224, 177 N.W. 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 However, in the July 8 interview, he had specifically denied that the reason she left the apartment at 11:00 A.M. to sunbathe in Central Park was related to an argument that morning. Finally, although the alleged assault she recounted was undoubtedly extremely frightening, the proof shows her mental state so many hours later was not shown to be dominated by the same level of heightened excitement that would normally overwhelm a person in the immediate aftermath of such a recent traumatic shock. Defendant also relies on the trial justice's rejection of the People's request to call defendant's three treating doctors to testify at trial. Later the same day, around 6:30 P.M., defendant arrived alone at his sister's Montclair, New Jersey, home for his nephew's birthday party. Former New York surgeon admits killing wife, throwing body from However, notwithstanding that, initially, the police carefully explained to him at least three times their critical need to know every detail he was able to recall in order to aid their search efforts, he withheld all of this information during their interview with him-one encounter a mere 34 hours, and the others all within 7 days, following his wife's disappearance. Therefore, even though the victim's phone conversation with Wiese was erroneously admitted as excited utterances, its core content was nonetheless relevant, admissible, and the jury properly heard about it from other witnesses. To begin with, any notion that the victim disappeared in some way other than her actual demise on July 7, 1985 is utterly dispelled by a combination of the legitimate inferences raised by all the proof and by defendant's concession that his wife died, and that she died that day. That is not to say that some of the many items of incriminating evidence, when each is evaluated in isolation, are not susceptible to arguable inferences which at first blush seem consistent with defendant's claim of innocence. Sgt. In our role of reviewing the sufficiency of trial evidence as an appellate court in a purely circumstantial evidence case, we must decide whether a guilty verdict is based on legally sufficient evidence by determin [ing] whether any valid line of reasoning and permissible inferences could lead a rational person to the conclusion reached by the fact finder on the basis of the evidence at trial, viewed in the light most favorable to the People [citations omitted] (People v. Williams, 84 N.Y.2d 925, 926, 620 N.Y.S.2d 811, 644 N.E.2d 1367). Rather, it should be, and is, a process whereby trial attorneys announce an unambiguous objection, in praesenti, based on an articulated or otherwise known rationale involving logic, legal principles, and/or common sense, a protest which gives an adversary notice sufficient to frame a response, and affords the court an opportunity to issue a ruling. We recognize that the law most often views consciousness of guilt evidence as weak-but not always. It is clear to us that the highly probative nature of this particular proof on the critical questions of defendant's motive and intent, and of the killer's identity, far outweighs any prejudice (see People v. Alvino, 71 N.Y.2d 233, 241-242, 525 N.Y.S.2d 7, 519 N.E.2d 808). The court did, however, permit the prosecution to adduce testimony that the victim had received a letter from one of these psychiatrists warning her of the danger defendant posed to her, although the justice prohibited the People from introducing the letter itself. 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. They argue that when certain established facts are juxtaposed with other proven circumstances, defendant's multiple contradictions and omissions are patently incriminating. On July 8, 1985, Bierenbaum called the police and reported his wife missing. https://t.co/WMwMXq1BzA, Gail Beth, beloved daughter, granddaughter and sister, her headstone says. Family and friends reported, however, that Katz wanted to divorce her husband. When Dalsass arrived, the crime scene unit was only allowed to search for fingerprints, the victim's diary and her address book. This conclusion is effortlessly drawn not nearly so much because he began dating so soon, but much more because of his obvious and expressed confidence his wife would never return. within 10 minutes, pack her dismembered torso and limbs into a flight/duffel bag and carry them through an unmonitored rear exit of his apartment building for a distance of two blocks to his garaged car. Defendant contends that the court improperly allowed the prosecution to adduce testimony, and otherwise refer to evidence, that defendant was violent, and that he choked his wife to the point of unconsciousness in late 1983. Parker Sentenced To Life In Prison | The Seattle Times Indeed, it has also been held that such evidence in like contexts is highly probative of the defendant's motive and [i]s either directly related to or inextricably interwoven (People v. Ely, [68 N.Y.2d 520] at 529 [510 N.Y.S.2d 532, 503 N.E.2d 88]) with the issue of his identity as the killer (People v. Linton, 166 A.D.2d 670, 671, 561 N.Y.S.2d 259, lv. 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. Another woman whom he dated in Las Vegas in 1995 asked him on their first date whether he had ever been married. They could find no proof, however, that he had harmed his wife. The magic didnt last long. [S]peaking in very hushed tones and very rapidly and sound[ing] extremely upset, she said that either the day before or the night before she had a fight with her husband and that during the course of that fight he had choked her into unconsciousness According to Wiese, she added that this was not the first time that they had fought nor the first time he had choked her, but it was the first time she was rendered unconscious and that she was extremely upset. She apparently spoke quickly because she expected defendant to return shortly, and she needed to know what she should do. Bierenbaum, a former plastic surgeon, was convicted of killing his first wife, Gail Katz, in 1985. 4. Surgeon Who Murdered Wife Confesses To Killing Powered by. 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 Former NY surgeon admits killing wife, throwing body from airplane in 1985 (NCD). Furthermore, defense counsel's earlier language on October 11, 2000 purporting to object was premature and, in any event, legally inadequate to constitute an objection (id.). A jury found Bierenbaum guilty of second-degree murder in 2000 and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. No other inference finds any support in this record, and none could survive an impartial and objective assessment of the proof, particularly in light of defendant's admission that their argument was severe and had become explosive.. Bierenbaum, a former plastic surgeon, was convicted of killing his first wife, Gail Katz, in 1985. Consequently, although defendant had contact with Det. He said he then disposed of her body, the Daily News reported. It is this inappropriate and distracting inference which the Molineux ruling and its progeny aim to bar. ), 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. Surely, one can argue as defendant does that any single aggressive act or threat, or a series of them, can suggest to a jury a general propensity to behave aggressively. However, he again omitted to mention that he had rented and flown an airplane for almost two hours that same afternoon, a consistent omission whenever he told others about the events of July 7. Man Admits to Murdering His Wife More Than He can hardly claim with any credibility that an interlude of that nature and length slipped his mind when he spoke to the police and others on the first day, or, indeed, at least four times during the first week, following his wife's unexplained disappearance. We hold otherwise. Indeed, the Lipsky court expressed no hesitancy in holding that the corpus delicti may be established by circumstantial evidence (id. Tarasoff v. Regents of Univ. Dalsass he would respond to his request to view the apartment, defendant in fact did not contact Dalsass until September 12, 1985, and he did not permit entry until September 30. Matthew Rowley hoisted the bag into the front passenger seat of the plane, a four-seat Cessna 172, similar to the plane investigators said Bierenbaum rented. Defendant counters this reasoning, contending that the 1983 choking incident and all the other evidence and references to threats and marital strife should have been precluded because they bespeak propensity and because the People improperly used the choking incident to suggest that defendant had a propensity for violence. 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. Furthermore, when defendant spoke to Det. Second, defendant complains that the trial court erroneously allowed the jury to learn a) of the existence and nature of a letter written to his wife by his psychiatrist warning her of the danger defendant posed to her; and b) of several of her verbal statements to various people describing defendant's threatening remarks and otherwise negative behavior. Furthermore, were we to reach the merits of the videotape's admissibility, we would reject the defense argument that its contents are based on pure speculation and thus were improperly placed before the jury. At his sentencing, Alayne Katz told the court Bierenbaum killed her sister to prevent her from exposing him as a violent and twisted man, according to the Times. The Surgeon's Wife rendered November 29, 2000, affirmed. Because the letter's separate purpose was to warn, and, further, to insure that its disclosure at trial for that valid purpose did not publish its otherwise confidential contents-and thus breach the court's associated preclusion order-the court appropriately placed significant restrictions on the People's use of the letter. By 1990, Bierenbaum had relocated to Las Vegas and opened a plastic surgery practice there, ABC News reported. Although her body was never found, Katz-Bierenbaum has a grave at Mount Zion Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens, New York, according to Find a Grave. Robert Bierenbaum Today: Where Is the Surgeon Now in 2021. Furthermore, he invited a different woman to move into the marital apartment with him in September 1985. ). Defendant also disputes the instructions' adequacy, and, beyond that-in addition to urging this Court to reject the notion of a background exception to the hearsay rule-he further argues that the testimony recounting the victim's out-of-court statements was largely unreliable. In December 1999, prosecutors charged Bierenbaum based on the circumstantial evidence. While the attorneys and the court may have intuitively suspected what was on each other's mind, the legal process has not become, nor should it be, guesswork, mind reading, or fortune telling. His first parole hearing is when, according to ABC The protective privilege ends where the public peril begins (Tarasoff v Regents of Univ. There is little or nothing by way of circumstantial evidence that is more relevant or more probative in a circumstantial murder case-especially one involving domestic violence-than the type of evidence at issue on this appeal. Gail Katz is pictured in a family photo. After the verdict,Snyder ordered him jailed to await sentencing. Furthermore, the trial justice gave the People even less leeway than Farrow permits after a waiver, by ruling that only the existence and nature of the letter-not its factual content nor the physicians' testimony-were admissible. I wanted her to stop yelling at me and I attacked her, Bierenbaum said, according to a hearing transcript obtained by the network. Therefore, in the aggregate, the People convincingly advance the conclusion that the jury's verdict was correct. Alayne Katz told ABC News she immediately knew something was very wrong. A seemingly distraught defendant also told Baranoff about the argument, adding that his wife had not yet returned after having left their apartment wearing shorts, a halter top and sandals. Instead, he falsely told both detectives, on a total of at least three occasions, that he stayed in his Manhattan apartment all day until 5:30 P.M., emphasizing to Dalsass that he was positive that he left [his apartment] at 5:30 [P.M.]. He also changed his claim that on July 7 he had spoken to the doorman who, he had originally maintained, said he saw the victim leave the building Sunday shortly after 11:00 A.M. Defendant's lies, misstatements and omissions powerfully bespeak his consciousness of guilt. That ruling was correct, first, because defendant waived his CPLR 4504(a) privilege by consenting that the warning be communicated; second, because a warning under these circumstances is an exception to the principle of confidentiality since the psychiatrist is under a duty to warn the intended target of a patient's violence; third, because the nature and existence of the warning letter were relevant to the state of the parties' marriage and defendant's motive to kill his wife in light of her stated intent to use it as leverage in her contemplated divorce action against defendant by confronting him with it and threatening to reveal its contents if he refused to meet her divorce settlement demands; and, finally, because it was relevant to prove, in addition to motive and the state of the parties' marriage, the interrelated issues of his intent to kill her and his identity as her killer. Dalsass asked defendant for a list of the names and phone numbers of the victim's friends, relatives and others to facilitate the search efforts. 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. Something that might be very innocent might develop into a lead where she might be. During a parole hearing in December 2020, two decades after he was jailed and 35 years after Gail disappeared, Bierenbaum finally admitted he murdered his wife. The existence of a physical shock or trauma has often been cited as a key consideration (see People v. Brooks, 71 N.Y.2d 877, 527 N.Y.S.2d 753, 522 N.E.2d 1051; People v. Brown, 70 N.Y.2d at 516-517, 522 N.Y.S.2d 837, 517 N.E.2d 515;6 Wigmore, Evidence 1745[1] [Chadbourn rev. I went flying. GRAND FORKS -- The story of Dr. Robert Bierenbaum, a plastic surgeon who practiced in Grand Forks and Minot and later was convicted for the murder of his wife in their Manhattan apartment, will air in a two-hour, special 20/20 program beginning at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 22, on ABC. All three subsequently contacted Katz and warned her that her life could be in danger, the newspaper reported. Corrections is thankful to the Tribes for caring for these lands since time immemorial and honors its ongoing connection to these communities past, present and future. In a December parole hearing, however, Bierenbaum, now 66, admitted for the first time that he strangled Gail Katz, 29, in July 1985. Moreover, his behavior with other women so soon after July 7 is inconsistent with behavior one would reasonably anticipate from a husband whose wife had mysteriously disappeared, notwithstanding that their marriage was stormy. We hold that the reliability of this evidence, initially a question for the court to resolve, is amply supported by this record. at 293, 61 N.E. As a cameraman in a helicopter filmed the recreation, a New York City police officer shoved a duffel bag filled with 110 pounds of rice and sand from a Cessna 172 three times, unassisted, the newspaper said. Starcasm Staff October 22, 2021 20/20, True Crime. First, she would threaten to humiliate him by publishing to his professional colleagues and superiors a warning letter she had received from defendant's treating psychiatrist; and, second, she would threaten to expose an alleged Medicare fraud in which she claimed he and his father were allegedly involved. One of the prosecution's key assertions was that defendant was motivated to kill his wife because she threatened to destroy him by exposing the letter's contents should he fail to meet her divorce demands. 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. ABC News reports that Robert Bierenbaum, who is serving 20 years-to-life in prison for murdering his wife Gail Katz, confessed to the crime during a Dec. 2020 parole Dalsass' approximately eight telephone answering machine messages. Moreover, it is unlikely that one's body would vanish without a trace in the aftermath of self-inflicted death. 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. Confession: Dr. Robert Bierenbaum and his then-wife, Dr. Janet Cholett, leave court together in October 2000 in New York. denied 94 N.Y.2d 920, 708 N.Y.S.2d 359, 729 N.E.2d 1158 [crime against spouse extinguishes statutory privilege]; People v. Johnson, 84 N.Y.2d 956, 620 N.Y.S.2d 822, 644 N.E.2d 1378 [no statutory or common law parent/child privilege for adult child under these circumstances]), the court correctly decided that defendant waived the privilege. 79 N.Y.2d 673, 584 N.Y.S.2d 770, 595 N.E.2d 845 [uncharged evidence of prior assaultive acts may be admissible as background to support testimony that otherwise might be unbelievable or suspect]). In our sufficiency review, we have determined that a valid line of reasoning and permissible inferences could lead a rational person to the conclusion reached by [this jury] on the basis of the evidence at trial, viewed in the light most favorable to the People (People v. Williams, 84 N.Y.2d 925, 926, 620 N.Y.S.2d 811, 644 N.E.2d 1367). We disagree with defendant and find them fair and legally satisfactory. 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.
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