Man Butchered His Wife Over Again
Ex-surgeon confesses he took wife's 'body out of the airplane over the ocean'
Robert Bierenbaum was convicted in 2000 but long maintained his innocence.
Robert Bierenbaum, a old plastic surgeon who was bedevilled of murdering his wife in 2000, confessed to killing her and throwing her body out of an plane later more than three decades of maintaining his innocence.
Bierenbaum, an experienced pilot who had been convicted on circumstantial testify, was serving his 20 years-to-life prison house judgement when he made the chilling confession during a December 2020 parole board hearing.
It was the first time he had admitted to the criminal offence since his wife, Gail Katz, disappeared in 1985. Her torso has never been found.
"I wanted her to finish yelling at me and I attacked her," according to a transcript of the hearing obtained past ABC News.
When asked how, Bierenbaum said he "strangled" her, and went on to say, "I went flying. I opened the door and then took her trunk out of the airplane over the ocean," the transcript said. He also told the board he killed his wife considering he was "immature" and "didn't understand how to deal with his anger," according to the transcript.
His admission shocked everyone involved in the instance, because it was the exact theory prosecutors had presented in court at Bierenbaum'southward 2000 murder trial.
"I was similar, 'Holy s---, are you kidding me?'" said Dan Bibb, one of the prosecutors who brought Bierenbaum to justice. "I was stunned because I always thought that that twenty-four hours would never come up, that he would ain up, accept responsibility for having killed his married woman."
Bierenbaum remains in prison. His next parole hearing is scheduled for November.
Watch the total story on "twenty/twenty" FRIDAY at nine p.m. ET on ABC
When Gail Katz met Bierenbaum in the early '80s, he seemed like a perfect catch. At the fourth dimension, she was in college and working odd jobs in Manhattan. He was a handsome surgical resident who spoke multiple languages, and had a passion for gourmet cooking, skiing and piloting small-scale planes.
He was known for taking women on short flights for romantic dates. But his love of flight, and ane flight in particular, was fundamental for prosecutors to convince a jury that Bierenbaum was a murderer, someone who killed Katz in a homicidal rage and got abroad with it for 15 years.
"[Flying] is the crux of the story. I hateful, information technology's the method that he tries to cover up his crime," said Steve Saracco, a former Manhattan banana district attorney who prosecuted the Bierenbaum case with Bibb.
At get-go, their romance seemed "magical," said Katz'due south sis Alayne Katz, an chaser in New York land, but there were red flags. She said she went on a strange double date at a sushi eating house, where Bierenbaum shoved food into her sister's mouth, then tried to practise the same with her. Alayne Katz besides said her sister called her ane day, hysterically crying, considering Bierenbaum tried to drown her true cat in the toilet of their Upper E Side flat.
"[She said], 'No, no, no, Alayne… nosotros're gonna become rid of the cat and and so everything's gonna exist fine because he'southward gonna believe that I beloved him,'" Alayne Katz said. "And I'm like, 'No. Non actually. Yous actually accept to become rid of Bob.'"
Even still, Gail Katz decided to get through with marrying him.
"My sis told me, 'I'm smart. I'm loving. My dearest volition cure. This is going to work out,'" Katz said.
Over time, Gail Katz's friends and family members noticed the wedlock was growing toxic. Bierenbaum was very controlling and at ane point a neighbour said Katz told him she didn't experience comfortable at home.
One night, Alayne Katz said Bierenbaum defenseless his married woman smoking on their balcony and he choked her into unconsciousness. Gail Katz reported the incident to a police force authoritative aide at a local precinct but nothing came of it.
"If this had happened in 2021 … Robert Bierenbaum would have been in handcuffs immediately," Bibb said. "The fact that this was [1983] ... nada was done about it."
She convinced Bierenbaum to see a therapist, who ended up writing her a letter suggesting she should get out of the matrimony and he was concerned he might kill her. Still, her sis said, Katz brushed it off for a while, and told her sis she was planning on leaving him.
Then on July 7, 1985, Gail Katz disappeared.
Bierenbaum told her family and police they had a fight at their flat and Katz stormed off. He claimed to have stayed home. Her sister wasn't buying his story.
"She's not with me, and she'due south non with my parents, and at that moment I know that my sister's dead," Alayne Katz said. "And if she'south not live there's just 1 person who is a likely suspect to murder her, and information technology'due south Bob. At that place's no other suspect."
Days turned into weeks, then months, and there was still no sign of Gail Katz. Meanwhile, Bierenbaum was spending more than time out in the Hamptons attending parties and dating other women.
Somewhen, the Manhattan District Attorney'due south Office picked upwardly the example and it went to main investigator Det. Andy Rosenzweig.
Knowing of Bierenbaum's love of flying, Rosenzweig checked with the New Jersey airport Bierenbaum liked to rent planes from and discovered the doctor had taken a plane out on July 7, 1985, only Bierenbaum had doctored his flight log to make information technology wait like he went flying the next day. Rosenzweig's working theory was that the doctor had killed his wife and thrown her body into the Atlantic Bounding main.
Even so, without a body, the DA's function told Katz's family at the fourth dimension they didn't take enough evidence to pursue charges against Bierenbaum. The DA's office closed their end of the investigation without bringing charges and the constabulary department's investigation fizzled out. Bierenbaum connected to alive his life as a gratuitous man.
And then in May 1989, almost iv years after Katz'south disappearance, a body done up on Staten Island. This was a time earlier DNA forensics, and investigators tried to see if it belonged to Katz using old breast 10-rays.
"An 10-ray technician compared this Ten-ray with the torso and said, 'This is Gail,'" Alayne Katz said. "Now … we have a body to bury. Nosotros have some closure."
By 1990, Bierenbaum had relocated to Las Vegas and opened his own plastic surgery do. He started dating Dr. Stephanie Youngblood, a chiropractor, and she said their first year together was "perfect."
"We went to medical black tie events ... we went on a lot of ski trips," she said. "To go ski in Argentina in August when it'south 114 in Las Vegas was absolute heaven."
Once once again, he seemed similar a perfect catch. Youngblood said Bierenbaum joined an organization that flew doctors and nurses in and out of Mexico to care for children who needed medical care.
But over time, cracks in Bierenbaum's facade started to appear. Youngblood said he somewhen admitted he had been married earlier, but said his wife had disappeared and he didn't similar to talk about it.
"The way he told the story, information technology was believable," Youngblood said. "He goes, 'Mind, this isn't for public noesis. I would really appreciate it if y'all kept this under wraps.'"
But there were two incidents where Youngblood said Bierenbaum exploded with rage at her in front of other people. Afterwards the second fourth dimension, she said she convinced Bierenbaum they should encounter a therapist, who recommended Youngblood end the relationship considering her "life could exist in danger with him." So she left him.
Bierenbaum started dating once again and, in 1996, he married a Las Vegas gynecologist named Janet Challot. The couple moved to Minot, North Dakota, to commencement a new life together, and eventually had a babe daughter.
No one in N Dakota knew nearly Bierenbaum's by, and in fact he had become somewhat of a local hero for saving a boy'south life after he was bitten by a tiger at the North Dakota State Fair.
"He looked good, wore suits, loved his kid, loved dogs, just all over all things that you think would be great characteristics," said Affront Cooper, who worked as a nanny for Bierenbaum.
Meanwhile, back in New York, Rosenzweig was nearing retirement and was looking into cold cases that still haunted him. The Gail Katz'south disappearance case, which had been cold for 10 years by that signal, was on his list.
In 1998, Rozenzweig got back in touch with her family unit. Deoxyribonucleic acid forensics existed by and then and he convinced the Katz family to exhume the torso they had cached years agone to have it tested.
"To our surprise, information technology came dorsum that Gail Katz had been eliminated every bit a contributor of that sample," said Bibb.
When she heard the news, Alayne Katz said she was devastated.
"That little, trivial shred of closure that I had has now been ripped away," she said "I looked up at Dan [Bibb] and at Steve [Saracco], and I said, 'Now, you better get a confidence.'"
Investigators decided to re-interview everyone from the example. They flew to North Dakota to speak to Bierenbaum and Vegas to talk to Youngblood, as well equally other women Bierenbaum was known to have dated.
One interview that struck investigators was with ane of Bierenbaum's former girlfriends from when he was still in New York City. She told them she was with him one night when he got a phone phone call from Port Authority police force in New York City, saying they thought someone had institute Katz. He told them he would call them afterward, then told her, "I doubt it's Gail," according to investigators.
With this evidence, coupled with the proof Rozenzweig had uncovered years before that Bierenbaum took a flight on the day Katz disappeared, investigators moved forward with their instance.
In 2000, a one thousand jury indicted Bierenbaum for second-caste murder. Fifteen years subsequently her disappearance, he was finally going to trial for his wife'south death.
"We knew it was going to exist the toughest trial that we'd ever had. No forensics, no eye witnesses, entirely coexisting," Bibb said. "In that location was no foregone decision to this case, by whatsoever stretch of the imagination."
I of the biggest hurdles at trial for prosecutors was to convince a jury Bierenbaum could fly a pocket-sized aeroplane and push a body out of it at the same time, so they filmed a recreation of this exact scenario to evidence information technology was possible.
"I thought the demonstration with the plane was extremely effective, probably one of the critical moments of the example," said Leslie Crocker Snyder, the approximate who presided over the example.
Bierenbaum'south defense tried to pigment Gail Katz equally an unstable woman with mental wellness issues and a drug trouble, simply her sister said none of this was truthful. They called a witness, a retired fabric manufacturer, who claimed he saw Katz in a bagel store days afterward she disappeared, but prosecutors were able to easily point out the woman he described didn't match her clarification.
Later but five-and-a-half hours of deliberation, a jury establish Bierenbaum guilty of murder.
"I'll never forget … squeezing my brother's manus and slamming information technology down on his thigh and saying, 'Guilty?' with a question mark at the end because, 'Did I merely hear that?'" Alayne Katz said. "I was in shock … I was relieved."
He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. He made attempts over the years to have his conviction overturned but was unsuccessful. And so, later serving 20 years of his sentence, he made his bombshell confession.
When ABC News showed the transcript of Bierenbaum's confession to Alayne Katz, she said, "This is exactly the same human that I knew 35 years agone." He hasn't changed … he is incapable of a shred of remorse."
In laurels of her sister, Alayne Katz said the nonprofit organization Pace Women's Justice Heart was rebranded as Gail's Firm to bring greater sensation to domestic violence issues and provide resources to women. Katz said she allowed them to employ her sister's name as a way to honor her retentivity.
"My sister'due south body has never been found … Gail doesn't residuum anywhere," Katz said. "Gail's Firm … gave my sister a resting place. I feel my sister'due south spirit ... is here … warning others … inspiring others."
If you need assistance or need help supporting someone else, telephone call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at i-800-799-7233, or become to thehotline.org. All calls are price-complimentary and confidential. The hotline is bachelor 24/vii in more than 170 languages.
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/surgeon-confesses-wifes-body-airplane-ocean/story?id=80647310
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