Speaker 1: Novel. Hey listener. In this episode, we talk about domestic
Speaker 1: violence and death. There's also a bunch of empowered women,
Speaker 1: New York's feistiest young reporter, and an introduction to a
Speaker 1: new woman with a great nickname, and of course more swearing,
Speaker 1: because you know, I am who I am. If you
Speaker 1: do listen and are impacted by any of our themes,
Speaker 1: you can reach out to no More, a domestic violence
Speaker 1: charity we've partnered with. They have lots of great resources
Speaker 1: to help you or your loved ones. You can find
Speaker 1: them at no More dot org. That's noo Moore dot org.
Speaker 1: In November of nineteen ninety eight, shortly after the Horso
Speaker 1: was removed from Gail's grave, Bob and Janet welcomed their
Speaker 1: first child into the world, a daughter. The Club and
Speaker 1: I learned that Janet was pregnant when the DA came
Speaker 1: to Las Vegas. We talked about the baby every now
Speaker 1: and then, wondering when the do date was and what
Speaker 1: Bob would be like as a father. We didn't know anything,
Speaker 1: but my god, we were curious. So can you imagine
Speaker 1: how I felt. My producer Anna tracked down their nannies. Hi,
Speaker 1: sorry for hanging up on you.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to make sure it was free.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good thing the beer and Bounce had two nannies,
Speaker 1: one for the day and one for the night.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 1: Hi, how are you doing good?
Speaker 4: How are you all?
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm good, Which means almost twenty four hour
Speaker 1: visibility into Bob's North Dakota home. Now, the film recordings
Speaker 1: aren't so good, but this is definitely one of the
Speaker 1: most exciting eighty moments of our investigation because, knowing all
Speaker 1: I know now, it feels like everyone had an external
Speaker 1: view of Bob and min not they'd interact with him
Speaker 1: as a patient or a neighbor. It was rarely as
Speaker 1: intimate as someone sharing your home. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: how Bob was behaving behind closed doors as the DA
Speaker 1: prosecutors were closing in on him. I also just wanted
Speaker 1: to know if Janet was okay and their daughter.
Speaker 5: I was more involved with Janet, but Bob would come
Speaker 5: in on Thursday or Fridays.
Speaker 1: This is Barb Cooper, the day nanny.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they feel real comfortable around either one of them, necessarily,
Speaker 5: but I stuck it out. I loved the child and
Speaker 5: loved what I was doing.
Speaker 4: He was weird, he was bizarre. I've never met anyone
Speaker 4: like him before.
Speaker 1: That's Cheryl Sherrick, the night nanny. She used to arrive
Speaker 1: in the evening and sleep in the basement with the baby,
Speaker 1: who at that point required feeding every two to three hours.
Speaker 4: The thing is they had a crip or anything. She's
Speaker 4: left in a car seat, which is not very comfortable
Speaker 4: for a baby.
Speaker 1: For Cheryl, the vibe of the house was just well off,
Speaker 1: especially when Bob was there.
Speaker 4: The house was always closed up. I could never open
Speaker 4: the blinds or anything, and he wouldn't let us answer.
Speaker 6: The door to me.
Speaker 4: She was always kind of creepy. They loved him as
Speaker 4: a doctor's here, but he would never treat anyone that smoked.
Speaker 4: He asked me if I smoked. If I did, they
Speaker 4: wouldn't hire me.
Speaker 1: Overall, the nanny seemed to remember a home a little
Speaker 1: like this. The Beer and Bombs lived in a town
Speaker 1: called Grand Forks. Bob would fly to work at the
Speaker 1: hospital and min not and come back home for the weekends,
Speaker 1: so it was mostly just Janet, the nannies, and their baby.
Speaker 1: The nannies both described Janet as a loving mom who
Speaker 1: could at times also be a little emotionless but they
Speaker 1: never saw anything bad happen between her and Bob. When
Speaker 1: Janet got pregnant, she stopped working as a gynecologist and
Speaker 1: started studying law. She was also writing a bit on
Speaker 1: the side, something she'd done a little before, even once
Speaker 1: consulting on scripts for Er and Bob. He was being Bob.
Speaker 1: He loved as badly behaved golden retriever, worked hard, and
Speaker 1: flew a lot. One thing both nannies agree on was
Speaker 1: he was really sweet with his daughter. He seemed to
Speaker 1: love being a dad. But Cheryl did have one really
Speaker 1: weird experience.
Speaker 4: They had me in the basement and they slept upstairs.
Speaker 4: There was one night he came into the nursery and
Speaker 4: I woke up and he was watching me sleep, and
Speaker 4: I don't know what he was planning to do, but
Speaker 4: he took off.
Speaker 1: I imagine at this point Bob felt invincible, But the fact
Speaker 1: is he was being investigated that whole time. And on
Speaker 1: the morning of November thirtieth, nineteen ninety eight, just three
Speaker 1: weeks after his daughter was born, he was about to
Speaker 1: get a rude awakening. I'm Carol Fisher and from the
Speaker 1: teams at Novel and iHeartRadio, You're listening to The Girlfriends
Speaker 1: episode seven Cowabunga.
Speaker 6: We had pretty much finished our investigation, and we decided
Speaker 6: that he had already spent literally tens of thousands of
Speaker 6: dollars going across the country doing this investigation would be
Speaker 6: worth a couple of plane tickets to North Dakota to
Speaker 6: try and see what he had to say.
Speaker 1: On November thirtieth, DA Prosecutor Dan Bibb sent the case
Speaker 1: investigators Andy Rosenswag and Tommy Pond to mine Not with
Speaker 1: the mission ask Bob if he was still represented by counsel,
Speaker 1: and if not, get him to talk on the spot,
Speaker 1: something they couldn't do if he was lawyered. Up that morning,
Speaker 1: they lurked around Bob's clinic and waited for him to arrive.
Speaker 1: When they spotted him approaching the building, they sped towards
Speaker 1: him on foot and confronted him with their ready prepared script.
Speaker 1: They had a feeling that Bob would see them coming,
Speaker 1: that someone in Las Vegas would have told him that
Speaker 1: they'd been sniffing around, but instead Bob just stood there
Speaker 1: and stared back at them like a deer in headlights.
Speaker 6: He basically says, I'm still represented by an attorney, and
Speaker 6: that was that.
Speaker 1: For Steve Sorako, the other prosecutor, it wasn't just about
Speaker 1: getting him to talk though disguise his intel gathering, the
Speaker 1: DA was sending a message.
Speaker 7: What he knows is this is not over. This sense
Speaker 7: of security I have up here up north. The veil
Speaker 7: has been pierced and they're still looking at me. And
Speaker 7: he knows he's guilty.
Speaker 6: And within a half hour there's a phone call from
Speaker 6: his lawyer and he said, Dan, this is Scott Greenfield.
Speaker 6: What's going on. Well, we're investigating the disappearance of Gail
Speaker 6: Burnbound and we want to know if he wanted to
Speaker 6: talk to us. You know, there is out raised and
Speaker 6: violing right the council. Scott, nobody violently anybody's right to council.
Speaker 6: As soon as my guys opened their mouth, he said,
Speaker 6: I'm represented by an attorney, and they walked away. Nobody
Speaker 6: violated anything. And he said, are you going to the
Speaker 6: grand jury? I can't tell you whether we are or
Speaker 6: we are, so grand jury is a secret proceeding. Can't
Speaker 6: do it in New York State. A defendant if he
Speaker 6: is aware that there is a proceeding in the grand
Speaker 6: jury going on that may involve him has an absolute
Speaker 6: right to testify before that grand jury. Within a day
Speaker 6: or two, I had a letter serving statutory notice that
Speaker 6: doctor Burnbaum wanted to testify before the grand jury.
Speaker 1: Dan knew that Bob was never actually going to testify
Speaker 1: in front of the grand jury. That's pretty rare, but
Speaker 1: it's a clever trick. Attorneys used to make sure they're
Speaker 1: notified if a grand jury is ever assembled, then they
Speaker 1: can keep tabs on the result and get their ducks
Speaker 1: in a row. That's what Greenfield was doing. He was
Speaker 1: essentially setting up a notification service, and nearly a year later,
Speaker 1: on September twenty second, nineteen ninety nine, Greenfield got what
Speaker 1: he was asking for.
Speaker 6: I wrote him a letter saying, here you go, here's
Speaker 6: your opportunity. And he called me up and he said,
Speaker 6: what the hell, what are you doing? I said, Scott,
Speaker 6: you serve notice. I just told you that the grand
Speaker 6: jury is going on. What do you want to do.
Speaker 1: At some point in late September or early October, Bob
Speaker 1: was in New Jersey attending the wedding of his close
Speaker 1: friend and flying buddy, Ernie Sussman. The night before the
Speaker 1: big day, Ernie invited some of his closest friends, including
Speaker 1: Bob and Janet, for dinner at an Italian restaurant.
Speaker 3: I believe it was Friday evening, and I think there
Speaker 3: were four couple so some of my friends. We went
Speaker 3: out to a nice restaurant that evening, and I don't
Speaker 3: know how the subject came up, but we were talking
Speaker 3: about this doctor in Buffalo. His name was Anthony Pignataro,
Speaker 3: and he ended up doing plastic surgery and doing I
Speaker 3: guess liposuctions and even breast augments, even though he wasn't
Speaker 3: a bird certified plastic surgeon, and he ended up killing
Speaker 3: a woman. But like two thirds of the way into
Speaker 3: the story, Bobby turned white. And I never saw him
Speaker 3: break a sweat no matter what he did, whether he
Speaker 3: was in surgery or flying in that bad weather, but
Speaker 3: he just turned white like a ghost. And next thing,
Speaker 3: you know, he told Johnny, you know, I'm tired. I
Speaker 3: think we need to get going. After he left, we
Speaker 3: made comment boy like he really blew out of here
Speaker 3: in a hurry. It was just very unusual.
Speaker 1: I can't say if Bob knew it or not, but
Speaker 1: while he was running away from dinner parties in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Women around the country were being called to testify against
Speaker 1: him in New York. A grand jury is a process
Speaker 1: where sixteen to twenty three jurors are randomly selected to
Speaker 1: come to court a few days a month, and here
Speaker 1: prosecutors lay out their case, witnesses and all. There is
Speaker 1: no judge, no defendant, and it's all in secret. At
Speaker 1: the end of the process, which can last weeks or months,
Speaker 1: the jurors decide if charges should be brought against the defendant.
Speaker 1: A proper trial would then take place where they'll be
Speaker 1: found guilty or not guilty. Now I'm explaining this because
Speaker 1: I didn't understand what it meant when Dan and Steve
Speaker 1: first reached out to me and asked me to testify.
Speaker 1: The only thing I was sure of is I didn't
Speaker 1: want to do it, so I refuse to go. Instead,
Speaker 1: I spent the next few months wondering what was going on.
Speaker 1: Sometimes curiosity would get the better of me, so me,
Speaker 1: Mom and Mindy we would call up Bob's clinic in
Speaker 1: North Dakota to see if he was still accepting appointments.
Speaker 1: When the receptionist started to offer us dates or suggest
Speaker 1: a consultation, we would hang up No arrest yet I
Speaker 1: guess until tonight the doctor under arrest.
Speaker 8: He's charged with killing his wife.
Speaker 1: Tops say he dumped her body in the ocean, throwing
Speaker 1: it from a plane. On December eighth, nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: the grand jury cast their vote.
Speaker 9: Fourteen years ago, a surgeon in New York City reported
Speaker 9: his wife missing. Now he's being charged with her murder.
Speaker 9: The investigation went from Long Island to Las Vegas and
Speaker 9: wound up in North Dakota.
Speaker 1: In the days following the indictment, the news was everywhere
Speaker 1: and they did not spare any details.
Speaker 10: They say they have new witnesses, new evidence, enough to
Speaker 10: build a murder case even without the body.
Speaker 11: I remember the day I was getting ready for work.
Speaker 1: This is Denise Cassenbaum, Gail's best friend.
Speaker 8: I was getting dressed in my apartment and my sister call,
Speaker 8: She said, turn on the news.
Speaker 10: This almost reads like a screenplay. But what's scary is
Speaker 10: that this is a true crime.
Speaker 1: Turns out. Back in the nineties, news reporters were not
Speaker 1: too concerned with holding back the details before they had
Speaker 1: been proven in court.
Speaker 10: A loving wife would complained constantly about our husband's violent temper,
Speaker 10: but instead of getting away from him. She tried to
Speaker 10: help and sadly paid for it with her life.
Speaker 5: I was just like, oh my god, finally, you know,
Speaker 5: I was screaming.
Speaker 10: I was just Yes, she was never seen again, and
Speaker 10: her family and cops didn't buy the doc's story.
Speaker 12: We've always been certain that it was him.
Speaker 13: He is the last person that saw her.
Speaker 12: His story regarding her whereabouts and what happened never made
Speaker 12: any sense.
Speaker 13: Seeing in court being accused of murdering my sister was
Speaker 13: such a relief.
Speaker 12: I'm very gratified that after fourteen years, the person who
Speaker 12: murdered my sister is finally standing in a courtroom being
Speaker 12: charged with that murder. I'm only very very sorry that
Speaker 12: my parents are not alive to be here to see this.
Speaker 12: And I told him responsible for their deaths as well,
Speaker 12: because they died of a broken heart.
Speaker 10: This was a tireless investigation. Believe me, For two das,
Speaker 10: here are two guys that you don't want after you
Speaker 10: if you're the bad guy.
Speaker 6: Steve and I had agreed that we would be seeking
Speaker 6: half a million dollars baill, so we asked her five
Speaker 6: hundred thousand dollars and the attorney goes, yeah, okay, no,
Speaker 6: Megan Beer, and Baum.
Speaker 10: Was released after putting up a half million bucks in bail. Now,
Speaker 10: if he's convicted of murder too, the doc's next big
Speaker 10: trip will be upstate for the comfort of a four
Speaker 10: x eight cel twenty five years to life.
Speaker 1: I guess me and the other girl old friends were
Speaker 1: onto something all along, and it turns out another woman
Speaker 1: was too. When Bob was charged with Gail's murder, it
Speaker 1: was like a punch to the gut. Everybody wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about it, but I didn't have enough wind left
Speaker 1: in me to say his name. Instead, they'd call Mindy
Speaker 1: to ask for the latest gossip. But everything it changed.
Speaker 1: It was a real case now, with the real victim
Speaker 1: and a real potential murderer. Even Mindy wasn't excited by
Speaker 1: that anymore.
Speaker 11: There was a shift from the sensational and the speculative
Speaker 11: to the real and present, so it was no longer funny.
Speaker 1: We were really starting to doubt ourselves. If, like the
Speaker 1: investigators were saying, this case hinged on the testimony of
Speaker 1: all of us women who knew Bob, then what if
Speaker 1: we had gotten it wrong. What if we'd let in
Speaker 1: our game go too far?
Speaker 11: What if he's not guilty, will he come after us
Speaker 11: for slander? And if he is guilty, will he come
Speaker 11: after us?
Speaker 1: After us? But little did we know that while we
Speaker 1: were starting to doubt ourselves, another girlfriend was about to surface.
Speaker 6: It was right after Burnbaum had been indicted. I got
Speaker 6: a phone call from a woman and she refused to
Speaker 6: identify herself. And she actually says to me, oh my god,
Speaker 6: I slept with this guy right after his wife disappeared.
Speaker 6: And I'm literally on the phone motioning to Steve to
Speaker 6: come into my office and basically telling him there's somebody
Speaker 6: we need to talk to.
Speaker 7: I said, what's it all about, Goodwill, there's another one
Speaker 7: of his one of her better word girlfriends has just surfaced.
Speaker 6: She refused to identify herself. She said, I'm afraid of him.
Speaker 6: She said. She called me back in a couple of days.
Speaker 6: A couple of days later, phone rings. It's the woman
Speaker 6: I had spoken to a day or two before, and
Speaker 6: she said, I'm Cary Carojuana.
Speaker 14: I know Bob Bernbaum. We worked together in my Minas
Speaker 14: Medical Center in Brooklyn in nineteen eighty four nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 14: and this is my story.
Speaker 6: I said, we'll see in a day or two booked
Speaker 6: flights to San Francisco, flew in one day, drove down
Speaker 6: to San Jose. Next we met in the diner of
Speaker 6: all places, and sat there while she told us the story.
Speaker 1: And told them that when she first met Bob, she
Speaker 1: was a nurse working on the cardiovascular unit where Bob
Speaker 1: was undertaking a residency as a surgical intern. She didn't
Speaker 1: think much of them. He'd gotten a reputation for having
Speaker 1: a terrible bedside manner with patients and their families, and
Speaker 1: he was rude to the nurses. But outside of work,
Speaker 1: they had attended the same parties, and they would go
Speaker 1: to clubs or restaurants with the other young hospital staff.
Speaker 1: Karen even met Gail a few times, only enough to
Speaker 1: make introductions, but she remembers her as small and submissive.
Speaker 1: There was always a feeling that things were just not right.
Speaker 15: He was at the nurses station in the cardiovscer I
Speaker 15: see you, and he was yelling at somebody on the phone,
Speaker 15: and it was obvious it was Gail that he was
Speaker 15: talking to, and I had to tell him a couple times,
Speaker 15: you know, please lower your voice. I mean, the nurses
Speaker 15: station was right next to where we recovered patients. From
Speaker 15: open heart surgery. It wasn't appropriate for him to be
Speaker 15: yelling at anybody at the nurses station.
Speaker 1: Whatever people thought about Bob and Gail's relationship, when Gail
Speaker 1: went missing, it shook the staff.
Speaker 15: I remember the first time I saw him come back.
Speaker 15: He looked horrible. He hadn't shaved, he was very disheveled.
Speaker 15: There evidently had been no word as to where she
Speaker 15: was or if she had run away, if something had
Speaker 15: happened to her and someone had taken her. We didn't know.
Speaker 15: In fact, I do remember going out to Central Park
Speaker 15: with people that I worked with, nurses, and we put
Speaker 15: up posters in Central Park with her picture.
Speaker 1: Sometime at the end of July, about three weeks after
Speaker 1: Gail went missing, Karen rented a little beach house in
Speaker 1: the Hamptons for the week, just a vacation. Before she left,
Speaker 1: one of her colleagues told her that Bob was also
Speaker 1: going to be out in the Hamptons that week.
Speaker 15: She had said, you know, why don't you get together
Speaker 15: with Bob. Maybe you could go out to dinner with him,
Speaker 15: give him some companionship. He's really lost without Gail.
Speaker 1: So Karen obliged. After arriving in the Hampton's, She drove
Speaker 1: over to his rental house, which was a really large
Speaker 1: building with the pool just away from the ocean. Karen
Speaker 1: parked her car and Bob drove them out to a
Speaker 1: seafood restaurant on the water in sag Harbor. Over the meal,
Speaker 1: she started gently probing Bob for information about Gail.
Speaker 15: He said that in the last month he had hired
Speaker 15: a private investigator and they found Gail in California and
Speaker 15: she was waiting tables on the coast. I mean, it
Speaker 15: didn't sound totally right, but he kind of convinced me
Speaker 15: that that was what he knew. At the time.
Speaker 6: What Bob had told Karen was a lie. We spoke
Speaker 6: to the investigator and the investigator said, absolutely not, that's
Speaker 6: not true, but never found evidence of Gail anywhere.
Speaker 1: Bob also described how Gail was a difficult wife and
Speaker 1: how on the day she went missing, they'd had a
Speaker 1: big argument.
Speaker 15: They said she had no shoes on, and I said
Speaker 15: to him, I said, who lives in New York City
Speaker 15: and doesn't wear shoes to walk to Central Park from
Speaker 15: their apartment.
Speaker 6: Again, another embellishment lie about what had happened that morning.
Speaker 1: Sitting in the diner, Dan and Steve knew they'd stumbled
Speaker 1: onto something big. These are exactly the kinds of details
Speaker 1: they wanted, Bob telling different versions of Gail's disappearance, Bob lying.
Speaker 1: They even gave their new star witness.
Speaker 7: A nickname, Karen Cawabunga Karen Cowabunga.
Speaker 1: When Dan and Steve saw Karen Cowabunga, they saw a
Speaker 1: star witness. But I just see myself because just like me.
Speaker 1: After Bob told Karen all about Gayle's disappearance, she still
Speaker 1: went home with him.
Speaker 15: I mean, he was different than he had been. I
Speaker 15: went from dreading even talking to him at work, to
Speaker 15: really sympathizing with his plight. I hadn't been with anybody
Speaker 15: in a while, so I think I was probably lonely horny,
Speaker 15: I cass, you could say. I mean, he was pretty persuasive,
Speaker 15: and I remember climbing upstairs to the bedroom.
Speaker 1: Back in New York, they kept seeing each other. They'd
Speaker 1: go out for Japanese food, they went dancing in clubs
Speaker 1: down in the West Village. On the weekends, Bob would
Speaker 1: go back to the Hampton's and party at West Hampton
Speaker 1: Beach's famous club, the Marrakesh. He ditched his ll Bean
Speaker 1: clothing for Saturday Night Fever shirts with the shirttails tucked
Speaker 1: right in. All of this just a month or two
Speaker 1: after his wife had dispeared.
Speaker 15: I was still having fun with him at that point,
Speaker 15: probably not even thinking about Gail, I'll be honest. And
Speaker 15: he wasn't either.
Speaker 1: But after only six weeks of dating, Karen says, their
Speaker 1: relationship literally hit the curb.
Speaker 15: We had gone out to dinner and we argued at
Speaker 15: the restaurant and we were in a cab. My recollection
Speaker 15: is a little bit fuzzy, just because I think I
Speaker 15: was pretty drunk at the time, but I remember the
Speaker 15: cab was still moving, and somehow he had pushed me
Speaker 15: out of the door onto the curb. And I remember
Speaker 15: my best friend in New York at the time was
Speaker 15: woman Carol, who was a nurse at my Moonodes and
Speaker 15: I called her and I was hysterical, crying. And I've
Speaker 15: talked to her since and she said I kept saying
Speaker 15: that he hurt me. He hurt me.
Speaker 1: Reached out to Bob for comment on this, but he
Speaker 1: never responded. These stories, like Bob allegedly pushing a woman
Speaker 1: out of a moving car are the ones I care
Speaker 1: about most. In fact, there's a lot I wish i'd
Speaker 1: known before I met Bob, some of which never made
Speaker 1: it into trial. That's after the break. On a warm
Speaker 1: day in early August two thousand, a young New York
Speaker 1: Times reporter by the name of Catherine Eban walked into
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Criminal Court for the first time.
Speaker 2: I was completely new to legal reporting, but the beat
Speaker 2: had been sold to me. As you develop sources for
Speaker 2: life and you cover interesting trials, so you get a
Speaker 2: lot of ink that way.
Speaker 1: Catherine had been told that if you want to get
Speaker 1: ahead on the biggest cases, you have to cover the
Speaker 1: pre trial hearings to secure an early scoop. The only
Speaker 1: problem is it was notoriously boring, you know.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily considered a plum beat, because you're sitting in
Speaker 2: this dusty old press room and there's just a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff you have to cover that is not necessarily fascinating.
Speaker 2: But this was the first one.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing about this stage in the legal process
Speaker 1: is that the hearings are close to everyone apart from
Speaker 1: the press, judge, lawyers, defendants and witnesses who were summoned.
Speaker 1: So Catherine was one of the only people present during
Speaker 1: Bob's pre trial hearing, not even a lane was invited
Speaker 1: in consider this a sneak peek.
Speaker 2: I remember it vividly because it was August and the
Speaker 2: air conditioning in this courtroom was insane, and it was
Speaker 2: absolutely empty. I was one of the few people sitting
Speaker 2: in the audience, shivering with cold with the judge up there.
Speaker 8: My name is Leslie Crocker Snyder, and I was the
Speaker 8: judge who presided over the Barenbaum case in two thousand.
Speaker 8: Some of the defendants called me the ice Princess, which
Speaker 8: was kind of ridiculous because actually I'm a very warm,
Speaker 8: outgoing person, but not on the bench.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes Berreenbaum wasn't even there, so it was
Speaker 2: just his lawyers, and as I sat listening, this kind
Speaker 2: of remarkable story was unfolding, and I got very interested
Speaker 2: in it.
Speaker 1: The primary purpose of pretrial hearings is for the judge
Speaker 1: to decide what testimonial evidence is permissible in court. In
Speaker 1: Bob's case, this process went on for the best part
Speaker 1: of nine months, and in that time they covered a
Speaker 1: lot of ground. But for the prosecution, there was one
Speaker 1: major argument whether or not the psychiatrist's testimony should be included.
Speaker 1: After Bob strangled Gail in nineteen eighty three, she demanded
Speaker 1: that he went to therapy. His first appointment was with
Speaker 1: doctor Stanley Bone, who after one session asked Bob if
Speaker 1: he could talk to Gaile on the phone. Like I said,
Speaker 1: Elaine wasn't there, but she requested the redacted transcripts afterwards.
Speaker 1: Here she is reading doctor Stanley Bone's testimony from that
Speaker 1: cold pre trial hearing.
Speaker 13: Question did you call her essentially to warn her?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 13: Question and at that time did you warn her that
Speaker 13: she may be in danger? And the witness said yes.
Speaker 1: After just one session, doctor Bone called Gail to warn her,
Speaker 1: and then he refused to treat Bob again. Instead, he
Speaker 1: referred him to another psychiatrist named doctor Shelley Duran, who
Speaker 1: deja vu also asked Bob if she could speak.
Speaker 13: To Gail on the phone, and then the question was
Speaker 13: did you feel at that time you had an ethical
Speaker 13: duty to warn her that she might be in danger
Speaker 13: from the defendant, and doctor Juran answered, I didn't know
Speaker 13: if I would hear her voice.
Speaker 1: Doctor Duran also refused to treat Bob again, and he
Speaker 1: moved on to his third psychiatrist, doctor Michael Stone. Who
Speaker 1: again after just one session, decided he needed to contact Gail.
Speaker 1: He wrote her something called a Pterosov letter. That's the
Speaker 1: letter Gail told Denise and Laine about the one she
Speaker 1: was going to use to blackmail Bob.
Speaker 13: It's on doctor Stone's letterhead Doctor Michael Stone, Central Park, West,
Speaker 13: New York City. It's written to my sister, Gail Bierrembaum
Speaker 13: in eighty fifth Street, and it says I have been
Speaker 13: advised by doctor Stone that, for reasons of my own safety,
Speaker 13: I should at this time live apart from my husband,
Speaker 13: Doctor Robert Biurembaum. I further understand that, owing to the
Speaker 13: unpredictable nature of my husband's physical assaults, and to the
Speaker 13: chronic nature of the character logical abnormalities that underlie these assaults,
Speaker 13: no firm date can as yet be fixed as to
Speaker 13: when it might be safe to resume living together. If
Speaker 13: I do not heed this advice, I must accept the consequences,
Speaker 13: including the possibility of personal injury or death at the
Speaker 13: hands of my husband, and absolve Doctor Stone of responsibility
Speaker 13: for any such eventuality. And there's a line at the
Speaker 13: end of it from my sister's signature, And I don't
Speaker 13: believe she ever signed it.
Speaker 1: The Pterosoft letter is named after a woman named Tatiana Terrasov,
Speaker 1: who was murdered by her a strange boyfriend after he
Speaker 1: told his therapist that he intended to kill her. The
Speaker 1: legal requirement to send a letter like this was introduced
Speaker 1: after it was determined that his therapist had an ethical
Speaker 1: duty to warn Todtiana that she was in danger. In
Speaker 1: addition to sending the Pterosoft letter, Doctor Stone gave Bob
Speaker 1: an offer. He said he would continue to treat under
Speaker 1: two conditions. First, doctor Stone asked to talk to Bob's parents,
Speaker 1: and then he said he wanted them to pay for
Speaker 1: his life insurance just in case anything should happen to
Speaker 1: him as a result of treating their son. Bob refused
Speaker 1: the insurance request, but he did let doctor Stone talk
Speaker 1: to his mom and dad.
Speaker 2: Of course, Beerenbaum's attorneys did not want this testimony introduced
Speaker 2: because it spoke to his motive, and the psychiatric associations
Speaker 2: in the day were watching this case closely because of
Speaker 2: the battle over whether this testimony was going to be admissible.
Speaker 2: So that turned out to be a very rich vein
Speaker 2: for reporting the implications for patient confidentiality were pretty profound.
Speaker 1: It's truly damning evidence, but if the judge let it in,
Speaker 1: it would be setting a dangerous precedent for future cases,
Speaker 1: and who knows how that could be exploited.
Speaker 6: Our argument was that since Bob had authorized doctor Stone
Speaker 6: to share information about their sessions with Gail and with
Speaker 6: his parents, that that was a waiver of privilege. The
Speaker 6: judge disagreed with us.
Speaker 8: I made some rulings that I think both sides thought
Speaker 8: were controversial, in that I would not allow the three
Speaker 8: doctors to testify on the ground that although the doctors
Speaker 8: and the defendant had spoken to other people, namely the
Speaker 8: defendant's parents and to Gail Berenbaum, Nevertheless, the doctor patient
Speaker 8: privilege had not been waived because the people to whom
Speaker 8: the relationship was disclosed were only involved so that the
Speaker 8: psychologists could aid the defendant in his treatment.
Speaker 1: We don't know exactly what it was that made the
Speaker 1: psychiatrists react to Bob the way they did, but my producer,
Speaker 1: Anna has been looking into it, and this is what
Speaker 1: we learned based on interviews doctor Stone had previously given.
Speaker 1: Anna learned that during his first session with Bob, while
Speaker 1: discussing the time he strangled Gil for smoking. Bob told
Speaker 1: doctor Stone it was not the first time he had
Speaker 1: strangled a woman. Back when Bob was still a medical intern,
Speaker 1: before he even met Gail, he was engaged to a
Speaker 1: girl he met in medical school. In these interviews, Stone
Speaker 1: said Bob told him that not only did he strangle her,
Speaker 1: but he also admitted to killing her cat in a
Speaker 1: fit of rage after they broke up. We have tried
Speaker 1: to confirm the story about Bob's first fiance, but sadly,
Speaker 1: the woman in question died from cancer last year and
Speaker 1: she'd never spoken publicly about her relationship with Bob. Anna
Speaker 1: did track down her family, who said she was a
Speaker 1: very private person, but over a series of texts, her
Speaker 1: sister confirmed that Bob had been abusive towards her. She
Speaker 1: didn't know the details, But the fact is this, if
Speaker 1: doctor Michael Stone is telling the truth, this information comes
Speaker 1: from Bob himself. Either way, There's something about these pre
Speaker 1: trials that I find very hard to swallow. I understand
Speaker 1: the point of the justice system. I understand the concept
Speaker 1: of innocent until proven guilty, and I understand the importance
Speaker 1: of doctor patient privilege. But as a woman who fell
Speaker 1: for Bob's charms. These details that were held back feel
Speaker 1: really significant to me. After the pre trials were over,
Speaker 1: Dan and Steve's attention turned to prepping for the real thing.
Speaker 6: It's very important. It's almost like a movie.
Speaker 7: A trial is a production, and the order of witnesses
Speaker 7: as to how they're going to impact and fit together
Speaker 7: is something that has to be thought out. You just
Speaker 7: told randomly pick names out of a hat. He'll be first,
Speaker 7: he'll be second, she'll be third.
Speaker 1: And that's when, after months of telling them I didn't
Speaker 1: want to be involved, they subpoenaed me. I had to
Speaker 1: go to New York. I had to stand in the
Speaker 1: witness box and for the first time in four years,
Speaker 1: I had to come face to face with my ex boyfriend, Bob.
Speaker 1: That's next time.
Speaker 8: On the girlfriends, they painted her as a woman with
Speaker 8: a lot of problems, very needy, once suicidal, totally promiscuous.
Speaker 8: It was quote unquote blaming the victim.
Speaker 6: It's a five minute a quinta. If you believe this guy.
Speaker 7: Once you're thinks she's alive. When we say he's dead,
Speaker 7: that case is over.
Speaker 6: There were audible gasps from the jury.
Speaker 16: I remember turning to my brother and saying what did
Speaker 16: they say?
Speaker 1: The Girlfriends is produced by Novel for Ourheart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The series is
Speaker 1: hosted by me Carol Fisher and produced by Anna Sinfield.
Speaker 1: Our assistant producer is Julian Manu Gera Patten, and our
Speaker 1: researcher is Madeline Parr. The editor is Veronica Simmons. Max
Speaker 1: O'Brien is our executive producer. Our fact checker is Valeria Rocca.
Speaker 1: Production management from Sharie Houston and Charlotte woolf Sound design,
Speaker 1: mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempsen and Nicholas Alexander. Music
Speaker 1: supervision by Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Luisa Gerstein.
Speaker 1: Story development by Isaac Fisher. Willard Foxton is creative director
Speaker 1: of Development. Special thanks to Shawn Glynn, David Waters, might
Speaker 1: Lely Raw, Katrina Norvel, David Wasserman, and beth Anne Mcaluso.
Speaker 1: We did reach out to Bob and his legal team
Speaker 1: to ask if he'd like to comment on the podcast,
Speaker 1: but we never heard back.
Speaker 6: Novel