Speaker 1: Larchment is located along the Long Island South in Westchester
Speaker 1: County and New York. It's a charming and affluent village
Speaker 1: that feels worlds away from the chaos of nearby New
Speaker 1: York City. It was originally a summer retreat from Manhattan's
Speaker 1: e late, but it blossomed in the late nineteenth century
Speaker 1: when the railroad brought city dwellers to its shores. Of
Speaker 1: the decades, it's developed into a tight knit community known
Speaker 1: for its tree lined, straight, historic hombs, and genteel atmosphere.
Speaker 1: The Larchment Police Department reflects this quiet character. It's housed
Speaker 1: in a modest brick building just off Main Street and
Speaker 1: is more Maybury than Manhattan. Officers often know the residents
Speaker 1: by face, if not by name. Shifts were steady, predictable,
Speaker 1: almost boring in the best possible way. It's the kind
Speaker 1: of place where the radio crackles with reports of a
Speaker 1: raccoon in someone's attic or a suspicious parked car. Rarely
Speaker 1: anything more sinister, but even the most peaceful of places
Speaker 1: have their shadows. Before nineteen eighty nine, the village had
Speaker 1: only ever recorded to murders in its entire history. The
Speaker 1: first occurred in October nineteen thirty eight, when a whimpering
Speaker 1: dog led its owner to the body of seventeen year
Speaker 1: old martemmeld Coil. She had been beaten to death and
Speaker 1: dumped in a vacant lot of Palmer Avenue. The case
Speaker 1: was never solved. Nearly four decades later, a tragedy struck
Speaker 1: once more. In nineteen seventy six, patrolman Arthur Demat responded
Speaker 1: to reports of a homeless man near the train tracks.
Speaker 1: During the encounter, twenty three year old Anthony Curtis Blanks
Speaker 1: wrestled the matt's gone from him and fatally shot the officer.
Speaker 1: His badge still hangs in the village hall, a solemn
Speaker 1: tribute to a rare but devastating loss. Since then, the
Speaker 1: police department had returned to its sleepy rhythm. That was
Speaker 1: until New Year's Day of nineteen eighty nine. As the
Speaker 1: first evening of the new year settled over larchmentth festive
Speaker 1: lights still blinked in windows, and the lingering scent of
Speaker 1: pine clung to the cold there. Families returned home from
Speaker 1: holiday dinners. Children played in snowy front yards, their laughter
Speaker 1: muffled by scarves. Inside the police station, the mood was quiet,
Speaker 1: almost drowsy. A couple of officers nursed coffees, reviewing routine paperwork,
Speaker 1: while the dispatcher occasionally glanced at the silent switchboard. At
Speaker 1: seven thirty pm, the front door opened with a jingle
Speaker 1: of bells. A man stepped inside, brushing the chill from
Speaker 1: his coat. He looked uneasy as he approached the front desk.
Speaker 1: He said that he hadn't seen or heard from his
Speaker 1: sister and her husband all weekend. In a town where
Speaker 1: nothing bad ever seemed to happen, something had. Lincoln Street
Speaker 1: wasn't the kind of place you just stumbled upon. You
Speaker 1: arrived there on purpose. It curled through the heart of
Speaker 1: Larchment like a secret, a residential strait so pristain, so
Speaker 1: well kept it felt almost staged. It was the kind
Speaker 1: of place where children still played hopscosh on the sidewalks,
Speaker 1: and neighbors exchanged nods while raking their leaves. It was
Speaker 1: wide enough for two cars to pass without slewing, and
Speaker 1: in the summer time, the trees lining both sides formed
Speaker 1: a canopy so dense the straight glowed grain. And about
Speaker 1: half way up that quiet stretch of Lincoln Straight sat
Speaker 1: house number thirty six. It wasn't flashy, but it didn't
Speaker 1: need to be. The two story home, with its early
Speaker 1: twentieth century bones and graceful stone steps, had presents the
Speaker 1: kind of presence that made people pause mid walk and
Speaker 1: look just a second longer. It was regal, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't chowy. Like it belonged there, rooted and unwavering in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine. This house belonged to doctor laksh Manrau
Speaker 1: and doctor Shanta's Chervou, and their story was the embodiment
Speaker 1: of everything America promised to those brave enough to chase
Speaker 1: the dream. Originally from New Delhi, they had come to
Speaker 1: the United States in the early nineteen sixties chasing a
Speaker 1: dream with little more than education and determination in their suitcases.
Speaker 1: By all accounts, they had caught that dream. Akshman Rau
Speaker 1: was a professor of nuclear medicine at the Albert Einstein
Speaker 1: College of Medicine. Shanda worked in emergency medicine at New
Speaker 1: Rochelle Hospital. She had trained in geriatrics at Montefior Medical
Speaker 1: Center in the Bronx, and even on her rare days off,
Speaker 1: she never truly slowed. Their lives were demanding, but the
Speaker 1: Chervus never wore stress the way that others did. They
Speaker 1: had two children, both grown, both thriving. A room was
Speaker 1: out west deep into a surgical residency at UCLA. A Raree,
Speaker 1: a gifted economist, was carving out her own path in Toronto.
Speaker 1: From the outside, the cherves were the perfect picture not
Speaker 1: just of success, but of something richer. Each evening, after
Speaker 1: grilling shifts in the emergency room, Shanta would return to
Speaker 1: her kitchen. The scent of cumen and turmeric would drift
Speaker 1: through the house as she prepared traditional Indian meals, chopping
Speaker 1: vegetables with worn, familiar knives at the counter, just as
Speaker 1: she had in her mother's kitchen in India decades before.
Speaker 1: For years, she didn't even own a proper knife block.
Speaker 1: Then their daughter Arare got her first real paycheck and
Speaker 1: brought her mother a gift, an elegant set of German
Speaker 1: Henkles knives in a beautiful wooden block. It was a
Speaker 1: thank you for everything her parents had sacrificed. Shanda wore
Speaker 1: her mangol cut every day, a chain of black beads
Speaker 1: that never left her neck, even beneath her hospital scrubs.
Speaker 1: La Shaman Rau. He was the kind of man who
Speaker 1: collected degrees the way other people collected books or bottle caps.
Speaker 1: Between the two of them, the Chervius spoke six languages.
Speaker 1: Their home was more than shelter, It was sanctuary. They
Speaker 1: went their doors to others as well. Over the years
Speaker 1: they helped more than a dozen realves immigrant from India, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews.
Speaker 1: They gave generously, quietly, without ever asking for recognition. One
Speaker 1: of those nephews, Rakubamadan, once put it best. They immigrated here,
Speaker 1: they worked hard, they built themselves a home and achieved
Speaker 1: prominent positions as doctors, and then they brought ten brothers
Speaker 1: and sisters here. It was a beautiful story, the kind
Speaker 1: of story people want to believe always ends well, the
Speaker 1: kind of story that makes you believe in the promise
Speaker 1: of America, in the promise of hard work and determination.
Speaker 1: But even the most perfect stories have their shadows, and
Speaker 1: Larchman's shadows were deeper and more twisted than anybody could
Speaker 1: have imagined. It was December thirty first, nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: and New Rochelle Hospital's emergency department was chaos. It was
Speaker 1: one of those holiday nights where patients just kept coming,
Speaker 1: where the coffee grew colder and the charts piled higher
Speaker 1: and higher. Doctor Shantah Shreview should have gone home hours ago,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't who she was. She staid until every
Speaker 1: chart was signed, every patient properly discharged. That was Shanta,
Speaker 1: meticulous caring, never leaving work half done. Just after midnight,
Speaker 1: as nineteen eighty nine officially began, she made her runs,
Speaker 1: not medical runs, but personal ones. She walked through the
Speaker 1: hospital corridors, wishing everybody a happy New Year. Then she waited,
Speaker 1: but not outside. Shanta never waited outside. She didn't feel
Speaker 1: safe there. She waited in the hallway inside the building
Speaker 1: until she saw familiar headlights pull up. Lakshman raw As always,
Speaker 1: was there to pick her up. They drove home through
Speaker 1: the quiet streets of Westchester County, past houses where families
Speaker 1: were sleeping off their New Year celebrations. They had no
Speaker 1: idea they were driving towards their final night, thirty six
Speaker 1: Lincoln Street. About twenty four hours later, that same Queen's
Speaker 1: Hospital was filled with celebration. More than twenty members of
Speaker 1: the Sherviu family had gathered to welcome a new life
Speaker 1: into the world, the birth of a first generation American.
Speaker 1: It was supposed to be a milestone, a joyful chapter
Speaker 1: in the family's story, and yet something felt incomplete. Lakshman,
Speaker 1: Rau and Shanta, the very people who had made this
Speaker 1: life possible for so many, were missing. They had sponsored
Speaker 1: every single relative in that waiting room, every sibling, every cousin,
Speaker 1: every niece and nephew. Without them, the celebration simply didn't
Speaker 1: feel whole. But when call after call went unanswered, celebration
Speaker 1: gave way to concern. By sunrise, that concern had blossomed
Speaker 1: into dread. Chants brought they're volunteered to check in. Just
Speaker 1: to be safe. He drove the familiar route to Larchment,
Speaker 1: winding past quiet houses and holiday wraiths, past empty sidewalks
Speaker 1: and leafless streets. The house of thirty six Lincoln Street
Speaker 1: stood still, as if it was asleep. He knocked on
Speaker 1: the front door and waited. Nobody came to answer it.
Speaker 1: He peered through the windows, but only saw the empty
Speaker 1: ships of furniture in the morning shadow. Then he walked
Speaker 1: around back. As he drew closer, he saw that the
Speaker 1: back door was open. Its glass pane had been shattered.
Speaker 1: Too afraid to go further. He backed away and drove
Speaker 1: straight to the Larchment Police Department. Police officers arrived swiftly,
Speaker 1: among them with Sergeant Kenneth Khan. They circled to the
Speaker 1: back of the house and immediately saw the glass scattered
Speaker 1: on the cold cement. Can nudged the rear door open
Speaker 1: it creaked against the stillness the fire himself and called
Speaker 1: out to the Chervoos. There was only silence. They moved inside,
Speaker 1: then they climbed the stairs. Before they even reached the bedroom,
Speaker 1: the smell hit them. It wasn't the smell of blood,
Speaker 1: but the unmistakable scent of decomposition. The master bedroom door opened.
Speaker 1: The bed was soaked, dark, heavy and glistening with blood.
Speaker 1: In the middle lay Lakshman, Rau and Shanta, still in
Speaker 1: their pajamas, still side by side, but now earily silent.
Speaker 1: It was clear even from the doorway that they were
Speaker 1: both gone. Rick Remordis had said in there was blood
Speaker 1: spattered on the walls and on the ceiling. The Chervoos
Speaker 1: never stood a chance. Shanda had suffered eight stab wounds,
Speaker 1: one pierced her heart, another cut through to her spine,
Speaker 1: and even after death, the killer had slashed her throat.
Speaker 1: Lakshman Rau had been stabbed fourteen times in the face,
Speaker 1: the hand, the chest, the abdomen. Like his wife, his
Speaker 1: throat had also been slashed. The bodies were removed and
Speaker 1: taken to the medical Examiner's office, but the horror of
Speaker 1: that scene clung to the house like a fog. It
Speaker 1: didn't take long for word to spread. A double homicide Enlarchment,
Speaker 1: a quiet, picturesque suburb where violence simply didn't happen. Within
Speaker 1: ours of discovering the bodies of doctor Lakshman Rau and
Speaker 1: doctor Shanta Chervu, Lincoln Street transformed the quiet, storybook neighborhood
Speaker 1: was suddenly a crime scene. Police tape fluttered from the
Speaker 1: porch railings, Markers dotted the lawns. Investigators moved in and
Speaker 1: out of the home with hushed urgency cameras flashing, gloved
Speaker 1: hands gathering evidence, whispered exchanged beneath furrowed brows. It was
Speaker 1: the first homicide Enlarchment in more than a decade, and
Speaker 1: detectives felt the weight of that immediately. They knew the
Speaker 1: eyes of the community were now on them. The initial
Speaker 1: theory was a familiar one, a robbery gone wrong, but
Speaker 1: that theory crumbled almost as quickly as it was formed.
Speaker 1: The inside of the home didn't reflect chaos. Nothing appeared ransacked.
Speaker 1: Valuable items including jewelry, electronics, and cash, remained untouched, sitting
Speaker 1: in plain sight like bait the killer never took. It
Speaker 1: didn't make sense if somebody had broken in to steel,
Speaker 1: they had failed miserably and instead carried out an execution.
Speaker 1: So detectives turned their focus elsewhere. They combed the neighborhood
Speaker 1: with a precision that bordered on desperate. Garbage cans were overturned,
Speaker 1: storm drains were searched with flashlights and mirrors. Metal detectors
Speaker 1: swept beneath hedges and down driveways. They were looking for
Speaker 1: something very specific, a knife. One was missing from the
Speaker 1: elegant henkle block in the Shervood kitchen, the butcher knife.
Speaker 1: It was likely the murder weapon, but after days of
Speaker 1: searching nothing turned up. Detective Captain Michael Garcia addressed the
Speaker 1: press and said, we looked everywhere for a weapon. We
Speaker 1: haven't come up with anything yet, and so the focus
Speaker 1: shifted away from physical evidence and towards the lives of
Speaker 1: the victims. They figured out the last time either of
Speaker 1: them were seen was when Shanda had finished her shift
Speaker 1: and waited outside for her husband to collect her. One
Speaker 1: of her colleagues, Anne Kenny, remembered, it clearly to be
Speaker 1: afraid to wait outside the emergency room and then be
Speaker 1: killed in your own house. It's so ironic. She was
Speaker 1: a very timid, gentle soul as always. Lakshman Rau was
Speaker 1: the one to pick her up. They drove home, and
Speaker 1: two days later their bodies were fond soaked in blood
Speaker 1: in the sanctuary they'd spent a lifetime building. Now detectives
Speaker 1: were faced with a disturbing question. If it wasn't a burglary,
Speaker 1: if it wasn't random, than who wanted them dead. They
Speaker 1: began looking into their past, their social circles, their hospital colleagues.
Speaker 1: They searched for any hint of tension, a jealous coworker,
Speaker 1: a spurned friend, a disgruntled patient, but they found none.
Speaker 1: Everyone spoke of the chervous the same way, with admiration,
Speaker 1: with warmth, and now with grief. There were no enemies,
Speaker 1: no scandals, just a quiet, perfect couple who seemed to
Speaker 1: have done everything right. Days turned into wakes, and weeks
Speaker 1: turned into months. By spring, the floors had returned to
Speaker 1: Lincoln Street. The blood had been washed away, but something lingered,
Speaker 1: not just grief, not just confusion, but silence, the kind
Speaker 1: of silence that fills a room after something terrible happens
Speaker 1: and nobody knows what to say. Detectives, meanwhile, were stuck
Speaker 1: in place. Despite their efforts, including the interviews, the search parties,
Speaker 1: the forensic sweeps, they were no closer to finding an
Speaker 1: answer than they were on day one. They didn't believe
Speaker 1: that anybody in the Sheriview family was involved. Everybody had alibis,
Speaker 1: everyone had been accounted for. Still the leads were scarce.
Speaker 1: So police Chief William Cursey announced a twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollar reward, hoping it might jar something loose. But the
Speaker 1: phone line stayed quiet. Nobody came forward. Enlarchment, life continued,
Speaker 1: Children walked to school, mail was delivered, lawns were moan,
Speaker 1: but something had changed. People were trying to resume with
Speaker 1: their routines, but they were doing so with a killer
Speaker 1: still among them, And so the town invented its own
Speaker 1: kind of comfort. The story people told themselves over coffee
Speaker 1: and across garden fences was simple. This wasn't random. The
Speaker 1: sherifviews had been targeted. Their neighbor Joan Sassin said it plainly,
Speaker 1: we live in a very safe neighborhood. Most people feel
Speaker 1: this was targeted at one specific family. It was an
Speaker 1: isolated defense. People needed for that to be true, because
Speaker 1: if it wasn't, if it was random, then nobody was safe.
Speaker 1: And yet even with a double murder on their doorstep,
Speaker 1: most residents didn't change much. They still answered the door
Speaker 1: for strangers, still left keys and unlocked sheds, still chatted
Speaker 1: casually with passerby. Ralph Engel echoed the sentiment and said,
Speaker 1: we may be totally wrong, but the general belief seems
Speaker 1: to be that this wasn't random, not some crazy murderer.
Speaker 1: There really has been no request for concerted community action.
Speaker 1: But behind that fragile calm, the rumors were relentless. Some
Speaker 1: believed that the killer had ties to the Indian community,
Speaker 1: that it was personal, but they had already fled the
Speaker 1: country and would now be seen again. That theory, albeit dark,
Speaker 1: gave people comfort because it meant that they were safe.
Speaker 1: It meant this horror story had already ended. But others
Speaker 1: didn't buy it, especially not the Indian American community. In fact,
Speaker 1: Many of them believed that police weren't doing enough. They
Speaker 1: worried the case was being ignored, swept aside because the
Speaker 1: victims weren't white. Some even feared that the murders might
Speaker 1: have been racially motivated. That possibility wasn't without president. Just
Speaker 1: a few months earlier, in New Jersey, several attacks had
Speaker 1: been carried out by self identified vigilantes calling themselves the
Speaker 1: dot busters, a cruel reference to the bindi worn by
Speaker 1: Hindu women. Detectives tonight any link, They insisted, the murders
Speaker 1: weren't hate crimes, but they offered very little else, no motive,
Speaker 1: no suspect, no timeline, and no updates. Frustration mounted, faith
Speaker 1: in the system and eroded, and as the silence dragged on,
Speaker 1: people began to wonder if justice would ever come. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the month slipped into years, the house at thirty six
Speaker 1: Lincoln Street was sold. The neighborhood slowly stopped talking about
Speaker 1: what had happened. The Chervus, it seemed, had been buried
Speaker 1: not just in the earth, but in memory. By nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three, four years after the murders, Police Chief Cursey
Speaker 1: gave an interview and said, I wish I could tell
Speaker 1: you there was something new. It's a frustrating case. But
Speaker 1: what the police chief didn't know, what almost nobody knew,
Speaker 1: was that everything was about to change, and arrest was coming,
Speaker 1: and when it arrived, it stunned everyone. On the twentieth
Speaker 1: of May nineteen ninety three, more than four years after
Speaker 1: Lakshman Rau and Chanta Shervey were brutally murdered, detectives called
Speaker 1: the press conference. There had been a development. A twenty
Speaker 1: five year old man named Paul Cox had been arrested.
Speaker 1: He was a self employed carpenter working under the name
Speaker 1: PC Construction. He lived in New Rochelle, just a short
Speaker 1: drive from Larchment. He held a job as a living
Speaker 1: superintendent at an apartment complex. Claimed gutters or placed locks,
Speaker 1: fixed the boilers. To most people, he was just a handyman,
Speaker 1: and a quiet one at that. But to those who
Speaker 1: knew the name Cox, the arrest came as a shock
Speaker 1: because Paul Cox didn't come from obscurity. He came from legacy.
Speaker 1: His grandfather, Joseph Van der Knout, was one of the
Speaker 1: most well known local politicians in Westchester County. He'd served
Speaker 1: as the Mammarineck Town supervisor before that he was on
Speaker 1: the town council. Paul's mother, Mary van der Knoot Cox,
Speaker 1: was a Junior League member. His father, Francis Cock the third,
Speaker 1: was a prominent attorney. This wasn't the kind of family
Speaker 1: the people whispered about. This was the kind of family
Speaker 1: sent Christmas cards to. But the connection that shook the
Speaker 1: community the most was the house Paul Cox had grown
Speaker 1: up inside thirty six Lincoln Street, the very home where
Speaker 1: Lakshmanrou and Shanter were killed. He had lived there until
Speaker 1: he was seven years old. His parents had sold the
Speaker 1: house to the Chervous in nineteen seventy. The murders had
Speaker 1: happened almost two decades later. The overlap of place of
Speaker 1: memory of violence was almost too disturbing to process to
Speaker 1: the residence of Lincoln Street. This wasn't just an arrest.
Speaker 1: It was a collapse of the narrative that they had constructed.
Speaker 1: Somebody from the Indian community hadn't committed this crime. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a cultural dispute or some far off mystery. It
Speaker 1: was Paul, the quiet kid from the neighborhood, the one
Speaker 1: whose roots ran so deep into the foundations of Larchment
Speaker 1: that people see still called his family by name. You've
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Speaker 1: And Tia Judas, a neighbor, told reporters. The police made
Speaker 1: it clear it wasn't a random incident. Most people thought
Speaker 1: it was somebody within the Indian community. They weren't alone.
Speaker 1: Even Paul's tenants were stunned. Steve McNally, a fellow resident,
Speaker 1: said the place was a rat hole and he took
Speaker 1: care of cleaning it up. He did seem like a
Speaker 1: nice guy. He never gave any trouble. But now the
Speaker 1: same man who had been fixing leaking pipes and patching
Speaker 1: drywall was in handcuffs and charged with a double murder.
Speaker 1: Tom Constable, a local lawyer, tried to hold on to
Speaker 1: that old larchment logic and said it's a very sad thing,
Speaker 1: but an arrest isn't a conviction. And he was right.
Speaker 1: But what nobody could yet imagine was the dark undercurrent
Speaker 1: beneath Paul Cox's quiet demeanor, because the real story, the why,
Speaker 1: was more terrifying than anybody had expected. The truth was coming,
Speaker 1: and it was buried not in a motive but in memory.
Speaker 1: It was about three am on the thirty first of
Speaker 1: December nineteen eighty eight when Paul Cox lost control of
Speaker 1: his nineteen seventy nine Chevrolet and crashed it on a
Speaker 1: sharp turn along Fifth Avenue in New Rochelle. A few
Speaker 1: hours later, police found the car abandoned. They called the
Speaker 1: hospital and Paul Cox's home, but there was no sign
Speaker 1: of him. At this time, Cox was an alcoholic, but
Speaker 1: in ninety ninety something shifted. He was an alcoholics anonymous
Speaker 1: trying to turn his life around. During one of the meetings,
Speaker 1: Cox stood up to take the fourth and fifth steps
Speaker 1: of the twelve step program, the ones that ask members
Speaker 1: to take a moral inventory and admit their wrong doings
Speaker 1: to themselves, to God, and to another person. But what
Speaker 1: Cox shared would leave the room silent. He said he
Speaker 1: believed he had killed two people while blackout drunk. He
Speaker 1: didn't know it, not for sure, but he felt it.
Speaker 1: He told the group he had been out drinking heavily
Speaker 1: the night of the car crash out at a bar
Speaker 1: on North Avenue, but after the wreck, instead of heading home,
Speaker 1: he ended up on Lincoln Street outside his childhood home,
Speaker 1: the Sherview's Home. He said he had a dream where
Speaker 1: he smashed a window, then walked inside. He said he
Speaker 1: grabbed a n eye from the kitchen like it was instinct,
Speaker 1: muscle memory, and then he went upstairs. He wasn't sure
Speaker 1: what happened next, but he was standing in the master bedroom,
Speaker 1: the one where his parents had once slept. Lakshman, Rau
Speaker 1: and Schanda were already dead. Cox said that he panicked.
Speaker 1: He left the scene, walked to his parents' home on
Speaker 1: Prospects Street, and then fell asleep. When he woke up,
Speaker 1: there was blood on his clothing. He told the group
Speaker 1: his mother had thrown the clothes away. Later, he said
Speaker 1: he returned to the Shervo's home, cleaned anything he thought
Speaker 1: he'd touched, and said he tossed the murder weapon into
Speaker 1: the Long Island Sound. One of the members of that
Speaker 1: AA group was his girlfriend at the time, a woman
Speaker 1: referred to only as Miss S. She recalled how Cox
Speaker 1: had broken down in tears as he recounted what he
Speaker 1: thought he'd done. She remembered, I said, no way, I
Speaker 1: know you're kind. It's not possible. Another member, Mister S,
Speaker 1: remembered it differently. He didn't brush it off, he later said.
Speaker 1: He told me he thought he had done something really bad.
Speaker 1: He said, after a period of drinking, he had gone
Speaker 1: into these people's house where he lived and killed the
Speaker 1: people with a knife while they slept. The confession had
Speaker 1: happened four years before the arrest, because it had been
Speaker 1: made in an AA meeting under a veal of confidentiality.
Speaker 1: Nobody went to police, not then, even as the murders
Speaker 1: remained unsolved, even as the headlines faded, even as the
Speaker 1: Chervou family pleaded for answers. For four years, those words
Speaker 1: sat like a stone at the bottom of a river
Speaker 1: until somebody finally came forward. And when they did, detectives
Speaker 1: reopened the case file and began to dig. Because this
Speaker 1: wasn't a tip, it was a road map, and Paul
Speaker 1: Cox had already drawn the route. Once someone from the
Speaker 1: AA group finally came forward with Paul Cox's confession. Detectives
Speaker 1: reopened the file that had sat cold for over four years.
Speaker 1: They went back to the crash and sure enough checked
Speaker 1: out the abandoned nineteen seventy nine Chevrolet Sadan had in
Speaker 1: fact been discovered smashed into a guardrail on Fifth Avenue
Speaker 1: in New Rochelle, just like Cox had said, it was
Speaker 1: Detective Sergeant Robert Smith who had found it. At that
Speaker 1: part of the story was confirmed, detectives needed to know
Speaker 1: what else was true. Paul Cox was arrested and brought in.
Speaker 1: His fingerprints were taken and run through the system. They
Speaker 1: came back as a matched unidentified fingerprints from the Shervo
Speaker 1: crime scene. Paul Cox was charged with four counts of
Speaker 1: second degree murder an order to be held on two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand dollars bill. As part of the agreement,
Speaker 1: he was he'd wear an electronic ankle monitor and remained
Speaker 1: confined to his parents' home Enlarchment. It wasn't what prosecutors
Speaker 1: had wanted. They had asked for a two million dollar bail.
Speaker 1: They told the judge that Cox had a history of
Speaker 1: psychiatric treatment and that he had once told the nurse
Speaker 1: he might try to flee. Cox's defense attorney, Andre Rubin
Speaker 1: pushed back. He said that if Paul Cox had really
Speaker 1: intended to run, he'd had four years to do it.
Speaker 1: The judge agreed, bill was lowered, and Paul Cox went home.
Speaker 1: The Sherivo family was furious. Sarah Swaddre Lakshmann, Raus's sister,
Speaker 1: was devastated and commented, it is very unfair. We're very
Speaker 1: frightened by this. How can they let him go? Her sister, Lakshmi,
Speaker 1: echoed the same disbelief. They had waited years for justice,
Speaker 1: and now the man accused of murdering their loved ones
Speaker 1: was walking free, living in comfort, just blocks from the
Speaker 1: crime scene. To them, it felt like the system was
Speaker 1: minimizing their pain, trivializing loss. The legal teams began preparing
Speaker 1: for trial, and it didn't take long before it became
Speaker 1: clear what the strategy the defense planned to pursue. Insanity.
Speaker 1: Ribbon made the first hint in a press statement when
Speaker 1: he said, assuming that he did commit these acts, it's
Speaker 1: clear they weren't committed by somebody in his right mind.
Speaker 1: Jury selection began in May of nineteen ninety four, Ribbon
Speaker 1: addressed the prospective jurors with a haunting observation, it's every
Speaker 1: person's nightmare to be stabbed while you sleep. He also
Speaker 1: asked how they felt the bout a psychiatric defense. The prosecutors,
Speaker 1: led by George Bolin, were blunt. They wouldn't have an
Speaker 1: eye witness. They didn't need one. They were building a
Speaker 1: case on forensics, confessions, and circumstantial evidence. Bolan was firm
Speaker 1: when he said, you will not hear from any only
Speaker 1: one witness who could be an eyewitness to the actual crime.
Speaker 1: But outside the courtroom, a more complex issue began to unfold.
Speaker 1: The case raised legal and ethical questions about confidentiality and
Speaker 1: whether self help programs like Alcoholics Anonymous should be shielded
Speaker 1: in the same way as therapy with a licensed professional.
Speaker 1: Most states only protect conversations that take place under the
Speaker 1: care of a license psychotherapist or physician. AA, by contrast,
Speaker 1: was peer let. So when people finally broke their silence,
Speaker 1: was it a betrayal or was it justice? And in
Speaker 1: that gray area the future of the case would hang
Speaker 1: in the balance. On the morning of the second of
Speaker 1: June nineteen ninety four, Paul Cox was led into the courtroom.
Speaker 1: He wore soon and his hair was neatly combed. He
Speaker 1: took a seat beside his defense team, while his parents,
Speaker 1: Stoic and Peale, sat behind him in the gallery. Across
Speaker 1: the aisle sat the Chervu family. While they said nothing,
Speaker 1: their grief was unmistakable. They had waited years for this day.
Speaker 1: They didn't believe that Paul Cox was insane, rangonanthus Shan't.
Speaker 1: His brother in law spoke bluntly when he said, insanity
Speaker 1: is just the state of the art of getting out
Speaker 1: for the sheervous. The idea that this man who had
Speaker 1: once lived in the very same house as them could
Speaker 1: now claim madness felt like a second betrayal. They showed
Speaker 1: up to court every day they had to. They said,
Speaker 1: it felt like a responsibility. Opening statements then began. Defense
Speaker 1: attorney Andrew Reuben addressed the jury and said, nothing speaks
Speaker 1: of a person who was in his right mind when
Speaker 1: these crimes were committed. Then came the evidence. The testimony
Speaker 1: began with officers who recalled finding the crime scene home
Speaker 1: bathed in blood. A Radish shervy, the couple's daughter, took
Speaker 1: the stand. She spoke about the knife block she had
Speaker 1: purchased for her parents a set of five. She had
Speaker 1: last seen all five knives there on December twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: after the murders. One was missing. That missing knife, the
Speaker 1: prosecution would argue, became the weapon that ended the two lives.
Speaker 1: Then came missus S, Paul Cox's ex girlfriend. She testified
Speaker 1: that Cox had confessed to her, believing that he had
Speaker 1: killed the Sheervws in a blackout. From the defense table.
Speaker 1: Cox broke down in tears as she spoke. Miss S
Speaker 1: also revealed that in moments of drunken despair, Cox would
Speaker 1: carve crosses into his arms. One by one, four more
Speaker 1: AA members took to the stand. Each of them had
Speaker 1: heard Paul Cox confess to the murders. To them, the
Speaker 1: confessions had sounded dream like, surreal, like something pulled from
Speaker 1: a nightmare, But then came a much clearer count. Mister S,
Speaker 1: a former roommate, told the court that Coxe had confessed
Speaker 1: to him directly, not during a meeting, but in private.
Speaker 1: He remembered every word. He said. The woman woke up
Speaker 1: and he stabbed her many times. He told me the
Speaker 1: man woke up and was pleading with him. He stabbed
Speaker 1: him many times, and before he left, he slipit their
Speaker 1: throats to make sure they were dead. It was graphic,
Speaker 1: personal and specific, and to the prosecution it was more
Speaker 1: than a foggy recollection. It was a story told with detail.
Speaker 1: Mister R also said that contrary to what Cox had
Speaker 1: told the AA group about his mother disposing of the
Speaker 1: bloody clothes, he had actually burned them himself. Under cross examination,
Speaker 1: Reuben tried to discredit the witness. Mister R admitted to
Speaker 1: having taken LSD and other drugs, and said he had
Speaker 1: been in and out of psychiatric hospitals ten or eleven times.
Speaker 1: He was even an escapee from a New Haven institution
Speaker 1: when he met Cox, but the story never changed. Another
Speaker 1: former roommate, missus H, echoed this account. She said Cox
Speaker 1: would wake up screaming from nightmares in which he relived
Speaker 1: the murders. She testified, it seemed like a little boy
Speaker 1: was talking. I don't know how to describe it. It
Speaker 1: wasn't his usual voice. It was miss H who eventually
Speaker 1: went to police. Without her, the case may never have
Speaker 1: been reopened. Then the trial turned to the forensic evidence,
Speaker 1: and it was damning. Cox's palm print and two fingerprints
Speaker 1: were found around the back door to the Sheervoo's home.
Speaker 1: A bloody handprint on a pillowcase spore a fingerprint that
Speaker 1: matched Cox's left Indeck's finger. Thomas Wall, a forensic supervisor,
Speaker 1: testified about blood found on a Venetian blank cord in
Speaker 1: the bedroom. It didn't belong to either victim, it may
Speaker 1: have been Cox's blood. He told the court. The physical
Speaker 1: evidence tied the nightmare to reality. The confessions, whether vague
Speaker 1: or not, were no longer floating in the dark. Now
Speaker 1: they were grounded in blood, finger prints, in science. And
Speaker 1: with that the prosecution rested. Next it was the defense's turn,
Speaker 1: and their strategy would be simple. Paul Cox wasn't in
Speaker 1: his right mind. He was broken, damaged, and mad, or
Speaker 1: at least they would try to convince the jury of that.
Speaker 1: The defense opened their case with a familiar figure, Mary
Speaker 1: van Dernook Cox, Paul's mother. She sat before the jury,
Speaker 1: a woman in her sixties, composed but trembling. She was
Speaker 1: here to paint to portrait not of a killer, but
Speaker 1: of a broken boy. She told them that Paul was
Speaker 1: her fifth child, that from the beginning there were problems.
Speaker 1: He couldn't stay dry throughout the night he struggled in school.
Speaker 1: I guess we were disappointed, she admitted. She talked about
Speaker 1: her son sus attempt in high school and how he
Speaker 1: never graduated, how he drifted through college attempts, through jobs
Speaker 1: through the Air Force, and she spoke about that night
Speaker 1: and the crash. The police had told her his car
Speaker 1: had been found wrecked and abandoned. She said she went
Speaker 1: to check his bedroom and it was empty. Mary's testimony
Speaker 1: was heartbreaking and some would later say persuasive. She cried occasionally,
Speaker 1: but she always regained control. The defense then turned to
Speaker 1: psychiatry doctor David Weber, a psychiatrist, took to the stand
Speaker 1: and said he really snapped. He went through these actions
Speaker 1: as if he was going back in time to eliminate
Speaker 1: the people he blamed for all of his problems. When
Speaker 1: he was seven years old, Weber believed that Cox had
Speaker 1: been suffering from dysgraphia, a learning disability that went undiagnosed
Speaker 1: until adulthood. He said, the frustration from his academic failures
Speaker 1: festered into violent fantasies of killing himself, of killing his parents,
Speaker 1: and that night, drunk on beer and Camikazi cocktail, something
Speaker 1: inside him broke. He testified, it stands to reason that
Speaker 1: he couldn't have been in possession of his reason at
Speaker 1: the time, But the prosecution pushed back. They suggested that
Speaker 1: Cox had simply lied to the psychiatrist. They pointed to
Speaker 1: his vivid dreams of his parents dead in bed. They
Speaker 1: weren't hallucinations, they were plans. Two more defense experts testified.
Speaker 1: Daniel Mortell, a forensic psychologist, said that Cox scored just
Speaker 1: one point away from schizophrenia. He said he's well groomed, presentable,
Speaker 1: but underneath he shattered. But under cross examination, both Martell
Speaker 1: and we Were admitted that Cox showed very few classics
Speaker 1: signs of psychosis. That's when the prosecution called doctor Alan Tuckman,
Speaker 1: chief forensic psychiatrist for Rockland County, and his conclusion was clear.
Speaker 1: He said, he has personality disorders, he has a problem
Speaker 1: with alcohol, but there is no evidence of a severe
Speaker 1: mental illness. Doctor Tuckman pointed out that after the murderers,
Speaker 1: Cox appeared completely normal to his family, his friends, himself.
Speaker 1: He said, I just can't identify any psychotic disorder that
Speaker 1: renders a person psychotic and then disappears. A few hours later,
Speaker 1: the case was drawing to a close. During closing arguments,
Speaker 1: defense attorney Andrew Rubin made a final play and set
Speaker 1: there's an unpopular notion of the insanity defense. People see
Speaker 1: it as a cop out, but the truth, he said,
Speaker 1: was more complicated. He asked them to consider mental illness,
Speaker 1: not just blood and fingerprints. The prosecution, led by George Bowland,
Speaker 1: delivered a scathing rebuttal, said to Paul Cox, your manipulative
Speaker 1: ways have come to an end. The jury then retired
Speaker 1: to deliberate, but after nine hours they sent a note
Speaker 1: to the judge. They were stuck. One juror refused to move.
Speaker 1: The other said this jur didn't seem to understand the instructions. Worse,
Speaker 1: she couldn't support her opinion with evidence. They wrote, this
Speaker 1: juror is basing their verdict on opinion and cannot support
Speaker 1: it with concrete evidence. The judge urged them to continue,
Speaker 1: and they did for three more days, but the lone
Speaker 1: juror refused to budge. The rest were furious. They called
Speaker 1: her refusal an insult to their intelligence. They stayed overnight
Speaker 1: at the court's request, and still nothing changed. Three more
Speaker 1: days and still no verdict. Finally, the judge declared a mistrial.
Speaker 1: A new trial was scheduled for November. Outside court, a
Speaker 1: reporter asked one of the jurors a simple question, do
Speaker 1: you think Paul Cox was insane? Her answer was swift No,
Speaker 1: It's as simple as that. But they had wanted a conviction,
Speaker 1: but one woman wasn't convinced, and Paul Cox, for the moment,
Speaker 1: walked free. In November of nineteen ninety four, Paul Cox
Speaker 1: walked back into court, a new trial, a new jury,
Speaker 1: but the same two lives lost. This time, he testified
Speaker 1: in his own defense. His voice trembled as he recounted
Speaker 1: a loveless childhood inside the very home where Lakshman, Rau
Speaker 1: and Chant they were brutally murdered. He said he never
Speaker 1: felt like a true part of his family, that the
Speaker 1: house itself was soaked in bad memories. He told the
Speaker 1: jury about a birthday party where his family left him
Speaker 1: alone to watch television, about stealing food at school because
Speaker 1: his mother wouldn't pack him snacks, and the worst humiliation,
Speaker 1: he said, was the bed wedding. His mother, he claimed,
Speaker 1: hung a calendar in the kitchen every morning, warning she'd
Speaker 1: mark it a scarlet X for every accident. He said,
Speaker 1: The shame of it all drove him to alcohol, but
Speaker 1: by the time he was in his twenties, he needed
Speaker 1: a wake up beer just to stop the shaking. Then
Speaker 1: came the dreams. He testified. There would be dreams where
Speaker 1: I would see myself swinging the knife and up and
Speaker 1: down motion, slashing side to side. I never saw the
Speaker 1: knife going into anything. It was just the motion of
Speaker 1: the knife. I still can't believe that I did it,
Speaker 1: but I look at the evidence and realized I must
Speaker 1: have to say I'm sorry. Would be a total understatement.
Speaker 1: The jury retired to deliberate. Four days passed. Just like
Speaker 1: the first trial, the jury was divided, but this time
Speaker 1: they returned with a verdict. Paul Cox was found guilty,
Speaker 1: but not of murder. Instead, he was convicted of first
Speaker 1: degree manslaughter. They believed that he had killed the sheervous,
Speaker 1: he had admitted it much, but they also believed he
Speaker 1: had done so while suffering from what the law calls
Speaker 1: an extreme emotional disturbance. In the gallery. The Riviere family
Speaker 1: sat stunned. Their daughter Arati said he acted with no conscience.
Speaker 1: He has acted with no remorse whatsoever throughout this trial.
Speaker 1: In March the next year, Paul Cox stood for sentencing.
Speaker 1: He addressed the family of the people he killed and said,
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life, I'm going to regret
Speaker 1: what happened that night. I'm not lying. I'm sorry. That's
Speaker 1: all I can say. The judge then handed down the
Speaker 1: maximum sentence, which was up to fifty years in prison.
Speaker 1: In the aftermath, Paul Cox appealed his scent in several times.
Speaker 1: By two thousand and one, he had exhausted all of
Speaker 1: his appeals in the state court. But now his attorney,
Speaker 1: Joshua Siegel, had a different argument. He said the alcoholics
Speaker 1: anonymous confessions should never have been allowed in court, that AA,
Speaker 1: at its core, was religious in nature, and that the
Speaker 1: same confidentiality given to a priest should apply to AA members,
Speaker 1: and a federal judge agreed. US District Judge Charles Bryant
Speaker 1: overturned Cox's conviction in August of two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: ruling that the AA conversations were privilege and inadmissible in court,
Speaker 1: but Paul Cox wasn't going anywhere. The following July, a
Speaker 1: federal appeals court reversed the ruling and reinstated the conviction.
Speaker 1: They wrote Cox spoke with other AA members, primarily to
Speaker 1: unburden himself, to seek empathy and emotional support, and perhaps
Speaker 1: in some instances, to seek practical guidance. His communications at
Speaker 1: issue here would therefore not be privileged. Paul Cox remains
Speaker 1: in prison. He has served decades now behind bars for
Speaker 1: a crime committed in a house he once called a home. Well,
Speaker 1: that is it for this episode of Morbidology. As always,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening, and I'd like to
Speaker 1: say a big oh thank you to my newest supporters
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Speaker 1: checks out at morbidology dot com for more information about
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Speaker 1: next time, take care, of yourselves, stay safe and have
Speaker 1: an amazing week.