Speaker 1: Novel, Hey listener. In this episode, there's mention of suicide, attempts, depression,
Speaker 1: violence and control. There's also the story of Gail's life
Speaker 1: full of friendship, curly hair, and the romance of youth.
Speaker 1: Probably a few swears too, so, as they say in
Speaker 1: the South, Sorry, y'all.
Speaker 2: If you do.
Speaker 1: Listen and are impacted by any of our themes, you
Speaker 1: can reach out to No More, a domestic violence charity
Speaker 1: we've partnered with. They have lots of great resources to help.
Speaker 2: You or your loved ones.
Speaker 1: You can find them at no More dot org. That's
Speaker 1: no More dot org.
Speaker 3: A baby photos.
Speaker 4: That you that's us too, and Gail No, and Gail
Speaker 4: And I was with her when we took this one.
Speaker 4: You know you get from J. C. Penny these like
Speaker 4: little things come here for a free photo. And she
Speaker 4: made me gun with her and we took the photo.
Speaker 4: And that's her beloved cat. Here's more care free Gails
Speaker 4: before she met and married Bob. And here's Bob. And
Speaker 4: here's Gail and Bob. Does she look happy? No, I'm
Speaker 4: Alaine Katz, I'm Gail's sister.
Speaker 2: I'm Carol Fisher.
Speaker 1: And from the teams that and our Heart Radio you're
Speaker 1: listening to The Girlfriends episode three, Bubbly, Bouncy and Very
Speaker 1: Alive You. A few days before Christmas in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: my producer Anna visited Elaine in Westchester County, New York.
Speaker 1: Lane had just moved houses the day before, this beautiful
Speaker 1: wood paneled home which looked out over the Hudson River.
Speaker 1: They sat around the kitchen table for two days, drinking
Speaker 1: wine out of plastic cups pulled from cardboard boxes. I
Speaker 1: wish I could have been there, though I'll admit I
Speaker 1: would have been nervous. I worried a lot about how
Speaker 1: Elaine would perceive me as a member of a lady
Speaker 1: social club that had turned her sister's disappearance into gossip.
Speaker 1: I would hate for her to think we made light
Speaker 1: of the hardest moment of her life. But I'm really
Speaker 1: ready to learn about Gail and to show all of
Speaker 1: you who she was, because I never got that chance
Speaker 1: when I first stumbled into this story. If you look
Speaker 1: at some of those old photos of their family, it's
Speaker 1: clear how similar Elaine and Gail look. They weren't even
Speaker 1: two years apart.
Speaker 4: One of our favorite sayings is Gail and I were
Speaker 4: the opposite side of the same coin. We were very different,
Speaker 4: but it was because we were responding to the same
Speaker 4: stimuli in an opposite way, so we were very close.
Speaker 4: Early in our lives, we lived in Brooklyn and there
Speaker 4: was a school at the end of our block, and
Speaker 4: the kids would get out, and I'd find this impossible
Speaker 4: when I think back on it. They would go wild
Speaker 4: and they would like sometimes start fights with us. Gail
Speaker 4: was a protector then, but then she became fragile. She
Speaker 4: had psychosomatic asthma, like when she got anxious, she couldn't breathe.
Speaker 4: And I remember we would be in school and you know,
Speaker 4: they had those public announcements, you know, Laine cats come
Speaker 4: to the nurse's office, and there my sister would be
Speaker 4: breathing with you know, a bag over her nose, and
Speaker 4: I would be called down there to hold her hand
Speaker 4: and calm her down. So there was like a role reversal.
Speaker 4: Although she was older than me, she had become highly
Speaker 4: emotion and fragile.
Speaker 1: Elaine, Gail, their younger brother Stephen, and their parents, Sylvia
Speaker 1: and Manny, moved to belmore Long Island in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 1: It's where the girls lived out their teenage years.
Speaker 5: There was a lot of noise in our families. When
Speaker 5: we got together. It was always lots of loud discussions.
Speaker 5: I think partly the Jewish families. Lots of debating always
Speaker 5: went on.
Speaker 2: This is Abby Bruce, Gail and Elaine's cousin.
Speaker 5: We were having a passover or Thanksgiving or something all together,
Speaker 5: and there was a lot of tension going on between
Speaker 5: my mother and my uncle. I forget what was going on,
Speaker 5: but I remember it being tense, and Gail went over
Speaker 5: and sat down at the piano and started playing the piano.
Speaker 5: It completely diffused the situation. She was young, we were probably,
Speaker 5: you know, fourteen or fifteen at the time. I remember
Speaker 5: watching her hands on the piano and thinking she has
Speaker 5: such beautiful hands.
Speaker 4: I would say I was into boys. Gail was into love.
Speaker 4: There's a difference. I'm not saying that Gail was boy crazy.
Speaker 4: I was boy crazy. Gail was love crazy. Gail was
Speaker 4: engaged like twice before she graduated high school and Saturday.
Speaker 6: Gail had a way about her that she would attract
Speaker 6: a lot of attention. We were very popular in school,
Speaker 6: and we were in the popular crowd.
Speaker 1: This is Gail's best friend from high school Denise Cassenbaum.
Speaker 1: If you look through gail high school yearbook, you'll find
Speaker 1: Denise and Gail on the same page. They look like
Speaker 1: they could have been plucked right out of woodstock. Denise
Speaker 1: has an air of a young barbistreisam with long, straight
Speaker 1: Joni Mitchell hair, while Gail's rocking more of a young
Speaker 1: share look with their curly dark hair, flat iron long
Speaker 1: and cut to one length, pure flower power. They met
Speaker 1: when Gail was bumped up a year after excelling at
Speaker 1: her studies. While they weren't at school, they were having
Speaker 1: lots of fun doing all the things us girls did
Speaker 1: back in the seventies.
Speaker 6: I remember being at her house and we'd go up
Speaker 6: to her room and we'd listen to Neil Young, Crosby
Speaker 6: Stills and Nish and Neil Young. That was our favorite.
Speaker 6: And she was the first person who I went to
Speaker 6: New York City with. We were only fourteen, and our
Speaker 6: parents let us go into Manhattan on the train and
Speaker 6: we went down to Crenwich Village and we walked around.
Speaker 6: We met boys we thought were so cool.
Speaker 1: Gail graduated at seventeen and followed her high school boyfriend
Speaker 1: David out to Albany in upstate New York. She was
Speaker 1: convinced he was the love of her life, but they
Speaker 1: broke up within a year or so. A few more
Speaker 1: unsuccessful relationships later, and Gail was single again, but this
Speaker 1: time she was stuck in Albany for no good reason.
Speaker 1: She made a plan to enroll in the school in
Speaker 1: Colorado in the fall, but decided to stick around for
Speaker 1: one more summer.
Speaker 4: During that summer, she met John fell in love head
Speaker 4: over heels. They had this durable apartment facing the public square,
Speaker 4: decorated it completely like you new hippie style. She was
Speaker 4: completely vegetarian. She had, you know, a zillion cats in
Speaker 4: the apartment. He was a struggling artist, and every now
Speaker 4: and then, because they really couldn't pay the rent, they
Speaker 4: would go. They would tell some local club that the
Speaker 4: name of their band was rent. They would play a
Speaker 4: few gigs, they would cover whatever crap somebody wanted them
Speaker 4: to cover. They would raise enough money for the rent,
Speaker 4: then they would stop.
Speaker 1: When his band, called Odd spelt Ode, weren't trying to
Speaker 1: pay the rent. They were writing and performing in avant
Speaker 1: garde rock opera. If you don't believe me, here it
Speaker 1: is John's on the.
Speaker 2: Keys an escalator raising side.
Speaker 7: The farm in heaven my land, I saw the heart
Speaker 7: of man in the old order moved, touching hands as
Speaker 7: they walked on all the treasure will share with love
Speaker 7: for every woman.
Speaker 2: Ah the seventies founder.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, she was the daughter of professional, educated Jewish people
Speaker 4: and our tribe doesn't really believe in rock music as
Speaker 4: a career, and she was getting a lot of flack
Speaker 4: from her parents.
Speaker 2: Her mother was very overbearing as a mother. Here's Gail's
Speaker 2: cousin Abby again, and she had very high expectations of
Speaker 2: the kids. So Elaine did what Sylvia thought she should do,
Speaker 2: and that was go be a lawyer, because you're really smart.
Speaker 2: Gail didn't want to do any of that kind of thing.
Speaker 5: She was a bit of a free spirit, and that
Speaker 5: was really hard for her mother.
Speaker 4: I think she started to feel like they had to succeed.
Speaker 1: Gail moved down to New York City, where she enrolled
Speaker 1: in a dance therapy program and started fronting the band
Speaker 1: to music producers, and.
Speaker 4: She even got a job as a cocktail waitress at
Speaker 4: Tracts Trax, which was one of the hottest rock clubs
Speaker 4: in the city.
Speaker 2: I think Gail and I would have been fast friends.
Speaker 1: I swooned over my fair share of rock stars, too,
Speaker 1: starting with The Monkeys as a young girl and.
Speaker 2: Later Eric Clapton and Mick Fleetwood.
Speaker 1: Rock and roll musicians represented everything opposite from an overbearing.
Speaker 2: Jewish mother, and rushing on them felt like a certain
Speaker 2: kind of freedom.
Speaker 1: So I totally understand why Gail wanted it to work
Speaker 1: with John. I wanted a guy like him too. At tracks,
Speaker 1: Gail met big name producers and record label and our guys.
Speaker 2: She even got friendly with Cindy.
Speaker 1: Lauper, but no one was really biting at her rock
Speaker 1: opera offering.
Speaker 2: It was pretty lonely.
Speaker 1: Sitting in her Manhattan apartment, Gail would write John poems
Speaker 1: describing how much she missed him. Here's Elaine reading one
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 4: It is a poem of loneliness about which I write words, thoughts,
Speaker 4: and images seemed to come best to me in the
Speaker 4: dead of the night. Alone, I am in my own
Speaker 4: quiet room, hoping that this feeling will go away soon.
Speaker 4: I close my eyes and wash Sure here to help
Speaker 4: and love me and calm my fears. But you and
Speaker 4: I have things we must do to grow and to learn,
Speaker 4: to make our dreams come true. I cannot touch you
Speaker 4: and hear you say all of the comforting words you
Speaker 4: always know to help me up when I fall too low,
Speaker 4: And so I'll sing my song of loneliness until you
Speaker 4: come to me with the internal kiss.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy nine, John moved to Manhattan to be
Speaker 1: with Gail, but their free flowing upstate love didn't thrive
Speaker 1: for long in the big city. They split after a
Speaker 1: year or so. Around the same time, Gail suffered from
Speaker 1: an elbow injury that pulled her out of her dance
Speaker 1: therapy program within just a few months. She felt lost
Speaker 1: and aimless.
Speaker 4: Gail kicked around the city, you know, working a train,
Speaker 4: dating guys that she shouldn't have been dating in the
Speaker 4: music industry, and uh she unfortunately had a suicide attempt
Speaker 4: and ended up in the hospital Saint Vincent's I don't
Speaker 4: think it was a real suicide attempt. She picked the
Speaker 4: night to try a suicide attempt when I was meeting
Speaker 4: her attracts, so she knew that I would get to
Speaker 4: tracks she wouldn't be there. Ultimately, she was in and
Speaker 4: out of the hospital, and I somehow convinced her to
Speaker 4: move into my apartment in eastern Long Island, and she
Speaker 4: lived with me briefly out there, but not surprisingly, she
Speaker 4: didn't want to live out there, and I wangled out
Speaker 4: of my graduate school an internship in the city, and
Speaker 4: the two of us moved into the city and we
Speaker 4: lived together in the city. So, yes, my sister had
Speaker 4: a cry depression. I have chronic anxiety, and quite frankly,
Speaker 4: anxiety and depression are on a continuum spectrum. As I said,
Speaker 4: opposite sides of the same corn.
Speaker 1: It's never easy hearing about someone reaching a point so
Speaker 1: low that they try to end their lives. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine what Gail must have felt to find herself there.
Speaker 1: What I have learned from listening to Elaine is that
Speaker 1: depression was a lifelong affliction for Gail. But by the
Speaker 1: summer in nineteen eighty, after Gail's hospitalization, she was doing
Speaker 1: a lot better, well enough that she wanted to start
Speaker 1: dating again, so her friend Diane invited her over for
Speaker 1: a summer barbecue with the promise of vegetarian options and
Speaker 1: a young man to meet.
Speaker 4: Diane was living in New Jersey with her then doctor
Speaker 4: husband and invited Gail over with the intention of a
Speaker 4: sort of blind date. Fixed up with doctor Bob, and
Speaker 4: they really headed off.
Speaker 6: She was enamored doctor surgeon Pilot.
Speaker 4: One night took her and I think it was Valentine's Day,
Speaker 4: flying all over the bridges of Manhattan at night.
Speaker 6: She said it was very romantic. I mean, why wouldn't
Speaker 6: it be.
Speaker 2: He whined and dined and.
Speaker 4: Took her up to his East Side high in the
Speaker 4: sky apartment with beautiful views of the East River. And
Speaker 4: he took her out to his idyllic family's home in
Speaker 4: West Orange, New Jersey, where his doctor, sister, doctor brother
Speaker 4: in law. We're visiting with their son. The mother, I
Speaker 4: think was a psychologist, something that Gail always had an
Speaker 4: interest in. It seemed perfect to her.
Speaker 5: But in terms of the difference between those two guys,
Speaker 5: completely opposite ends of the spectrum.
Speaker 2: John was a musician.
Speaker 5: He could sit around for hours and play his guitar
Speaker 5: and it was calm, and.
Speaker 2: How was different.
Speaker 5: There was a lot of excitement, a lot of we
Speaker 5: did this, we did that. He was bigger than life.
Speaker 5: I think she was just overwhelmed with Wow, this is amazing.
Speaker 2: And you couldn't blame her. We all thought it was too.
Speaker 1: Everyone was hearing about the wonderful new man in Gail's life.
Speaker 2: Even her hairdresser.
Speaker 8: My name is we Dodd. I am the curl experts
Speaker 8: started the Curly Hair in the country back in nineteen
Speaker 8: eighty four of the first salon for curls. Gail Katz
Speaker 8: was a client, a regular client, regular basis. She was
Speaker 8: ecstatic when she first saw what her hair can do
Speaker 8: for her. Was bouncy, and she was having a good
Speaker 8: time with her and it literally reflected her personality. Bubbly, bouncy,
Speaker 8: very alive. That's the Gail that I knew. We were
Speaker 8: all talking about boyfriends, and she had met this doctor
Speaker 8: and she was very excited about it. And I remember
Speaker 8: it was around Thanksgiving and that she was dreading going Thanksgiving,
Speaker 8: but she might be introducing Bob to her family.
Speaker 1: At that time, I imagine Gail would have been excited
Speaker 1: about introducing her new bow to the family. He was
Speaker 1: exactly what her mother wanted for her. Boy do I
Speaker 1: know that feeling.
Speaker 2: Sylvia was beside herself. He's a doctor.
Speaker 5: He's a doctor.
Speaker 2: That's all she talked about. And I don't think she
Speaker 2: meant it in a bad way. I really don't. A
Speaker 2: typical Jewish.
Speaker 5: Mother from a long island stream for their child. I
Speaker 5: think she wanted Gail to be taken care of, and
Speaker 5: this was the answer to what she thought was the
Speaker 5: best thing that could happen.
Speaker 1: And Bob took care of literally everything.
Speaker 4: Gail would tell me she would go to turn on
Speaker 4: a light, and he would with one hand hold her
Speaker 4: hand and with the other hand turn the light on. Now,
Speaker 4: it might have looked like he was helping her, but
Speaker 4: who needs help turning on a light? He was controlling everything.
Speaker 1: One evening early on, Elaine and her boyfriend Larry went
Speaker 1: out for sushi with Gail and.
Speaker 4: Bob, and Bob was with his chopsticks picking up food
Speaker 4: and putting it in Gail's mouth. He was feeding her,
Speaker 4: and then he started feeding me. He was telling Larry
Speaker 4: I own both of them. It was so strange.
Speaker 1: From that moment on, Elane started noticing things about Bob
Speaker 1: that made her uncomfortable. First it was just the way
Speaker 1: he stood out and his front beclothed when they went
Speaker 1: dancing at.
Speaker 2: Studio fifty four.
Speaker 1: Then the fact he'd make up bizarre lies, like saying
Speaker 1: he went to a trendy pizza place all the time,
Speaker 1: and then not knowing which neighborhood.
Speaker 8: It was in.
Speaker 4: It was such an innocuous and dumb lie, like, no,
Speaker 4: Pebby's pizza isn't there. And you know, he's so bright
Speaker 4: that you had to be really smart to catch him
Speaker 4: in all his lies. But that wasn't so hard for Larry.
Speaker 4: Larry was yell undergrad, Harvard Grad. Larry was smarter than Bob.
Speaker 4: And Bob would say something, Larry would turn his head
Speaker 4: and look at me and roll his eyes, and I
Speaker 4: knew that was, you know, code for not true.
Speaker 2: Worst of all was how Bob was trying to change Gail.
Speaker 4: Gail couldn't change two things that Bob required of her.
Speaker 4: He wanted her to be taller, and he claimed that
Speaker 4: she had a Brooklyn accent. She was five two, she
Speaker 4: wasn't tall, So there was this constant You're not good
Speaker 4: enough for me, Get thinner, get taller, don't wear you know,
Speaker 4: sexy clothes. I'll never forget seeing her. And she was
Speaker 4: dressed so dowdy. She looked like she was from some
Speaker 4: religious sect. We very quickly began to realize Larry and
Speaker 4: I what a sick fuck Bob was.
Speaker 1: The Fact is Gail was in love and she wanted
Speaker 1: it to work out with Bob, just like I had
Speaker 1: no amount of side eye from Elaine was going to
Speaker 1: convince her otherwise. After around a year of dating, Gail
Speaker 1: and Bob got engaged, and with Elaine liked it or not,
Speaker 1: she was plunged into the role of maid of honor.
Speaker 1: They started planning the wedding, picking out food, scouring wedding
Speaker 1: dress shops, visiting venues, combing through Bloomingdale's.
Speaker 4: Hated Bloomingdales is way too big. I have no idea
Speaker 4: where anything is in Bloomingdale's. But we went to Bloomingdale's
Speaker 4: looking at dishes and linens and towels and doing the
Speaker 4: whole gift registry thing.
Speaker 1: During a haircut, she told we did the news and
Speaker 1: asked if she'd come up to Long Island to do
Speaker 1: everyone's hair and makeup before the ceremony. No expense is spared.
Speaker 1: Gail seems so excited.
Speaker 8: You know, I'm in New York with a lot of clients,
Speaker 8: So for me to have a Jewish girl marrying a
Speaker 8: doctor's perfect. That's what they all want. Another Jewish girl
Speaker 8: marrying a doctor. How happy, how fabulous.
Speaker 1: Then one night, about a month before the wedding, Elaine
Speaker 1: got a frantic call.
Speaker 4: My sister calls me hysterical, and she said, you have
Speaker 4: to come get me in the morning. And like, I
Speaker 4: wasn't so happy about this marriage, and this sounds good
Speaker 4: to me. I'll come get you in the morning. I
Speaker 4: go into the city and I drive up to her
Speaker 4: apartment and she comes out holding her cat, no luggage,
Speaker 4: no nothing, just the cat, and she's weeping, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: what's up. And she said, Bob tried to kill the cat.
Speaker 4: And she tells me that she was in the bedroom
Speaker 4: she heard the cat making a funny noise. She goes
Speaker 4: into the bathroom and there Bob is with the cat's
Speaker 4: head in the toilet, drowning the cat, and she of
Speaker 4: course saves the cat. And she says he was jealous
Speaker 4: of the cat. He thinks I love the cat more
Speaker 4: than I love him. So I'm going to prove to
Speaker 4: him how much I love him. I'm going to get
Speaker 4: rid of the cat. And I of course responded, I
Speaker 4: have a good idea. Let's keep the cat and get
Speaker 4: rid of Bob.
Speaker 1: While this alleged drowning was never reported to the police,
Speaker 1: it raised alarm bells among Gail's family.
Speaker 2: I remember thinking this is so weird. Why would anybody
Speaker 2: do something like that. Here's Gail's cousin Abby again, and I.
Speaker 5: Think I remember having a conversation with my mother about it,
Speaker 5: and my mother saying, you know, maybe it's not exactly
Speaker 5: the way we hear it went. You know, it was
Speaker 5: the typical deny that it could really be as bad
Speaker 5: as it was. So I remember thinking, Okay, maybe it wasn't.
Speaker 5: We were planning a wedding, so why were we planning
Speaker 5: a wedding if this was so terrible. When I think
Speaker 5: back now, I'm like, oh my god, what planet was
Speaker 5: I on?
Speaker 2: Sorry?
Speaker 5: I didn't think it would made me cry.
Speaker 1: Gail did get rid of the cat astray she rescued
Speaker 1: from Caldwood Airport after she found it roaming the strip.
Speaker 1: It was named Amelia. A month later, on the morning
Speaker 1: of August twenty ninth, nineteen eighty two, Gail and Bob
Speaker 1: woke up in separate beds, Gail at her parents' house
Speaker 1: in Long Island and Bob in their apartment.
Speaker 2: They're getting married, the poem.
Speaker 4: By Gail dats today. I feel like pleasing you more
Speaker 4: than before. To be living for you is all I
Speaker 4: want to do. To be loving you. It will all
Speaker 4: be there. Everything you want. I swear it all will
Speaker 4: come true. Today I can't use words. They don't say enough.
Speaker 4: Please please listen to me. It's taken so long to
Speaker 4: come true, so long for you, all for you.
Speaker 1: There are so many reasons we choose to get married.
Speaker 1: It sounds unromantic, but it's not always just about love.
Speaker 1: We get married for security, both financial and physical. We
Speaker 1: get married because of family pressure. We get married because
Speaker 1: our friends are doing it too. I can't say why
Speaker 1: Gail decided to marry Bob. I suspect she recognized in
Speaker 1: him a life she wanted, financial security and a husband
Speaker 1: her parents would be proud of. But for her sister Elaine,
Speaker 1: it felt wrong. She'd been dragged around every wedding dress
Speaker 1: shop in Manhattan, only to find that Gail had decided
Speaker 1: to wear Bob's mother's dress.
Speaker 4: I can tell you for a fact it was not
Speaker 4: at all like what I thought she was going to buy.
Speaker 4: And again, I think this was about pleasing Bob.
Speaker 1: It was the most obvious start to a marriage of compromise.
Speaker 1: Early in the morning on the wedding day, we DoD
Speaker 1: and her husband Peter, arrived at Gil's parents' home to
Speaker 1: start fixing everybody's hair and makeup.
Speaker 8: The door was open. I just dragged the belt, I said,
Speaker 8: come in. I walked in. Peter was with me, and
Speaker 8: we walked through the hallway into the kitchen and there
Speaker 8: was an argument going on with her mother, her sister,
Speaker 8: and Gail. It was squeaming, but you see many things
Speaker 8: as a hairdresser, so that's not shocking. It's like, all right,
Speaker 8: how do we manage this? How do we get rid
Speaker 8: of these two to try to do the bride? Calm
Speaker 8: it down, get her ready and get out. And the
Speaker 8: mother and the sister. I asked them if they'd mind leaving,
Speaker 8: and they said, in a minute, we need to finish
Speaker 8: this and you can come right back. And so I said, okay.
Speaker 8: I turned around and I said to Peter Grestarving, we'll
Speaker 8: have a cup of coffee and a bagel or something
Speaker 8: and then we'll wait for them, and then I'll go
Speaker 8: in and I'll do it. So we go outside, we're
Speaker 8: looking at each other and he said, this is odd.
Speaker 8: I'm like, I know, it's really strange. I went back in.
Speaker 8: The argument, I guess resolved, and I went and did
Speaker 8: Gale's hair. I was in her room, we were doing
Speaker 8: her hair, and she was just upset, very very upset.
Speaker 8: She wanted it to be the way she wanted it.
Speaker 8: And she doesn't care what her mother says. She doesn't
Speaker 8: care what they say. She had I believe I don't
Speaker 8: know who's veil, but she didn't care how it was
Speaker 8: put on. She was just just get me done and
Speaker 8: get me on here. I don't care what the hell
Speaker 8: I look like. It was just a strange experience.
Speaker 1: Nobody can fully remember what the argument was about. We
Speaker 1: Dodd says she thinks she heard Bob's name being thrown about.
Speaker 1: Elaine remembers it being tense because a flower crown Gail
Speaker 1: ordered turned out to look more Christmas wreath than Stevie Nicks.
Speaker 1: The only thing I'm sure of, it's not the wedding
Speaker 1: morning Gail would have dreamt of. She put on a
Speaker 1: brave face and headed into Manhattan wearing a modified flower
Speaker 1: crown and her modified mother in law's dress.
Speaker 5: She looks so beautiful, and I don't know if you've
Speaker 5: seen pictures of their wedding, she was beautiful.
Speaker 4: Bob wore a white linen suit, which is a little
Speaker 4: odd and he sort of matched Gail.
Speaker 1: After a traditional service at a temple in Manhattan, everyone
Speaker 1: moved on to the party at a stylish penthouse restaurant
Speaker 1: called Terrace in the Sky, overlooking the grounds of the
Speaker 1: Columbia University campus. From up there, you could see panoramic
Speaker 1: views across northern Manhattan.
Speaker 4: There were two rooms at the Terrace, and she had
Speaker 4: her friends and me in one room, and she had
Speaker 4: everyone else in the other room.
Speaker 1: The venue boasted a wine list of over three hundred bottles,
Speaker 1: and the chef prepared dishes like smoked salmon and caviaar
Speaker 1: lobster bealute, and duck confee.
Speaker 4: She arranged for she and I to be served a
Speaker 4: better champagne than anyone else. We had special Champagne Galeni.
Speaker 5: It was really fine.
Speaker 2: We danced and it was a happy day. It seemed
Speaker 2: like it was a happy day.
Speaker 5: I didn't end the day thinking this is the beginning
Speaker 5: of the end in any way.
Speaker 1: After the wedding, Bob and Gail went on a honeymoon Decrete,
Speaker 1: and judging from their photos, it looked like a beautiful trip.
Speaker 2: But something changed. When Gail got home.
Speaker 8: After the marriage, her energy was not there. She was
Speaker 8: a little bit more subdued. Not talking about clubs, not
Speaker 8: talking about museums, not talking about anything, just very very quiet,
Speaker 8: just wanted her hair done. No conversation asked to a
Speaker 8: desire of what she would like this time, it was
Speaker 8: just whatever you think, very passive.
Speaker 1: At this point, Bob was working one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: hour weeks on a three hospital rotation and Gail was
Speaker 1: studying psychology at grad school.
Speaker 2: He was exhausted and she felt neglected.
Speaker 4: She was the most lonely wife imaginable. She was completely ignored.
Speaker 4: He came home like some fourteen year old before they
Speaker 4: were real video games and played on his computer. He
Speaker 4: was either doing his internship and working or home and
Speaker 4: playing on his computer. Unless he had some infantile need
Speaker 4: that he needed satisfied, he ignored her.
Speaker 6: The incident which really turned my head around about him
Speaker 6: was my thirtieth birthday.
Speaker 1: By this is Gail's friend Denise.
Speaker 6: I mean, who makes their wife have to sit on
Speaker 6: his lap to eat dinner and feed her? It was
Speaker 6: just so strange. That was the first time that I
Speaker 6: really started to think this is not kosher.
Speaker 1: Elaine says that by nineteen eighty four, Gail started having
Speaker 1: an affair with the finance guy named Anthony Sagalis. They'd
Speaker 1: hang out at each other's apartments while Bob was at work.
Speaker 1: They would party, they would sleep together. Then there was
Speaker 1: also Kenneth Feiner, a professor who Gaile met on the
Speaker 1: subway after he spotted her reading a psychology article. He
Speaker 1: always insisted it was a meeting of the minds rather
Speaker 1: than a sexual thing. It's hard to know if Gail
Speaker 1: was just distracting herself or trying to line up her
Speaker 1: next relationship before breaking things off with Bob, but the
Speaker 1: fact is she was unfaithful.
Speaker 2: She needed that kind of validation from a man.
Speaker 5: So did her mother. Her mother promoted that having a
Speaker 5: man in your life made you complete, and without that.
Speaker 2: You weren't.
Speaker 1: On November ninth, nineteen eighty three, the day before Gail's
Speaker 1: graduate record exams, she was studying at home.
Speaker 4: She was feeling nervous, and Bob had gone to work.
Speaker 4: She figured he was doing it, you know, his usual residency,
Speaker 4: long shift. She thought he wouldn't catch her smoking. And
Speaker 4: he came home and he saw her smoking, and between
Speaker 4: the front door and the balcony of their apartment there
Speaker 4: was a couch, and as she tells me, he came
Speaker 4: running in, leaped over the couch. I mean, it's not
Speaker 4: a six foot hurdle, it's just a couch, pushed her
Speaker 4: down with his hands around her throat and strangled her.
Speaker 4: But of course he did what all men do after
Speaker 4: they've got their anger out. Oh, I'm so sorry, And
Speaker 4: I told her there has to be a report of this,
Speaker 4: you know, go to the police station and make a report,
Speaker 4: and she did, which, by the way, is amazing. I mean,
Speaker 4: that was attempted murder.
Speaker 2: In the report made to the police.
Speaker 1: A few days after, Gail described to the desk clerk
Speaker 1: how Bob strangled her to the point of losing consciousness,
Speaker 1: but the police never followed it up with Gail, so
Speaker 1: instead she tried to fix her crumbling marriage herself.
Speaker 4: She told me how sorry he was, and he was
Speaker 4: going to get therapy and everything was going to be okay,
Speaker 4: just like after he strangled the cat.
Speaker 5: She went and stayed at my grandfather's in Brooklyn. I
Speaker 5: remember my mother being very upset, furious at him. I
Speaker 5: think my grandfather. I think my grandfather told her that
Speaker 5: she needed to work it out. I don't think she
Speaker 5: told my grandfather about the strangling part, and then she
Speaker 5: went back home. That was the beginning of the end
Speaker 5: for a Lane. She didn't want her around him anymore.
Speaker 5: She did everything she could to get her out of there,
Speaker 5: begged her to come stay with her, begged her to
Speaker 5: stay at my grandfather's, begged her to do something legal,
Speaker 5: and Gail just wouldn't. When Gail made up her mind
Speaker 5: about something, you couldn't talk her out of it.
Speaker 1: For the next six months or so, Gail and Bob
Speaker 1: went to therapy, both separately and together. It was a
Speaker 1: confusing time for Elane because on one hand, Gail seemed
Speaker 1: to be dedicated to staying with Bob, and then on
Speaker 1: the other she started to talk about leaving him.
Speaker 4: My boyfriend Larry was supplending his apartment. She called me
Speaker 4: to ask me if I could come up for the
Speaker 4: last weekend in July because she wanted to have a
Speaker 4: really big thirtieth birthday party for Bob. And then she
Speaker 4: also asked me if she could subplet Larry's apartment because
Speaker 4: she wanted to leave Bob. And I said, you know,
Speaker 4: which is it? And she says, I'm not sure.
Speaker 8: A couple of visits in she goes. It's really tough.
Speaker 8: I thought it would be different. It's not different. I
Speaker 8: think I made a mistake. I need to change my life.
Speaker 8: But it just so happened that my client next to
Speaker 8: me happened to be a real toa and they started
Speaker 8: a conversation. I didn't know where it went from there,
Speaker 8: but I think they did connect about trying to get
Speaker 8: an apartment.
Speaker 4: I remember in the late fall, early winter of nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty four her telling me, I'm going to get a
Speaker 4: divorce and I'm going to get him. She told me
Speaker 4: that she had a letter, a letter from his psychiatrist
Speaker 4: warning her that he was twisted and dangerous and he
Speaker 4: was going to kill her. She was going to use
Speaker 4: that letter to threaten him to give her divorce number
Speaker 4: one because there was no fault divorce in the state
Speaker 4: of New York, and number two to give her what
Speaker 4: she wanted, and what she wanted was just to finish
Speaker 4: graduate school. She just wanted him to support her so
Speaker 4: she could finish her degree and go on her merry
Speaker 4: way and support herself. And I of course said, it's
Speaker 4: very dangerous to be threatening Bob, that you're going to
Speaker 4: ruin him. And as always, as when he strangled the
Speaker 4: cat as when he strangled her, she said, don't worry, Elaine,
Speaker 4: I have it under control.
Speaker 6: The last day I saw her, I picked her up
Speaker 6: at her hairdressers and we went to the museum. It
Speaker 6: was a sunny day, warm. She was wearing the holder
Speaker 6: top or something like that in shorts. We were laying
Speaker 6: on a blanket and we were chatting about art, music,
Speaker 6: places we'd seen and been, and how much we loved
Speaker 6: each other. She had the New York Times with her,
Speaker 6: and we were circling apartments, possibilities. It wasn't until, you know,
Speaker 6: towards the end of the day that she told me
Speaker 6: that she was going to make him dinner, and then
Speaker 6: during dinner she was going to talk to Bob about leaving.
Speaker 6: I got nervous right then and there, because by that
Speaker 6: time I knew he wasn't a kind of guy who
Speaker 6: was just gonna take that sitting down. And so I
Speaker 6: had this feeling in my gut like, oh my god,
Speaker 6: you know, how's that gonna go? How's he gonna react?
Speaker 6: And she was saying to me, I gotta get home
Speaker 6: because I gotta cook Bob dinner. Walked back together to
Speaker 6: her apartment, building, kissed each other goodbye, and she went
Speaker 6: upstairs and I went downtown. I shouldn't let her go home, Denise,
Speaker 6: that's not one year, I know. I know. Yeah, Bray
Speaker 6: knew something wasn't going to rewright.
Speaker 4: Sorry.
Speaker 6: I still still getting emotional about its Okay, yeah yeah,
Speaker 6: yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Next time the search for Gail.
Speaker 4: Bob was not forthcoming. Bob does not want me to
Speaker 4: find your sister.
Speaker 6: He was so stone cold. It's not as if he
Speaker 6: displayed any emotion at all.
Speaker 3: She left her pocketbook there with cigarettes, and she lives
Speaker 3: in a building with doormen, and there's a fire department
Speaker 3: on the same block where they all whistled at my
Speaker 3: sexy sister. Nobody saw her.
Speaker 6: Sometimes I'd see somebody that looked like her. I get
Speaker 6: this rush inside me like a girl.
Speaker 4: I began the process us proving that Bob called my sister.
Speaker 1: The Girlfriends is produced by Novel for Ourheart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The series is
Speaker 1: hosted by me Carol Fisher and produced by Anna Sinfield.
Speaker 1: Our assistant producer is Julian Manu, Gera Patten, and our
Speaker 1: researcher is Madeline Parr. The editor is Veronica Simmons. Max
Speaker 1: O'Brien is our executive producer. Our fact checker is Valeria Rocca.
Speaker 1: Production management from Sharie Houston and Charlotte Woolf. Sound design,
Speaker 1: mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempsen and Nikola Alexander. Music
Speaker 1: supervision by Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Luisa Gerstein.
Speaker 1: Story development by Isaac Fisher. Willard Foxton is creative director
Speaker 1: of Development. Special thanks to Shan Glynn, David Waters, might
Speaker 1: Ley Rowl, Katrina Norvel, David Wasserman, and beth Ann Mcaluso,
Speaker 1: and an extra big thank you to Kevin Bartlett and
Speaker 1: the rest of the band Odd for letting us use
Speaker 1: their track The Electrifying Flying Man. We did reach out
Speaker 1: to Bob and his legal team to ask if he'd
Speaker 1: like to comment on the podcast, but we never heard back.
Speaker 2: Novel