Speaker 1: Novel. Hey listener. In this episode, we talk about domestic violence, control, murder,
Speaker 1: and disposing of a body. There's also a group of
Speaker 1: fearless women honoring their beloved friend by holding a man accountable.
Speaker 1: Once again, be warned to expect some swearing. This episode
Speaker 1: really earns it. If you do listen and are impacted
Speaker 1: by any of our themes, you can reach out to
Speaker 1: No More, a domestic violence charity we've partnered with. They
Speaker 1: have lots of great resources to help you or your
Speaker 1: loved ones. You can find them at no More dot org.
Speaker 1: That's no More dot org. It was early in the
Speaker 1: morning on October twelfth, two thousand. I arrived at the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Criminal Courthouse to testify against Bob and I was terrified.
Speaker 1: I remember saying to myself, just don't pass out, Carol,
Speaker 1: don't pass out. And so with that pep talk over,
Speaker 1: I entered the building through the revolving door. I emptied
Speaker 1: my pockets into a tray, and I walked through the
Speaker 1: metal detectors. Shortly after I was greeted by the prosecutors.
Speaker 1: They pointed out a woman with cropped red hair and
Speaker 1: told me it was Gail's sister Elaine. We had spoken
Speaker 1: about her at the Mayflower a few times, but we
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about her. She just seemed like a
Speaker 1: traumatized sister, and that's exactly what she looked like in
Speaker 1: the courthouse that day, traumatized but determined. Eventually, after some
Speaker 1: waiting around, it was my turn to testify. I walked
Speaker 1: out into the cavernous courtroom to see press, the judge, jury,
Speaker 1: and Bob's new wife. And there in the chair where
Speaker 1: people on trial sit was my ex boyfriend Bob. He
Speaker 1: looked different, older, more tired, but he did flash me
Speaker 1: this confusing smirk, a smirk till this day I still
Speaker 1: don't understand. When I got to the witness box, the
Speaker 1: prosecution told me to address the jury, and then came
Speaker 1: the questions, how do you meet Mob? How long did
Speaker 1: you date for? What did he tell you about his wife?
Speaker 1: So I told him about the time I asked Bob
Speaker 1: if he killed his wife, and when I explained how
Speaker 1: silent and weird he got, I could see the jury
Speaker 1: nodding along, and that's when I realized Bob was totally fucked.
Speaker 1: Carol Fisher from the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio, you're
Speaker 1: listening to The Girlfriend's Episode eight, The Girlfriends Versus Beerenbaum.
Speaker 1: After I testified, I took the first flight out of
Speaker 1: New York that I could. I was not interested in
Speaker 1: sticking around, So I really knew very little about what
Speaker 1: actually went down at the trial. But my brilliant researcher Maddie,
Speaker 1: she got a hold of the transcripts, all one thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred and nineteen pages of them. So let's start
Speaker 1: from the beginning. The trial started on October tewod two thousand,
Speaker 1: fifteen years after Gale's death. By then the case had
Speaker 1: gone from relative obscurity to one of the most covered
Speaker 1: court cases in New York City. Reporter Catherine Eban made
Speaker 1: sure she kept her front row seat.
Speaker 2: By then, the courtroom was full, so my colleagues in
Speaker 2: the press corps all showed up.
Speaker 3: Place was packed almost every day.
Speaker 1: That's Prosecutor Daniel Bibb Press took up.
Speaker 3: The first two rows. There was press from all over
Speaker 3: the place, not just New York.
Speaker 1: In front of the press in what's called the well,
Speaker 1: the attorney sat at two large wooden tables. The prosecution
Speaker 1: closest to the jurors box.
Speaker 3: There's three of us see Sirocco, Adam Kaufman, and me
Speaker 3: sitting at the prosecution table, which is facing the bench.
Speaker 3: Then you have the left, probably ten feet away is
Speaker 3: the defense table with Scott Greenfield, David Lewis, and Catherine Case.
Speaker 1: Those were Bob's attorneys. In case that's not obvious, you
Speaker 1: won't hear from them because they were not interested in
Speaker 1: appearing on this podcast. Back to the courtroom, we're in
Speaker 1: front of everybody. With a huge American flag behind her
Speaker 1: sat the judge, Leslie Crocker Snyder.
Speaker 4: I don't really use a gabble, except I had a
Speaker 4: huge one that was given to me as a joke,
Speaker 4: and occasionally I'd use it to get the jury laughing.
Speaker 2: I remember her as a blonde haired, no nonsense judge
Speaker 2: with a big reputation. She was not there to play.
Speaker 2: I mean, she was very strict and tough with the attorneys.
Speaker 1: And then sitting at the defence table furthest away from
Speaker 1: the jury as possible was Bob.
Speaker 2: I remember Beerenbaum. He had this sort of stitching gloom
Speaker 2: that hung over him, reflected in the deep shadows under
Speaker 2: his eyes.
Speaker 1: The trial lasted nine long days. During that time, the
Speaker 1: defense and prosecution agreed that Gail died at some point
Speaker 1: on July seventh, nineteen eighty five, but that's where the
Speaker 1: similarities end. The defense argued that there was not enough
Speaker 1: evidence to prove that Bob killed her. Instead, they suggest
Speaker 1: all kinds of things could have happened to her that day.
Speaker 4: They painted her as a woman with a lot of problems,
Speaker 4: very needy, one suicidal, Realdy motivated by money. It was
Speaker 4: quote unquote blaming the victim, which, although was pre days
Speaker 4: of me too, I think was very distasteful. But the
Speaker 4: portrait of both of them emerged as two people who
Speaker 4: should have gotten divorced a long time before, and there
Speaker 4: was an escalation of violent and horrible conduct.
Speaker 1: The defense's second tack was a bit more tangible. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was a serious threat. At the beginning of the trial,
Speaker 1: they told the jury that they had just one witness
Speaker 1: to call, a star witness that swears he saw Gilcats
Speaker 1: alive and well in the hours that the prosecution alleged
Speaker 1: she was dead.
Speaker 3: It's a five minute acquittal if you believe this guy,
Speaker 3: because he says he sees her at a time when
Speaker 3: our theory is that she is dead and either in
Speaker 3: a bag in a plane or already in the Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 3: Okay kills, the case dead done.
Speaker 1: The prosecution's goal was to do their best to undermine
Speaker 1: the defense's case because, as the judge explained, the burden
Speaker 1: of proof was on them. They needed to prove that
Speaker 1: the reason Gail was dead was because Bob killed her.
Speaker 1: In the prosecution's opening statement, Dan argued that Gail wasn't suicidal.
Speaker 1: In fact, multiple friends claimed she was happier than she
Speaker 1: had been in a while. Her psychiatrist, Sybil Baron even
Speaker 1: remembers Gail getting a pedicure just days before she went missing.
Speaker 3: I think the line was suicides don't get pedicures.
Speaker 1: Then there was the portrayal of Gail's a drug fiend
Speaker 1: running with the wrong crowd. The prosecution made it clear
Speaker 1: that this was a gross exaggeration. Her boyfriend Anthony Sigalis
Speaker 1: said he only did coke with Gail twice, so she
Speaker 1: certainly was not an addict.
Speaker 3: You know, everybody did cocaine in the eighties, it was everywhere.
Speaker 3: She was not this hardcore cocaine. So some beginner coke
Speaker 3: user all of a sudden becomes this died in the
Speaker 3: wool coke head and gets killed by a drug dealer
Speaker 3: who then disposed of her body. Made no sense whatsoever.
Speaker 3: People get killed by drug dealers, their body is usually found,
Speaker 3: you know. And people who die of drug overdoses, their
Speaker 3: bodies are found.
Speaker 1: And that was the crux of the prosecution's case. Gail's
Speaker 1: body had never been found. And the reason they theorized
Speaker 1: is because Bob killed Gail and threw her body out
Speaker 1: of a plane and into the Atlantic Ocean. They just
Speaker 1: had to prove it.
Speaker 3: This was no easy task. We were facing no body,
Speaker 3: no forensics, no admissions, an extremely difficult, circumstantial case based
Speaker 3: in large part on things that the defendant had said
Speaker 3: to his friends and his girlfriends.
Speaker 1: You've already heard a lot of what's covered throughout the trial,
Speaker 1: our testimonies. But when I read through these transcripts, I
Speaker 1: discovered parts of the story that I've never heard before.
Speaker 1: Things it shocked me. I also see what Prosecutor Steve
Speaker 1: meant when he described the trial as a production. The
Speaker 1: prosecution called up thirty seven witnesses to the stand, all
Speaker 1: of us weaving threads of circumstantial evidence together to create
Speaker 1: an image of Bob for the jury. First up was
Speaker 1: Bob the controlling boyfriend.
Speaker 5: I mean, who makes their wife have to sit on
Speaker 5: his lap to eat dinner. It was just so strange.
Speaker 6: He had to control everything that they did, what they ate,
Speaker 6: where they went.
Speaker 1: And there was violent Bob.
Speaker 7: He came running and leaped over the couch, pushed her
Speaker 7: down with his hands around her throat, and strangled her.
Speaker 1: Sometimes a witness testimony made it seem like he wanted
Speaker 1: to kill Gail, like telling one of his friends that
Speaker 1: he hated Gail so much he could kill her, or
Speaker 1: telling Gail that he would kill her if she left him.
Speaker 1: One of the most controversial moments of the trial was
Speaker 1: when various witnesses started bringing up the Pterosov letter from
Speaker 1: doctor Stone, the letter he had written warning Gail that
Speaker 1: Bob might kill her. The judge had disallowed this piece
Speaker 1: of physical evidence in the pretrial hearings, but she did
Speaker 1: not stop people from describing it in great detail.
Speaker 4: One of the functions of the judge in any case
Speaker 4: is to try to balance both sides right, and I
Speaker 4: felt that allowing testimony about the nature of a letter,
Speaker 4: which I did with the Tarosoft letter, but not allowing
Speaker 4: it in for the jury to see, was a balancing
Speaker 4: of fairness to both sides.
Speaker 7: I'll never forget the defense arguing that having me testified
Speaker 7: to what the letter said was almost worse than having
Speaker 7: the letter admitted into evidence, and they may have been right.
Speaker 7: At least it wouldn't have been the sister talking about it.
Speaker 1: And of course it was that letter that Gail told
Speaker 1: multiple people she was going to use to blackmail Bob,
Speaker 1: forcing him into divorcing and continuing to pay her school tuition.
Speaker 1: But there was also something else that came out at trial,
Speaker 1: something I had never heard about before. Gail told her
Speaker 1: friend Lee that she had evidence that Bob and his
Speaker 1: father were involved in medicaid fraud and that she was
Speaker 1: planning on using that information as part of her ammunition
Speaker 1: against Bob. Gail had all this information ready to go
Speaker 1: on Saturday, July sixth, the day before she went missing.
Speaker 1: That day, she went to her hairdressers to the Ghana
Speaker 1: cologist for a routine IUD checkup, and she saw friends
Speaker 1: even bumping into her fling Anthony. Everyone described her as
Speaker 1: happy and jovial and the reason she was going to
Speaker 1: ask Bob for a divorce that weekend.
Speaker 5: She was going to make him dinner and then during
Speaker 5: dinner she was going to talk to Mob about leaving.
Speaker 1: We have no idea what happened over that dinner, if
Speaker 1: she told him at all, but we do know that's
Speaker 1: not when she died. The next morning, at around ten
Speaker 1: thirty am on July seventh, Gail picked up a call
Speaker 1: from her former boss, Francesca Bial. Francesca wanted a doctor
Speaker 1: recommendation from Bob, but Gail was sounding off. And that
Speaker 1: is the last time anyone other than Bob saw or
Speaker 1: heard from Gail. As multiple people testified, no one saw
Speaker 1: her leave the apartment building, not the doorman, not the neighbors.
Speaker 1: Gail had vanished, leaving all of her possessions, including her wallet, cigarettes,
Speaker 1: credit cards, address book, and keys. This is the point
Speaker 1: in the prosecution story where they stopped talking about Gail
Speaker 1: and instead start talking about Bob, because, as you know,
Speaker 1: he wasn't acting like your typical grieving husband. He was
Speaker 1: constantly missing and not returning phone calls from the police.
Speaker 1: He said the police could search his apartment, but when
Speaker 1: the forensics team showed up, his lawyer said they could
Speaker 1: only dust for fingerprints. He tried to avoid all the press.
Speaker 1: He avoided putting posters up in his building. He did
Speaker 1: not even interview the doormaan basically never felt to Gaile's
Speaker 1: family and friends like Bob was driving the search. Instead.
Speaker 1: After a couple of weeks, Bob was seen partying in
Speaker 1: the Hampton's, dressing like he was in Saturday Night Fever
Speaker 1: and laughing at a comedy show. And then there were
Speaker 1: the romances like ROBERTA. Karnowski, who challenged Bob over dinner
Speaker 1: about killing his wife, and Karen Carojuana his Hampton's fling.
Speaker 1: They all testified to the prosecutors brought on a lot
Speaker 1: of witnesses to show how everyone who interacted with Bob
Speaker 1: after Gail's disappearance seemed to come away with a slightly
Speaker 1: different story. I think he just didn't count on us
Speaker 1: remembering everything or talking about it.
Speaker 3: These were all professional women who said, your wife is missing,
Speaker 3: and you did what. My argument was that the women
Speaker 3: here definitely would remember things like this, because again, there
Speaker 3: but for the grace of God, go on. You know
Speaker 3: somebody is telling you how their wife disappeared. Wouldn't that
Speaker 3: see her into your brain?
Speaker 1: But, as the defense argued, all our stories were just
Speaker 1: a smattering of circumstantial evidence. Witnesses recalling conversations they had
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago. Is that really enough? They asked a
Speaker 1: jury to say, beyond any reasonable doubt that Bob killed Gail,
Speaker 1: Even after being presented with all of the evidence from
Speaker 1: the Pterosoft letter, Bob's lawyer argued that the notion that
Speaker 1: Bob controlled Gail went against the evidence. Instead, they explained
Speaker 1: that Bob jumped into new relationships fast because why not
Speaker 1: his wife cheated, did drugs, and ran off. Finally, the
Speaker 1: defense referred to the moment Roberta challenged Bob over dinner,
Speaker 1: saying she believed he threw Gail out of a plane,
Speaker 1: a crackpot theory that Bob just did not need to
Speaker 1: respond to. But Dan and Steve did have a response
Speaker 1: to that theory, a piece of evidence that shows Roberta's
Speaker 1: idea wasn't so crackpot after all that after the break.
Speaker 1: So we all know the theory by now, where as
Speaker 1: the defense likes to call it the Roberta theory, it's
Speaker 1: something that the prosecution we're running with. But how do
Speaker 1: you prove it? Like, how could he have done that?
Speaker 2: How can you be flying a plane and pushing a
Speaker 2: body out of a plane?
Speaker 1: At the same time, we.
Speaker 8: Were confident that if we didn't show the jury that
Speaker 8: this could be done, they're going to bring in somebody
Speaker 8: and say that this is impossible.
Speaker 3: So we actually found the airplane that he used. It
Speaker 3: was an upstate New York. It was a complete and
Speaker 3: total wreck. But we used the exact same model and
Speaker 3: an NYPD helicopter. And what we did is we put
Speaker 3: two fifty pound bags of sand and a ten pound
Speaker 3: bag of rice and a number of Duffel bags and
Speaker 3: put him in the back of the plane and it
Speaker 3: actually took off from Coal Airport, the same airport he used,
Speaker 3: and then trailed by an NYPD helicopter. They flew out
Speaker 3: over the ocean and they did three demonstrations, one where
Speaker 3: he simply just pushed open the passenger side door and
Speaker 3: pushed it out, one where he actually banked the plane
Speaker 3: the door opened and it fell out of its own accord.
Speaker 3: And then the third one where he's ragged the Duffel
Speaker 3: bag across his box and put it out the pilot's
Speaker 3: side door.
Speaker 8: And this sergeant is actually on the witness stand describing
Speaker 8: this whole thing to the jury using the video of it.
Speaker 1: It was very powerful I've seen this video, and for me,
Speaker 1: it's hard to watch these bags of sand and rice
Speaker 1: and think about a woman inside, a woman who just
Speaker 1: the day before had done all the things that I
Speaker 1: would do, had her hair done, laugh with the friend
Speaker 1: in the park, and there she was in an airplane
Speaker 1: with Bob, a place that I had been many times,
Speaker 1: a place where I had seen so much beauty. She
Speaker 1: was there in a bag.
Speaker 3: The jurors sat there wrapped attention, not an eyeball, wasn't
Speaker 3: on those television screens watching that demonstration.
Speaker 2: It was a moment that everybody paid close attention to
Speaker 2: because it was very strange. I mean, to reenact something
Speaker 2: that you think happened based on circumstantial evidence and no
Speaker 2: actual proof. But essentially that was their case. That was
Speaker 2: how they were going to build it.
Speaker 1: The prosecution then brought out a guy named Charles McKenna
Speaker 1: from the airline rental company, who verified the booking and
Speaker 1: the invoice charged to beer Embaum. He confirmed that Bob
Speaker 1: could have flown at least eighty miles out before turning
Speaker 1: around that day. Then New York's chief medical examiner, Charles Hirsch,
Speaker 1: described how easy it would be for a skilled surgeon
Speaker 1: to dismember a body in as little as ten minutes
Speaker 1: with the kitchen knife in order to fit it in
Speaker 1: a duffel bag. If he acted fast enough, he may
Speaker 1: have even been able to fold her in without the
Speaker 1: graphic mutilation. But the real clincher to the flight theory
Speaker 1: was when they brought out Roberta Karnofski. She told the
Speaker 1: jury about the moment she and Sharon found his altered
Speaker 1: flight lock. At this point in the trial, the prosecution
Speaker 1: brought out a brand new piece of evidence. They had
Speaker 1: subpoenaed Bob and forced him to turn over the original
Speaker 1: flight log, and right there for everyone to see was
Speaker 1: the alteration. Just as Roberta was describing it, the seventh
Speaker 1: of July seventh had been crudely changed to an eight.
Speaker 1: It's even in the wrong color ink.
Speaker 3: I'm like Steve, this is a home run. He goes, Yeah,
Speaker 3: why the hell didn't Burnbaum just burn the thing? And
Speaker 3: I said, because he's anal because he saves everything. He
Speaker 3: couldn't let it go.
Speaker 1: But then, just as it was looking like a landslide
Speaker 1: victory for the prosecution, the defense played the ace up
Speaker 1: their sleeve. Their star witness oh in the weeks following
Speaker 1: gales disappearance, the missing person squad received seven or eight
Speaker 1: calls from people claiming to have seen her. Among them
Speaker 1: was a retired textiles manufacturer, Joel Davis. On October eighteenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand, the eighth and last day of testimony, the
Speaker 1: defense called Joel to the stand.
Speaker 3: So Joel Davis walks to the court and says hello
Speaker 3: to us. He's just walking in, So he takes the
Speaker 3: stand and David Lewis takes them through direct.
Speaker 1: Joel described how on the afternoon of July seventh, at
Speaker 1: H and H Bagel on eighty first Street and Second Avenue,
Speaker 1: he noticed an attractive woman wearing a distinctive T shirt
Speaker 1: with the complex and colorful print. Three to five weeks later,
Speaker 1: he sees Gail's missing poster and recognizes her as the
Speaker 1: woman he saw at the bagel shop. At around five
Speaker 1: in the morning. He calls the missing Person's number to
Speaker 1: report it. This was not looking good for the prosecution.
Speaker 4: He was pretty strong, and I think everyone in the
Speaker 4: courtroom thought that's the end of the prosecution case. Because
Speaker 4: he was absolutely adamant that he had seen Gail late
Speaker 4: enough in the day so that the defendant couldn't have
Speaker 4: killed her.
Speaker 3: Steve's like, oh, this is a problem one.
Speaker 8: You're thinks she's alive when we shay she's dead. That
Speaker 8: case is over. Down to tubes.
Speaker 3: Steve gets up, and you know, the adage is you
Speaker 3: don't answer a question on cross examination that you don't
Speaker 3: know the answer to. That's not one hundred percent true.
Speaker 1: When Steve stepped up to question Joel, he had a
Speaker 1: clear tactic spin Joel around enough times that he ends
Speaker 1: up undoing his own testimony. He started by asking Joel
Speaker 1: to clarify details like what did this woman actually look like,
Speaker 1: to which Joel responded that the woman he saw was
Speaker 1: with another woman carrying a large beach bag. They were
Speaker 1: deeply tanned, with a lot of oil all over their bodies.
Speaker 1: He said that he was probably in her presence for
Speaker 1: between five and ten minutes while they waited in line
Speaker 1: for takeout. But then it all starts getting a bit seedy.
Speaker 1: The first thing that caught Joel's eye was her T shirt.
Speaker 1: He was in the print business, and he was impressed
Speaker 1: with the T shirt's European printing style. But then his
Speaker 1: eyes drifted to her body, which he found very attractive.
Speaker 1: When asked to describe her, he says her face reminded
Speaker 1: him of a friend's sister in law, but she was
Speaker 1: built like his ex wife. Five't one, well defined and
Speaker 1: a very good body.
Speaker 8: He describes her as voluptuous, like she's really built, you know,
Speaker 8: and Gail was as flat as a board.
Speaker 1: He'd previously said he was pretty positive, whereas now he
Speaker 1: was one hundred percent sure. He'd changed where he'd seen her.
Speaker 1: He changed the clothes she was wearing. At one point,
Speaker 1: when asked whether he saw photos of Gail, he said,
Speaker 1: I didn't see the picture, but I did see the picture.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 3: All he's doing is he's basically taking a knife and
Speaker 3: he's stabbing himself in the chest with every word that
Speaker 3: comes out of his mouth. Stevie is just spinning him
Speaker 3: around in circles.
Speaker 1: Steve then drilled deeper into Joel's physical description of Gail.
Speaker 1: He pulled out some transcripts of a previous interview where
Speaker 1: Joel had described the woman in the bagel shop as
Speaker 1: tall and statuesque. He said he'd noticed her because he
Speaker 1: was a leg and ass man.
Speaker 9: Jesus Christ, he is describing a woman that is completely
Speaker 9: opposite of who Gail Barnbaunm was physically.
Speaker 4: It was kind of amusing how he described her as,
Speaker 4: you know, so statuesque and what a great body and tall,
Speaker 4: and then he withdrew that a little bit.
Speaker 3: He gets so flustered and he goes, can I explain.
Speaker 3: Steve leans down to me, he goes, what do you think?
Speaker 3: I go one hundred percent, let him explain. He said
Speaker 3: he's going to explode.
Speaker 1: He did explode with utter nonsense. Joel started fumbling and
Speaker 1: said he did, in fact see a woman in the
Speaker 1: bagel shop, but he confused that woman with not only Gail,
Speaker 1: but the body of his ex wife, who was small,
Speaker 1: and with the face of his friend's ex sister in law,
Speaker 1: who was tall but had a similar face to Gail's.
Speaker 1: If you are confused, don't worry. So is Joel, and
Speaker 1: so is everyone in that courtroom.
Speaker 3: There were audible gasps from the jury, I mean audible.
Speaker 3: And he finishes and Steve leaves down. I go sit down.
Speaker 3: He goes, like a couple more questions. I said, sit down.
Speaker 1: To really put the final nail in Joel's coffin, Dan
Speaker 1: and Steve called it Blaine with a huge photo of
Speaker 1: Gail in a bikini.
Speaker 7: I went up on the witness stand and I identified
Speaker 7: the photo and it showed a side profile of her
Speaker 7: in the bikini, and the picture depicted her as a
Speaker 7: flat chested woman.
Speaker 4: It was like a television moment, really, that witness had
Speaker 4: been destroyed, and that doesn't really happen that often in trials.
Speaker 4: That you're able to show that the witness was either
Speaker 4: lying or mistaken.
Speaker 7: And that was it. The trial was over, the jury
Speaker 7: was charged, and then the alternates were dismissed. You have
Speaker 7: alternate jurors in case someone gets sick. And one of
Speaker 7: the alternates, a beautiful woman, walked down and sat next
Speaker 7: to me and she squeezed my hand and she said,
Speaker 7: I hope they convict. And there I had yet another sister.
Speaker 1: After around six hours of deliberation over two days, the
Speaker 1: jury reached their verdict.
Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen, have you reached a verdict? Then a
Speaker 3: four persons say yes, say as to this sole count
Speaker 3: of the indictment, trudge murder on the second degree, how
Speaker 3: do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty.
Speaker 7: I remember turning to my brother and saying, what did
Speaker 7: they say? And he said guilty? And I said yes,
Speaker 7: and I squeezed my brother's hands so hard it hurt.
Speaker 7: And at the same time I did that, I took
Speaker 7: my fist and I banged it on my own thigh
Speaker 7: and I felt free at.
Speaker 10: Last, And just like that we got him.
Speaker 1: My sister called me.
Speaker 5: She said guilty, and I started screaming.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'll never forget my mother calling me.
Speaker 1: Is screaming on the phone.
Speaker 6: He's guilty, he's guilty, He's guilty. About fifteen times and
Speaker 6: just sobbing, just sobbing.
Speaker 1: On November twenty ninth, two thousand, Judge Crocker Snyder sentenced
Speaker 1: Bob to twenty years to life.
Speaker 4: I tried to consider everything, the evidence, the horrible nature
Speaker 4: of the crime, but also that it had been at
Speaker 4: that point fifteen years, I guess, and that he had
Speaker 4: done a lot of good things. Berenbaum was a horrible
Speaker 4: person in what he did, but even if it was
Speaker 4: to xpiate his guilt, he spent the last fifteen years
Speaker 4: helping kids in Mexico and doing a lot of good things,
Speaker 4: and in no way did that detract from the horrible
Speaker 4: nature of the crime. But I also thought he deserved
Speaker 4: some credit for that. The minimum would have been fifteen
Speaker 4: to life at maximum twenty five to life, and I
Speaker 4: gave him twenty years to life. This was a tough
Speaker 4: sentence in that I felt I should factor in what
Speaker 4: little good he had done, But it.
Speaker 1: Was some good. When I first learned about the verdict,
Speaker 1: I had mixed feelings. A part of me felt so
Speaker 1: bad for Bob because I had always wanted to believe
Speaker 1: that he was just overworked. Gail was a tough wife
Speaker 1: and he had just snapped one moment of anger him
Speaker 1: twenty years of his life. But making this series has
Speaker 1: changed my mind. In those intervening years, Bob dated so
Speaker 1: many women that didn't feel safe around him. He allegedly
Speaker 1: pushed Karen out of a moving taxi. He screamed and
Speaker 1: raged at me. He was so controlling that a therapist
Speaker 1: told Stephanie that she could be in danger if she
Speaker 1: continued to date him. He showed no empathy and no
Speaker 1: remorse to any of Gaile's family. Bob's charity work in Mexico,
Speaker 1: treating children with cleft palletts, it was definitely good, but
Speaker 1: I just don't think it has anything to do with it.
Speaker 1: He killed a woman, a woman who was in an
Speaker 1: intimate relationship with him, a woman just like me or
Speaker 1: Mindy or Roberta or Stephanie or Karen. And there's nothing
Speaker 1: to say that he couldn't have done it again. If
Speaker 1: you're good at math, you've already figured out that Bob
Speaker 1: was convicted in two thousand and finished serving his twenty
Speaker 1: year sentence in twenty twenty, and well, there's been some
Speaker 1: recent developments. That's next. Time on the Girlfriends.
Speaker 11: Oh I had twenty years of solid peace. I never
Speaker 11: thought about Bob for twenty years anymore. And then the
Speaker 11: Pearol's process started.
Speaker 1: Mindy, what I've got the transcripts from Bob's parole hearing.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, tell me what happened On July seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five. We were arguing with each other and
Speaker 1: things escalated. How did you attack her? Sir?
Speaker 9: Elaine?
Speaker 7: Hello, Hi, Nice to meet you, Carol and Mindy.
Speaker 1: Nice to meet you, Elaine, very nice to meet you.
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 Annasinfield. Our
Speaker 1: assistant producer is Julian Manyu Gera Patten and our researcher
Speaker 1: is Madeline Parr. The editor is Veronica Simmons. Max O'Brien
Speaker 1: 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. Story
Speaker 1: development by Isaac Fisher. Willard Foxton is creative director of development.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Shawn Glynn, David Waters, Might, Billy Rowl,
Speaker 1: Katrina Norvell, David Wasserman, and Beth Anne Mcaluso. We did
Speaker 1: reach out to Bob and his legal team to ask
Speaker 1: if he'd like to comment on the podcast, but we
Speaker 1: never heard back. Novel