The Girlfriends S1/E6: Women Who Like to Gab

Transcript

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 2 This is Matt Rogers from Los Cultures with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 3 This is Bowen Yang from Los Culture Resistance with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 2 What if you could boost your Wi-Fi to one of your devices when you need it most? Because Xfinity Wi-Fi can. Like when you need to upload 200 photos of your cat in a Santa hat to post online.

Speaker 4 We've all been there.

Speaker 6 And what if your Wi-Fi could proactively fix issues before they even happen?

Speaker 2 Xfinity Wi-Fi does that too.

Speaker 7 It's like having a little holiday helper.

Speaker 8 And what if your Wi-Fi had parental instincts built right in?

Speaker 9 So your kids are always protected online.

Speaker 2 It's Wi-Fi that's not just smart, it's brilliant. And during the holidays, that's a gift we all could use.

Speaker 7 Xfinity, imagine that.

Speaker 10 Hosts compensated for their time.

Speaker 11 I've seen a lot of tough women in my life, women who fight hard and keep showing up no matter what.

Speaker 14 And when one of them gets hit with breast cancer, it's brutal.

Speaker 17 But here's the thing: even treatment, breast cancer can come back.

Speaker 18 That's why I'm telling you about Kiscali.

Speaker 21 Kiscali ribocyclib 200 milligram tablets are taken with an aromatase inhibitor.

Speaker 25 It's for adults with HR-positive, HER2-negative, stage 2 or 3 early breast cancer with a high risk of recurrence, and it can help reduce the risk of cancer coming back.

Speaker 28 If you or someone you love went through it, talk to them.

Speaker 10 Share this.

Speaker 32 It may not seem seem helpful, but it's a real way to show up for the women you love, or maybe yourself.

Speaker 34 In a clinical study at three years, 91% of people taking Kiscali plus an aromatase inhibitor were cancer-free versus 88% taking an aromatase inhibitor alone.

Speaker 32 Individual results may vary. Kiscali may cause serious skin reactions, liver problems, and low white blood cell counts that may result in serious infections.

Speaker 13 Life-threatening lung problems and abnormal heartbeats can occur.

Speaker 38 Your doctor should test your heart and blood before and during treatment.

Speaker 40 Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening cough, chest pain, or dizziness.

Speaker 41 Before taking Kaskali, tell your doctor all your medical conditions, medicines you take, and if you're breastfeeding, pregnant, or planning to be, as it can harm an unborn baby.

Speaker 37 Common side effects include nausea, headache, and tiredness.

Speaker 19 Visit Kaskali.com, that's K-I-S-Q-A-L-I, to learn more, more. And ask your doctor if Kaskali is right for you.

Speaker 42 You won't believe what my new friend just told me about dinosaurs.

Speaker 43 Is your child having conversations you never imagined?

Speaker 44 Are they learning without realizing it?

Speaker 45 It's not a tablet. It's not a toy.

Speaker 47 It's Miko Mini Plus, the AI-powered companion that turns curiosity into endless learning.

Speaker 43 Hear the future of playtime.

Speaker 47 Meet the extraordinary Miko Mini Plus, only at Costco.

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Speaker 4 To be clear, that's half price, not half the service.

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Speed slow out at 35 gigabytes of networks busy.

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Speaker 48 Cementmobile.com.

Speaker 7 Novel.

Speaker 50 Hey, listener. In this episode, we talk about domestic violence, cancer, and disposing of a body.

Speaker 50 But you also get to hear our club really come to life, and you know that you've really been waiting for that. And of course, just a warning: a little more of my swearing.

Speaker 50 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 50 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 50 Remember Stephanie Youngblood, the fiancée who met Bob at the New Year's Eve party back in 1989?

Speaker 50 She's the only regular member of our club that you haven't heard from directly. The sad reason is that Stephanie died from cancer in 2022, just before this podcast went into production.

Speaker 50 Stephanie was a core member of our club, and she dated Bob the longest of all of us, around three years.

Speaker 50 But I never really knew what led to their breakup until Stephanie first joined us at the Mayflower. And I think it's time you found out too.

Speaker 51 I thought that he was weird.

Speaker 50 This is Stephanie's best friend, Gina. She saw it all go down.

Speaker 51 Bob had to one-up you, no matter what it was. No matter what you said, if you ordered a certain bottle of wine, there was another one that was better.
He was smarter.

Speaker 51 He was better educated, no matter what it was.

Speaker 50 At first, Stephanie gave Gina the same report everyone gives of Bob. Magical dates, flying above the desert, great food, skiing, so smart.
Yada, yada, yada.

Speaker 51 I mean, who wouldn't want that on your repertoire, but the way he acted didn't fit any of that to me.

Speaker 50 There was one particular trip with Bob that raised alarm bells for Gina. They had gone skiing in Argentina with a group of doctors, and Gina started to feel sick.

Speaker 51 So I called her room. I said, Stephanie, I'm not feeling really good.
My stomach hurts. She said, come by the room.

Speaker 51 So I knocked on her door and he was there and had like a little mini hissy fit. Like, who is this intruder?

Speaker 51 I felt that I was intruding and I was in a very bad moment that I should not have been there. And he picked up his clothes or something and kind of stalked and stormed out of the room.

Speaker 51 And I remember I said, Stephanie, I wouldn't have come come now. I mean, you know, you should have told me, she goes, no, that's fine.
That's just Bob being Bob.

Speaker 50 This left a bad taste in Gina's mouth. She had previously been married to a guy just like that, and she knows firsthand what those temper tantrums can develop into.

Speaker 50 So she told Stephanie that Bob reminded her of her ex, who'd fly off the handle at anything, who got so irate during a dinner that he chucked a pepper grinder into the swimming pool, who once locked her in the bathroom, and who eventually tried to throw her off a boat.

Speaker 50 But Stephanie did not want to hear Gina's warnings. Instead, she kept dating Bob, just like how I kept dating him, like Gail did, and like Gina did with her husband.

Speaker 50 As time went on, Stephanie saw Bob's outbursts get worse. Like the time Stephanie, Bob, and a friend were having dinner on a boat.

Speaker 50 Stephanie had requested a bottle of red wine, but when the waiter brought it over, they accidentally sprayed the wine all over the table. It infuriated Bob.

Speaker 50 He turned to Stephanie with these intense laser eyes and started raging on her like it was all her fault. She was terrified.

Speaker 51 Everybody was like, there's something not quite right with this dude.

Speaker 50 Following his outburst, Stephanie couldn't look at Bob in the same way. He'd always been a little controlling, but the way he exploded, exploded, the way he looked at her, it unlocked a new fear.

Speaker 50 Ultimately, though, she wanted to fix him, so she demanded that they go to see a couple's therapist.

Speaker 50 But after just one session, the therapist spoke with Stephanie privately and told her that there were significant problems with their relationship and warned her that her life might be in danger.

Speaker 50 Remind you of anything?

Speaker 51 Stephanie said there's just something wrong with him. He had to control everything that they did, what they ate, where they went.

Speaker 51 And she said, I got to get away from it. I got to figure out how to get away from it.

Speaker 50 From that point on, Stephanie started to build a plan to leave Bob. One day when she was leaving town for a seminar, she told Bob it was over.

Speaker 51 And I think it really came down to, I'm going going to be gone. I want you out by the time I get back.
That was how she told me. I said, good.

Speaker 50 And that's how Stephanie earned her seat at the Harriet the Spy Club, a club that was half ridiculous girl talk and half camaraderie, a sisterhood, a place for women to get together, drink wine, and tear their ex-boyfriend to shreds.

Speaker 51 She was always excited about it. You know, it was fun.
They would go have a glass of wine or meet for coffee. They would shoot the discs.

Speaker 51 I mean, they would talk about all the things they did and compare notes. I think it was good too, because for her, she wasn't the only one.

Speaker 50 We miss you, Stephanie. And I still can't believe that all of our gossiping became part of a multi-state investigation.

Speaker 50 Wait a minute. You all don't know about that yet.
I'm getting ahead of myself.

Speaker 50 I'm Carol Fisher, and from the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio, you're listening to The Girlfriends,

Speaker 50 episode 6, Women Who Like to Gab.

Speaker 50 I've got

Speaker 50 you,

Speaker 50 I've got you, got you.

Speaker 50 Cause I've got

Speaker 50 you,

Speaker 7 When you pick up a cold case, the first thing you do is you redo everything that's been done in the past. No matter how old it is, no matter what's been done, you do it over again.

Speaker 50 This is Dan Bibb, one of the DA prosecutors assigned to Gail's cold case.

Speaker 7 Even if

Speaker 7 someone who's been spoken to says they don't remember or they don't know.

Speaker 7 A lot of people lie. And there were many cases I picked up where people were,

Speaker 7 I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what you're talking about. And 10, 15 years later, they straightened their acts out and now willing to tell you what happened.
It's a rule.

Speaker 7 You redo everything that's been done in the past. And that's what we did.
We took every report, what's called a DD5, it's a detective division report.

Speaker 7 And if there was a witness interviewed, we redid that interview.

Speaker 50 And when Dan says they re-interviewed everyone, he means it. We've seen the files.

Speaker 50 There's Elaine, Denise, Gail's brother Steve, the doorman at Gail's apartment, Gail's colleagues, and her fellow students.

Speaker 50 And they also spoke to the two guys Gail was dating on the side, Anthony Segalis and Kenneth Feiner.

Speaker 7 If the husband didn't do it, maybe one of the boyfriends did. Segalis and Feiner couldn't have been more different people.

Speaker 7 Segalis, a little bit brash, you know, businessman. Feiner, this soft-spoken psychologist.
Yeah, Finer and Segalis, they weren't killers.

Speaker 50 Next, Dan and his partner Steve had to figure out what Bob had been up to over the past 10 years, which is when these two poker-loving, steak-eating, luxury hotel-staying prosecutors first touched down in Sin City.

Speaker 50 One of the first people they spoke to when they arrived in 1998 was Scott Baranoff, Bob's childhood friend from New Jersey, who had convinced Bob to join him in Las Vegas.

Speaker 52 He's like a mahogany tan, like golden curly, nice looking guy.

Speaker 7 He's got pictures on the wall of him and all these casino owners. You know, and all the casino owners are in their 70s and 80s.

Speaker 52 The guy says they're 80 years old. They got 25-year-old girlfriends.
At these casino openings, you'll see me on one side and the cardiologist on the other.

Speaker 7 I'm like, what? He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. The cardiologists keep them alive and the urologists keep them pissing and fucking.

Speaker 7 And I nearly fell out of my chair laughing so hard.

Speaker 50 Once the medical bro talk was over, Scott started spouting loads of stuff about his old buddy Bob and the things they used to do back in New York, like the time Bob dropped in at Scott's mom's house after his nephew's party, the day that Gail went missing.

Speaker 52 Dr. Bierenbaum told Dr.
Baronoff that Gail's missing, what should I do? And that's when Bierenbaum reported her missing the next day.

Speaker 50 They spoke to Ernie Sussman, too, a local urologist who Bob befriended after he gave him flying lessons.

Speaker 53 I had no idea he was married.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 13 It's amazing that that never came up.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 And I wouldn't ask.

Speaker 53 If guys volunteer stuff, great. I mean, unless I'm asked, I'm not going to start talking somebody's ear off about my past and my relationships.
So

Speaker 53 I think it's a guy thing. I mean, most guys don't start gabbing.
Now, they gab too much about their past. You know, I'm a little suspect.
I'm not sure I want to be around them anyway.

Speaker 50 The guys just didn't really know much about Bob or Gail. They didn't ask.

Speaker 7 It was like the guys. It's like, yeah, I remember he told me his wife disappeared one day.
He never saw her again.

Speaker 7 So you're a guy, you're not going to drill down and say, Jesus, Bob, what the hell happened? You know, you just,

Speaker 7 all right, well, probably walk away thinking, did he kill her?

Speaker 50 It was becoming clear that if the prosecutors were going to get anywhere with the Vegas interviews, they needed to come to the people who knew Bob best in this town. The women who did like to gab.

Speaker 50 The girlfriends.

Speaker 50 Bless Dan and Steve. They really had no idea how much we had been preparing for this.

Speaker 54 Incoming with the old gays, it's Jessé, Bill, Robert, and Mick with a special bonus episode of Silver Linings with the Old Gays.

Speaker 54 No matter what time of year it is, we know it's important to uplift the spirit of pride, which is relatively easy when Palm Springs celebrates in November.

Speaker 7 The first pride I went to, it made me feel like I was really part of something.

Speaker 7 People being so joyous in the streets and being themselves.

Speaker 7 We've really come a long way and I realized I am standing on the shoulders of so many millions of queer people who sacrificed their lives for what we have today.

Speaker 54 Silver Linings with the Old days is brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Viv Healthcare. Listen on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 This is Matt Rogers from Los Culture Resist with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 3 This is Bowen Yang from Los Culture Resist with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 2 What if you could boost your Wi-Fi to one of your devices when you need it most? Because Xfinity Wi-Fi can. Like when you need to upload 200 photos of your cat in a Santa hat to post online.

Speaker 4 We've all been there.

Speaker 8 And what if your Wi-Fi had parental instincts built right in?

Speaker 9 So your kids are always protected online.

Speaker 2 It's Wi-Fi that's not just smart. It's brilliant.
And during the holidays, that's a gift we all could use.

Speaker 46 Meet the extraordinary Miko Mini Plus.

Speaker 47 Only at Costco.

Speaker 17 But here's the thing, even after treatment, breast cancer can come back.

Speaker 25 It's for adults with HR positive, HER2-negative, stage 2 or 3 early breast cancer with a high risk of recurrence, and it can help reduce the risk of cancer coming back.

Speaker 32 It may not seem helpful, but it's a real way to show up for the women you love or maybe yourself.

Speaker 34 In a clinical study at three years, 91% of people taking Kiscali plus an aromatase inhibitor were cancer-free.

Speaker 15 versus 88% taking an aromatase inhibitor alone.

Speaker 41 Before taking Kiscali, tell your doctor all your medical conditions, medicines you take, and if you're breastfeeding, pregnant, or planning to be, as it can harm an unborn baby.

Speaker 37 common side effects include nausea, headache, and tiredness.

Speaker 19 Visit Kascali.com. That's K-I-S-Q-A-L-I to learn more and ask your doctor if Kascali is right for you.

Speaker 50 The first member of the club to to get the call was Stephanie Youngblood. She invited Dan and Steve straight to her office.

Speaker 52 She was the chiropractor who said that his engagement ring was the gift that keeps on giving. I think he was engaged to like three or four different women in Las Vegas.

Speaker 52 He dated the entire Jewish professional community.

Speaker 50 What they really wanted to know was what Bob had said about Gail.

Speaker 52 She was aware that he was previously married, that his wife had disappeared. And I know that he had given to her an account as to what he thought had happened to Gail.

Speaker 50 In fact, when Stephanie first met Bob, he told her that he had never been married before.

Speaker 50 But then Stephanie started noticing that some mail was addressed to Bob and Gail Biernbaum.

Speaker 50 She also found a trunk with luggage tags that had Gail's name on it. The same trunk I saw.

Speaker 50 Stephanie shared all of this with her friend Gina.

Speaker 51 She said he didn't have any good explanations for it other than his wife had gone missing and she was wondering why he still had papers and bills and things like that there in a Las Vegas house when he came from New York years before.

Speaker 50 When Stephanie repeatedly asked Bob who Gail was, he welled up and said it was hard to explain. Then he told her his story, that she went to Central Park and never came back.

Speaker 50 He said it was upsetting because during the investigation, he found out she had a drug problem and that she was having extramarital affairs. These were the details Dan and Steve were looking for.

Speaker 7 It was the common theme,

Speaker 7 the argument, walking out, going to the party. Again, there were a number of lies and embellishments, but it was also the fact that he had this horrendous temper.

Speaker 7 Could fly off the handle at the drop of a hat

Speaker 7 at almost nothing.

Speaker 50 After Stephanie's interview, she called me and said she'd given my number out to Dan and Steve, and they want to interview me too. She said they're opening this case back up.

Speaker 50 They really want Bob, and they believe that we all independently have enough information to help put him away.

Speaker 50 Let me be honest here. I was kind of on the fence about meeting them.
It was fun gossiping with the girls at the Mayflower restaurant, but this all sounded a bit too serious.

Speaker 50 Thinking back, I just wanted this to go away and not have to accept the fact that I might have dated someone capable of murdering his wife.

Speaker 50 So I said I would only meet with them if it could be at Stephanie's office. When we met, I told them all about my relationship with Bob, the glass-breaking story, and that wild syphilis accusation.

Speaker 50 But the one they really loved was the moment when I said, what did you do, murder your wife?

Speaker 52 He doesn't respond. Doesn't say, what are you talking about, Caroline?

Speaker 52 He just drops his head. And that comes in as an admission by silence, where it's something that a reasonable person would be expected to respond to and deny or whatever.

Speaker 52 A reasonable person just wouldn't sit there once confronted with an accusation that you had committed a murder.

Speaker 7 What stuck out to me was that the women all remembered the conversations and details. What he said, what he did, what she said, what she did.

Speaker 7 And I think it was a function of their but for the grace of God go I.

Speaker 50 At first, these details were just fodder for club gossip, but now they were becoming a murder case.

Speaker 50 It didn't feel good, especially after the things I'd learned about Bob from the detectives. They told me about his life in North Dakota and how he was starting over.

Speaker 50 He had a new medical practice and was part of a community.

Speaker 50 They said his new wife, Janet, was pregnant and the baby was due in a few months. Could that guy really have murdered somebody? And if he hadn't, were we about to ruin his life?

Speaker 54 Incoming with the old gays. It's Jessé, Bill, Robert, and Mick with a special bonus episode of Silver Linings with the Old Gays.

Speaker 54 No matter what time of year it is, we know it's important to uplift the spirit of pride, which is relatively easy when Palm Springs celebrates in November.

Speaker 7 The first pride I went to, it made me feel like I was really part of something.

Speaker 7 People being so joyous in the streets and being themselves.

Speaker 7 We've really come a long way and I realized I am standing on the shoulders of so many millions of queer people who sacrificed their lives for what we have today.

Speaker 54 Silver Linings with the Old Days is brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Viv Healthcare. Listen on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 This is Matt Rogers from Los Culture Resist with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 3 This is Bowen Yang from Los Cultural Resist with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 2 What if you could boost your Wi-Fi to one of your devices when you need it most? Because Xfinity Wi-Fi can.

Speaker 2 Like when you need to upload 200 photos of your cat in a Santa hat to post online, we've all been there.

Speaker 9 And what if your Wi-Fi had parental instincts built right in so your kids are always protected online?

Speaker 2 It's Wi-Fi that's not just smart, it's brilliant. And during the holidays, that's a gift we all could use.

Speaker 46 Meet the extraordinary Miko Mini Plus, only at Costco.

Speaker 17 But here's the thing, even after treatment, breast cancer can come back.

Speaker 25 It's for adults with HR positive, HER2-negative, stage 2 or 3 early breast cancer with a high risk of recurrence, and it can help reduce the risk of cancer coming back.

Speaker 32 It may not seem helpful, but it's a real way to show up for the women you love or maybe yourself.

Speaker 34 In a clinical study at three years, 91% of people taking Kiscali plus an aromatase inhibitor were cancer-free.

Speaker 15 versus 88% taking an aromatase inhibitor alone.

Speaker 38 Before taking Kiscali, tell your doctor all your medical conditions, medicines you take, and if you're breastfeeding, pregnant, or planning to be, as it can harm an unborn baby, common side effects include nausea, headache, and tiredness.

Speaker 19 Visit Kiscali.com, that's K-I-S-Q-A-L-I, to learn more, and ask your doctor if Kascali is right for you.

Speaker 50 Back in New York over the summer of 1998, Dan and Steve kept going, re-approaching potential witnesses who had refused to be interviewed back in the 80s.

Speaker 50 There was one woman in particular that they were desperate to talk to, Roberta Karnofsky, a medical student who Bob supervised at Maimonides Medical Center.

Speaker 7 We were kind of aware that Roberta was

Speaker 7 a love interest and we were aware that she lived with him,

Speaker 7 but she was uncooperative at the time, back in 1985-86. She refused to be interviewed.

Speaker 50 But when Dan and Steve approached her all these years later, Roberta agreed to talk. Steve flew out to meet her in her new home of Charleston, North Carolina.

Speaker 52 I met with her and her lawyer. Her lawyer felt comfortable with me.

Speaker 52 And it just was a great interview.

Speaker 50 Roberta tells Steve that Bob first asked her out in August of 1985, just a month after Gail went missing.

Speaker 50 About three weeks later, and after just a couple of dates, he asked her to move into his apartment, which technically is still Gail's apartment.

Speaker 50 In fact, Roberta was already living there when Elaine came to collect Gail's belongings, the ones Bob put out in trash bags.

Speaker 50 Roberta also told Steve about this one night at the apartment that really stood out to her.

Speaker 7 Roberta tells us that in the middle of the night there's a telephone call saying that there's a woman in the Port Authority, I believe it was, which is a bus terminal in Midtown Manhattan.

Speaker 7 And would he come down and take a look at her and see if it's her?

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 Bob is resistant.

Speaker 50 Bob says, I doubt it's Gail, and asks if he has to come right away as it's the middle of the night.

Speaker 52 Roberta Karnofsky, hearing this, is ready to move out of the apartment. He says, should I get out of here now? And he tells her, no, don't worry, it's not her.

Speaker 50 Bob did eventually go, but he dragged his feet.

Speaker 7 That was a little piece of evidence that hurt him quite a bit, you know, because he knew, of course, it wasn't her

Speaker 7 because he knew where she was.

Speaker 50 From that point on, Roberta was suspicious of Bob, and she, just like us, started adding up the details.

Speaker 50 She thought about the answering machine messages Gail's mom would leave Bob accusing him of murdering her daughter. And she remembered how much he loved to fly.

Speaker 50 She started to formulate a theory that Bob had killed Gail, rented a plane, and thrown her into the ocean.

Speaker 7 And it was after an argument that Roberta and Bob had at dinner where she actually accused him of killing Gail,

Speaker 7 and he remained silent.

Speaker 50 Roberta told her friend Sharon Alonghi about what was going on and her plane theory. Sharon had an idea to check Bob's movements on the day of Gail's disappearance.

Speaker 7 When Bob was at work, they said, let's look at his flight log for that day.

Speaker 7 And they went and they saw that it was altered. And it was altered to show that on on that date, he had not flown, but he had flown on another date.

Speaker 52 A savvy 12-year-old could see that it had been altered from the 7th to the 8th.

Speaker 50 It's a huge breakthrough for the case, but it's not the first time that the DA had learned that Bob most likely flew that day.

Speaker 50 Back in the original DA investigation in the 80s, One of the investigators called in at Caldwell Airport, the same place Gail rescued her cat Amelia, to ask some questions.

Speaker 7 And they walked in and they talked to the owners of MACDAN Aviation and they said, Actually, you know, Dr. Birnbaum used to fly out of here all the time.

Speaker 7 They said, Well, do you have any records of him flying here? He says, Yes. Do you have any records of him flying here in July of 1985? And they said, Yes.

Speaker 7 And sure enough, he flew on July 7th, 1985, the day his wife disappeared.

Speaker 52 dr bierenbaum in talking to both missing person detectives and detectives from the precinct her family or his friends he never mentioned that he had rented that plane that afternoon and we had records that he did there was no way that he could deny it he lied to the police and to everyone else when he related his activities after he says his wife walked out of the apartment sometime around noon that Sunday.

Speaker 7 It was a lie of co-mission because he would say he was either waiting for his wife to return

Speaker 7 or he was on his way to his sister's place in Montclair, New Jersey, which is two or three towns over from where Corwell Airport is for his nephew's birthday party, or he was already at the party when he was actually in an airplane for almost two hours.

Speaker 7 And he could have flown over 150 miles easily.

Speaker 7 So, I mean, the importance of the flight is not only because he lied about it, because it gave him the opportunity to dispose of a body where no one was ever going to find it.

Speaker 50 Based on all of the interviews and this breakthrough proof of the flight, the DA land Roberta's theory.

Speaker 50 They believe Bob killed Gail at some point between 10.30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
on July 7th.

Speaker 50 That Bob put her body into a duffel bag and smuggled her out of the back door of his building to the car, evading cameras and the doormen.

Speaker 50 At 4.30 p.m., he drove right onto the tarmac at Caldwell Airport, hired a plane, and flew for a two-hour round trip, allowing him to travel 170 miles out over the Atlantic.

Speaker 50 He dropped her body out of the plane, flew back, and headed to his nephew's party just a few miles away. There's even a photo of him smiling with his nephew and the birthday cake.

Speaker 50 The only problem is the prosecutors needed hard evidence. All these stories were not enough.
They had to prove that beyond any reasonable doubt, Bob must have done it.

Speaker 50 And for Dan and Steve, there was one reasonable doubt that they still had to address.

Speaker 50 The torso.

Speaker 50 When the body washed up on the Staten Island shore back in 1989, the chief medical examiner didn't have the DNA testing capabilities that they do now.

Speaker 50 Instead, the body was identified as Gail's by comparing a radiology report of the torso and some x-rays of Gail's former coccyx injury. To Dan and Steve, it felt like a risk.

Speaker 50 Could you really identify a body solely by comparing their spines?

Speaker 50 It's a sort of detail that the defense could cling on to to discredit their argument. DNA testing had improved in the intervening years, and they wanted to be sure, but it comes at a risk.

Speaker 50 If the body is definitely Gail's, then they're protecting themselves from the juror's doubt. But if it's not hers, then they're back to square one.

Speaker 50 A case with no body and only circumstantial evidence, that's a hard case to win.

Speaker 50 And on top of all that, the torso was already buried. So Dan called Gail's sister, Elaine.

Speaker 55 They then asked me if they could exhume the body.

Speaker 7 I said, we are and we will put everything that we have into this. No holds barred.
Bring out all the guns blazing. But I can't guarantee an outcome.

Speaker 55 I thought about it for a while.

Speaker 50 We had no idea whether this was ever going to be prosecuted, whether it was going to be a successful prosecution.

Speaker 50 Eventually, Elaine consented to the exhumation and a tent was erected over Gail's gravesite in Mount Zion Cemetery in Queens.

Speaker 50 A few months later, Elaine was asked to come into the city for a meeting at the medical examiner's office.

Speaker 50 When she arrived, she was directed into a huge conference room where Dan, Steve, two lawyers, and the chief medical examiner, Charles Hirsch, were all waiting for her.

Speaker 7 And they said to me, the torso is not Gail.

Speaker 7 And after a string of curses, I said to them, you have ripped the shred.

Speaker 7 of closure that I have

Speaker 7 away from me.

Speaker 7 You better indict him and you better convict him.

Speaker 50 Next time on the girlfriends,

Speaker 50 my sister called and she said, turn on the news.

Speaker 52 Sometimes you want to keep things out of the press, but this case was front page for a while.

Speaker 7 I got a phone call from a woman and she actually says to me, I slept with this guy right after his wife disappeared what if he's not guilty will he come after us for slander and if he is guilty will he come after us after us

Speaker 50 The Girlfriends is produced by Novel for iHeartRadio. For more from Novel, visit novel.audio.

Speaker 50 The series is hosted by me, Carol Fisher, and produced by Anna Sinfield.

Speaker 50 Our assistant producer is Julian Managera Patton, and our researcher is Madeline Parr.

Speaker 50 The editor is Veronica Simmons. Max O'Brien is our executive producer.
Our fact-checker is Valeria Rocha. Production management from Cherie Houston and Charlotte Wolf.

Speaker 50 Sound design, mixing, and scoring by by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander.

Speaker 50 Music supervision by Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Louisa Gerstein.
Story development by Isaac Fisher. Willard Foxton is Creative Director of Development.

Speaker 50 Special thanks to Sean Glynn, David Waters, Maitali Rau, Katrina Norvell, David Wasserman, and Beth Ann McAluso.

Speaker 50 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 7 Novel.

Speaker 56 Then the space hamster flew his hot air balloon all the way to the bottom of the ocean.

Speaker 1 Where did that story come from?

Speaker 7 Book?

Speaker 45 Dream?

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Speaker 27 What color was the hamster's cape?

Speaker 56 And what did he pack for lunch?

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Speaker 49 So, that means a half day.

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Speaker 49 Upfront payment of $45 for a three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only.
Speed slow under 35 gigabytes of networks busy.

Speaker 49 Taxes and fees extra.

Speaker 48 See Mintmobile.com.

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Speaker 1 Holidays with kids and family? Magical, but let's be honest, overwhelming. Between hanging lights, cleaning, wrapping gifts, and prepping for the in-laws, the list never ends.

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Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.