The Girlfriends S1/E5: The Best Job a Lawyer Could Have

Transcript

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

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Speaker 4 I couldn't even believe it was real.

Speaker 9 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 10 Just like my parents talk about they knew where they were when John F.

Speaker 11 Kennedy was killed.

Speaker 12 Pretty much everyone I know knows exactly where they were when River died.

Speaker 14 Featuring new interviews with Samantha Mathis, Dr.

Speaker 8 Drew Pinski, Corey Feldman, and more.

Speaker 18 Listen to Variety Confidential on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 20 was like the smartest Wi-Fi? Yeah, it's Wi-Fi that is so smart. It makes everything work better together.
Xfinity. Imagine that.

Speaker 21 This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal. Are there two sides to every story?

Speaker 21 Academy Award nominee Robin Wright stars in The Girlfriend on Prime, September 10th, a psychological thriller that will make you question everything.

Speaker 21 Laura has the perfect life and a son she'd die for. But when he brings home his new girlfriend Cherry, played by Olivia Cook, something feels off.

Speaker 21 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 exclusively on Prime September 10th.

Speaker 21 Sometimes the truth is just a matter of perspective.

Speaker 24 Novel.

Speaker 25 Hey, listener. In this episode, there are mentions of domestic violence and how it's treated in the justice system.
We also take on 18 Holes of Golf with two poker-playing prosecutors.

Speaker 25 If you do listen and are impacted by any of our themes, you can reach out to Know More, a domestic violence charity we've partnered with.

Speaker 25 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.org.

Speaker 25 In the spring of 1996, Bob had the audacity to call me for advice.

Speaker 25 It was really strange because I hadn't talked with him in months since our messy breakup.

Speaker 25 But Bob goes on to tell me that he had met someone, an OBGYN named Janet, and in true Bob style, they were already engaged and due to be married within the next few weeks.

Speaker 25 He also said that Janet was getting cold feet and he wanted my advice on how to reassure her.

Speaker 25 I mean really, a guy dumps you and then calls you up for advice about his new fiancé?

Speaker 25 Anyway. The reason she was getting cold feet is because in order to register their marriage, Bob had to order a copy of Gail's death certificate.

Speaker 25 And when it showed up in the mail, Janet was really shocked to read the cause of death as undetermined and in brackets, torso with homicide, written and circled underneath.

Speaker 25 I'll admit, I was a little taken aback. I mean, first I'm hearing that he's marrying a woman that he met only a few months before, and then he wants advice on how to tell her about his missing wife.

Speaker 25 Bob also tells me in this strange as fuck phone call that he's moving to Minot, North Dakota. He's gotten some lucrative job in a hospital up there.

Speaker 25 So look anyway, I tell him, tell her the truth, Bob, whatever that meant. And I hung up and immediately reached out to the club.

Speaker 25 I mean, in a way, it was really funny. But I also wondered if we needed to tell Janet what we knew.

Speaker 26 We were around the table at the Mayflower and Stephanie said, do you think that we

Speaker 18 should warn her?

Speaker 26 And I think we just sat with that for a little bit

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 26 unanimously we said,

Speaker 18 no.

Speaker 25 I wonder if that would be different today. I might do it different today.

Speaker 26 If it was today, I I don't know if I'd offer that

Speaker 28 speculation.

Speaker 15 Because it was speculation.

Speaker 25 Mindy's right. We didn't want to go barging into Bob's fiancé's life with our theories.
You and I know so much more than we ever did back in the 90s.

Speaker 25 Back then, we were still a bunch of grown-ass women using a code name to discuss our ex over Asian noodles.

Speaker 25 This was still just a glorified game of clue, but soon we'd find out that we weren't the only ones trying to solve this murder mystery.

Speaker 25 I'm Carol Fisher, and from the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio, you're listening to the girlfriends.

Speaker 25 Episode 5, The Best Job a Lawyer Could Have.

Speaker 25 got

Speaker 25 you

Speaker 25 I've got

Speaker 25 you

Speaker 25 I've got you got you Yes I got

Speaker 25 you

Speaker 25 I've got you got you I've got you got you I've got you

Speaker 25 Bob married Janet on June 23rd 1996 1996, and it couldn't have been more different than his wedding to Gail.

Speaker 25 This time it was in Ithaca, New York, and instead of the dancing crowds of family and friends, there were less than a dozen people.

Speaker 25 But I've since found out that going back to New York for the wedding was a very clever decision because it meant that Gail's death certificate, which had to be filed with the marriage license, was kept in the New York public record and wouldn't follow him to his new home, Minot, North Dakota.

Speaker 4 Now, your local weather with the KX New Storm Team.

Speaker 28 Welcome back, and it is snowy, snowy, snowy out there.

Speaker 29 This sure looks like it's going to be a big one.

Speaker 30 Heaviest snow falling in Minot.

Speaker 25 To the uninitiated, Minot, North Dakota couldn't be further from the big lights of New York or Las Vegas. It's a small agricultural Midwest town close to the Canadian border, and yep, it is cold.

Speaker 25 At the time, I didn't know much about Bob's life in North Dakota back in the 90s. I mean, there weren't all these resources that make it easy to cyber-stalk your ex.

Speaker 25 We couldn't keep tabs on Instagram or Facebook. So my producer, Anna, reached out to a bunch of local Facebook groups to see if anyone remembered Bob.

Speaker 30 I expected to get five or so people saying, oh, I've like heard about him.

Speaker 30 But I actually got something crazy. Like it was between 50 to 100 individual comments.

Speaker 30 There was this big camp of people who thought he was the best doctor that they'd ever worked with or ever been treated by.

Speaker 30 There was this one woman whose husband had injured his hand in a chainsaw injury and he was in so much pain that he went back to his German-Russian dialect and was starting to speak and like mutter in German because he was obviously very distressed.

Speaker 30 And the wife said, Oh, speak in English so that the doctor can understand you.

Speaker 30 And Bob goes,

Speaker 30 He's like, Don't worry, I can speak German, and then does the rest of the consultation in German.

Speaker 25 Well, right, he spoke five languages. I mean, it was part of the attraction of how smart he was.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 25 Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 25 And what do they say about his marriage? Do they mention Janet?

Speaker 30 Yeah, I think the only things that people really said about the marriage were how he would bring her these fresh homemade bagels because that was his whole thing.

Speaker 30 He baked a lot of bagels in North Dakota, apparently. He was quite known for that.

Speaker 25 He had to bring the Jewish heritage to North Dakota.

Speaker 30 He was really establishing himself as the local Jew.

Speaker 24 Yeah. Yes.

Speaker 30 And he would drop them into her office and apparently she spoke about him with a lot of affection and he did the same. So they seemed like a real unit.

Speaker 24 Wow.

Speaker 30 That's incredible. But I did speak to one woman on the phone and I really want to play you this clip because she had a very specific and unique experience with Bob that I think

Speaker 30 speaks to what we've heard other people talk about when you're a patient of his or you're in care of another patient of his and

Speaker 25 his anger starts to come out. Oh, wow.
Okay. I'm interested.

Speaker 31 He was my son's plastic surgeon. My son was born with a classical palate.

Speaker 31 I remember one specific time my son had just had surgery. He was probably six months old.

Speaker 31 We were in the hospital and he came to check on us.

Speaker 31 And my son was holding his own bottle because he knew when it hurt and I didn't know when it hurt him.

Speaker 31 And he came in and chewed me out up one side and down the other, yelling at me till I was in tears.

Speaker 31 Why was he yelling at you?

Speaker 31 Because my son was supposed to have arm braces on that kept their arms straight so they didn't pull at the stitches or pull at their lip.

Speaker 31 So I took those arm braces off and let him hold his own bottle.

Speaker 31 And it was very upsetting to him.

Speaker 31 One of the nurses was sitting at the nurses station then and realized that he was yelling at me and came in and said,

Speaker 31 that's enough. I think you need to leave now.
We'll take care of it from here.

Speaker 31 And I was 18 at the time.

Speaker 25 That sounds like Bob to a T.

Speaker 25 Highly unpredictable. Could go from, you know, zero to a hundred in terms of anger.
And very judgmental of people.

Speaker 25 So judgmental.

Speaker 30 There were quite a few people who said stuff like that. There was a woman who was going in for, I think, a breast reduction, and he made her cry.

Speaker 30 And I think, you know, the way some people rationalized that was that that's what doctors are like, that's what doctors are like. But I don't think that's true.

Speaker 25 I can't believe that you talked to all these people.

Speaker 30 So, actually, I met up with a Minot local who was visiting London for a theater tour, and her name was Harriet Epstein.

Speaker 25 You met her? Yeah, I did. And she's Jewish? She is Jewish.

Speaker 30 Yeah, because that last name. And she got to know Bob after he started working in the same clinic as her husband.
So they hung out a lot because of the medical community and the Jewish community.

Speaker 30 So here is a clip.

Speaker 32 He was just

Speaker 32 a smart guy, you know, good doctor, but women found him creepy.

Speaker 32 I don't know what other adjective to use to describe him.

Speaker 32 You just got a creepy feeling when you would talk to him. And his eyes, it was sort of like he would look right through you, kind of thing.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 25 Those piercing eyes. It was as if he could stare at you, but he wasn't connecting with you.

Speaker 25 He was looking through you.

Speaker 30 There was another similarity that you had with Harriet that I wanted to play you. It's something that she said that reminded me of something you said on your first date with Bob.

Speaker 24 Okay.

Speaker 32 I remember one time we were going to a function at the synagogue and he was helping me unload my car and I said, oh, Bob, have you ever been married before?

Speaker 32 Because he was of the right age that maybe this was going to be a second marriage.

Speaker 28 And he said, why would you say that?

Speaker 32 It was a very visceral, immediate response. And I said, I don't know, I was just curious.

Speaker 32 And he just didn't respond.

Speaker 32 If there was nothing questionable about his previous marriage, you would have thought he would have said, yes, but my wife died, something like that, but he didn't.

Speaker 25 Well, that's crazy that she had that same experience and he had that same defensive, non-committal answer.

Speaker 30 Yeah, he hadn't straightened it out.

Speaker 25 So did the community of Minot welcome him in with open arms?

Speaker 30 Yeah, he was a big part of the flying community and

Speaker 30 he made bagels, which Harriet Epstein actually ran the only local bagel shop there. So they're really fulfilling the roles of the only two Jews pretty much in Minot Nautical.

Speaker 25 Oh, that is hysterical. Oh my gosh.
Okay.

Speaker 25 From what I've learned, it seems like Bob really settled into this new stage of his life in Minot.

Speaker 25 He contributed to the local paper, offering articles on how to avoid snowblower injuries.

Speaker 25 He even became the talk of the town after he performed emergency surgery on a young boy who was attacked by a tiger. Oh yes, you heard me right, a tiger.

Speaker 25 Apparently, it happened when the young boy and his family were posing for a photo with a tiger in a visiting exhibit at the North Dakota State Fair.

Speaker 25 It was at the end of a a long day, and the tiger lashed out, clawing the five-year-old's face.

Speaker 25 He was fine in the end after Bob patched him up.

Speaker 25 But that's not the kind of content we were looking for.

Speaker 3 Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Speaker 26 There was a period where there was a lull, where

Speaker 26 when he was writing snowblower injuries in the My Not newspaper, and then there was nothing for a while.

Speaker 25 Bob was living that good Midwestern life. He was married, he had a golden retriever, but back for us in Las Vegas, it felt like an era was over

Speaker 25 until the actual detectives showed up.

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Speaker 3 Being a homicide prosecutor is probably the best job a lawyer could ever have, in my view.

Speaker 25 Meet Daniel Bibb and his partner, Steven Sorako.

Speaker 3 Steve and I, we were friends when I first started. We're still friends today.
We're just knockaround kind of guys.

Speaker 25 Dan and Steve headed up the Manhattan DA's Cold Case Homicide Unit together, and they are everything you want two homicide prosecutors to be.

Speaker 25 Dan is a huge guy, easily six foot seven and built to own it. He's got a thick, serious mustache that's designed to strain Italian wedding soup and cop bistros all around the West Village.

Speaker 25 And Steve, well, he's about as New York as it gets. Half Italian, half Irish, but a little smaller than Dan.

Speaker 33 I'm not a shrimp. I'm like five foot nine, but this guy is the monster.

Speaker 25 They formed their new cold case unit in 1996, which meant that Dan and Steve could come out of the usual grind of active homicide cases around the city. They were living the dream.

Speaker 3 It was like working with my best friend. We could work with the detectives that we wanted to work with.
We could refuse cases if we wanted them. We could pick and choose.

Speaker 3 And we picked a lot of good ones and picked some lemons, too.

Speaker 25 When you're dealing with old cases, you end up with a lot of witnesses dotted around the country.

Speaker 25 And so Dan and Steve traveled extensively to interview people on cases, people who'd often aged and retired to warmer states, which must have been really hard.

Speaker 3 We were in Florida so much that I got to be good friends with the concierge at the Royal Palm Crown Plaza in South Beach.

Speaker 3 We found hotels that 18 holes of golf was included in the room rate.

Speaker 33 You know, I'm not staying at Motel 6.

Speaker 3 A pool, a beach, a golf course, a casino to play poker, and steaks.

Speaker 33 We like to have three-hour lunches. We like to have a cocktail after work, and we like investigating homicides.

Speaker 25 Dan and Steve were getting a reputation as people who win cold cases.

Speaker 25 So the DA's chief investigator, Andrew Rosenzweig, decided to bring them something personal, a case that had been weighing heavy on his conscience. Gail, Katz, Bierenbaum.

Speaker 25 Andy led the DA's original investigation into Gail's disappearance from 1986 to 87, and he had become totally convinced that Bob was responsible for her death.

Speaker 25 Though he couldn't mount a case against him, he concluded that Bob was the most dangerous man he had ever known. With only a couple years left before retirement, it was now or never.

Speaker 33 He came into my office one day and put a box on the table containing all the paperwork of the burn bomb case and said, why don't you and Dan take a look at this and see if you can go someplace.

Speaker 3 He said, it's a missing persons case.

Speaker 3 There's no body.

Speaker 25 I know what you're thinking. The torso.

Speaker 25 We'll get to it.

Speaker 24 Hold tight.

Speaker 3 And both Steve and I looked at Andy and said, you know, Andy, those cases are really, really

Speaker 3 hard to do.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 we agreed to review the case. We picked up the file.

Speaker 33 I took some of the material home that night to review. A thing that struck me, it would struck anybody, you don't have to be a homicide investigator, and there is

Speaker 33 what's called a DD5. A DD5 is a Detective Bureau document that synopsizes an interview.
And there's an interview with Dr. Bierenbaum's psychiatrist, Dr.
Michael Stone.

Speaker 33 And Dr. Michael Stone was so upset with his session with his patient, Dr.
Bierenbaum,

Speaker 33 that he's required. to fire off a letter to Gail

Speaker 33 that she is in danger and should get out of the house. It's called a Tarasoff letter.

Speaker 25 This was the mysterious letter that Gail told Denise and Elaine about, the one she was going to use to manipulate Bob into getting a divorce.

Speaker 33 That evening, I cold called Dr. Stone,

Speaker 33 fully expecting him to say, well, you know, I can't really discuss this. And I said, I reviewed some documents here, and it appears to me that Gail Katz was murdered, and that your patient, Dr.

Speaker 33 Birenbaum, probably killed her.

Speaker 33 You have anything to say about that?

Speaker 33 He said, and I pretty much quote: Of course he killed her. Dr.
Burenbaum is a dangerous psychopath.

Speaker 33 This case has been burning on my skull for the last dozen years.

Speaker 33 Then I figured I think we should take a closer look at this.

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Speaker 22 We've all heard the stories. Missing persons, double lives, suspicious basements.
But here's one mystery you don't need in your life. Why can't my kid learn to ride a bike?

Speaker 22 For a lot of families, it turns into a saga. Meltdowns in the driveway, scraped knees, and frustrated parents googling how to teach a kid to ride a bike without losing your mind.

Speaker 22 That's where Guardian Bikes comes in. Their bikes are lightweight, low to the ground, and built to help kids find their balance fast.
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Speaker 22 No training wheels, no tears, just high fives and I did it moments. It's everything learning to ride should be.
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Speaker 25 By 1998, Gail's sister Elaine Katz had become a very successful family lawyer. She had two kids, a husband, and a nice house out in Westchester.

Speaker 25 I don't want to say she had moved on, but her life just couldn't revolve around Bob anymore.

Speaker 25 And then she got a call.

Speaker 35 The phone rang, and my secretary said it's the district attorney's office.

Speaker 35 And I said to myself, oh, crap, one of my clients got in trouble.

Speaker 35 But I answered the phone,

Speaker 35 and it's Andy Rosenzweig.

Speaker 35 And although I might have chosen not to think about these things, it took me a half a second to realize he was on the phone. And I will never forget him saying,

Speaker 35 We have a cold case bureau in the DA's office, and we've had a lot of success, and I'd like to open up Gail's case.

Speaker 35 And I mentioned, you know, the torso, and I'll never forget him saying,

Speaker 27 What torso?

Speaker 35 So, the body was found in Staten Island. That made it a Staten Island investigation, apparently.

Speaker 35 And the Staten Island Police Department, another borough of the city of New York, didn't talk to the Manhattan Police Department?

Speaker 35 And the medical examiner of the city of New York didn't talk to the police department or the district attorneys?

Speaker 27 No,

Speaker 4 they

Speaker 3 didn't.

Speaker 35 So Andy and his assistant came up to see me. We went through

Speaker 35 my files.

Speaker 35 I had the autopsies. I had all of the records.
And they began the process of reinvestigation.

Speaker 25 Andy Rosenzweig wouldn't retire without getting him.

Speaker 25 Without at least trying.

Speaker 25 Andy took up the role of investigator again. He was responsible for finding early leads and handing over investigative information to Dan and Steve, who would then build the case towards prosecution.

Speaker 25 It wasn't going to be easy. Opening a cold case comes with some really clear obstacles, like fading memories, dead witnesses, or a lack of fresh forensic evidence.

Speaker 25 But there are multiple reasons why Dan and Steve had much better odds solving this case a decade later.

Speaker 25 Attitudes towards domestic violence and how to police it were changing dramatically, which was making prosecuting domestic violence cases easier, even cold cases.

Speaker 25 Take that time when Gail went to the police station and reported that Bob had strangled her after he caught her smoking.

Speaker 3 That police report sat in a file cabinet. This is 1985.

Speaker 3 Domestic violence wasn't a big deal, unfortunately.

Speaker 3 If that happened in 2022,

Speaker 3 that

Speaker 3 police report, that complaint report would have made its way to a detective and Birmbaum would have been arrested the next day.

Speaker 3 But the awareness of domestic violence and the cycle of domestic violence certainly didn't exist in 1985.

Speaker 28 When somebody went into a precinct and made a complaint like that, when there weren't necessarily dedicated domestic violence police officers who would take the complaint or follow up on it, it would sort of languish there.

Speaker 25 This is Cindy Knusher. She joined the Manhattan DA's office as a prosecutor in 1988, 1988, a year after Andy shelved Gail's case.

Speaker 28 The problem was domestic violence cases are not exactly like your run-of-the-mill other cases. The

Speaker 28 complaining witnesses or the victims that you're working with are dealing with trauma and dealing with history of violence and dealing with so many other things in their lives going on as a result of the abuse that are very different than the average crime victim.

Speaker 25 I've thought a lot about how you become Gail or someone like her. When things are clearly so toxic, so violent, why don't you just walk away? When is enough enough?

Speaker 25 But I know it's never that easy.

Speaker 25 You already know that I stayed longer than I should have. And Gail, she did try to alert her situation to the police, but she wasn't listened to.
And that is not her fault.

Speaker 28 I don't think that

Speaker 28 the cases were getting the attention and being handled the way that was best for the victims.

Speaker 28 And layered on that is

Speaker 28 historically women who came and made complaints of sexual assault or domestic violence were looked at as women who were scorned or making it up or, you know, wanted to get money.

Speaker 28 And I mean, some of that still exists today, right? But I do think it's rooted in that.

Speaker 25 Then in 1994, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act, putting $1.6 billion towards the investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women.

Speaker 25 It was the year Nicole Brown Simpson was violently killed, and the case against her husband, the football player O.J. Simpson, riveted the nation.

Speaker 25 Little by little, the public's understanding of domestic violence was changing.

Speaker 25 While it wasn't perfect, things also started to improve within the justice system. Police departments got training on how to deal with spousal abuse.

Speaker 25 DA offices around the country introduced victim impact prosecutors, attorneys who were specially trained to deal with domestic violence cases.

Speaker 25 And with all that going on, there was a feeling in the late 90s that maybe Gail's case would go differently if it was given another go.

Speaker 25 So Dan and Steve started with the basics.

Speaker 25 Looking over the files in detail, getting in touch with key witnesses from the past, and booking luxury hotels in the gambling capital of America.

Speaker 25 Next time, New York comes to Las Vegas and our investigations collide.

Speaker 3 When you pick up a cold case, the first thing you do is you redo everything that's been done in the past. And that's what we did.

Speaker 33 I think he was engaged to like three or four different women in Las Vegas. He dated the entire Jewish professional community.

Speaker 3 We interviewed every single one of the girlfriends out in Las Vegas.

Speaker 28 She said there's just something wrong with him.

Speaker 3 She actually accused him of killing Gail,

Speaker 3 and he remained silent.

Speaker 33 He never mentioned that he had rented that plane that afternoon.

Speaker 35 After a string of curses, I said to them, You have ripped the shred

Speaker 35 of closure that I have away from me.

Speaker 25 The Girlfriends is produced by Novel for iHeartRadio. For more from Novel, visit novel.audio.

Speaker 25 The series is hosted by me, Carol Fisher, and produced by Anna Sinfield.

Speaker 25 Our assistant producer is Julian Manugera-Patten, and our researcher is Madeline Parr.

Speaker 25 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 25 Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander.

Speaker 25 Music supervision by Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Louisa Gerstein.
Story development by Isaac Fisher. Willard Foxton is Creative Director of Development.

Speaker 25 Special thanks to Sean Glynn, David Waters, Maithily Rau, Katrina Norvell, David Wasserman, and Beth Ann McAluso.

Speaker 25 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 24 Novel.

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Speaker 16 Exactly.

Speaker 28 I did take a spin class today after work.

Speaker 25 Look at you.

Speaker 23 Restoring like a pro.

Speaker 3 I mean, I also sat down halfway through.

Speaker 23 Eh, close enough.

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Speaker 1 Top Reasons Technology Pros want to move to Ohio, a thriving tech industry with high-paying jobs for programmers, developers, database architects, and more.

Speaker 1 Ohio is the silicon heartland with the top tech brands and thousands of startups too. Shorter commute times mean more time for you.

Speaker 1 And since your dollar goes further in Ohio, it's like a cheat code for success.

Speaker 5 The tech career you want and a life you'll love.

Speaker 23 Have it all in the heart of it all.

Speaker 34 Learn more at callohiohome.com.

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.