Speaker 1: Novel.
Speaker 2: Hey, listener, in this episode there's mentioned a murder, domestic violence,
Speaker 2: drug abuse, and a dead body, but I do not
Speaker 2: go into graphic detail. You also hear from a tenacious
Speaker 2: cast of women and friends whose fight for justice is
Speaker 2: truly truly inspiring. If you do listen and are impacted
Speaker 2: by any of our themes, you can reach out to
Speaker 2: no More, a domestic violence charity we've partnered with. They
Speaker 2: have lots of great resources to help you or your
Speaker 2: loved ones. You can find them at no More dot org.
Speaker 2: That's no More dot org, mindy, a little louder? Hello, perfect,
Speaker 2: So we're all on record. Yeah, and there goes your.
Speaker 3: Talking them in the car?
Speaker 2: Give me a she's putting her dogs in the car?
Speaker 4: Who does that?
Speaker 2: Mindy? Yes, Carol, we're starting right now. Are you sitting thankfully?
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 2: I've learned so much about Gail recently. Gail was this
Speaker 2: really educated young woman. She was pretty, she was tiny,
Speaker 2: and she actually reminds me a little bit of me.
Speaker 3: That does sound like you, Smart and petitte and attractive.
Speaker 2: You know what else she had in common with us?
Speaker 2: With you and I and our women friends?
Speaker 3: Dark haired? Which Jewish women.
Speaker 2: Besides dark haired Jewish women with great personalities. She not
Speaker 2: only thought, she believed that she could fix him and
Speaker 2: you and I've been there with men.
Speaker 3: I can relate to that. But I don't think I
Speaker 3: can fix them. I think I can fix me to
Speaker 3: adapt to them. And I wonder who was fixing whom here.
Speaker 2: That's a great point.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: The other thing I'm not proud of is that I'm
Speaker 2: not happy with some of the laughter we had over
Speaker 2: this situation. Like I look back and I go, what
Speaker 2: the hell was I thinking. It's not that we were
Speaker 2: doing anything wrong. We didn't know. But as I've come
Speaker 2: to No Gail, as I've come to get acquainted with Elane,
Speaker 2: we all have a very common bond and all could
Speaker 2: have been great friends.
Speaker 3: You know, in our weird Harriet the spy way, we're
Speaker 3: hoisting a red flag. There's something dangerous. We are concerned
Speaker 3: about this. I mean, really, Carol, look at how much
Speaker 3: angst we had about doing this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I went kicking and screaming.
Speaker 3: So there is a lot of baggage that we carry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, part of me doing this mindy is
Speaker 2: about like it's just time to own my story for
Speaker 2: christ sake. The domestic abuse or the controlling behaviors of men.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to define most women. May that just
Speaker 2: be part of our journey. May not that be a
Speaker 2: complete story.
Speaker 3: You know, your definition of self changes daily. It's like Hamilton,
Speaker 3: who tells you story? Because after you can't tell your
Speaker 3: own story? Who tells your story?
Speaker 2: I look back on that time and even now. I mean,
Speaker 2: you supported me then, and you support me now.
Speaker 3: And I support you because you're my crazy friend.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 2: I miss you.
Speaker 1: I love you.
Speaker 2: I love you too. And get the dogs out of
Speaker 2: the freaking car would you? From the teams at novel
Speaker 2: and iHeartRadio, I'm Carol Fisher and you're listening to the
Speaker 2: Girlfriends Episode four. Phone calls from Manhattan.
Speaker 4: Got you, I've got you, got you, I've got you,
Speaker 4: got you, I've got you.
Speaker 2: This is what I found out about the days, months,
Speaker 2: and years in New York after Gale went missing. In
Speaker 2: the late afternoon on Monday, July eighth, nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 2: Gail's sister Elaine, called her parents from a payphone from
Speaker 2: the corner of Broadway and seventy fifth Street. She was
Speaker 2: letting them know that she was headed back to law
Speaker 2: school in DC.
Speaker 4: And My mother said to me, have you spoken to Gail?
Speaker 4: Do you know where Gail is? And I said, no,
Speaker 4: I'm driving in a car, you know, to Manhattan. Then
Speaker 4: I'm my way to d see what's wrong? And she said,
Speaker 4: Bob said that she went out and never came back.
Speaker 4: And they had a birthday party in Jersey for his
Speaker 4: sister's child and she never came home. And that did
Speaker 4: seem really odd. Gail was about appearances. The idea that Gail,
Speaker 4: no matter how annoyed she was with Bob, didn't come
Speaker 4: home to attend a birthday party for her nephew by
Speaker 4: marriage in New Jersey was very strange.
Speaker 2: Elaine put the phone down and got back into the
Speaker 2: car to start the five hour drive back to DC,
Speaker 2: and then, over the course of twenty four hours, everyone
Speaker 2: else's phones in New York started ringing. Everyone was saying
Speaker 2: the same thing, where is Gail.
Speaker 1: Elaine called me and asked me if I had talked
Speaker 1: to Gail? And I was like, what do you mean
Speaker 1: if I talked to Gail?
Speaker 2: No, why Abby Bruce, Gail's cousin.
Speaker 1: Hoe down, So now what are you talking about?
Speaker 5: She went out for a job, she.
Speaker 2: Hasn't come home.
Speaker 3: It's been since yesterday.
Speaker 1: What do you mean she went for a jog and
Speaker 1: she never came home.
Speaker 4: What did she have on?
Speaker 1: She had on her running shorts and her T shirt.
Speaker 1: So I went out and started walking around and thinking,
Speaker 1: you know where could she have possibly gone, walked over
Speaker 1: to the park, came back, called my mother, who also
Speaker 1: was like, what are you talking about? What do you
Speaker 1: mean she's missing? So my mother hung up from me
Speaker 1: and called my aunt.
Speaker 2: But when Abby's mom called Sylvia, she was already in hysterics.
Speaker 1: I need to find my child. We need to find her.
Speaker 1: I remember her screaming at the top of her lungs.
Speaker 1: So everybody was kind of making phone calls through the
Speaker 1: rest of the day. Anyone heard from her, anyone heard
Speaker 1: no one had heard from her. No one had heard
Speaker 1: from her.
Speaker 2: Next to get a call with Denise, Gale's best friend.
Speaker 2: But it's not a Laine or Abby or Sylvia. He
Speaker 2: called me, it's Bob.
Speaker 5: Scale with you what no bus? She never came home.
Speaker 5: That's when I said, oh my god, I knew right away,
Speaker 5: I said to my husband at that time.
Speaker 4: He killed him.
Speaker 2: On Monday evening, roughly thirty hours after gail Is said
Speaker 2: to have gone missing. Bob went to the nineteenth Precinct
Speaker 2: on East ninety fifth Street and filed a police report.
Speaker 2: He told the officer that he had been arguing with
Speaker 2: his wife, Gail all morning and that around eleven am,
Speaker 2: she stormed out of their home to cool off in
Speaker 2: Central Park. He told them that she had a history
Speaker 2: of depression and suicide attempts, which prompted the officer to
Speaker 2: write EDP in the remarked section of the report. Now
Speaker 2: EDP is shorthand for emotionally disturbed person. Gail is a
Speaker 2: officially designated as New York's Missing Person's Squad number seven
Speaker 2: eight one six, and her case is assigned to Detective
Speaker 2: Tom O'Malley. Tom's first task is to start interviewing people
Speaker 2: Gale's family, her college friends, Denise, Elaine, and they are
Speaker 2: all talking about Bob.
Speaker 4: Bob is acting weird, like some TV station wants to
Speaker 4: put it on the six o'clock news, like two four
Speaker 4: or seven, and he's like refusing to do it and
Speaker 4: asking my mother if she'll drive in from Long Island
Speaker 4: to do it, which is so strange. I mean, he
Speaker 4: lives in Manhattan, where the TV studios are. This his wife.
Speaker 2: In the end, he does the interview, and this is
Speaker 2: the only moment that you'll hear Bob's voice on this
Speaker 2: podcast because he and his attorney he never got back
Speaker 2: to our request for an interview. But here he is
Speaker 2: talking about Gail in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 6: She's a graduate student psychology, takes out very seriously and
Speaker 6: has patient responsibilities. Has patients were dependent on her, and
Speaker 6: I think, no matter you know what, she wouldn't abandon
Speaker 6: her patients.
Speaker 2: What do you think happened to your wife?
Speaker 6: I don't know. I don't know, but I'm worried.
Speaker 2: Detective O'Malley started to build up a pretty damning picture
Speaker 2: of Bob. Multiple people tell him about Bob's controlling behavior,
Speaker 2: the strangulation, and the cat incident. O'Malley wanted to interview him,
Speaker 2: but he knew he had to tread carefully. He didn't
Speaker 2: want Bob to think he was a primary suspect and
Speaker 2: lawyer up too soon, So during a casual phone call,
Speaker 2: O'Malley invited Bob down to the station for a chat.
Speaker 2: This is a note from Detective O'Malley ally's police report
Speaker 2: from that day that my producer Anna found. It's dated
Speaker 2: July thirteenth, just six days after Gale went missing. I
Speaker 2: then asked him if he ever attempted to strangle his wife,
Speaker 2: and he said, very abruptly, he did not want to
Speaker 2: talk about it. When asked of any incident with the cat,
Speaker 2: I received the same abrupt type answer.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: As we concluded, doctor Breenbaum said this doesn't look right,
Speaker 2: and people are going to start to wonder. When I
Speaker 2: asked him what he meant, he said, it's obvious, isn't it.
Speaker 2: After that interview, Tom reached out to Elaine.
Speaker 4: And he said, Bob was not forthcoming. It's so weird.
Speaker 4: Bob doesn't want my help. Bob does not want me
Speaker 4: to find your sister. If my sister was leaving him
Speaker 4: and going to live with some guy, going to live
Speaker 4: with some girlfriend, going to Bora, Bora, or wherever the
Speaker 4: heck she was doing, the first one she would have
Speaker 4: called would have been me. She might not have called
Speaker 4: me to admit that she was going to stay married
Speaker 4: to the psychopath, but she certainly would have called me
Speaker 4: to tell me she was leaving him, and I would
Speaker 4: have been there to do all the things she needed
Speaker 4: me to do. I mean, please, she was dead. She
Speaker 4: was dead or he hurt her terribly and he had
Speaker 4: her hidden somewhere.
Speaker 2: The next day, exactly a week after Gail went missing,
Speaker 2: Bob and Gail's friends and family headed to Central Park
Speaker 2: to distribute some missing posters. I'm looking at one right now.
Speaker 2: The portrait of Gail is in black and white from
Speaker 2: the photocopier. In it, her hair is layered and shoulder length.
Speaker 2: She's smiling, but in that way where your eyes are
Speaker 2: being blinded by the sun, or you don't quite want
Speaker 2: your photo taken. And on the poster they've written her
Speaker 2: height five to three, her weight one hundred and seven pounds,
Speaker 2: brown hair and hazel eyes, a graduate student at Long
Speaker 2: Island University, last seen at eleven am July seventh, nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five, and they offered a reward for any information.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you this gives me chills. It just it
Speaker 2: must have been terrifying.
Speaker 5: Part of me knew she was dead, but part of
Speaker 5: me wanted to find her. Part of me wanted to
Speaker 5: find her alive and know that she was still out
Speaker 5: there somewhere.
Speaker 4: They papered the park with missing posters. Except my mother
Speaker 4: told me it felt weird. It felt like there were
Speaker 4: two camps. There was Bob and his friends, and there
Speaker 4: was my mother and father and Gail's friends, and it
Speaker 4: didn't feel that they had the same mission.
Speaker 2: At one point, Bob was handing out posters to passing
Speaker 2: joggers with Gail's college friend Marianne. When she asked him
Speaker 2: where he thought Gail might be, he said, I think
Speaker 2: she's on a shopping spree at Bloomingdale's. You know what
Speaker 2: a jap she is? Now, for those of you unfamiliar
Speaker 2: with the term JAP, it means Jewish American princess, and
Speaker 2: just in case it's not clear, it's a condescending term.
Speaker 2: Bob then suggests that Gail may have been overly affected
Speaker 2: when writing her recent paper on depression, but Marianne disagreed
Speaker 2: with him. Gail didn't seem depressed when she last saw her.
Speaker 2: Marianne's stance seemed to annoy Bob, at which point he
Speaker 2: pointed over at the gate and he said, how do
Speaker 2: you know she just didn't climb that gate? How do
Speaker 2: you know Gail isn't lying at the bottom of that reservoir.
Speaker 4: At one point, the New York Post did a story
Speaker 4: on it, and there's everybody holding the missing posters in
Speaker 4: front of their chest. Bob is holding it in front
Speaker 4: of his face as if he doesn't want people to
Speaker 4: see him, just like he didn't want to go on camera.
Speaker 2: After distributing posters, Denise and a group of Gail's friends
Speaker 2: went back to Gail in Bob's apartment. It was then
Speaker 2: that they all started quizzing, Bob, where's Gail, When did
Speaker 2: you last see her? What were you arguing about?
Speaker 5: He acted like, oh, so upset Gail's missing.
Speaker 2: The group of women started looking around for clues.
Speaker 5: And that's when we said, where's the rug that used
Speaker 5: to be here?
Speaker 7: This was a beautiful.
Speaker 2: Asian rug, and Bob said, oh, it had to be
Speaker 2: the cat got sick.
Speaker 5: We all looked at each other why but he was
Speaker 5: so stone cold. It's not as if he displayed any
Speaker 5: emotion at all, so there was like nothing to react to.
Speaker 2: At one point, the phone rang, but Bob decided not
Speaker 2: to pick it up. When the answering machine kicked in,
Speaker 2: Gail's voice played out into the entire room, telling the
Speaker 2: caller to leave a message. It must have been heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: Along the way, Bob continued to share his theories. He
Speaker 2: talked about Gail's drug use and how perhaps that's how
Speaker 2: she had gotten into trouble.
Speaker 4: Listen, I'm not going to say my sister didn't do
Speaker 4: any drugs. My sister had patience, and she was a
Speaker 4: graduate student, and then she had this prestigious internship. My
Speaker 4: sister was not someone who had a drug problem. I'm
Speaker 4: not saying my sister never did any drugs, but that's
Speaker 4: not who she was.
Speaker 2: Everything the Cat's family knew started to stack up Bob's
Speaker 2: past behavior, the fact that Gail was going to leave
Speaker 2: him that very night, the way she apparently left with
Speaker 2: hardly any belongings, and yet nobody had seen or heard
Speaker 2: from her. They had become convinced that Bob killed Gail.
Speaker 2: With only a week or two left before sitting for
Speaker 2: her bar exam, Elaine had to make a hard call.
Speaker 4: I'll never forget. I was taking the Peeper Lar Review
Speaker 4: class and I called John Peeper and I told him
Speaker 4: what I was going through. He said, don't take the
Speaker 4: word exam. I can't do that, which was sad for me.
Speaker 2: For Elaine, this was no longer a missing person's case,
Speaker 2: but a homicide investigation. And if she wasn't going to
Speaker 2: for the bar, then she'd settle for putting Bob behind bars.
Speaker 4: Of course, I was a heartbroken that I did not
Speaker 4: know where my sister was. But it wasn't because I
Speaker 4: couldn't bear the truth that my sister just left for
Speaker 4: another life and ignored her sister. It's because the facts
Speaker 4: surrounding the situation made it impossible. She left her pocketbook,
Speaker 4: you know, there with cigarettes, and she lives in a
Speaker 4: building with doormen. There's a fire department on the same
Speaker 4: block where they all whistled at my sexy sister. She's
Speaker 4: allegedly wearing a tank top and short shorts. Nobody saw her.
Speaker 4: We would fall asleep without hanging up the phone. She
Speaker 4: did not go somewhere without talking to me, and I
Speaker 4: began the one to two years us of proving that
Speaker 4: Bob killed my sister. There's my notes on what I did.
Speaker 4: These are all the notes on all the phone calls
Speaker 4: that I've had. The missing posters in here.
Speaker 2: When Elaine first arrived back in New York after dropping
Speaker 2: out of law school, she immediately started collaborating with the
Speaker 2: detectives from the Missing Person's Unit.
Speaker 4: It took the form of a deep relationship with Tom
Speaker 4: O'Malley and literally walking the beat with him, I mean
Speaker 4: sitting there and missing persons with him, brainstorming with him.
Speaker 2: They would talk about the calls Tom would get from
Speaker 2: people responding to the missing person's reports. A man who
Speaker 2: claimed to see Gail sitting in a yoga position in
Speaker 2: front of a brown stone near Washington Square. A doorman
Speaker 2: from an apartment on fifty second Street thought he saw her,
Speaker 2: but later he changed his mind. And a man said
Speaker 2: he saw her and her friend at eighteen eighth Bagels
Speaker 2: on East eighty first Street. She was spotted uptown on
Speaker 2: the subway, downtown through Soho, and wandering around Tudor City.
Speaker 2: None of these sightings could be verified by the detectives,
Speaker 2: but they also could not be dismissed ultimately, though the
Speaker 2: detectives already had a pretty good hunch who the last
Speaker 2: person to see Gail was.
Speaker 4: I'll never forget. I was having a drink with Tom
Speaker 4: O'Malley on one of those investigator cop bars and less
Speaker 4: Wolf came in and walked over and greeted us.
Speaker 2: Less as a private investigator that Bobbitt hired to search
Speaker 2: for Gail.
Speaker 4: And as he walked away, Tommy said, yeah, he's been
Speaker 4: hired to, you know, hide evidence. Bob knew he did it.
Speaker 4: Bob wasn't hiring someone to help find Gail. He knew
Speaker 4: exactly where Gail was.
Speaker 2: We couldn't confirm this, but whatever way you slice it.
Speaker 2: For Elaine, the official route didn't seem to be leading
Speaker 2: to anything, so she tried a different tack. She offered
Speaker 2: to pick up some of Gail's stuff from Bob's place.
Speaker 4: I was hoping that I could engage him in some way,
Speaker 4: and I thought that it.
Speaker 7: Sounds so idiotic.
Speaker 4: Now he might break down and I'll never figure out.
Speaker 4: I got up there and all of my sister's stuff
Speaker 4: was in big trash backs. He didn't want her underwear,
Speaker 4: he didn't want her perfume, he wanted her bike, her skis,
Speaker 4: he wanted some expense and sieve crystal platter that my
Speaker 4: aunt had bought them as a wedding gift. I argued
Speaker 4: with him, you can't have that. I called my aunt
Speaker 4: be on the phone and I said, Be, tell him
Speaker 4: he has to give me the bowl. And I handed
Speaker 4: him the phone and he let me take the ball.
Speaker 4: And I realized I had made the biggest mistake. Had
Speaker 4: I left the stuff. It may have haunted him. Instead,
Speaker 4: I was taking out the trash.
Speaker 2: By this point, Bob had been interviewed a few times
Speaker 2: by Detective O'Malley and his partner, Detective Dolcis. At first
Speaker 2: it had been on a friendly, voluntary basis, but it
Speaker 2: was becoming a parent that they were no longer treating
Speaker 2: Gale's disappearance as a missing person's case. After five or
Speaker 2: so interviews, he lawyered up and became increasingly hard to reach.
Speaker 2: Whenever the cops or Gail's friends and family tried to
Speaker 2: call him, they got his answering machine. Time passed and
Speaker 2: still nothing. The Cat's family endured their first family gatherings
Speaker 2: without Gail, their first young Kaipoor, the first passover, and
Speaker 2: with each passing day, the family's grief cemented and the
Speaker 2: wider public forgot about Gail. So Elaine started writing letters
Speaker 2: to the editors and journalists of New York papers from
Speaker 2: the perspective of her grieving mother.
Speaker 4: My name is Sylvia Katz. My daughter gil Katspiarram disappeared
Speaker 4: from her apartment. Nobody has heard from her. My son
Speaker 4: in law has been asked to take a lie detector
Speaker 4: test along with other friends with Gaels, but unlike her
Speaker 4: friends who said yes, my son in law has refused twice.
Speaker 4: He was the last person to see Gail. Therefore everything
Speaker 4: that is known comes from him. He is uncooperative, as
Speaker 4: is his family. We are very frustrated, and so are
Speaker 4: the police. Please help us. Part of what I was
Speaker 4: trying to do is really in good faith, get evidence.
Speaker 4: Part of what I was trying to do if I
Speaker 4: couldn't get evidence, is make sure that every single place
Speaker 4: that Bob was people knew the truth. So by the spring,
Speaker 4: I sent letters to every doctor that worked with Bob.
Speaker 4: And at that point he was in a three hospital rotation,
Speaker 4: and I sent them to all three hospitals. I used
Speaker 4: a reverse phone book at the New York Public Library.
Speaker 4: This is way before happy web stuff sending a letter
Speaker 4: to every single person in the high rise apartment building.
Speaker 2: Elaine started coming up with their own leads, talking to
Speaker 2: people the police hadn't even interviewed.
Speaker 4: The woman downstairs told me that it was terrible living
Speaker 4: under them. They fought constantly, especially on the weekends when
Speaker 4: he was home, and it was awful. And what was
Speaker 4: interesting about that day was how quiet it was, except
Speaker 4: she heard furniture moving, but it wasn't enough. There came
Speaker 4: a time, the Missing Persons and the Homicide Bureau and
Speaker 4: they all put their hands up and said, we just
Speaker 4: don't have the evidence. Lady. I remember thinking double jeopardy.
Speaker 4: They're hoping for a better case, and if they do
Speaker 4: it now and they fail and they ever get really
Speaker 4: good evidence, he will be walking around with impunity being
Speaker 4: able to say I beat it. And I think that
Speaker 4: really would have killed us. But my cousin, Hillard Weiss
Speaker 4: worked for the Legal Aid Society and he got the
Speaker 4: DA's office to investigate.
Speaker 2: In August nineteen eighty six, a year and a month
Speaker 2: since Gale went missing. The case was passed on to
Speaker 2: the Manhattan District Attorney's office, but after just one year,
Speaker 2: the investigation came to a halt and the case was
Speaker 2: dropped yet again.
Speaker 4: So at the point at which they said we're not prosecuting,
Speaker 4: I had nothing left to lose, and I began a
Speaker 4: different campaign. I would call him and I would say,
Speaker 4: I know you killed my sister. Everyone knows she killed
Speaker 4: my sister, and you're not going to get away with that.
Speaker 4: And I'm going to keep on leaving these messages. Yes,
Speaker 4: and every time you have a new girlfriend, she's going
Speaker 4: to hear these messages. I was dying for him to
Speaker 4: sue me for slander. We might not have had beyond
Speaker 4: a reasonable doubt for a criminal courtroom, but if he
Speaker 4: sued me, I would get him under oath and a
Speaker 4: deposition and a civil suit. He would have to prove
Speaker 4: that I was lying, so I could act with absolute impunity.
Speaker 2: But Bob was never going to sue Elane. He knew
Speaker 2: better than that. Instead, her messages went unanswered, and slowly
Speaker 2: people started getting on with their lives. Even Bob continued
Speaker 2: to work at my Monadese Hospital, where he now worked
Speaker 2: as a heart surgeon.
Speaker 5: I went back to work, I went through my daily routine.
Speaker 2: Denise Gale's friend.
Speaker 5: I used to ride the bus and I'd look out
Speaker 5: the window on the bus, and sometimes i'd see somebody
Speaker 5: that looked like her, and you know, I'd get this
Speaker 5: rush inside me like a girl, you know, And of
Speaker 5: course I realized it wasn't but I never stopped looking
Speaker 5: for her. So for a lot of years it was
Speaker 5: still that feeling inside me. Then maybe she is alive,
Speaker 5: Maybe she is out there.
Speaker 2: Elaine decided that after three years of grief and anger.
Speaker 2: She needed to choose herself.
Speaker 4: Because during the summer of nineteen eighty eight, my father
Speaker 4: had been hospitalized with heart disease. They discovered a massive
Speaker 4: brain tumor. That's around the time that I decided I
Speaker 4: had to live. I left Larry because he reminded me
Speaker 4: of Gail.
Speaker 2: Larry was Elaine's long term boyfriend.
Speaker 4: I stopped allowing my mother to talk to me about
Speaker 4: my sister. I when I'm New York magazine Personal Ads
Speaker 4: and found a husband literally.
Speaker 2: And while Elaine was on her honeymoon with her new husband,
Speaker 2: a human torso washed up on the shores of Staten Island,
Speaker 2: a torso that they believe could belong to Gail. It
Speaker 2: was a calm day on Staten Island when the torso
Speaker 2: washed up just north of the Verrizanto Narrows Bridge. She
Speaker 2: was carried in by the water and laid on the
Speaker 2: beach waiting to be found. Without overwhelming you with details,
Speaker 2: it was clear that she had been at sea for
Speaker 2: a while and that it was not her choice. This
Speaker 2: happened on May twenty first, nineteen eighty nine, which makes
Speaker 2: it roughly four years since Gail went missing. Obviously, It's
Speaker 2: hard to verify who a torso belongs to it first glance,
Speaker 2: But for New York's Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch, the
Speaker 2: age and size of the torso on the shore it
Speaker 2: seemed to match up enough to warrant further testing, and
Speaker 2: once again Elaine had to put her own life to
Speaker 2: one side.
Speaker 4: The saga began of trying to identify the torso. They
Speaker 4: tried DNA testing, but it was in the water for
Speaker 4: so long. The DNA testing was not sophisticated enough back
Speaker 4: in nineteen eighty nine, and I remember it was the
Speaker 4: fall of eighty nine when during one of those trillion
Speaker 4: conversations that I had racking my brain about how am
Speaker 4: I going to identify this torso? I remembered that my
Speaker 4: sister had a cox It's bone injury. And we looked
Speaker 4: far and wide for those X rays. We couldn't find them.
Speaker 4: Then we remembered that she had that injury when she
Speaker 4: was at NYU and she didn't have health insurance, so
Speaker 4: she used my health insurance card to get X rays,
Speaker 4: and we got all these X rays, and it was
Speaker 4: the radiology report of the torso comparing it to the
Speaker 4: X rays that we found that sufficiently for the medical
Speaker 4: examiner allowed them to change Jane Doe Torso on the
Speaker 4: death certificate to Gil Cat's Spearmbam And finally I felt
Speaker 4: that I found my sister and I had her and
Speaker 4: she was safe.
Speaker 2: A few months later, Gil's family finally had a burial.
Speaker 4: I remember there was a scene at the burial site
Speaker 4: because I wanted to open the coffin. I wanted to
Speaker 4: see my sister, and I cried and screamed, and people
Speaker 4: who were bigger than me, which wasn't so hard, physically
Speaker 4: restrained me. They would not let me.
Speaker 7: See her, and we buried her.
Speaker 2: Gail's gravestone is small, nestled closely to the ground. Its
Speaker 2: inscription reads Gail Beth beloved daughter, granddaughter, and sister March eighth,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty six to July seventh, nineteen eighty five, Forever
Speaker 2: in our hearts. I'm sure it meant a lot to
Speaker 2: give Gail a place to rest. Usually Jewish burials take
Speaker 2: place within twenty four hours, yet the Cats has had
Speaker 2: to wait four years. But whatever sense of closure that
Speaker 2: gave them, it didn't last long. Within six months of
Speaker 2: the burial, Sylvia Elaine's mother was diagnosed with an aggressive
Speaker 2: form of cancer.
Speaker 4: My mother buried daughter and she was dead by June.
Speaker 2: Then just six years later, Elaine's father, Manny Katz, also
Speaker 2: died from cancer, something he battled for years. He was
Speaker 2: buried next to his daughter and his wife in the
Speaker 2: Mountain Zion Cemetery family plot in Queens.
Speaker 7: That's when I stopped.
Speaker 4: I could not leave my brother alone, so I promised
Speaker 4: myself that Bob would not kill me too.
Speaker 2: But when Elaine cat stops, she doesn't really stop.
Speaker 1: She was so angry that he was out there walking
Speaker 1: around living his life. As long as her sister was gone,
Speaker 1: she was going to find a way to make him pay.
Speaker 2: This is Abby Bruce, Elaine's cousin.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a thing you could say to her do.
Speaker 1: It was an obsession. And what's amazing to me about
Speaker 1: her is that along with that obsession she lived her life.
Speaker 1: She got married, she had children, she opened a law firm.
Speaker 1: I mean, she's an amazing person. But there was no
Speaker 1: question in my mind that she was never going to
Speaker 1: give up.
Speaker 2: And so every once in a while Elaine would pick
Speaker 2: up a part of the case, or in a moment
Speaker 2: of sudden fury, she'd call Bob again to leave a
Speaker 2: message on his machine while he was at work.
Speaker 4: You killed my sister, and I know you think you
Speaker 4: got away with it. I will always hound you and
Speaker 4: haunt you, and I will keep at the police, I
Speaker 4: will keep at the press. I will always find you
Speaker 4: as long as you are a licensed and registered physician.
Speaker 4: No matter where you go, I will find you. And
Speaker 4: thanks to me, he did.
Speaker 2: Go straightened to my unsuspecting arms in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Speaker 2: But it didn't take long for him to run again.
Speaker 2: While we were meeting up to talk about him at
Speaker 2: the Mayflower Restaurant, he was packing his bags and heading
Speaker 2: to one of the coldest places in America, North Dakota.
Speaker 2: I know surprised us too.
Speaker 3: There was a period where there was a vault and
Speaker 3: he was writing snowblower injuries in the minor newspaper.
Speaker 5: He was just smart guying, but women found him creepy.
Speaker 4: I will never forget him saying. We have a cold
Speaker 4: case Bureau, and I'd like to open up Gil's case.
Speaker 2: We'd like to have the three hour lunches, we'd like
Speaker 2: to have a cocktailer after work, and we'd like to
Speaker 2: investigating homicides and.
Speaker 4: I mentioned you know the Torso, and I'll never forget
Speaker 4: him saying what Torso.
Speaker 2: The Girlfriends is produced by Novel for Our Heart Radio.
Speaker 2: For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The series
Speaker 2: is hosted by me Carol Fisher and produced by Anna Sinfield.
Speaker 2: Our assistant producer is Julian Manyu Gera Patten, and our
Speaker 2: researcher is Madeline Parr. The editor is Veronica Simmons. Max
Speaker 2: O'Brien is our executive producer. Our fact checker is Valeria Rocca.
Speaker 2: Production management from Sharie Houston and Charlotte woolf Sound design,
Speaker 2: mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempsen and Nicholas Alexander. Music
Speaker 2: supervision by Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Luisa Gerstein.
Speaker 2: Story development by Isaac Fisher. Willard Foxton is creative director
Speaker 2: of Development. Special thanks to Shawn Glynn, David Waters, might
Speaker 2: Ley Rowl, Katrina Noravel, David Wasserman, and Beth Anne Mcaluso.
Speaker 2: We did reach out to Bob and his legal team
Speaker 2: to ask if he'd like to comment on the podcast,
Speaker 2: but we never heard back.
Speaker 5: Novel