WEBVTT - Chapter 6 | The Warrant 0:00:00.050 --> 0:00:05.149 This series includes sensitive and potentially distressing topics, including sexual 0:00:05.190 --> 0:00:10.340 assault and abuse involving children. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:20.259 I was really excited. It was my first home. 0:00:21.420 --> 0:00:24.800 I had started a business, and I loved the house. 0:00:26.020 --> 0:00:29.040 That voice belongs to a man we'll call Barry. A 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:32.159 new homeowner at 30, Barry was pleased with his purchase. 0:00:32.940 --> 0:00:35.559 The house, a gray four-square, was a short walk from 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:38.380 a lake, and his puppy had a half-acre lot to 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:42.629 run in. Moreover, the town of New Fairfield was Connecticut quaint, 0:00:43.130 --> 0:00:48.130 with windmills and obsessively clipped lawns. There was just one problem. 0:00:49.070 --> 0:00:50.570 Barry's next-door neighbors. 0:00:51.870 --> 0:00:53.930 All I wanted to do was fence the property for 0:00:53.970 --> 0:00:55.990 my dog. Like, that was my mission. 0:00:57.050 --> 0:00:59.800 But his neighbor's trash overran their lot and littered a 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:04.120 chunk of his. Old car tires and beer bottles, even 0:01:04.180 --> 0:01:08.000 shingles from their roof, were strewn across his yard. So 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:10.660 Barry screwed his nerve up and knocked on their door, 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:12.940 hoping for a little help cleaning up. 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:16.970 What I saw inside the house was disturbing in the 0:01:17.140 --> 0:01:20.830 terms of, like, a very incompetent older man and a 0:01:20.870 --> 0:01:21.830 lot of firearms. 0:01:23.270 --> 0:01:27.160 The house was filthy and smelled barnyard bad. and there 0:01:27.180 --> 0:01:29.360 were guns laying out on the kitchen table. 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:32.020 When I first met him for the first time, I 0:01:32.060 --> 0:01:34.720 introduced myself, you know, do you have a family, are 0:01:34.750 --> 0:01:36.670 you here alone? And he said, I have a son, 0:01:36.690 --> 0:01:41.009 but you better watch out for him, is what he said. Well, 0:01:41.050 --> 0:01:43.190 I said, okay, you know, well, good to meet you, 0:01:43.510 --> 0:01:44.150 and I left. 0:01:45.650 --> 0:01:49.270 Barry came away from that doorstep shaken, wondering what he'd 0:01:49.310 --> 0:01:53.220 just bought into. He set about cleaning the lot himself, 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:55.640 and then he met the old man's son. 0:01:57.060 --> 0:02:01.020 After I learned about Howard Gombert Jr., the son, who 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:05.890 I had met him once. I'm outside in the summer. 0:02:06.170 --> 0:02:08.410 My little puppy went over there and I had to 0:02:08.450 --> 0:02:09.450 go get him. 0:02:10.150 --> 0:02:12.210 And I went over there and it. 0:02:13.270 --> 0:02:16.070 Was a guy about my age who had a girlfriend 0:02:16.230 --> 0:02:19.169 who was clearly a teenager, like much younger than him. 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:23.680 Gombert at that point was in his 30s. The girl 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:27.639 said Barry looked like a teen. was clearly Gombert's girlfriend. 0:02:28.460 --> 0:02:32.150 Barry was alarmed and repulsed. When we talked to him 0:02:32.169 --> 0:02:34.829 last summer, he still regretted that he hadn't called the 0:02:34.889 --> 0:02:38.610 local cops sooner. Of course, he couldn't have known then 0:02:38.669 --> 0:02:42.710 what he found out later, who his next-door neighbor really was. 0:02:42.730 --> 0:02:48.850 I just remember being taken back by the fact that 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:51.480 if he's 32. 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:53.519 His girlfriend's easily half his age. 0:02:54.860 --> 0:02:59.750 And Both friendly, cordial. To me, you know, they were 0:02:59.770 --> 0:03:02.780 laying on a blanket in the lawn. But you never 0:03:02.900 --> 0:03:16.840 think it's a crime scene. 0:03:16.940 --> 0:03:28.360 Do you hear my madness? my fears. 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:32.579 Sorrow's depths are. 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:40.440 Endless this valley of tears I'm Paul Solitaroff. 0:03:54.280 --> 0:04:05.280 And this is Season 2 of The Devil's Quarry. Almost 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:09.559 six years after Robin Murphy disappeared, Detective Brian Kors made 0:04:09.620 --> 0:04:12.870 a breakthrough in her case. Jane Gunderman showed him a 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:17.270 cheap tan suitcase stashed in her cottage basement. Inside it 0:04:17.290 --> 0:04:20.950 were 12 pairs of girls' and women's underwear, each of 0:04:20.990 --> 0:04:25.020 them sealed in Ziploc baggies. Kars sent a lot of 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:28.280 them out for DNA testing. One of them was consistent 0:04:28.300 --> 0:04:33.110 with a control sample taken from Robin's cutoffs. Kars concluded 0:04:33.150 --> 0:04:39.930 it was a match. That link was Dr. Frankenstein's lightning bolt. 0:04:40.390 --> 0:04:44.490 It jolted a dead case back to life. Kars called 0:04:44.510 --> 0:04:47.750 the Murphys in straight away. He wanted to tell them 0:04:47.790 --> 0:04:51.270 the news before he told the press. Sure enough, the 0:04:51.310 --> 0:04:55.650 local papers ran headlines once they got word. By then, 0:04:55.790 --> 0:04:59.870 Karst had essentially started afresh. Talked to anyone he could 0:04:59.910 --> 0:05:03.530 who'd been connected to Robin, except for the psychics and 0:05:03.570 --> 0:05:08.530 civilian detectives. He spoke to Robin's dear friend, James Blaisdell. 0:05:09.710 --> 0:05:16.750 He presented himself as a new, young, hip type of detective. 0:05:16.830 --> 0:05:18.850 He goes, look, I understand what it was like in 0:05:18.890 --> 0:05:26.310 the 90s. I'm not looking for spookies or... or ghosts 0:05:26.390 --> 0:05:29.790 and goblins. I'm not looking for anything like that. I 0:05:29.830 --> 0:05:33.670 just want to find out from you, from your own words, 0:05:34.250 --> 0:05:34.970 what happened. 0:05:36.330 --> 0:05:39.080 And Kars spoke to anyone who could tell him about Gombert, 0:05:39.620 --> 0:05:42.479 including most of the people you've heard from in this series. 0:05:43.540 --> 0:05:46.660 One of those people was Gombert's long-suffering ex, the young 0:05:46.740 --> 0:05:50.979 woman we're calling Anne-Marie. Kars kept coming back to her 0:05:51.020 --> 0:05:55.020 about written statements she made. One in particular stood out 0:05:55.060 --> 0:05:59.200 to him, dated eight months after Robin disappeared. It had 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:03.080 to do with physical evidence tied to Robin. Our reporter 0:06:03.140 --> 0:06:06.260 Kathleen Horan reads from Anne-Marie Swarn's statement. 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:13.550 On the Thursday that Robin's personal belongings were found behind ShopRite, 0:06:14.089 --> 0:06:17.690 a large plastic bag with my personal belongings was put 0:06:17.730 --> 0:06:20.810 by my father's Jeep in the front yard. My mother 0:06:20.870 --> 0:06:23.219 took the items out of the bag. and put some 0:06:23.260 --> 0:06:26.660 things away. I didn't help her. I was kind of 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:29.240 upset that Howard had apparently been to my house. 0:06:30.420 --> 0:06:33.520 Yes, on the same day Robin's friends found her things 0:06:33.580 --> 0:06:37.730 behind ShopRite, Gombert left a bag with Anne Marie's folks. 0:06:38.710 --> 0:06:41.469 In that bag of clothes was something that belonged to Robin, 0:06:42.050 --> 0:06:45.010 but Anne Marie didn't see it right away. She was 0:06:45.070 --> 0:06:47.890 so sickened by even the thought of Gombert that she 0:06:47.910 --> 0:06:49.810 didn't go through that stuff for a month. 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:54.520 I just remember getting that, opening it up, and seeing 0:06:54.580 --> 0:06:56.930 the mace and going, that's not mine. 0:06:58.790 --> 0:07:01.170 She thought back to an evening she'd spent with Robin. 0:07:02.410 --> 0:07:04.230 I remember one of the times that she was at 0:07:04.270 --> 0:07:07.560 the house, I believe she found that mace. So I 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:11.380 knew that looked like the one she had found. 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:15.540 Several months before she vanished, Robin was at the flat 0:07:15.620 --> 0:07:19.340 Anne-Marie shared with Gombert. Robin showed them a can of 0:07:19.460 --> 0:07:23.030 Maysheet found in the ShopRite parking lot. It had a 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:25.550 distinctive white cap, says Anne-Marie. 0:07:27.330 --> 0:07:29.730 Did you think to bring it to police right away? 0:07:29.750 --> 0:07:32.450 I think I brought it up to them because it 0:07:32.550 --> 0:07:35.470 wasn't mine. I don't know if it was hers, but 0:07:35.930 --> 0:07:36.730 it wasn't mine. 0:07:38.090 --> 0:07:40.940 It was another piece of evidence that, for Karst at least, 0:07:41.240 --> 0:07:43.560 connected Gombert to Robin Murphy. 0:07:44.660 --> 0:07:47.520 Detective Karst and I had phone conversations before. 0:07:48.060 --> 0:07:48.960 For numerous years. 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:51.580 And I think he really wanted to try and find 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:52.560 out what was happening. 0:07:53.530 --> 0:07:55.630 But Karst needed more than a can of mace to 0:07:55.710 --> 0:08:00.090 take a run at Gombert, something that definitively belonged to Robin. 0:08:02.330 --> 0:08:05.730 Gombert Sr., as you've heard, had a small, filthy cottage 0:08:05.790 --> 0:08:09.940 in New Fairfield, Connecticut, just 14 miles east of Carmel, 0:08:09.980 --> 0:08:10.500 New York. 0:08:11.620 --> 0:08:14.770 This was a summer home. That had never been converted. 0:08:14.810 --> 0:08:18.050 There was no septic system, and there would be sewage 0:08:18.110 --> 0:08:19.810 in the yard, and it smelled terrible. 0:08:20.790 --> 0:08:23.510 That's Barry, the neighbor who wanted to install a fence 0:08:23.570 --> 0:08:27.110 for his dog. The problem was the two Gomberts living 0:08:27.210 --> 0:08:27.770 next door. 0:08:28.940 --> 0:08:32.240 The houses were 20 feet apart, and there was a 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:33.180 fence in between. 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:35.960 My property was like an L-shape. 0:08:36.670 --> 0:08:39.290 Like three parts of a square, and then his property 0:08:39.370 --> 0:08:42.270 was like nested into that fourth square. So I kind 0:08:42.309 --> 0:08:43.850 of surrounded him on two sides. 0:08:45.170 --> 0:08:48.580 All Barry wanted was a tidy lawn and yard. But 0:08:48.620 --> 0:08:51.839 the Gomberts kept dumping their trash on his lot, which 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:53.690 extended to the woods behind it. 0:08:54.940 --> 0:08:57.640 They had a garage that there wasn't a square inch 0:08:57.679 --> 0:09:00.320 of space. It was filled with junk and car parts 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:04.280 and dirty old engines and You know, when he decided 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:06.380 he didn't want something, he just kind of chucked it 0:09:06.420 --> 0:09:07.079 in the woods. 0:09:08.980 --> 0:09:12.920 Detective Kars was curious about that garage and any other 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:17.970 cranny that might hide proof of Gombert's crimes. His curiosity 0:09:17.990 --> 0:09:21.910 had been piqued by another of Gombert's exes, Jim Gunderman. 0:09:23.690 --> 0:09:26.430 His dad's attic at his dad's house. And that's the 0:09:26.590 --> 0:09:28.850 only thing I can tell you is where that would 0:09:28.890 --> 0:09:29.650 be where stuff is. 0:09:31.140 --> 0:09:34.760 Jane said that the attic was Gombert's hidey-hole, the place 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:37.400 he stashed the stuff he wanted no one to see. 0:09:39.460 --> 0:09:42.160 After talking to Jane, Kors did a bit of recon. 0:09:42.980 --> 0:09:45.460 He drove by Gombert's house with a Connecticut cop to 0:09:45.500 --> 0:09:49.710 take photos of the exterior and to track Gombert's seniors' 0:09:49.790 --> 0:09:54.589 comings and goings. But to actually search the house, he'd 0:09:54.610 --> 0:09:57.730 need a warrant, which wasn't as simple as it sounds. 0:09:58.450 --> 0:10:01.500 He'd have to apply for an out-of-state warrant in a 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:06.199 six-year-old cold case to boot. He sweated each detail in 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:09.720 his application to a judge. There's several drafts of it 0:10:09.740 --> 0:10:13.030 in the file. Kars rewrote his findings to make his 0:10:13.190 --> 0:10:19.980 best pitch for the evidence he hoped to find. While 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:23.820 we wait on that judge's decision, let's talk about no-body murders. 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:27.040 Those are, of course, killings in which no corpse is 0:10:27.100 --> 0:10:30.720 ever found, which was the sort of case Detective Kars 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:36.140 was pursuing. Not a missing girl or pissed-off runaway case. No, 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:39.699 a girl who'd been snatched and killed that rainy night 0:10:39.740 --> 0:10:46.770 in April, Palm Sunday of 1995. No-body murders are devilishly 0:10:46.850 --> 0:10:50.199 tricky to bring to trial. With no remains, it's hard 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:53.780 to prove that someone's even dead. But a body isn't 0:10:53.830 --> 0:10:57.589 the only thing that can prove a person has died. Instead, 0:10:57.650 --> 0:11:00.930 the prosecution can rely on evidence that shows they're no 0:11:00.990 --> 0:11:06.110 longer alive. As in, no phone calls, no sightings, no 0:11:06.210 --> 0:11:10.550 activity in their accounts. Legally speaking, they have ceased to 0:11:10.630 --> 0:11:14.790 live their life. And though no body cases don't often 0:11:14.830 --> 0:11:18.180 get to trial, When they do, they're successful more often 0:11:18.220 --> 0:11:23.260 than not. In fact, according to FBI specialists, when prosecutors 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:28.179 try no-body killings, they win convictions 86% of the time. 0:11:29.500 --> 0:11:33.540 That's what Kars was trying to build, a winnable no-body case. 0:11:34.740 --> 0:11:38.140 After reviewing the warrant application, the judge cleared the way 0:11:38.220 --> 0:11:41.819 for him. Kars got his warrant to search the Gombert 0:11:41.860 --> 0:12:13.750 house on grounds. On April 25th, 2001, two Carmel detectives 0:12:13.809 --> 0:12:19.430 went warrant in hand into Howard's father's house. Gombert Sr. 0:12:19.429 --> 0:12:22.800 's mom had died by that point, and Gombert Jr. 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:26.140 was in jail awaiting trial for the crime of raping 0:12:26.220 --> 0:12:30.959 seven-year-old Sarah Lindley. But his dad still lived in the house. 0:12:32.020 --> 0:12:34.220 On that day, the cops found no one home, so 0:12:34.260 --> 0:12:39.040 they went in through an unlocked window. Jane Gunderman described 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:39.900 the place to us. 0:12:41.100 --> 0:12:44.439 You walk in, there's the kitchen, here's the living room. 0:12:44.940 --> 0:12:48.700 You walk to the little hall, and there's a bedroom 0:12:48.820 --> 0:12:51.859 that's a twin-size bed and a full-size in the other 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:53.739 bedroom and the bath right in the middle. 0:12:54.380 --> 0:12:54.720 That's it. 0:12:55.300 --> 0:12:56.360 That's the extent of the house. 0:12:57.850 --> 0:13:00.400 Now, in those days, cops didn't wear body cams or 0:13:00.450 --> 0:13:05.010 capture searches on video. But from photos the detectives took 0:13:05.070 --> 0:13:07.390 that day, we can see some of what they saw 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:11.579 Climbing in through the kitchen window, they swerved past heaps 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:15.339 of clutter on the counters. Bags of trash hung from 0:13:15.420 --> 0:13:18.970 drawer handles or heaped up on the floor, as if 0:13:19.050 --> 0:13:21.809 someone had started to clean the place, then dropped dead 0:13:21.870 --> 0:13:26.630 from exertion. In the hall, they threaded through hip-deep junk. 0:13:27.429 --> 0:13:31.500 Big bags of cat litter and busted car parts. There 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:33.960 was so much rubbish underfoot they could barely see the 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:38.410 front door. In the smaller room, old desktops took up 0:13:38.470 --> 0:13:42.819 most of the space. One source told us that Gombert Sr. 0:13:42.860 --> 0:13:46.680 was an avid consumer of porn. There were stacks of 0:13:46.700 --> 0:13:51.990 VHS tapes on the shelves. One of those tapes was labeled, Finally, 0:13:52.850 --> 0:13:55.730 but its contents aren't detailed in the case file. 0:13:57.110 --> 0:13:58.910 If you saw this place, you would be like, oh 0:13:58.950 --> 0:14:00.610 my God, oh my God. 0:14:01.630 --> 0:14:05.110 He had all these AM radios in the kitchen reporting 0:14:05.170 --> 0:14:06.469 police information. 0:14:06.510 --> 0:14:09.250 And it was very noisy. To me, it was just 0:14:09.309 --> 0:14:09.990 another world. 0:14:10.010 --> 0:14:12.890 It gave me the heebie-jeebies. 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:15.420 It was very dirty. 0:14:16.420 --> 0:14:18.920 I had to clean it up my way so I 0:14:18.940 --> 0:14:21.680 could cook, at least, because there wasn't even cooking room 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:23.020 with everything around. 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:30.980 It also bears saying that in his letters to me 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:35.240 and my team, Gombert brought up videotapes he had. And no, 0:14:35.340 --> 0:14:38.950 they weren't footage of birthday parties or joyous family events. 0:14:39.780 --> 0:14:43.470 It seems he'd rigged up camcorders around the house. Though 0:14:43.490 --> 0:14:45.690 to what end is known only to Gombert. 0:14:46.890 --> 0:14:49.470 He had said something about you at his father's house, 0:14:49.810 --> 0:14:51.550 and he had a camera installed. 0:14:51.630 --> 0:14:52.570 Is there any truth to. 0:14:52.530 --> 0:14:53.170 That, or. 0:14:54.410 --> 0:14:55.010 In the shower. 0:14:55.030 --> 0:14:57.050 Wait, what? 0:14:58.190 --> 0:15:02.050 It was a big recording thing. A video cam hanging 0:15:02.220 --> 0:15:02.940 from the light. 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:06.440 Jane would see the red light blinking at her while 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:07.560 she washed her hair. 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:10.400 I know it was recording me, but what was I 0:15:10.420 --> 0:15:13.020 going to do? I had to take a shower. I said, well, 0:15:13.060 --> 0:15:14.660 if you guys are that desperate, here you go. 0:15:16.410 --> 0:15:17.970 We don't know if Jane was featured in any of 0:15:17.990 --> 0:15:22.110 the tapeses from that search. That's known only the Carmel detectives, 0:15:22.330 --> 0:15:26.270 who presumably viewed the footage. But there were other corners 0:15:26.330 --> 0:15:30.240 of the house to search. One in particular was the attic. 0:15:32.500 --> 0:15:35.760 It was only accessible from outdoors via a ladder to 0:15:35.780 --> 0:15:39.960 a second-story window. When the cops climbed up there, they 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:44.480 saw stacks and stacks of boxes and duffel bags strewn 0:15:44.540 --> 0:15:48.420 across the floor. There in the mess was a manila 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:52.900 folder that immediately caught their eye. It contained newspaper stories 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:57.360 about Robin's disappearance. Gombert had clipped and saved them all. 0:15:59.060 --> 0:16:01.740 The Carmel cops bagged the items of interest and brought 0:16:01.780 --> 0:16:06.200 them back to the station. If those things were forensically tested, 0:16:06.220 --> 0:16:10.630 there's no word of it in Robin's file. That's not, however, 0:16:10.650 --> 0:16:14.930 the last word on searches and seizures. Some months later, 0:16:15.050 --> 0:16:18.030 Kars got an email out of the blue. It came 0:16:18.090 --> 0:16:22.580 from Barry, the Gombert's next-door neighbor. He'd found something discarded 0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:25.040 on the corner of his lot that the Gomberts used 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:26.220 as their dump site. 0:16:28.180 --> 0:16:31.500 First thing I found was a woman's handbag that was 0:16:31.620 --> 0:16:39.150 totally deteriorated with undergarments in the handbag. You naturally were like, oh, 0:16:39.230 --> 0:16:42.810 somebody lost this. Let me go through and see if 0:16:42.850 --> 0:16:45.390 there's an ID and I can return it to them. 0:16:46.090 --> 0:16:49.580 Because there was like some bracelets and, but it was 0:16:49.620 --> 0:16:53.780 all in a state of filth and decay from being 0:16:53.820 --> 0:16:54.380 in the woods. 0:16:55.020 --> 0:16:56.520 That was the first handbag. 0:16:57.740 --> 0:17:02.640 The second handbag I found did have a person's identification 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:05.740 in it. And that's when the alarm went off in 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:07.859 my head that there was a problem. Like, wait a minute, 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:12.150 two handbags and this creepy guy with a young girl 0:17:12.210 --> 0:17:12.750 next door. 0:17:14.070 --> 0:17:16.510 He's referring to the time he saw Gombert Jr. on 0:17:16.530 --> 0:17:20.270 a blanket with a much younger girl. It's possible, though 0:17:20.310 --> 0:17:24.800 not likely, that the girl was Anne-Marie. Given Gombert's obsession 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:28.000 with teens and tweens... She could have been any number 0:17:28.060 --> 0:17:28.620 of girls. 0:17:29.930 --> 0:17:33.390 Over the course of time, that really bothered me. 0:17:34.250 --> 0:17:38.430 So I took the wallet out of the second hand 0:17:38.450 --> 0:17:40.429 bag I found and that one hadn't been there for 0:17:40.490 --> 0:17:43.340 as long as the other one. It seemed like maybe 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:46.300 it was in the debris in the brush for a 0:17:46.340 --> 0:17:49.439 year or two. I could still, there's driver's license cash 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:53.139 in the wallet and I called the number on the 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:57.800 driver's license and asked for the woman to say, hey, 0:17:58.260 --> 0:18:03.500 I found your purse. And a gentleman answered the phone 0:18:03.540 --> 0:18:07.520 who was her father, who didn't say much to me, 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:10.169 but he said, I'll come over and get it. 0:18:12.660 --> 0:18:15.820 He came over, he introduced himself, he's very pensive with me. 0:18:17.300 --> 0:18:20.300 And he, after I talked to him a little bit 0:18:20.340 --> 0:18:24.090 and he realized I wasn't like part of this really 0:18:24.150 --> 0:18:29.950 sleazy gang of people I lived around. He said, my 0:18:29.990 --> 0:18:34.179 daughter got raped in that house. And he pointed to 0:18:34.220 --> 0:18:37.120 a house up the street, which was the Mullins house. 0:18:39.060 --> 0:18:42.680 Barry knew all too well about that house. Danny Mullen, 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:44.730 a close friend of Gombert's, lived there. 0:18:46.510 --> 0:18:49.750 I went up there one time because my mailbox was 0:18:49.810 --> 0:18:54.640 adjacent to his. And like, the guy never got his mail. Again, 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:57.770 it was overflowing. So I said, I'm going to use 0:18:57.830 --> 0:19:01.450 the mail to go up there and hand it off 0:19:01.490 --> 0:19:03.390 to him and say, hey, just thought you might want this. 0:19:03.910 --> 0:19:07.469 But when I went up there, there's nobody inside the house. 0:19:07.490 --> 0:19:11.080 The door was open. So I brought the mail in 0:19:11.190 --> 0:19:13.460 and put it on the table that was kind of 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:13.980 near the door. 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:16.980 And it was really disgusting in there. 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:23.399 Like very little furniture, beer bottles, cigarette butts put out 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:24.020 on the floor. 0:19:24.730 --> 0:19:26.720 I mean, pardon my English, it was a shithole. 0:19:27.859 --> 0:19:29.660 But back to the father of the girl who owned 0:19:29.700 --> 0:19:30.220 the purse. 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:35.740 He said to me, point blank, the guy who raped her, 0:19:36.020 --> 0:19:41.490 his name was Howard. And he took the purse and 0:19:41.510 --> 0:19:45.369 he was broken up. And he thanked me and he 0:19:45.410 --> 0:19:45.850 got in the. 0:19:45.810 --> 0:19:46.590 Car and left. 0:19:47.710 --> 0:19:50.379 It shocks you when you think he's going to say, say, oh, 0:19:50.380 --> 0:19:52.379 thank you so much for returning this. And he tells 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:53.100 that story. 0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:57.720 The purses, the warning from Montgomery Sr. about his son, 0:19:58.380 --> 0:20:01.320 the all-night parties and drugs at the house across the street. 0:20:02.460 --> 0:20:06.190 Barry started fearing for himself and his pets. He never 0:20:06.270 --> 0:20:08.970 left them home when he went to work. And then 0:20:08.990 --> 0:20:11.570 the winter after he bought the place, he saw footprints 0:20:11.630 --> 0:20:15.379 in the snow around it. Someone was clearly casing his 0:20:15.430 --> 0:20:18.980 house when he wasn't there. It was time for Barry 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:20.859 to do his own dig into the neighbors. 0:20:23.700 --> 0:20:26.460 I wanted to see, like, what's going on here? And 0:20:27.020 --> 0:20:30.160 at the time, you know, there was no internet or anything. 0:20:30.619 --> 0:20:34.250 I went down and did the microfiche thing in the 0:20:34.830 --> 0:20:37.310 New Fairfield Library and the Danbury Library. 0:20:38.410 --> 0:20:42.400 Microfish for younger listeners is how archives used to be saved. 0:20:43.540 --> 0:20:45.980 I just wanted to understand because I was getting a 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:51.380 really creepy feeling, not only from the Gombert's house, but 0:20:51.460 --> 0:20:54.280 from the people at the top of my street, the Mullins. 0:20:55.460 --> 0:20:58.070 As he scrolled through back issues of the local papers, 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:01.050 he found Gombert Jr. 's name over and over. 0:21:02.850 --> 0:21:06.250 His name came up, I think, in the Danbury News 0:21:06.310 --> 0:21:11.390 Times about his girlfriend in a laundromat or something like 0:21:11.450 --> 0:21:14.149 that and somebody got in a laundromat complaining about him 0:21:14.210 --> 0:21:16.840 and that's when the bell went off and finally I 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:18.359 put it all together and wrote that letter. 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:25.320 That email landed in Kars' inbox in March of 2002. 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:27.879 Kars drove to New Fairfield to talk to Barry about 0:21:27.900 --> 0:21:31.129 the purses and to see if he'd witnessed anything at 0:21:31.170 --> 0:21:33.689 the Gombert house that might help him solve his case. 0:21:34.890 --> 0:21:41.489 The police came and specifically asked me about Like the laundromat. And, 0:21:42.950 --> 0:21:44.870 you know, they were searching for a missing girl from 0:21:44.910 --> 0:21:47.650 the laundromat. And they, you know, all I could tell 0:21:47.670 --> 0:21:49.340 them was I found purses. 0:21:51.060 --> 0:21:54.740 Shortly thereafter, Barry put his house up for sale and 0:21:54.800 --> 0:22:20.500 left the town of New Fairfield for good. On the 0:22:20.540 --> 0:22:24.440 day his colleagues searched the Gombert house, Detective Karst was elsewhere, 0:22:25.060 --> 0:22:30.090 by design. And why wasn't Karst there? Because he was 0:22:30.130 --> 0:22:33.990 springing an ambush on someone else. That someone else being 0:22:34.010 --> 0:22:38.470 Howard Gombert Jr. It was Karst's intention to confront Gombert 0:22:38.510 --> 0:22:42.560 in prison, while the Carmel cops were tossing his father's house. 0:22:44.859 --> 0:22:47.380 To prep for that ambush, Karst would have first read 0:22:47.440 --> 0:22:51.090 the notes of a cop named Edward Grant... Grant, a 0:22:51.130 --> 0:22:54.060 lieutenant with the New York State Police, was the expert 0:22:54.180 --> 0:22:58.720 profiler who'd assessed Howard Gombert in the days after Robin vanished. 0:22:59.740 --> 0:23:09.660 The first line read, But Karst also called a profiler 0:23:09.700 --> 0:23:13.790 with the BAU, short for the Behavioral Analysis Unit of 0:23:13.830 --> 0:23:17.570 the FBI. We don't have Karst's notes from that chat, 0:23:17.609 --> 0:23:21.720 but we're confident they talked about strategy. because that's what 0:23:21.760 --> 0:23:25.330 profilers are really good at, teaching cops how to talk 0:23:25.350 --> 0:23:27.129 to predators like Gombert. 0:23:34.950 --> 0:23:40.500 He can be very charismatic. He can be likable and conversational, 0:23:41.000 --> 0:23:43.020 and he can come across as caring. 0:23:44.040 --> 0:23:48.270 That's Julia Cowley, a retired senior profiler with the FBI. 0:23:49.300 --> 0:23:52.080 She worked for the Bureau for 22 years and helped 0:23:52.100 --> 0:23:55.910 break one big case after another. Though she didn't work 0:23:55.990 --> 0:23:58.730 Robin's case, she was kind enough to wade through our 0:23:58.830 --> 0:24:02.010 Gombert file and give us her expert take on him. 0:24:02.910 --> 0:24:06.169 I'm not saying he's caring, but he can be. So 0:24:06.619 --> 0:24:09.780 that tells me he likely can read people well, and 0:24:09.820 --> 0:24:12.980 he's likely reading the interviewer pretty well. 0:24:14.200 --> 0:24:17.240 She helped us understand what Karst was up against in Gombert. 0:24:18.330 --> 0:24:22.990 What I saw as a main feature is control in 0:24:23.030 --> 0:24:25.930 the way people interpreted him and their interactions with him 0:24:26.350 --> 0:24:31.940 and his own writings. When I looked across the relationships 0:24:32.119 --> 0:24:40.119 that he had, you repeatedly see control, domination, difficulty tolerating 0:24:40.540 --> 0:24:42.220 rejection or defiance. 0:24:44.780 --> 0:24:47.590 She also told us how she'd have prepped Detective Karst 0:24:47.640 --> 0:24:49.169 before he sat with Gombert. 0:24:50.270 --> 0:24:54.770 Somebody like Gombert, clearly he's not just going to confess. 0:24:54.890 --> 0:24:57.590 So you want him to talk, and he does like 0:24:57.650 --> 0:25:04.100 to talk. So giving him that opportunity to demonstrate something 0:25:04.280 --> 0:25:07.500 that the interviewer doesn't know or he thinks that he 0:25:07.540 --> 0:25:08.260 doesn't know. 0:25:09.380 --> 0:25:12.460 Having interviewed Gombert several times, I can confirm he's a 0:25:12.619 --> 0:25:16.790 master at pressing your buttons. That's precisely what you can't 0:25:16.869 --> 0:25:21.070 let him do, says Cowley. Instead, you humble yourself before 0:25:21.090 --> 0:25:24.380 him and make him think he's the alpha in the room. 0:25:25.359 --> 0:25:31.000 I wouldn't argue with him because that just feeds his 0:25:31.040 --> 0:25:37.400 grievances and makes him mad. He clearly likes to explain things, 0:25:37.720 --> 0:25:43.290 correct people, correct the record, and prove people wrong. Give 0:25:43.330 --> 0:25:46.669 him that opportunity to do that. I would use that 0:25:46.790 --> 0:25:48.350 rather than try to fight him. 0:25:49.350 --> 0:25:52.389 The essential thing, she says, is to keep asking questions, 0:25:53.230 --> 0:25:55.220 even when you know he's lying to your face. 0:25:56.320 --> 0:26:00.139 His stories change. And you read through it and you're like, okay, 0:26:00.180 --> 0:26:02.500 that's not what he said earlier. But if he wants 0:26:02.560 --> 0:26:06.300 to say something that seems unbelievable or implausible, let him 0:26:06.340 --> 0:26:10.439 keep talking because there may be something there that, hmm, 0:26:11.340 --> 0:26:12.160