Family and friends reported, however, that Katz wanted to divorce her husband. Most important, if there existed any lingering ambiguity about whether defense counsel had or had not registered a cognizable objection on October 11, defense counsel himself resolved it on October 16 when he said no objection at the moment the People actually offered the exhibits. (Lorenzo Ciniglio/Sygma via Getty Images), We knew it was going to be the toughest trial that wed ever had. Since there may be reasons other than guilt of the crime charged which would prompt a person to give a false statement, the probative weight of such statements depends upon the facts of the particular case. Alayne Katz told ABC News she immediately knew something was very wrong. To yet another, he described his missing wife as a tramp, off living with someone else. Consequently, although defendant had contact with Det. Since none of the three of these relatives was involved in providing defendant treatment nor subject to any other privilege (see Poppe v. Poppe, 3 N.Y.2d 312, 165 N.Y.S.2d 99, 144 N.E.2d 72 [marital privilege inapplicable where one spouse wrongs another]; People v. Davis, 226 A.D.2d 125, 640 N.Y.S.2d 53, lv. During the first police interview of defendant on July 8 at 9:00 P.M., lasting 45 minutes, Det. That anything said, however insignificant it could possibly be used to find her and locate her , I told the defendant that he should give me a narration of the time he spent over the last weekend. 14, 551 P.2d 334). Compounding the significance of that devastating omission-an omission which concealed the very means and opportunity to dispose permanently of his victim's body-is the documentary evidence found in his home several months after July 1985 showing clearly that his written flight log entry for July 7 was changed from July 7 to August 7. In a domestic violence homicide, as this clearly is, it is highly probative-quite often far outweighing any prejudice-that a couple's marriage was strife-ridden and that defendant previously struck and/or threatened the spouse-victim (see People v. La France, 182 A.D.2d 598, 599-600, 583 N.Y.S.2d 835, lv. When a few months later he received an early morning telephone call from the police indicating they may have had his lost wife at the precinct, he was less than anxious to accede to their request that he immediately leave his bed to possibly identify his inexplicably missing wife. The magic didnt last long. Robert Bierenbaum admitted to killing wife Gail Katz and throwing her body out of an airplane during a December 2020 parole board hearing, according to a new rendered November 29, 2000, affirmed. On the facts here, it is reasonable to assign a moderate degree of probative force to the false statements [emphasis added]. However, defendant said he would not be home until later, as he had plans to dine out-after an interview which had focused on his wife's sudden disappearance just 34 hours earlier. O'Malley that he and his wife had argued the night before she disappeared and continued arguing on the morning of July 7, prompting her to go to Central Park at 11:00 A.M. to cool off.. Please try again. During that meeting he told O'Malley that he drove his father's Cadillac to his sister's New Jersey home on July 7, instead of his own [smaller] Datsun, as his car allegedly had mechanical problems. Bierenbaum confessed to killing his wife during a parole hearing in December 2020, saying they were fighting and he wanted her to stop yelling, according to the New York Daily News. Her body was never found and the great weight of the evidence shows that she was anything but desperate or depressed so that one might reasonably fear she was contemplating suicide. It is, simply put, not a ruling in response to an actual objection based on then existing circumstances (see People v. Luperon, supra, at 78, 623 N.Y.S.2d 735, 647 N.E.2d 1243; cf. To the contrary, it was her professional opinion, based on three years of treating the deceased once or twice weekly, that she was not suicidal. Accordingly, the judgment of the Supreme Court, New York County (Leslie Crocker Snyder, J. Almost a ed.] We reject the notion that in a case where an alleged homicide is the second alleged violent act against a spouse-instead of, for example, the third, fourth or ninth-the case may not be treated as a domestic violence homicide for purposes of evidentiary rulings. He admitted that during the July 7 argument he failed to heed his psychiatrist's advice to try to defuse the situation and that this argument on the day she disappeared became explosive. He told others that he and the victim argued just before she left for Central Park to cool off; another that a private investigator he had hired found evidence she was living in California probably with financial help from her family; others that she had a drug problem, that she may have disappeared with drug dealers and that she probably was murdered by her druggie friends; others that she may have run off to live with someone in the Caribbean; and others that his missing wife was seen after July 7, 1985 in some type of fugue state in the Central Park area and that it was unlikely she would return. Yet, he omitted to tell the detective that he was a pilot and that on the previous afternoon he rented a plane from a New Jersey airport between 4:30 P.M. and 6:30 P.M. for a two-hour flight. We also conclude that even if a different finding were somehow deemed reasonable, there can be no rational view after weigh[ing] the relative probative force of conflicting testimony and the relative strength of conflicting inferences that may be drawn from the testimony,'(People v. MacCracken ex rel. On the other hand, the acts and/or threats can-separately or together-demonstrate as they do in the instant case defendant's specific intent to hurt a particular human being, i.e., in this case, his wife, and to do so physically and emotionally. First, the court correctly ruled that defendant's objection in the form of a mistrial motion, after summations were completely over, was belated (see People v. Allende, 269 A.D.2d 211, 704 N.Y.S.2d 206, lv. NEW YORK Dr. Robert Bierenbaum maintained his innocence in 2000 as he was tried and convicted of killing his first wife 15 years before. | The full 20/20 premieres TONIGHT at 9/8c on @ABC. Ron DeSantis is making an announcement in Titusville, After Disney sues DeSantis, Central Florida Tourism Oversight District board to sue back, Boy, 14, dies after being shot over the weekend at Dezerland Park on I-Drive in Orlando. He was the individual that las[t] saw her in the apartment. Furthermore, he said to at least two people, not including the police, that he had searched for his inexplicably missing wife in Central Park on the afternoon of July 7 and there allegedly found the suntan oil and towel she had taken with her when she left the apartment at 11:00 A.M. Defendant misstated that the doorman told him he saw the victim on the afternoon of July 7, when in fact the doorman made it clear he saw her last on July 6 and he could not remember whether he saw either the victim or defendant at all on July 7; 2. Bierenbaum, now 66, convicted of the murder in 2000 under circumstantial evidence, had continually denied any involvement in her death, told parole that he killed his wife Gail To one of his Southampton summer housemates in July 1985, with a demeanor described as lacking in emotion, he said he and his wife fought on July 7 and she had taken a towel and some suntan lotion and had gone to Central Park. Watch 20/20 Season 44 Episode 3 Do No Harm Online 20/20 S44 E3 Do No Harm The first wife of a Jekyll and Hyde Manhattan plastic surgeon mysteriously disappears. In other words, they may be admitted only if the acts help establish some element of the crime under consideration (People v. Lewis, 69 N.Y.2d 321, 325, 514 N.Y.S.2d 205, 506 N.E.2d 915). I wanted her to stop yelling at me and I attacked her, he said, according to the article. The case continued to nag at Andy Rosenzweig, chief investigator for the Manhattan District Attorneys Office, and he and other detectives began re-interviewing everyone involved in the missing persons case, according to the network. I went flying. I told him that any information is useful. However minor it might be it was very important. Furthermore, although defendant told friends he searched for the deceased in Central Park on July 7 between 11:00 A.M. and 5:30 P.M. and found her towel and suntan oil in the park, he never shared that highly significant detail with O'Malley or Dalsass on the two interviews each had held with him during the seven days following July 7. After the verdict,Snyder ordered him jailed to await sentencing. Defendant's lies, misstatements and omissions powerfully bespeak his consciousness of guilt. Kieran Crowley. In late July or early August, defendant asked her out, and they became intimate on their first date. https://t.co/ZGewROXCaQ pic.twitter.com/qwTytMjU2s. People v. Benzinger, 36 N.Y.2d 29, 33-34, 364 N.Y.S.2d 855, 324 N.E.2d 334. denied 90 N.Y.2d 1009, 666 N.Y.S.2d 104, 688 N.E.2d 1387; People v Bonilla, supra; People v LaFrance, supra). He never told investigators about the flight. The victim's contested statements meet virtually all these enumerated criteria. DNA tests showed the body was not Katz-Bierenbaum, the missing persons website reported. Notwithstanding defendant's characterization of that exchange as wordplay, contending now it should be deemed a substantial legal objection, the attorney's words do not constitute an effective protest under CPL 470.05(2), because the specific language would not, nor did it, prompt the court to make an actual ruling. We recognize that the law most often views consciousness of guilt evidence as weak-but not always. ABC News and the Times reported that investigators learned that Bierenbaum had gone to the Essex County Airport in Caldwell, New Jersey, on July 7, 1985, and taken out a small plane for about two hours. While married to defendant, the victim had an affair with at least one other man; just before the day she disappeared she stated to a friend she was about to tell defendant she wanted a divorce; she had borrowed money to prepare to leave; she said she was seeing one or two other men and that she loved one of them; she was looking for an apartment and was seen with circled newspaper ads for apartment rentals the day before she disappeared and her friend had offered her a place in Connecticut to stay while she got herself resettled. Robert Bierenbaum Today: Where Is the Surgeon Now in 2021. He urges now-as he did at trial-that the court could have served the People's purpose adequately by only allowing the People to use the letter to inform the jury that the letter existed, and stipulating that its unspecified contents would embarrass defendant. Therefore, the trial justice's ruling was a careful and completely reasonable exercise of judicial discretion. There he told his father that he and his wife had an argument earlier that day, that she left for Central Park, and she had not returned by the time he left Manhattan. Because of client confidentiality, the doctors could not testify in court. Dalsass on Monday, July 8 and again on Sunday, July 14, he never said-indeed on July 8 he denied-that he and his wife argued that morning, even though Dalsass did acknowledge that defendant, on July 14, said the victim was pissed the morning she left. He also once choked Gail into unconsciousness after finding her smoking on their balcony. The victim would complain also that defendant tried to exert excessive control over her, and she expressed fear of him more than once. At a parole hearing in December 2020, he confessed to killing his wife and dumping her body from a plane, according to the New York Daily News. Prosecutors who convicted Bierenbaum were stunned by his admission to the parole board, particularly because the confession mirrored the states theory of the crime in 1999, when Bierenbaum was charged with second-degree murder. Arcturus: New COVID-19 variant spreading in the U.S with new symptom, Accused Florida serial killer accepts plea deal, will serve 4 consecutive life terms, Gov. The jury saw this altered document. His first parole hearing is when, according to ABC 224, 177 N.W. We disagree with defendant and find them fair and legally satisfactory. Former NY surgeon admits killing wife, throwing body from airplane in 1985 (NCD). However, in a strange turn of events, Robert decided to confess during a 2020 parole hearing and claimed that he had strangled Gail to death before flying out with her body and dumping it into the Atlantic Ocean. The trial testimony and physical exhibits revealed the following: In 1982 defendant and the victim married. Furthermore, he invited a different woman to move into the marital apartment with him in September 1985. Authorities could not use the actual plane they say Bierenbaum flew because another pilot later crashed the plane, the article said. He said he then disposed of her body, the Daily News reported. Starcasm Staff October 22, 2021 20/20, True Crime. He then drove her body to an airstrip in Caldwell, N.J., and dumped it into the Atlantic Ocean from a single-engine private plane. ), rendered November 29, 2000, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of murder in the second degree, and sentencing him to a term of 20 years to life should be affirmed. Bierenbaum was on the staff of Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. WebDr Robert Bierenbaum is sentenced in New York City to twenty years to life in prison for murdering his wife, Gail Katz-Bierenbaum, who disappeared 15 years ago; Judge Leslie Although no DNA tests were available at the time to confirm whether the remains were that of the missing woman, it was assumed that Gail had been located, The Charley Project reported. Defendant falsely attributed to Dr. Baran the opinion that the victim was depressed and might have committed suicide. This aspect of the evidence, when viewed with all else the People proved, compels inferences that defendant had an informed reason, based on his own direct knowledge, to be completely unconcerned that: a) his paramour might shortly be forced to confront his missing wife in her own bedroom; and b) his early morning trip to the precinct would reunite him with her. She expressed this homicide theory to Sharon one day while defendant was not home. Most of the victim's hearsay statements, in one way or another, bespoke this couple's marital strife and unhappiness, a perception defendant himself shared and repeatedly admitted. 3139, 111 L.Ed.2d 638; Dutton v. Evans, 400 U.S. 74, 89, 91 S.Ct. On another occasion, while the couple was watching a television program about the Von Bulow murder case, defendant told the victim that the problem with Claus Von Bulow is that he left evidence and [defendant] would not leave evidence. The testimony revealed that the victim perceived this statement as a threat. While no one other than the victim and defendant was present to observe what transpired in the marital dwelling on the morning of July 7, the inference from the foregoing circumstantial facts is most compelling, if not irresistible, that they had a hostile confrontation that weekend about the future of their marriage, its serious problems, and how each would deal with them. Defendant contends: 1) that the trial justice improperly allowed the People to adduce opinion testimony that he was able, as a trained surgical resident, to dismember the victim's body within ten minutes, and also capable of packing it into a flight bag, whether or not the body had been disarticulated; and 2) that the court improperly permitted the jury to watch a videotaped demonstration depicting how a pilot can, without any assistance, load a 110 pound body, so packaged, onto a Cessna 172 airplane, fly it over the ocean, and discard it overboard. 831), a physician is required to disclose to the extent necessary to protect a threatened interest. Therefore, in the aggregate, the People convincingly advance the conclusion that the jury's verdict was correct. 14, 551 P.2d 334; Berry v. Moench, 8 Utah 2d 191, 331 P.2d 814; Simonsen v. Swenson, 104 Neb. In that 1858 case, the Court of Appeals held, without direct proof of the death, or of the violence or other act of the defendant which is alleged to have produced death, a murder conviction may not stand (id. And if shes not alive, theres only one person who is a likely suspect to murder her, and its Bob. NEW YORK Dr. Robert Bierenbaum maintained his innocence in 2000 as he was tried and convicted of killing his first wife 15 years before. To begin with, the court, on a number of occasions during trial and at its conclusion, gave the jury cautionary instructions about the victim's statements and other related evidence, evidence the People had introduced to explain two critical factors, i.e., the state of this marriage and both parties' state of mind. 286 and its progeny. 2023 Cox Media Group. In addition to the foregoing powerful circumstantial evidence, the People contend that the interplay between certain items of evidence also supports the verdict. Moreover, the justice's immediate response-I suspect I'll allow it-is of no greater legal significance. 93 N.Y.2d 946, 694 N.Y.S.2d 337, 716 N.E.2d 172 [prior assault admissible]; People v. Jones, 289 A.D.2d 1010, 735 N.Y.S.2d 276, lv. The only thing more shocking may be how he tried to hide the body. Forever in our hearts.. To that same end, she also planned to threaten to expose his and his father's alleged multimillion-dollar Medicare fraud. The protective privilege ends where the public peril begins (Tarasoff v Regents of Univ. Contested are the way and reason her life ended, the way her killer disposed of her body immediately thereafter, and her killer's identity and state of mind. In fact, the doorman did not speak to defendant July 7 and could not recall seeing either defendant or the deceased that day.
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