Conviction of former Minot surgeon Mar 15, 1999. Bierenbaum, now 66, convicted of the murder in 2000 under circumstantial evidence, had continually denied any involvement in her death, told a parole hearing in O'Malley that they argued on July 6 and continued on the morning of July 7. To begin with, Wiese was unable to reliably estimate how long before his cousin called him that the choking incident occurred. 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. 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. Finally, she observed that defendant was meticulous, even compulsive, about making flight log entries. Defendant displayed no reaction, [h]e didn't say anything.. However, the court, while prohibiting publication of its specific factual contents to the jury, did allow the jury to know that the letter warned the victim of the danger defendant posed to her. A King County Superior Court jury today found Robert Parker guilty of two counts of aggravated murder in the stabbing and strangulation of two Shoreline-area Crystal Bonvillian, Cox Media Group National Content Desk, Former NY surgeon admits killing wife, throwing body from airplane in 1985. Bierenbaum was on the staff of Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. 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. Judged by that standard, we find and hold that the circumstantial evidence adduced at this trial decisively extinguishes any doubt that defendant Robert Bierenbaum, and no one else, intentionally killed his wife Gail Katz Bierenbaum, brought her body to Caldwell Airport in Fairfield, New Jersey, loaded it onto a small plane, flew it over the Atlantic Ocean, and, there, dumped her remains. Anything could be helpful in locating Gail. Dr. Robert Bierenbaum and his then-wife, Dr. Janet Cholett, leave court together in October 2000 in New York. In fact, the doorman did not speak to defendant July 7 and could not recall seeing either defendant or the deceased that day. The Charley Project 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. https://t.co/ZGewROXCaQ pic.twitter.com/qwTytMjU2s. Finally, the victim chose to call an attorney, rather than a lay person, one with whom she did not have an especially close, personal and confidential relationship. The email address cannot be subscribed. The defense argues that these rulings were improper because: 1) there was no evidentiary foundation to justify the opinion evidence and the scenario depicted in the video demonstration, i.e., that they were purportedly based on speculation; and because 2) these forms of evidence are extremely potent, inflammatory, and therefore they unduly prejudiced defendant in a case like this where, according to him, there is no proof to support the opinions or the scenario shown on tape. She said that he, not for the first time, had choked her, although this was the first time she was thereby rendered unconscious. From the rental office's vantage point, one would not have been able to see defendant on the tarmac getting ready to board-and possibly load luggage or other items onto-the plane, which was in a position readily accessible by automobile for such purposes. 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). [S]peaking in very hushed tones and very rapidly and, sounding extremely upset, she told him that she and defendant had a fight the night or day before. We disagree with defendant and find them fair and legally satisfactory. Defendant essentially admitted as much, and was heard to say, more than once, that during one argument there was physical contact, that their last argument was explosive and severe, and that he was frustrated in his marriage because they argued constantly. Second, he admitted that their marriage was unhappy and virtually over, and that his own anger had reached a level tempting him toward violence against her because he was so frustrated by the strife between them. ). Moreover, the justice's immediate response-I suspect I'll allow it-is of no greater legal significance. 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. 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. Her remains have never been found, although a body washed ashore in Staten Island that investigators initially believed to be Katz Bierenbaum. Defendant's lies, misstatements and omissions powerfully bespeak his consciousness of guilt. And, while we agree this type of evidence, alone, may not and should not form the basis for a finding of guilt, it may be taken into account in evaluating all the other evidence. of Cal., supra, at p. 442, 131 Cal.Rptr. Defendant gave contradictory accounts about whether and why he sent the living room rug out to be cleaned immediately following the decedent's disappearance, but completely withheld that information from the police; 4. Moreover, the testimony of the only defense witness, Joel Davis, suggesting that he saw the deceased on the afternoon of July 7, was extremely weak. Shes not with me, and shes not with my parents, and at that moment I know that my sisters dead, Katz said. In a December parole hearing, however, Bierenbaum, now 66, admitted for the first time that he strangled Gail Katz, 29, in July 1985. Often, evidence of prior assaults and threats manifests general aggressiveness, i.e., a general propensity to act aggressively against other people. Accordingly, the judgment of the Supreme Court, New York County (Leslie Crocker Snyder, J. | The full 20/20 premieres TONIGHT at 9/8c on @ABC. denied 362 U.S. 912, 80 S.Ct. Surgeon Admits to Throwing Wife Out Robert Bierenbaum (born July 22, 1955) is an American former plastic surgeon and convicted murderer. He said the day ended with a Saturday evening, candlelight dinner in their apartment, but he again declined to discuss whether this interlude, described by him as romantic, helped resolve the argument. Notwithstanding these and other direct, uncomplicated admonitions, defendant omitted telling Det. The former plastic surgeon, who is in prison for the killing, admitted to the parole board in December 2020 that he strangled Katz, 29, before loading her body onto a Cessna 172 and tossing it into the Atlantic Ocean. The trial record also makes it clear-notwithstanding the victim occasionally vacillated about terminating her marriage-this couple was on the verge of divorce in July 1985. Furthermore, when defendant spoke to Det. It is on the basis of that history and its relevance to proving an element of the crime charged-and, as well, after the court balances probative value against potential prejudice-that a court may determine the admissibility of prior evidence of aggressiveness, be it acts of domestic violence, threats or otherwise. Robert Bierenbaum Today: Where Is the Surgeon Now in 2021. During the trial, the jury saw a video of an NYPD pilot loading two 50-pound bags of sand and a 10-pound bag of rice into a black duffel bag, meant to serve as a simulation for the 110-body of Katz Bierenbaum. Second, if we were to reach the merits, we would find that the prosecutor's summation arguments on the subject, when viewed in the complete context of his closing statements, do not warrant reversal. Verbal strife plagued it, express and implied threats uttered by defendant aggravated it, and defendant's admitted violence against his victim during at least one episode surely worsened it. 2023 Cox Media Group. rendered November 29, 2000, affirmed. When she came to, he begged her forgiveness and promised it would never happen again. Ex-surgeon confesses throwing wife's body from airplane in 1985 Bierenbaum, an experienced pilot who had been convicted on circumstantial evidence, was serving his 20 years-to-life prison sentence when he made the chilling 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. Turning next to defendant's hearsay claims, he argues that the trial justice erroneously allowed several People's witnesses to testify that the victim had told them that, inter alia, her marriage was stormy, that she was afraid of defendant, that he was very controlling, that there was much verbal strife between them, that her husband had occasionally made threatening statements to her, that he once choked her in 1983 rendering her unconscious, that she had taken steps to prepare to leave him, and that she had used and intended again to use the Tarasoff letter to threaten him if he failed to meet her divorce demands. The jury saw this altered document. 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. Her stated intentions, should defendant refuse to accede to those demands, were plain. His claim of innocence-and the presumption which accompanies it-have been utterly overwhelmed and destroyed by the People's proof. Additionally, her key reason for precluding the professionals from giving oral testimony at trial was that one of their purposes for consulting with defendant's closest family members was to gain insights from his family members, insights which might enhance their treatment of defendant. Fourth, he urges that the court incorrectly allowed the People to introduce opinion testimony by a medical examiner, and demonstrative and opinion evidence by a police pilot and two other experts, that it is possible for a surgeon/pilot, alone, to dismember a 110-pound body in 10 minutes, load a 36-inch long package containing the body's disarticulated remains onto a small airplane, and, also while alone in the air, throw it into the ocean. Learn more about FindLaws newsletters, including our terms of use and privacy policy. Dalsass' approximately eight telephone answering machine messages. Parker Sentenced To Life In Prison | The Seattle Times Like his wife, he was 29 years old when she vanished. 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. By 1990, Bierenbaum had relocated to Las Vegas and opened a plastic surgery practice there, ABC News reported. 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. That key factor in the context of marital or other intimate relationships frequently differentiates domestic violence assaults and homicides-wherein prior bad acts have often been deemed admissible during the People's direct case-from other cases wherein evidence of past assaultive behavior against people other than the victim has most properly been precluded. Indeed, defendant himself told his father in 1983 that their strife had reached the point of some physical contact, and there is credible testimony that in 1985 defendant was so filled with hostility that he was tempted toward violence against his wife. Robert Bierenbaum was convicted of second-degree murder in 2000 and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. 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. 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. He faces 25 years to life and is to be sentenced on Nov. 20. Because of client confidentiality, the doctors could not testify in court. The court said (at 603, 721 N.Y.S.2d 593, 744 N.E.2d 128): Reliability is the sum of the circumstances surrounding the making of the statement that render the declarant worthy of belief. As discussed at greater length elsewhere in this opinion, notwithstanding defendant's contentions to the contrary, this evidence is clearly relevant not only to motive, but to intent and identity. The call came from the police who insisted that he immediately come in to view a woman they had found at the New York Port Authority Bus Terminal, someone they thought might be his missing wife. The Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC) strongly emphasizes the importance of inclusion and representation by recognizing the unique challenges that non-binary and transgender incarcerated people face Gov.