to availability, fees, and restrictions apply.

Speaker 10 Novel.

Speaker 2 Hey, listener. In this episode, we talk about domestic violence and death.

Speaker 2 There's also a bunch of empowered women, New York's feistiest young young reporter, and an introduction to a new woman with a great nickname.

Speaker 2 And of course, more swearing because, you know, I am who I am.

Speaker 2 If you do listen and are impacted by any of our themes, you can reach out to No More, a domestic violence charity we've partnered with.

Speaker 2 They have lots of great resources to help you or your loved ones. You can find them at nomore.org.
That's n-o-m-o-r-e dot org.

Speaker 2 In November of 1998, shortly after the torso was removed from Gail's grave, Bob and Janet welcomed their first child into the world, a daughter.

Speaker 2 The club and I learned that Janet was pregnant when the DA came to Las Vegas. We talked about the baby every now and then, wondering when the due date was and what Bob would be like as a father.

Speaker 2 We didn't know anything, but my god, we were curious.

Speaker 2 So can you imagine how I felt when my producer Anna tracked down their nannies?

Speaker 10 Hi, sorry for hanging up on you. I just wanted to make sure it was free.
Yeah, good thinking.

Speaker 2 The Beer and Baums had two nannies, one for the day and one for the night.

Speaker 10 Hi. Hi, how are you doing?

Speaker 23 Good, how are you? I'm good.

Speaker 2 I'm good. Which means almost 24-hour visibility into Bob's North Dakota home.

Speaker 2 Now, the phone recordings aren't so good, but this is definitely one of the most exciting moments of our investigation because knowing all I know now, it feels like everyone had an external view of Bob and Minot.

Speaker 2 They'd interact with him as a patient or a neighbor. It was rarely as intimate as someone sharing your home.

Speaker 2 I wanted to know how Bob was behaving behind closed doors as the DA prosecutors were closing in on him i also just wanted to know if janet was okay and their daughter i was more involved with janet but bob would come in on thursday or fridays this is barb cooper the day nanny you know i didn't feel real comfortable around either one of them necessarily but i stuck it out i loved the child and loved what i was doing he was weird he was bizarre.

Speaker 26 I've never met anyone like him before.

Speaker 2 That's Cheryl Sherrick, the night nanny. She used to arrive in the evening and sleep in the basement with the baby, who at that point required feeding every two to three hours.

Speaker 26 The thing is, they never had a crib or anything. She slept in a car seat, which is not very comfortable for a baby.

Speaker 2 For Cheryl, the vibe of the house was just, well, off, especially when Bob was there.

Speaker 26 The house was always closed up. I could never open the blinds or anything, and he wouldn't let us answer the door.
I mean, he was always kind of creepy.

Speaker 26 They loved him as a doctor here, but he would never treat anyone that smoked. He asked me if I smoked.
If I did, they wouldn't hire me.

Speaker 2 Overall, the nannies seemed to remember a home a little like this.

Speaker 2 The Berenbombs lived in a town called Grand Forks. Bob would fly to work at the hospital in Minot and come back home for the weekends.
So it was mostly just Janet, the nannies, and their baby.

Speaker 2 The nannies both described Janet as a loving mom who could at times also be a little emotionless, but they never saw anything bad happen between her and Bob.

Speaker 2 When Janet got pregnant, she stopped working as a gynecologist and started studying law. She was also writing a bit on the side, something she'd done a little before.

Speaker 2 even once consulting on scripts for ER. And Bob, he was being Bob.
He loved his badly badly behaved golden retriever, worked hard, and flew a lot.

Speaker 2 One thing both nannies agree on was he was really sweet with his daughter. He seemed to love being a dad.

Speaker 2 But Cheryl did have one really weird experience.

Speaker 26 They had me in the basement and they slept upstairs. There was one night he came into the nursery and I woke up and he was watching me sleep.
And I don't know what he was planning to do.

Speaker 26 But he took off.

Speaker 2 I imagine at this point, Bob felt invincible. But the fact is, he was being investigated that whole time.

Speaker 2 And on the morning of November 30th, 1998, just three weeks after his daughter was born, he was about to get a rude awakening.

Speaker 2 I'm Carol Fisher, and from the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio, you're listening to the Girlfriends, episode 7, Kawabunga.

Speaker 2 I've got

Speaker 2 you,

Speaker 2 got you, I've got you, got you.

Speaker 2 Got you, I've got you, got you, I've got you.

Speaker 16 We had pretty much finished our investigation and we decided that we had already spent literally tens of thousands of dollars going across the country doing this investigation.

Speaker 16 It would be worth a couple of plane tickets to North Dakota to try and see what he had to say.

Speaker 2 On November 30th, DA Prosecutor Dan Bibbs sent the case investigators Andy Rosenzweig and Tommy Pond to Minot with a mission.

Speaker 2 Ask Bob if he was still represented by counsel, and if not, get him to talk on the spot, something they couldn't do if he was lawyered up.

Speaker 2 That morning, they lurked around Bob's clinic and waited for him to arrive.

Speaker 2 When they spotted him approaching the building, they sped towards him on foot and confronted him with their ready, prepared script.

Speaker 2 They had a feeling that Bob would see them coming, that someone in Las Vegas would have told him that they'd been sniffing around.

Speaker 2 But instead, Bob just stood there and stared back at them like a deer in headlights.

Speaker 16 He basically says, I'm still represented by an attorney. And

Speaker 16 that was that.

Speaker 2 For Steve Sorako, the other prosecutor, it wasn't just about getting him to talk, though. Disguised as intel gathering, the DA was sending a message.

Speaker 27 What he knows is this is not over.

Speaker 27 This sense of security I have up here, up north. The veil has been pierced and they're still looking at me.
And he knows he's guilty.

Speaker 16 And within a half hour is a phone call from his lawyer.

Speaker 16 And he said, Dan, this is Scott Greenfield.

Speaker 28 What's going on?

Speaker 16 Well, we're investigating the disappearance of Gail Birnbaum, and we wanted to know if you wanted to talk to us.

Speaker 28 You know, this is outrageous to violate your right to counsel.

Speaker 16 Scott, nobody violated anybody's right to counsel. As soon as my guys opened their mouth, he said, I'm represented by an attorney, and they walked away.
Nobody violated anything.

Speaker 16 And he said, Are you going to the grand jury? I can't tell you whether we are or we aren't. So the grand jury is a secret proceeding.
Can't do it.

Speaker 16 In New York State, a defendant, if he is aware that there is a proceeding in the grand jury going on that may involve him, has an absolute right to testify before that grand jury.

Speaker 16 Within a day or two, I had a letter

Speaker 16 serving statutory notice that Dr. Birnbaum wanted to testify before the grand jury.

Speaker 2 Dan knew that Bob was never actually going to testify in front of the grand jury.

Speaker 2 That's pretty rare, but it's a clever trick attorneys use to make sure they're notified if a grand jury is ever assembled. Then they can keep tabs on the result and get their ducks in a row.

Speaker 2 So that's what Greenfield was doing. He was essentially setting up a notification service.
And nearly a year later, on September 22nd, 1999, Greenfield got what he was asking for.

Speaker 16 I wrote him a letter saying, Here you go. Here's your opportunity.

Speaker 16 And he called me up. He said, what the hell were you doing? I said, Scott,

Speaker 16 you serve notice. I just told you that the grand jury is going on.

Speaker 10 What do you want to do?

Speaker 2 At some point in late September or early October, Bob was in New Jersey attending the wedding of his close friend and flying buddy Ernie Sussman.

Speaker 2 The night before the big day, Ernie invited some of his closest friends, including Bob and Janet, for dinner at an Italian restaurant.

Speaker 6 I believe it was Friday evening, and I think there were four couples.

Speaker 6 So some of my closest friends, we went out to a nice restaurant that evening and I don't know how the subject came up, but we were talking about this doctor in Buffalo.

Speaker 6 His name was Anthony Pignitero, and he ended up doing plastic surgery.

Speaker 6 and doing, I guess, liposuctions and even breast augments, even though he wasn't a board-certified plastic surgeon, and he ended up killing a woman.

Speaker 6 But, like, two-thirds of the way into the story, Bobby turned white.

Speaker 6 And I never saw him break a sweat, no matter what he did, whether he was in surgery or flying in that bad weather. But he just turned white like a ghost.

Speaker 6 And next thing you know, he told Janet, you know, I'm tired. I think we need to get going.

Speaker 6 After he left, we may comment, boy, like, he really blew out of here in a hurry. It was just very unusual.

Speaker 2 I can't say if Bob knew it or not, but while he was running away from dinner parties in New Jersey, women around the country were being called to testify against him.

Speaker 2 In New York, a grand jury is a process where 16 to 23 jurors are randomly selected to come to court a few days a month and hear prosecutors lay out their case, witnesses and all.

Speaker 2 There's no judge, no defendant, and it's all in secret. At the end of the process, which can last weeks or months, the jurors decide if charges should be brought against the defendant.

Speaker 2 A proper trial would then take place where they'll be found guilty or not guilty.

Speaker 2 Now, I'm explaining this because I didn't understand what it meant when Dan and Steve first reached out to me and asked me to testify. The only thing I was sure of is I didn't want to do it.

Speaker 2 So So I refused to go. Instead, I spent the next few months wondering what was going on.
Sometimes curiosity would get the better of me.

Speaker 2 So me, mom, and Mindy, we would call up Bob's clinic in North Dakota to see if he was still accepting appointments.

Speaker 2 When the receptionists started to offer us dates or suggest a consultation, we would hang up. No arrest yet, I guess.

Speaker 20 Until.

Speaker 31 Tonight, a doctor under arrest. He's charged with killing his wife.
Cops say he dumped her body in the ocean, throwing it from a plane.

Speaker 2 On December 8th, 1999, the grand jury cast their vote.

Speaker 32 14 years ago, a surgeon in New York City reported his wife missing. Now he's being charged with her murder.
The investigation went from Long Island to Las Vegas and wound up in North Dakota.

Speaker 2 In the days following the indictment, the news was everywhere, and they did not spare any details.

Speaker 33 They say they have new witnesses, new evidence, enough to build a murder case even without the body.

Speaker 34 I remember the day I was getting ready for work.

Speaker 2 This is Denise Kassenbaum, Gail's best friend.

Speaker 34 I was getting dressed in my apartment and my sister called

Speaker 34 and she said, turn on the news.

Speaker 9 This almost reads like a screenplay, but what's scary is that this is a true crime.

Speaker 2 Turns out, back in the 90s, news reporters were not too concerned with holding back the details before they had been proven in court.

Speaker 9 A loving wife who complained constantly about her husband's violent temper, but instead of getting away from him, she tried to help and sadly paid for it with her life.

Speaker 34 I was just like, oh my God.

Speaker 35 Finally.

Speaker 35 You know, I was screaming.

Speaker 2 I was just,

Speaker 2 yes.

Speaker 9 She was never seen again, and her family and cops didn't buy the doc's story.

Speaker 36 We've always been certain that it was him. He is the last person that saw her.
His story regarding her whereabouts and what happened never made any sense.

Speaker 37 Seeing Bob in court, being accused of murdering my sister, was such a relief.

Speaker 36 I'm very gratified that after 14 years, the person who murdered my sister is finally standing in a courtroom being charged with that murder.

Speaker 36 I'm only very, very sorry that my parents are not alive to be here to see this and I hold him responsible for their deaths as well because they died of a broken heart.

Speaker 9 This was a tireless investigation. Believe me, the two DAs here are two guys that you don't want after you if you're the bad guy.

Speaker 16 Steve and I had agreed that we would be seeking half a million dollars bail.

Speaker 16 So we asked for $500,000 and the attorney goes, yeah, okay, go make it.

Speaker 9 Bierenbaum was released after putting up a half million bucks in bail.

Speaker 9 Now, if he's convicted of murder, too, the doc's next big trip will be upstate to the comfort of a four by eight cell for 25 years to life.

Speaker 2 I guess me and the other girlfriends were on to something all along.

Speaker 2 And it turns out another woman was, too.

Speaker 11 This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal.

Speaker 12 Are there two sides to every story?

Speaker 11 Academy Award nominee Robin Wright stars in the girlfriend on Prime, a psychological thriller that will make you question everything you think you know.

Speaker 11 Laura has the dream job, the perfect husband, and a son she'd die for. But when her beloved Daniel brings home his new girlfriend Cherry, played by Olivia Cook, something feels off.

Speaker 11 Is Cherry the sweet, innocent girl she appears to be? Or is there something more manipulative beneath the surface? And how far will a mother go to protect her son?

Speaker 11 Also starring starring Lori Davidson, The Girlfriend is a twisted game of cat and mouse where nothing is what it seems. And everyone has something to hide.

Speaker 11 Don't miss The Girlfriend, streaming now exclusively on Prime.

Speaker 12 Sometimes the truth is just a matter of perspective.

Speaker 6 I couldn't even believe it was real.

Speaker 21 Join me, Tatiana Siegel, executive editor of film and media at Variety, for a four-part tale of youthful ambition, artistic integrity, and the dark side of fame.

Speaker 38 Just like my parents talk about they knew where they were when John F.

Speaker 39 Kennedy was killed. Pretty much everyone I know knows exactly where they were when River died.

Speaker 40 Featuring new interviews with Samantha Mathis, Dr.

Speaker 14 Drew Pinske, Corey Feldman, and more.

Speaker 5 Listen to Variety Confidential on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 19 There's nothing like sinking into luxury. At washablesofas.com, you'll find the Anibay sofa, which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

Speaker 19 And get this, it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom, starting at only $699.

Speaker 19 The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash. Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa.

Speaker 19 With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Speaker 19 Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anibay has you covered.

Speaker 19 Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home right now you can shop up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee shop now at washable sofas.com add a little

Speaker 19 to your life offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply

Speaker 41 Kevin and Rachel and Peanut M ⁇ Ms and an eight-hour road trip and Rachel's new favorite audiobook the cerulean empress scoundrels inferno and florian the reckless yet charming scoundrel from said audiobook.

Speaker 36 And his pecs glistened in the moonlight.

Speaker 41 And Kevin, feeling weird because of all the talk about pecs, and Rachel handing him peanut MMs to keep him quiet.

Speaker 8 Uh, Kevin, I can't hear.

Speaker 41 Yellow, we're keeping it PG-13.

Speaker 8 MMs, it's more fun together.

Speaker 2 When Bob was charged with Gail's murder, it was like a punch to the gut. Everybody wanted to talk about it, but I didn't have enough wind left in me to say his name.

Speaker 2 Instead, they called Mindy to ask for the latest gossip, but everything had changed. It was a real case now with the real victim and a real potential murderer.

Speaker 2 Even Mindy wasn't excited by that anymore.

Speaker 42 There was

Speaker 42 a shift from the sensational and the speculative

Speaker 42 to the real

Speaker 42 and present.

Speaker 10 So it was no longer funny.

Speaker 2 We were really starting to doubt ourselves. If, like the investigators were saying, this case hinged on the testimony of all of us women who knew Bob, then what if we had gotten it wrong?

Speaker 2 What if we'd let our game go too far? What if he's not guilty?

Speaker 42 Will he come after us for slander? And if he is guilty, will he come after us after us?

Speaker 2 But little did we know that while we were starting to doubt ourselves, another girlfriend was about to surface.

Speaker 16 It was right after Birnbaum had been indicted. I got a phone call from a woman, and she refused to identify herself.

Speaker 28 And she actually says to me, oh my God, I slept with this guy right after his wife disappeared

Speaker 16 and i'm literally on the phone motioning to steve to come into my office and basically telling him there's somebody we need to talk to i said what's it all about he goes well there's another one of his one of our better girlfriends has just surfaced

Speaker 16 she refused to identify herself she said i'm afraid of him

Speaker 16 She said she'd call me back in a couple of days. A couple of days later, the phone rings.
It's the woman I had spoken to a day or two before, and she said, I'm Karen Caruana.

Speaker 43 I know Bob Bierenbaum. We worked together at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn in 1984, 1985.

Speaker 43 And this is my story.

Speaker 16 I said, we'll see you in a day or two. Booked flights to San Francisco.
Flew in one day, drove down to San Jose the next.

Speaker 16 We met in a diner of all places and sat there while she told us the story.

Speaker 2 Karen told them that when she first met Bob, she was a nurse working on the cardiovascular unit where Bob was undertaking a residency as a surgical intern. She didn't think much of him.

Speaker 2 He'd gotten a reputation for having a terrible bedside manner with patients and their families, and he was rude to the nurses.

Speaker 2 But outside of work, they had attended the same parties and they would go to clubs or restaurants with the other young hospital staff.

Speaker 2 Karen even met Gail a few times, only enough to make introductions. But she remembers her as small and submissive.
There was always a feeling that things were just not right.

Speaker 30 He was at the nurses station in the cardiovascular ICU and he was yelling at somebody on the phone. And it was obvious it was Gail that he was talking to.

Speaker 30 And I had to tell him a couple times, you know, please lower your voice. I mean, the nursing station was right next to where we recovered patients from open heart surgery.

Speaker 30 It wasn't appropriate for him to be yelling at anybody at the nursing station.

Speaker 2 Whatever people thought about Bob and Gail's relationship, when Gail went missing, it shook the staff.

Speaker 30 I remember the first time I saw him come back. He looked horrible.
He hadn't shaved. He was very disheveled.

Speaker 30 There evidently had been no word as to where she was or if she had run away, if something had happened to her, someone had taken her. We didn't know.

Speaker 30 In fact, I do remember going out to Central Park with people that I worked with, nurses, and we put up posters in Central Park with her picture.

Speaker 2 Sometime at the end of July, about three weeks after Gail went missing, Karen rented a little beach house in the Hamptons for the week, just a vacation.

Speaker 2 Before she left, one of her colleagues told her that Bob was also going to be out in the Hamptons that week.

Speaker 30 She had said, you know, why don't you get together with Bob? Maybe you could go out to dinner with him, give him some companionship. He's really lost without Gail.

Speaker 2 So Karen obliged.

Speaker 2 After arriving in the Hamptons, she drove over to his rental house, which was a really large building with a pool just away from the ocean.

Speaker 2 Karen parked her car and Bob drove them out to a seafood restaurant on the water in Sag Harbor.

Speaker 2 Over the meal, she started gently probing Bob for information about Gail.

Speaker 30 He said that in the last month, he had hired a private investigator and they found Gail in California. And she was waiting tables on the coast.

Speaker 30 I mean, it didn't sound totally right, but he kind of convinced convinced me that that was what he knew at the time.

Speaker 10 What Bob had told Karen was a lie.

Speaker 16 We spoke to the investigator, and the investigator said, absolutely not.

Speaker 10 That's not true.

Speaker 16 Never found evidence of Gail anywhere.

Speaker 2 Bob also described how Gail was a difficult wife and how on the day she went missing, they'd had a big argument.

Speaker 30 He said she had no shoes on. And I said to him, I said, who lives in New York City and doesn't wear shoes to walk to Central Park from their apartment.

Speaker 16 Again, another embellishment lie about what had happened that morning.

Speaker 2 Sitting in the diner, Dan and Steve knew they'd stumbled onto something big. These are exactly the kinds of details they wanted.
Bob telling different versions of Gail's disappearance, Bob lying.

Speaker 2 They even gave their new star witness a nickname.

Speaker 27 Karen Cowabunga.

Speaker 16 Karen Cowabunga.

Speaker 2 When Dan and Steve saw Karen Cowabunga, they saw a star witness. But I just see myself.
Because just like me, after Bob told Karen all about Gail's disappearance, she still went home with him.

Speaker 30 I mean, he was different than he had been. I went from dreading even talking to him at work to really sympathizing with his plight.

Speaker 30 I hadn't been with anybody in a while, so I think I was probably lonely,

Speaker 30 horny, I guess you could say. I mean, he was pretty persuasive.
And I remember climbing upstairs to the bedroom.

Speaker 2 Back in New York, they kept seeing each other. They'd go out for Japanese food.
They went dancing in clubs down in the West Village.

Speaker 2 On the weekends, Bob would go back to the Hamptons and party at West Hampton Beach's famous club, the Marrakesh.

Speaker 2 He ditched his LL Bean clothing for Saturday Night Fever shirts with the shirt tails tucked right in. All of this just a month or two after his wife had disappeared.

Speaker 30 I was still having fun with him. At that point, probably not even thinking about Gail, I'll be honest.
And he wasn't either.

Speaker 2 But after only six weeks of dating, Karen says their relationship literally hit the curb.

Speaker 30 We had gone out to dinner and we argued at the restaurant. And we were in a cab.

Speaker 30 My recollection is a little bit fuzzy just because I think I was pretty drunk at the time, but I remember the cab was still moving, and somehow he had pushed me out of the door onto the curb.

Speaker 30 And I remember my best friend in New York at the time was a woman Carol, who was a nurse at Maimonides. And I called her and I was hysterical.
crying.

Speaker 30 And I've talked to her since, and she said, I kept saying that he hurt me. He hurt me.

Speaker 2 We reached out to Bob for comment on this, but he never responded. These stories, like Bob allegedly pushing a woman out of a moving car, are the ones I care about most.

Speaker 2 In fact, there's a lot I wish I had known before I met Bob, some of which never made it into trial. That's after the break.

Speaker 11 This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal.

Speaker 12 Are there two sides to every story?

Speaker 11 Academy Award nominee Robin Wright stars in the girlfriend on Prime, a psychological thriller that will make you question everything you think you know.

Speaker 11 Laura has the dream job, the perfect husband, and a son she'd die for. But when her beloved Daniel brings home his new girlfriend Cherry, played by Olivia Cook, something feels off.

Speaker 11 Is Cherry the sweet, innocent girl she appears to be? Or is there something more manipulative beneath the surface? And how far will a mother go to protect her son?

Speaker 11 Also starring Lori Davidson, the girlfriend is a twisted game of cat and mouse where nothing is what it seems and everyone has something to hide.

Speaker 11 Don't miss the girlfriend, streaming now exclusively on Prime.

Speaker 12 Sometimes the truth is just a a matter of perspective.

Speaker 6 I couldn't even believe it was real.

Speaker 21 Join me, Tatiana Siegel, executive editor of film and media at Variety, for a four-part tale of youthful ambition, artistic integrity, and the dark side of fame.

Speaker 38 Just like my parents talk about they knew where they were when John F.

Speaker 39 Kennedy was killed. Pretty much everyone I know knows exactly where they were when River died.

Speaker 40 Featuring new interviews with Samantha Mathis, Dr.

Speaker 14 Drew Pinski, Corey Feldman, and more.

Speaker 5 Listen to Variety Confidential on the iHeartRadio app app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 19 There's nothing like sinking into luxury. At washablesofas.com, you'll find the Anibay sofa, which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

Speaker 19 And get this, it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom, starting at only $699.

Speaker 19 The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash. Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa.

Speaker 19 With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Speaker 19 Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anibay has you covered. Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home.

Speaker 19 Right now, you can shop up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Shop now at washable sofas.com.
Add a little

Speaker 19 to your life.

Speaker 19 Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 44 United Healthcare nurse Crystal checked in on a patient.

Speaker 45 We do a routine call after surgery, and I could tell in her voice that she was struggling. Crystal knew she needed help, and I knew that this is very serious.

Speaker 45 This is like septic, this is life-threatening. And she knew just what to do.
And I called the hospital and said she's coming in, here are her labs, and got her the help she needed.

Speaker 45 I see my role at United Healthcare as a life-saving role.

Speaker 44 Hear more stories like crystals at UHC.com. Benefits, features, and/or devices vary by plan area.
Limitation and exclusions apply.

Speaker 2 On a warm day in early August 2000, a young New York Times reporter by the name of Katherine Eban walked into the Manhattan Criminal Court for the first time.

Speaker 46 I was completely new to legal reporting, but the beat had been sold to me as you develop sources for life and you cover interesting trials, so you get a lot of ink that way.

Speaker 2 Catherine had been told that if you want to get ahead on the biggest cases, you have to cover the pretrial hearings to secure an early scoop.

Speaker 2 The only problem is it was notoriously boring.

Speaker 46 You know, not necessarily considered a plum beat because you're sitting in this dusty old press room and there's just a lot of stuff you have to cover that is not necessarily fascinating, but this was the first one.

Speaker 2 The interesting thing about this stage in the legal process is that the hearings are closed to everyone apart from the press, judge, lawyers, defendants, and witnesses who were summoned.

Speaker 2 So Catherine was one of the only people present during Bob's pre-trial hearing. Not even Elaine was invited in.
Consider this a sneak peek.

Speaker 46 I remember it vividly because it was August and the air conditioning in this courtroom was insane and it was absolutely empty.

Speaker 46 I was one of the few people sitting in the audience shivering with cold with the judge up there.

Speaker 47 My name is Leslie Crocker Snyder. And I was the judge who presided over the Birenbaum case in 2000.

Speaker 47 Some of the defendants called me the Ice Princess, which was kind of ridiculous because actually I'm a very warm, outgoing person, but not on the bench.

Speaker 46 I think sometimes Bierenbaum wasn't even there, so it was just his lawyers. And as I sat listening, this kind of remarkable story was unfolding and I got very interested in it.

Speaker 2 The primary purpose of pretrial hearings is for the judge to decide what testimony or evidence is permissible in court.

Speaker 2 In Bob's case, this process went on for the best part of nine months, and in that time they covered a lot of ground.

Speaker 2 But for the prosecution, there was one major argument, whether or not the psychiatrist's testimony should be included.

Speaker 2 After Bob strangled Gail in 1983, she demanded that he went to therapy. His first appointment was with Dr.
Stanley Bone, who after one session asked Bob if he could talk to Gail on the phone.

Speaker 2 Like I said, Elaine wasn't there, but she requested the redacted transcripts afterwards. Here she is reading Dr.
Stanley Bone's testimony from that cold pre-trial hearing.

Speaker 37 Question.

Speaker 37 Did you call her, essentially, to warn her?

Speaker 20 Yes.

Speaker 37 Question.

Speaker 37 And at that time, did you warn her that she may be in danger? And the witness said, yes.

Speaker 2 After just one session, Dr. Bone called Gail to warn her, and then he refused to treat Bob again.
Instead, he referred him to another psychiatrist named Dr.

Speaker 2 Shelley Duran, who, deja vu, also asked Bob if she could speak to Gail on the phone.

Speaker 37 And then the question was, did you feel at that time you had an ethical duty to warn her? that she might be in danger from the defendant. And Dr.

Speaker 8 Duran answered,

Speaker 37 I didn't know if I would hear her voice.

Speaker 2 Dr. Duran also refused to treat Bob again, and he moved on to his third psychiatrist, Dr.
Michael Stone, who again, after just one session, decided he needed to contact Gail.

Speaker 2 He wrote her something called a Terasoft letter. That's the letter Gail told Denise and Elaine about, the one she was going to use to blackmail Bob.

Speaker 37 It's on Dr. Stone's letterhead, Dr.
Michael Stone, Central Park West, New York City. It's written to my sister, Gail Bierenbaum at 85th Street, and it says, I have been advised by Dr.

Speaker 37 Stone that for reasons of my own safety, I should at this time live apart from my husband, Dr. Robert Bierenbaum.

Speaker 37 I further understand that owing to the unpredictable nature of my husband's physical assaults and to the chronic nature of the characterological abnormalities that underlie these assaults,

Speaker 37 no firm date can as yet be fixed as to when it might be safe to resume living together.

Speaker 37 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 37 and absolve Dr. Stone of responsibility for any such eventuality.

Speaker 37 And there's a line at the end of it for my sister's signature, and I don't believe she ever signed it.

Speaker 2 The Terasoff letter is named after a woman named Tatiana Terasoff, who was murdered by her estranged boyfriend after he told his therapist that he intended to kill her.

Speaker 2 The legal requirement to send a letter like this was introduced after it was determined that his therapist had an ethical duty to warn Tatiana that she was in danger.

Speaker 2 In addition to sending the Terasoff letter, Dr. Stone gave Bob an offer.
He said he would continue to treat Bob under two conditions. First, Dr.

Speaker 2 Stone asked to talk to Bob's parents, and then he said he wanted them to pay for his life insurance just in case anything should happen to him as a result of treating their son.

Speaker 2 Bob refused the insurance request, but he did let Dr. Stone talk to his mom and dad.

Speaker 46 Of course, Bierenbaum's attorneys did not want this testimony introduced because it spoke to his motive.

Speaker 46 And the psychiatric associations in the day were watching this case closely because of the battle over whether this testimony was going to be admissible.

Speaker 46 So that turned out to be a very rich vein for reporting. The implications for patient confidentiality were pretty profound.

Speaker 2 It's truly damning evidence, but if the judge let it in, it would be setting a dangerous precedent for future cases. And who knows how that could be exploited.

Speaker 10 Our argument was that since Bob had authorized

Speaker 16 Dr. Stone to share information about their sessions with Gail and with his parents,

Speaker 16 that that was a waiver of privilege. The judge disagreed with us.

Speaker 47 I made some rulings that I think both sides thought were controversial in that I would not allow the three doctors to testify on the ground that although the doctors and the defendant had spoken to other people, namely the defendant's parents and to Gail Bierenbaum, nevertheless, the doctor-patient privilege had not been waived because the people to whom the relationship was disclosed were only involved so that the psychologists could aid the defendant in his treatment.

Speaker 2 We don't know exactly what it was that made the psychiatrist react to Bob the way they did, but my producer Anna has been looking into it, and this is what we learned.

Speaker 2 Based on interviews Dr. Stone had previously given, Anna learned that during his first session with Bob, while discussing the time he strangled Gail for smoking, Bob told Dr.

Speaker 2 Stone it was not the first time he had strangled a woman. Back when Bob was still a medical intern, before he even met Gail, he was engaged to a girl he met in medical school.

Speaker 2 In these interviews, Stone said Bob told him that not only did he strangle her, but he also admitted to killing her cat in a fit of rage after they broke up.

Speaker 2 We have tried to confirm the story about Bob's first fiancé, but sadly, the woman in question died from cancer last year, and she'd never spoken publicly about her relationship with Bob.

Speaker 2 Anna did track down her family who said she was a very private person. But over a series of texts, her sister confirmed that Bob had been abusive towards her.

Speaker 2 She didn't know the details, but the fact is this, if Dr. Michael Stone is telling the truth, this information comes from Bob himself.

Speaker 2 Either way, there's something about these pretrials that I find very hard to swallow. I understand the point of the justice system.
I understand the concept of innocent until proven guilty.

Speaker 2 And I understand the importance of doctor-patient privilege. But as a woman who fell for Bob's charms, these details that were held back feel really significant to me.

Speaker 2 After the pretrials were over, Dan and Steve's attention turned to prepping for the real thing.

Speaker 27 It's very important. It's almost like a movie.
A trial is a production, and the order of witnesses as to how they're going to impact and fit together is something that has to be thought out.

Speaker 27 You just don't randomly pick names out of a hat. He'll be first, he'll be second, she'll be third.

Speaker 2 And that's when, after months of telling them I didn't want to be involved, they subpoenaed me.

Speaker 2 I had to go to New York, I had to stand in the witness box, and for the first time in four years, I had to come face to face with my ex-boyfriend, Bob.

Speaker 2 That's next time on the girlfriends.

Speaker 47 They painted her as a woman with a lot of problems, very needy, once suicidal, totally promiscuous. It was quote unquote blaming the victim.

Speaker 5 It's a five-minute acquittal, if you believe this guy.

Speaker 9 One juror thinks she's alive.

Speaker 27 When we say she's dead, that case is over.

Speaker 10 There were audible gasps from the jury.

Speaker 37 I remember turning to my brother and saying,

Speaker 37 What they say?

Speaker 2 The Girlfriends is produced by Novel for iHeartRadio. For more from Novel, visit novel.audio.

Speaker 2 The series is hosted by me, Carol Fisher, and produced by Anna Sinfield.

Speaker 2 Our assistant producer is Julian Manugera Patton and our researcher is Madeline Parr.

Speaker 2 The editor is Veronica Simmons. Max O'Brien is our executive producer.
Our fact checker is Valeria Roca.

Speaker 2 Production management from Cherie Houston and Charlotte Wolf.

Speaker 2 Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander.

Speaker 2 Music supervision by Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Louisa Gerstein.
Story development by Isaac Fisher. Willard Foxton is Creative Director of Development.

Speaker 2 Special thanks to Sean Glynn, David Waters, Mightily Rao, Katrina Norvell, David Wasserman, and Beth Ann McAluso.

Speaker 2 We did reach out to Bob and his legal team to ask if he'd like to comment on the podcast, but we never heard back.

Speaker 10 Novel.

Speaker 6 I couldn't even believe it was real.

Speaker 21 Join me, Tatiana Siegel, executive editor of Film and Media at Variety, for a four-part tale of youthful ambition, artistic integrity, and the dark side of fame.

Speaker 38 Just like my parents talk about they knew where they were when John F.

Speaker 39 Kennedy was killed. Pretty much everyone I know knows exactly where they were when River died.

Speaker 40 Featuring new interviews with Samantha Mathis, Dr.

Speaker 14 Drew Pinske, Corey Feldman, and more.

Speaker 1 Listen to Variety Confidential on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 19 Time for a sofa upgrade? Visit washable sofas.com and discover Anibay, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices.

Speaker 19 With sofas starting at $699, Anibay brings you the ultimate in furniture innovation with a modular design that allows you to rearrange your space effortlessly.

Speaker 19 Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out. Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.

Speaker 19 Liquid simply slides right off. Designed for custom comfort, our high-resilience foam lets you choose between a sink-in feel or a supportive memory foam blend.

Speaker 19 Plus, our pet-friendly stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years. Don't compromise quality for price.

Speaker 19 Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your living space today with no risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get up to 60% off plus free shipping and free returns.
Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Speaker 19 Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 29 Oral health goes beyond just aesthetics. It's deeply connected to your general health and well-being.
That's why preventing oral health problems before they start is so important.

Speaker 29 When you use the Colgate Total Active Prevention System, you're not just helping to prevent oral health problems like cavities and gingivitis. You're laying the groundwork for overall wellness.

Speaker 29 Colgate Total's three-product routine includes a reformulated toothpaste, an innovative toothbrush, and a refreshing antibacterial mouthwash that all support a healthy mouth.

Speaker 29 In fact, the three products were designed to work together to be 15 times more effective at reducing bacteria buildup in six weeks, starting from week one, compared to a non-antibacterial fluoride toothpaste and flat trim toothbrush.

Speaker 29 Take control of your oral health and get the Colgate Total Active prevention system today so you can be dentist ready. Visit shop.colgate.com slash total.

Speaker 41 Kevin and Rachel and peanut MMs and an eight-hour road trip. And Rachel's new favorite audiobook, The Cerulean Empress, Scoundrel's Inferno.

Speaker 41 And Florian, the reckless yet charming scoundrel from said audiobook.

Speaker 36 And his pecs glistened in the moonlight.

Speaker 41 And Kevin, feeling weird because of all the talk about pecs. And Rachel handing him Peanut M's to keep him quiet.

Speaker 8 Kevin, I can't hear.

Speaker 41 Yellow, we're keeping it PG-13.

Speaker 8 MMs, it's more fun together.

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.