On July 8, 1985, Bierenbaum called the police and reported his wife missing. 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. A jury convicted Robert Bierenbaum of second-degree murder based on circumstantial evidence that on July 7, 1985 he intentionally killed his wife, Gail Katz Bierenbaum, in their Manhattan apartment; transported her body to a New Jersey airport the same day; loaded it onto a small private plane; and piloted it over the Atlantic Ocean where he discarded her remains. The email address cannot be subscribed. After reviewing the court's rulings and reasons in this regard, the other evidence, and the court's cautionary instructions to the jury during and at the trial's conclusion, we hold that none of these rulings compromised defendant's right to a fair trial. Furthermore, there is virtually no conflicting testimony within the People's case to compare against the weight of the People's credible proof, proof which so firmly supports this conviction. At a parole hearing in December 2020, he confessed to killing his wife and dumping her body from a 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. Robert Bierenbaum, who is serving a sentence of 20 years to life in prison, revealed the details of the 1985 murder during a December 2020 parole hearing whose 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. 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. That was not always the case. 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). Her body has never Among them are the following examples: he told Det. Early in that period, before they began dating, and therefore significantly before the end of September, he falsely told her the police had searched his apartment and car and found him to be clean. Furthermore, she testified that, during that early period, he expressed no concern about his wife's disappearance. Katz, 29, of New York, was murdered in July 1985 by her husband, Dr. Robert Bierenbaum. 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. Please try again. Robert Bierenbaum first made headlines for the murder of his wife Gail Katz. If it appears that the trier of fact has failed to give the evidence the weight it should be accorded, then the appellate court may set aside the verdict (CPL 470. The victim, whom Wiese occasionally saw at family gatherings, telephoned him at his office one afternoon in the fall of 1983. 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. Sgt. 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. Dalsass repeated his appeal to defendant to leave out nothing, saying: I pretty much told him that any information that will assist in finding Gail was rather important. In Nucci, the Court set forth the factors relevant to a trial justice's assessment of the reliability of out-of-court-statements which the People proffer as hearsay exceptions. 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). About midway through their one-year relationship, defendant gave his approval to have Dr. Karnofsky's girlfriend, Sharon, also move into the apartment temporarily. The former plastic surgeons stunning confession took place during a December parole hearing, the transcript of which was recently obtained by ABC News. Another woman whom he dated in Las Vegas in 1995 asked him on their first date whether he had ever been married. But, as the law requires us to look at the body of proof as a whole, we are convinced it paints a clear picture of a defendant's guilt, and that the jury's verdict is both supported by legally sufficient evidence and entirely consistent with its weight. denied 93 N.Y.2d 879, 689 N.Y.S.2d 441, 711 N.E.2d 655), and its denial of the motion was a discretionary decision we perceive no reason to disturb. Parker was Armed with circled apartment rental ads the day before she disappeared, the victim declared to her close friend, Denise Kasenbaum, that she was leaving defendant that weekend. The detective specifically made it clear to defendant the importance of omitting nothing in describing and detailing for him the last three days his wife and he spent together: I opened up with anything that might be instrumental in locating Gail. Authorities could not use the actual plane they say Bierenbaum flew because another pilot later crashed the plane, the article said. Notwithstanding defendant's argument, this limitation was, under these circumstances, an exercise of discretion which was fair to both sides for the following important reason. All rights reserved. Det. She wanted to cool off and he waited a couple of hours and then he went looking for her and he found the towel and the suntan lotion but she was gone. Also, shortly after she vanished, he told his Southampton summer landlord that after his wife left he went through her drawers and found cocaine, prompting him to believe she went off with drug dealers. The record also reveals that, although in July defendant told Det.
examined; After Murder Verdict, Town Questions Doctor Offensive Slang A Jewish-American girl or woman regarded as being pampered or overindulged (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 935 [4th ed 2000]). However, the evidence also conclusively establishes that he rented and flew a Cessna 172 airplane beginning at 4:30 P.M. that day from Caldwell Airport in Fairfield, New Jersey and returned two hours later at 6:30 P.M. 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. It was the first time he had admitted to the crime since his wife, Gail Katz, disappeared in 1985. Because of client confidentiality, the doctors could not testify in court. By 1990, Bierenbaum had relocated to Las Vegas and opened a plastic surgery practice there, ABC News reported. The network is featuring the case Friday night on 20/20.. In addition, he made contradictory statements to the police and others about whether he cleaned his living room rug shortly after July 7, telling the police he did not, but telling the victim's friend, Dr. Feis, and others that he had. When she asked what had happened, he told her his wife may have committed suicide or may have met with foul play, as she had dated a variety of men. Defendant variously suggested or stated that his wife was wandering around Central Park in a fugue state, that she had a drug problem and ran off with drug dealers, that she possibly committed suicide, that she was on a shopping spree at Bloomingdale's, that she left to hang out with druggie friends, that she might have been killed by drug dealers, and that she had left for the Carribean to be with a boyfriend. In 1989, while Bierenbaum relocated from Manhattan to Las Vegas, Nevada, to set up a new medical practice, a partial female body washed ashore in Staten Island, New York, near the area where authorities believed Bierenbaum dumped his wifes remains, according to The Charley Project. Significantly, he omitted telling his father that he had flown an airplane for nearly two hours that very afternoon. 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. If this had happened in 2021 Robert Bierenbaum would have been in handcuffs immediately, Bibb told the network. That logic, which correctly served to preclude the doctors from testifying to the information they conveyed to and received from the family, does not apply to the existence and nature of the psychiatrist's letter whose separate purpose was only to warn a third party, this victim. He is now eligible for parole and faces a parole hearing in November. 224, 177 N.W. Within days, investigators were also skeptical of Bierenbaums story, according to the Times. 831), a physician is required to disclose to the extent necessary to protect a threatened interest. 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. They further established that it was possible for defendant, also alone, to pilot the Cessna 172 over the Atlantic Ocean as much as 85 miles east of the shoreline, maintain sufficient control of this relatively easy-to-operate plane so as to singlehandedly throw these human remains from the air into the ocean, and then land back at the same airport, all in less than two hours of flight time. denied 78 N.Y.2d 974, 574 N.Y.S.2d 954, 580 N.E.2d 426). Perhaps defendant's most damning omission was his repeated, false claim to the police and to others that he remained in the apartment all afternoon on July 7 and then went directly to his nephew's birthday party in New Jersey. That the victim had once before confronted him with the same letter and her same threat weeks or months before July 7 does not, as defendant now urges, diminish the potential explosiveness of her intended confrontation on the weekend she died, because the testimony is otherwise clear and certain that she once again intended to tell defendant over that weekend that she was divorcing him. When he later returned, he tersely remarked to his roommate that it was not his wife. 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. Dalsass could not speak to defendant to obtain that vital information until the July 14 interview. A few weeks after his wife disappeared, defendant began dating a nurse whom he knew from Maimonides Hospital where they were employed. Investigators took steps for a jury to witness exactly how they believe Bierenbaum dumped his wifes body during his 2000 murder trial, according to the New York Post. Robert Bierenbaum Today: Where Is the Surgeon Now in 2021. 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. All three subsequently contacted Katz and warned her that her life could be in danger, the newspaper reported. The two circumstances, i.e., 1) that the police never recovered the victim's body and 2) that no one other than the victim and her killer personally witnessed the violent act which ended her life, do not bar a valid murder conviction under current law. Gail Katz Bierenbaum./Robert Bierenbaum. Defendant falsely attributed to Dr. Baran the opinion that the victim was depressed and might have committed suicide.
Robert Bierenbaum daughter, second wife, family The court must assess not only the nature of the startling event and the amount of time which has elapsed between the occurrence and the statement, but also the activities of the declarant in the interim (People v. Edwards, 47 N.Y.2d 493, 497, 419 N.Y.S.2d 45, 392 N.E.2d 1229). Cigarettes were not allowed in their home, according to Bierenbaum. denied 94 N.Y.2d 904, 707 N.Y.S.2d 389, 728 N.E.2d 988; People v. Bonilla, 251 A.D.2d 82, 674 N.Y.S.2d 23, lv. I wanted her to stop yelling at me and I attacked her, he said, according to the article. By July, it was against this backdrop that a divorce was virtually inevitable-a situation exacerbated further by defendant's knowledge of his wife's adultery. The New York Times reported in 1999 that authorities believed he spent hours dismembering Katzs body before taking flight and dumping it into the water somewhere between Montauk Point, New York, and Cape May, New Jersey. His first parole hearing is when, according to ABC 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. I went flying.
Ex-surgeon confesses to killing wife, throwing her body out of In 2000, former plastic surgeon Robert Bierenbaum was convicted of the 1985 murder of his wife Gail Katz.
Doctor Convicted in 1985 Missing Body Jake Massey. As for now, Robert was sent back to prison. Indeed, the Lipsky court expressed no hesitancy in holding that the corpus delicti may be established by circumstantial evidence (id. We recognize that as a general proposition false statements are a relevant but weak form of evidence. We disagree. First, the court prohibited the People from showing the letter to the jury and, second, they were not permitted to adduce anything other than oral testimony describing only the type of letter the victim had received from defendant's psychiatrist. He thus argues that her ruling necessarily extends to preclude the People from also proving the existence and nature of the Tarasoff letter.
NYC surgeon admits to killing his wife by throwing her out of a plane Gail Katz Bierenbaum Murder: Her Cause of Death, Copyright 2023 Heavy, Inc. All rights reserved.
Robert Bierenbaum - The New York Times 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. Apart from the fact that defendant's alternate theories of his victim's demise have no evidentiary support, the existing evidence itself also refutes them. 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. Ive waited a very,very long time for this day. 3139, 111 L.Ed.2d 638; Dutton v. Evans, 400 U.S. 74, 89, 91 S.Ct. Moreover, the ruling was correct also because of the Tarasoff exception to the CPLR 4504(a) privilege. The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Robert BIERENBAUM, Defendant-Appellant. 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. 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. 3.86. Although defendant would not allow any police officers to view or inspect his apartment until September 30, 1985-and then only with severe restrictions-he, long before that day, falsely stated to others that the police had searched his home and car and found him to be clean; and. 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. dr bob bierenbaum parole 2020 CMI is a proven leader at applying industry knowledge and engineering expertise to solve problems that other fabricators cannot or will not take on. In addition, they sufficiently related to the circumstantial evidence the People offered, thus enabling the jury to understand medical and surgical matters beyond their ken and better evaluate the prosecution's theory (People v. Lee, 96 N.Y.2d 157, 726 N.Y.S.2d 361, 750 N.E.2d 63). Notwithstanding that defendant originally consented to having the psychiatrist speak to and warn the victim and his parents, he now claims that the ruling allowing testimony only about the existence and nature of the warning letter was error because it violated his statutory privilege under CPLR 4504(a) and it was otherwise unduly prejudicial.
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