Speaker 1: Lucky Land casino asking people what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 1: gotten lucky?
Speaker 2: Lucky in line at the Delhi I.
Speaker 1: Guess ah, in my dentist's office more than once. Actually
Speaker 1: do I have to say? Yes? You do? In the
Speaker 1: car before my kids pta meeting? Really?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky? I
Speaker 1: never win? And tell well, there you have it. You
Speaker 1: could get lucky anywhere playing at lucky landslots dot com.
Speaker 1: Play for free right now? Are you feeling lucky? Nope,
Speaker 1: we're not necessary boid. We're gonna bet my long eighteen
Speaker 1: plus terms and conditions of pluck se webs every details With.
Speaker 2: Lucky Land Slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere.
Speaker 1: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today. Has anyone seen
Speaker 1: the bride and groom?
Speaker 2: Sorry?
Speaker 1: Sorry, we're here. We were getting lucky in the limo
Speaker 1: and we lost track of time. No Lucky Land casino
Speaker 1: with cash prizes that add up quicker than a guess registered.
Speaker 1: In that case, I pronounce you lucky.
Speaker 2: Play for free at lucky landslots dot com. Daily bonuses
Speaker 2: are waiting, no purchase necessary board. We're prohibited by long
Speaker 2: eighteen plus terms and conditions applying see website for.
Speaker 3: Lop Toad.
Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking
Speaker 4: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zufansky.
Speaker 5: Good evening, This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 5: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime
Speaker 5: History and the authors that have written about them. The
Speaker 5: beloved son of Holocaust survivors, forty nine year old George
Speaker 5: Cogan grew up in Puerto Rico before making his way
Speaker 5: to New York City, where he enjoyed great success as
Speaker 5: and antiques and art dealer until one morning in nineteen
Speaker 5: ninety when George was approached on the street by an
Speaker 5: unidentified gunman and was killed in cold blood. Before the shooting,
Speaker 5: George had been on his way to his girlfriend's apartment.
Speaker 5: Mary Louise Hawkins was twenty eight years old and had
Speaker 5: once worked as george publicist, but ever since they became
Speaker 5: lovers George's estranged wife, Barbara, was consumed with bitterness as
Speaker 5: she and George hashed out a divorce. Barbara fueled her
Speaker 5: anger into greed, especially after a judge turned down her
Speaker 5: request for five thousand dollars a week in alimony. Barbara,
Speaker 5: who stood to collect four point three million in life insurance,
Speaker 5: was immediately suspected in George's death, but it would take
Speaker 5: authorities almost twenty years to uncover a link between her lawyer,
Speaker 5: Manuel Martini Martinez, and the hitman who killed George. In
Speaker 5: twenty ten, Martinez agreed to testify against his client, and
Speaker 5: Barbara eventually plaged guilty the charges of grand larceny, conspiracy
Speaker 5: to commit murder, and murder in the first degree. The
Speaker 5: book that we were featured this evening is The Millionaire's Wife,
Speaker 5: with my special guest, journalist and author Kathy Scott. Welcome
Speaker 5: back to the program, and thank you to agreeing to
Speaker 5: this interview. Kathy Scott, are you welcome.
Speaker 3: I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 5: Dan, thank you very much. Now tell us why. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's probably an obvious answer because it's such a fascinating story,
Speaker 5: but is there any other reason? And tell us the
Speaker 5: real reason why you decided, of all the stories that
Speaker 5: you could handle or write about, why did you decide
Speaker 5: to write about this story? What fascinated you about this
Speaker 5: story or compelled you, or what interested you in this
Speaker 5: story particularly? Well.
Speaker 3: I was asked to, actually I was asked to if
Speaker 3: I was interested in doing it, and I barely knew
Speaker 3: about the case. And then when I started reading about it,
Speaker 3: and there's been a lot of media, you know, Number one,
Speaker 3: it was you know, it was almost twenty years old,
Speaker 3: and you know, it was a triangle typecase. But Barbara
Speaker 3: Cogan was a very sympathetic character, you know, the one
Speaker 3: who was ultimately convicted in her husband's death. And so
Speaker 3: it it I mean, it had all the characteristics and
Speaker 3: I like to you know, I like to write about
Speaker 3: the underdog. Obviously her husband was the underdog. But it
Speaker 3: didn't it didn't seem that probable to me when I
Speaker 3: started digging into it, that that she did it. And
Speaker 3: and you know, I did into it, and I was
Speaker 3: able to, you know, get a lot of sources and
Speaker 3: all the documents and read the trial, and it was
Speaker 3: it was a good story, you know, as you you
Speaker 3: pointed out, you know, when we were chatting earlier that
Speaker 3: it's it almost is fiction, Like I mean, you can't
Speaker 3: make this stuff up, you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no story, I mean, it's the sad story the
Speaker 3: way George went down kind of and it was sad
Speaker 3: because Barbara just kind of get past the divorce. It
Speaker 3: was their divorce took two years and it ended, you know,
Speaker 3: the proceedings and everything else ended when he died.
Speaker 5: Sure, sure, now tell us let's go back for our audience,
Speaker 5: because you paint the picture, of course of both characters
Speaker 5: in this, well all the characters in this. But let's
Speaker 5: start off with, say, George Cogan, who he was and
Speaker 5: what type of person he was like, and what was
Speaker 5: his background? Where where is he from? And give us
Speaker 5: sort of a character of what he was. Was he
Speaker 5: a good looking guy, musket you know, athletic? What was
Speaker 5: this guy like? And paint a little bit of a
Speaker 5: it wasn't.
Speaker 3: He wasn't good, It wasn't. It was just kind of
Speaker 3: average looking, kind of pudgy, a little overweight, you know.
Speaker 3: So it was interesting that woman, you know, someone a
Speaker 3: very pretty woman was interested in him. Actually, let me
Speaker 3: turned this thing off. And his family was from Puerto Rico.
Speaker 3: They originally came from Russia. They were they were Jewish
Speaker 3: and his his father was young at the time, and
Speaker 3: the family fled mixed area of Russia because the Jews
Speaker 3: were all being being rounded up even even there, and
Speaker 3: they ended up going to New York City and because
Speaker 3: of I guess there was a you kind of there
Speaker 3: were fifty family members. They were uh Coganovich, I believe,
Speaker 3: I can't pronounce what the last name was, and they
Speaker 3: changed it to Cogan, and it was it was George's
Speaker 3: father who set out. They heard about Puerto Rico and
Speaker 3: so he went to Puerto Rico and they he found
Speaker 3: some farmland and they while while the family was still
Speaker 3: in New York and they were some went, some went
Speaker 3: to Cuba, most went to New York. Before they went
Speaker 3: to Puerto Rico, they hooked up with a merchandiser and
Speaker 3: they started shipping goods to New York to Puerto Rico
Speaker 3: to a contact there, and it became it became Cogan
Speaker 3: New York, New York department stores, and they ended up
Speaker 3: with once they moved there, they ended up with the
Speaker 3: chain of nine. So the family became quite quite wealthy.
Speaker 3: And then George, who went to boarding school part at
Speaker 3: the time in New York, as did his sister, and
Speaker 3: then he eventually moved to New York to go to college,
Speaker 3: and that's where he met That's where he met Barbara.
Speaker 3: And they weren't Barbara was, you know. She grew up
Speaker 3: in a in a nice area of New Jersey, but
Speaker 3: not nothing spectacular, you know. But he they married rather quickly.
Speaker 3: I don't think it was a mad passionate love affair.
Speaker 3: It seemed more convenient than anything else. But George was charming.
Speaker 3: People liked him and all his cousins. They had a
Speaker 3: farm and every Sunday they'd gather the whole Kogan clan
Speaker 3: and it grew quite big, and everybody worked. Everybody worked
Speaker 3: in the department stores, and so George learned very young
Speaker 3: how to be a businessman. And then he ended up
Speaker 3: going buying real estate and having his own department store.
Speaker 3: And Barbara's father was a jeweler and she used to
Speaker 3: work at his store, and so they had that in common,
Speaker 3: and they opened up stores. They became more about business
Speaker 3: really than their relationship. So likable guy, charming, but not
Speaker 3: a real looker. It was just an average guy, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean.
Speaker 5: And what did Barbara physically look like?
Speaker 3: Oh, Barbara was pretty when she was young. She actually
Speaker 3: won a singing contest and then I believe a beauty
Speaker 3: contest as well, and was supposed to get a scholarship.
Speaker 3: She sang and was supposed to get a record deal
Speaker 3: as well when she was like seventeen, but it fell through.
Speaker 5: But she.
Speaker 3: Liked the arts, and she actually was in a theater
Speaker 3: production off Broadway when she was in college, and it
Speaker 3: was a family friend who introduced them, and she met
Speaker 3: him backstage when George came backstage. And then she finished
Speaker 3: college and George dropped out, but he remained in New York,
Speaker 3: and as soon as she graduated, they eloped. They eloped
Speaker 3: to Pennsylvania, I believe it was, and then then right
Speaker 3: after that moved to New York and he opened up
Speaker 3: his own businesses, but he still had income. Everybody had
Speaker 3: income from the stores. It basically the stories made everybody wealthy. Family,
Speaker 3: lots of cousins, and once I started writing, I blogged
Speaker 3: about the case a little bit, and a lot of
Speaker 3: the cousins came out of the woodwork. I got a
Speaker 3: lot in the history of the family.
Speaker 5: It was great, right. So their marriage they elope, So
Speaker 5: that's maybe not the most promising start to a marriage.
Speaker 5: But what was their early marriage characterized by? What was
Speaker 5: it like? Was it tumultuous or was it what was
Speaker 5: it like? Now?
Speaker 3: They were both busy in business, and she got a
Speaker 3: master's degree at some point, and they tried to have
Speaker 3: a baby almost immediately and couldn't they And they lived
Speaker 3: in a big high rise in San Juan, in the
Speaker 3: Condado area, which was a kind of a pricey area.
Speaker 3: And they lived in a high rise and their backyard
Speaker 3: was basically the beach and backyard. I mean they were,
Speaker 3: you know, in a penthouse suite. And they ended up
Speaker 3: they adopted their first son, and as soon as they
Speaker 3: adopted him, she got pregnant. So their sons were ten
Speaker 3: months apart, Scott and William, and they were happy in
Speaker 3: those early years, but it seemed to be the focus.
Speaker 3: The focus for both of them became all about business.
Speaker 3: He bought a casino at some point, a hotel casino,
Speaker 3: a small one, and opened up the store for her,
Speaker 3: so she was running her own store, and then he
Speaker 3: was running the store. Just a lot of businesses, and
Speaker 3: then they once the boys went to college. Then they
Speaker 3: decided to liquidate. They liquidated a lot of things bought.
Speaker 3: One of their boys was in New York going to school,
Speaker 3: so they bought an apartment there in Manhattan and decided
Speaker 3: to move there to be close to the boys and
Speaker 3: open up their own store. They opened up a store
Speaker 3: on Fifth Avenue and Gallery Antique, high end antiques, and
Speaker 3: hired a PR company, and that PR company assigned one
Speaker 3: of their employees to handle PR for them, and that
Speaker 3: was Mary Louise Hawkins. And George got involved with her
Speaker 3: pretty quickly.
Speaker 5: Right, and she was young.
Speaker 3: I think had twenty four at the time, and he
Speaker 3: was He was killed two years after they met. So
Speaker 3: as soon as Barbara found out about it, she notified
Speaker 3: Mary Louisa's boss and they fired her. And George, well,
Speaker 3: he started going he was going out of town a
Speaker 3: lot on buying trips to Europe and that sort of
Speaker 3: thing they would do, buying trips, and he started taking
Speaker 3: Mary Louise, and she never suspected, you know. In fact,
Speaker 3: she told Mary Louise at one point that George thought
Speaker 3: she was pretty. She passed that on. That's how much
Speaker 3: she didn't see anything. And it turned to something more
Speaker 3: and as soon as Barbara found out, he moved. He
Speaker 3: moved out on to sixty ninth Street where Mary Louise
Speaker 3: was living on the upper east side of Manattan and
Speaker 3: he was murdered later, murdered in front of that apartment.
Speaker 5: Well, take us to that actual crime.
Speaker 3: She's a raw deal, you know, she felt, she felt scorned,
Speaker 3: as she should have, and it was kind of a
Speaker 3: raw deal. But she absolutely wouldn't settle on the divorce,
Speaker 3: and he won it. He wasn't. Nothing was liquid. Nothing
Speaker 3: was liquid, So that was money became the major major
Speaker 3: issue with them. It was a very nasty divorce, and
Speaker 3: neither one of them would ban.
Speaker 5: What was the How much of an effect was the
Speaker 5: denial in court of the five thousand dollars per month
Speaker 5: alimony prior to that, Well.
Speaker 3: She got it was huge because she was living off
Speaker 3: of credit cards and so was he. And then and
Speaker 3: then the they both started selling off property and they
Speaker 3: had an apartment still and businesses and they still had
Speaker 3: a store in one store left in New York, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: in Puerto Rico. So they started selling off stuff and
Speaker 3: you know, large pieces and jewelry and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: She felt he was hiding jewelry. They both didn't trust
Speaker 3: each other, and they were selling stuff off and the
Speaker 3: court froze everything and it put him mine fixed to
Speaker 3: where Mary Louise was supporting him, and her father paid
Speaker 3: her mortgage and for the apartment, so she didn't have
Speaker 3: any rent or anything. But she was convinced that George
Speaker 3: was paying paying Mary Louise rent, and it just was nasty.
Speaker 3: They didn't trust each other. She started to hire a
Speaker 3: PI you know, private eye, and then she hired an
Speaker 3: attorney to help her find an attorney in Puerto Rico
Speaker 3: to search for secret bank accounts she felt he had.
Speaker 3: He did it. He just you know, everything was liquid
Speaker 3: and he wasn't worth as much as everybody thought. They
Speaker 3: had a four point they had two life insurance policies
Speaker 3: that were four point three million dollars that they'd had
Speaker 3: for years on George's life. I'm you know, I'm not
Speaker 3: convinced she was guilty, not one hundred percent convinced, but
Speaker 3: you know, that's another story. But it was very you know,
Speaker 3: an acrimonious I mean sour sour divorce.
Speaker 5: Right right, And then then then this event, now go
Speaker 5: back to for our audience, what exactly happened that day
Speaker 5: and under what circumstances for George Coogan. He was at
Speaker 5: a market, he had some groceries. He was coming he
Speaker 5: was going to the apartment to see Mary Louise tell
Speaker 5: Us and.
Speaker 3: Then he had an appointment with They had an appointment
Speaker 3: with Barbara that afternoon and he went. It was it
Speaker 3: was sprinkling. It was ten o'clock in the morning. The doorman,
Speaker 3: who was also from Puerto Rico, and he walked me
Speaker 3: through the whole crime scene. He went up half a block,
Speaker 3: you know the streets in on the upper east side
Speaker 3: or long blocks, but it was half a block up
Speaker 3: and over to mid block store. He had two bags
Speaker 3: worth the groceries and had it home. And he was
Speaker 3: in a sweatsuit, you know, a top end bottom and
Speaker 3: right is he about twenty feet from the entrance and
Speaker 3: the canopy to the building. You know, it was a
Speaker 3: dormant building. He a gunman just came out of nowhere.
Speaker 3: And the guy had a hoodie on and a bright
Speaker 3: green cap and out of nowhere and with the snubnosed
Speaker 3: revolver hollow point fired three shots into his back and
Speaker 3: he just flew forward. Money flew everywhere, which I still
Speaker 3: find that odd. But money flew everywhere because I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't know that money comes out of your pocket,
Speaker 3: you know, when you're That's always seemed odd to me,
Speaker 3: and there's really no explanation for it. A couple of
Speaker 3: witnesses who there's only one who saw it from beginning
Speaker 3: to end, and she disappeared. She was a maid who
Speaker 3: was terrified and the person she worked for died, you know,
Speaker 3: not long after, and she disappeared to Mexico. So other
Speaker 3: people there was one woman who saw it, but she ducked,
Speaker 3: you know, he looked at her, she ducked, and then
Speaker 3: so I don't know. I con I'm not real one
Speaker 3: hundred percent settled on that that money was. I mean,
Speaker 3: how does money, bills, bills fly, how do they fly
Speaker 3: out of your pocket? He was wearing sweats. I still
Speaker 3: am not his wallet wasn't found on the ground or anything.
Speaker 3: But that's always been odd to me. So then everything
Speaker 3: became havoc and the dorman came out and ran out
Speaker 3: as soon as they saw him in you know, a
Speaker 3: mirror under the canopy, and the maid started pounding on
Speaker 3: the door of the of the building. Then the dorman
Speaker 3: ran out and talked to him and didn't at first
Speaker 3: realize he was flat face down because he was he
Speaker 3: was thrown forward by the impact. And then the gunman
Speaker 3: just literally literally vanished into street traffic on foot, never
Speaker 3: to be seen again. No, no, the gunman was never caught.
Speaker 3: Yet they convicted her and then she the attorney she hired.
Speaker 3: They were convinced that he hired a gunman to kill
Speaker 3: George for the for the policy money. But the gunman
Speaker 3: they named somebody and I'm not going to say his
Speaker 3: name out loud, it's in the book, but he's in
Speaker 3: jail right now for something else, and we'll be out
Speaker 3: in a few years. But they never brought him in.
Speaker 3: It's a weird case because they named him in court
Speaker 3: when the lawyer had the lawyer who hired a Puerto
Speaker 3: Rican attorney for her and there, you know, and they
Speaker 3: said that he got her to agree to hire a
Speaker 3: gunman to kill George.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: Ironically, on the day that they were going to settle,
Speaker 3: he'd written it all out, you know, George Town, and
Speaker 3: they were going to settle that day. So it's so weird,
Speaker 3: out of the blue it happens. Yet there's no gunman,
Speaker 3: but two people are in prison for for conspiring to
Speaker 3: kill George. But you don't. You don't have the gunman.
Speaker 3: And I've always wondered why the DA didn't presume, And
Speaker 3: I think he didn't presume because he didn't have a case.
Speaker 5: Well, of course they didn't have a case. They didn't
Speaker 5: have They have only a circumstantial here. But well we'll
Speaker 5: get into what I think really cooked their their goose,
Speaker 5: and that comes that stems from Martinez obviously. Yeah, let's
Speaker 5: go back a little bit.
Speaker 3: Though.
Speaker 5: Let's go back a little bit because George Cogan doesn't
Speaker 5: die immediately, so he ambulance rush him to the hospital
Speaker 5: and he.
Speaker 1: Lives Lucky Land Casino, asking people what's the weirdest place
Speaker 1: you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 5: Lucky?
Speaker 2: In line at the deli, I guess.
Speaker 1: Ah, in my dentist's office more than once. Actually do
Speaker 1: I have to say?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: You do? In the car before my kids PTA meeting? Really, yes,
Speaker 1: excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 5: I never win?
Speaker 1: And tell well, there you have it. You could get
Speaker 1: lucky anywhere. Playing at lucky landslots dot com play for
Speaker 1: free right now are you feeling lucky. No, we're just
Speaker 1: necessary boy. Where we're gonna be my long eighteen plus terms,
Speaker 1: conditions of plus you want say details? Okay? Round two,
Speaker 1: Name something that's not boring. Laundry, a book club, computer solitaire.
Speaker 1: Huh ah, Sorry, we were looking for Chumbuck casino.
Speaker 5: Chum.
Speaker 4: That's right, Chumbuckcasino dot com as over one hundred casino
Speaker 4: style games joined today and play for free for your
Speaker 4: chance to redeem some serious prizes.
Speaker 1: Chum, chumbucasino dot.
Speaker 5: Com said, for seven hours, tell us what Obviously, he
Speaker 5: was going to his girlfriend, and he's living with his girlfriend.
Speaker 5: He's he's in a relationship with his girlfriend now, Mary
Speaker 5: Louise Hawkins. So she rushes to the hospital. Who doesn't
Speaker 5: rush to the hospital that people might think, well, Barbara.
Speaker 3: Barbara and his wife. Well, the interesting thing is the dorman.
Speaker 3: Then George told him, well, the dorman, Moses Crespo, is
Speaker 3: the last person to have spoken to him before he
Speaker 3: went into unconsciousness. And like you say, he lived for
Speaker 3: seven hours, but he was you know, in several surgeries
Speaker 3: and in a comment at that point, he never woke
Speaker 3: up again. And and Moses ran to he said get
Speaker 3: Mary Louise for me. So he ran to the The
Speaker 3: apartment was on the first floor at the back, so
Speaker 3: he ran to the door and Mary Louise. He didn't
Speaker 3: tell her what was wrong, just George wants to talk
Speaker 3: to you. And she came outside, saw his body, saw
Speaker 3: him lying there, did not go over to him. Mary
Speaker 3: Louise did not go over to him. She stood there
Speaker 3: screaming and she said his wife did it. It was
Speaker 3: his wife, and that became the focus, and that is
Speaker 3: the only direction the police went in. They didn't look
Speaker 3: for anything else. One of the sons said to police,
Speaker 3: and it came out in the newspapers immediately that I'm
Speaker 3: not surprised. My dad had some bad business deals, so
Speaker 3: I'm not surprised he got killed. Then he recanted that
Speaker 3: a couple of years later, but that was the son's
Speaker 3: initial response. Apparently, George Cogan owed a lot of people
Speaker 3: a lot of money, and but that angle of it
Speaker 3: was never pursued. Just Barbara. So Barbara, Barbara was called
Speaker 3: by her youngest son. The one lived in Puerto Rico,
Speaker 3: and he hit a p and then George's sister came
Speaker 3: with him and the other boy lived there and He
Speaker 3: kept calling his mother, expecting her to go to the hospital,
Speaker 3: and she did it, and police and the DIA's office
Speaker 3: said that she had a hairdresser come to her house.
Speaker 3: She was a friend who happened to be a hairdresser
Speaker 3: and combed down her hair in case she decided to go.
Speaker 3: Barbara was used to a very very high lifestyle, so
Speaker 3: it wasn't unusual for her to have somebody come and
Speaker 3: comb out her hair, you know, for us, for me,
Speaker 3: that would be you know, that's not something I do
Speaker 3: in my life, and so it looks odd to some people,
Speaker 3: but you know, I didn't find it that odd. But
Speaker 3: Barbara didn't go. And you can say, well, she didn't
Speaker 3: go because she couldn't face everybody, you know, and that
Speaker 3: Barbara was notified that he had died at four pm
Speaker 3: that afternoon and the family was still there. The sister
Speaker 3: she'd gotten there, the son had arrived, one of the
Speaker 3: other sons, and Mary Louise was at the hospital with
Speaker 3: her parents. They waited an hour longer and they didn't
Speaker 3: find out for an hour afterward. So when Barbara learned
Speaker 3: from the hospital, because she was the legal next of ken,
Speaker 3: she didn't call her son and notify him that he
Speaker 3: had died. So she had what they deemed odd behavior.
Speaker 3: People react in different ways, so who's to say what
Speaker 3: looks guilty or what doesn't. But it didn't look good
Speaker 3: her behavior, and they used that as part of the
Speaker 3: circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 5: What was the interview.
Speaker 3: She was on medication, She was a little you know,
Speaker 3: she was bipolar. She was at that point, you know,
Speaker 3: she was in her forties and she was she was,
Speaker 3: you know, she was a little off at that point.
Speaker 3: I don't know that it points to you being guilty,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: What what does the what what do police do? And
Speaker 5: what what's their next step in terms of trying to
Speaker 5: solve this case? How do they proceed?
Speaker 3: They had they had a well, they had a two
Speaker 3: two slugs that came out of his body. One of them,
Speaker 3: uh well all three, you know, one stayed in his
Speaker 3: in his body. One believe they found one spent that
Speaker 3: went through him at the scene. And that's it. That's
Speaker 3: all they found. And and they actually during the trial
Speaker 3: presented a snubnosed revolver because they knew that's what it was,
Speaker 3: and they presented it as evidence, and it wasn't. They
Speaker 3: never found the murder weapon. You know, they had two
Speaker 3: different descriptions of the man the shooter. They it was
Speaker 3: odd and then Martinez, the attorney, they you know, he
Speaker 3: fled at some point. He went to Mexico and ended
Speaker 3: up in prison there for you know, he was kind
Speaker 3: of a slineball, you know, he's a sleazy, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of bottom barrel kind of guy, and he mostly
Speaker 3: evictions and that sort of thing. And then he got
Speaker 3: in trouble for some Czech scam and in Mexico and
Speaker 3: ended up in the Mexican prison. So they didn't they
Speaker 3: indicted him in ninety I believe it was ninety six
Speaker 3: or ninety eight, and he didn't know it, Yeah, ninety
Speaker 3: six and he didn't know it, and and so it
Speaker 3: took a little bit to get him out. But Barbara
Speaker 3: didn't know what was going on either. But the deputy
Speaker 3: district Attorney Joel seidemanns in New York City, they're really
Speaker 3: entered stings. I mean, some of this stuff is just fascinating.
Speaker 3: Deputy district attorneys are on call, like the homicide cops are.
Speaker 3: If there's a homicide, they actually send a deputy DA
Speaker 3: and Angel Seidemann was that guy. So that guy pursued
Speaker 3: the case for twenty years. So he was the deputy
Speaker 3: DA on the scene that day and he vowed to
Speaker 3: try and solve it. It is the last case before
Speaker 3: his retirement that he was bounded Ferman to solve it.
Speaker 3: And and that's what Martinez, Who's who? Martinez is an
Speaker 3: odd bird, odd odd bird and has written to everybody
Speaker 3: and their brother. I mean, he just writes and writes
Speaker 3: and writes, and has had cartoons done and was not
Speaker 3: a sympathetic character in court. And his attorney did not present,
Speaker 3: he didn't present one witness on his behalf. And it
Speaker 3: was and the jury bought it. It was pretty. It
Speaker 3: was pretty interesting because I wasn't convinced, you know, so
Speaker 3: I'm probably jumping ahead a little bit, but her behavior
Speaker 3: that day is really what pushed him. They didn't have
Speaker 3: a they didn't have a lot anything else on her.
Speaker 3: You know, it's pretty, it's pretty. It was a flimsy case,
Speaker 3: and it's amazing to me that it was prosecuted. Didn't
Speaker 3: you feel that when you read it? Did you get
Speaker 3: that sense?
Speaker 5: I I just got the sense that that you had
Speaker 5: maybe some questions with it, and you were very close
Speaker 5: to the story and you you interviewed so many people.
Speaker 5: I knew that that you could tell that that this
Speaker 5: is exhaustive research here. So I sort of want to
Speaker 5: err on the side of somebody that's that that that's there,
Speaker 5: because it's just like being a juror. And I've seen
Speaker 5: cases in America. Just saw the Kaylee Anthony case or
Speaker 5: the Casey Anthony case. Oh yeah, who would have predicted
Speaker 5: that outcome? You know? So sometimes jurors, like they said,
Speaker 5: they warned sometimes you know, you never know. So you
Speaker 5: never know when you see everything because juries see everything,
Speaker 5: and true crime writers, you know, in my case and
Speaker 5: in this case, with the access that you have, I
Speaker 5: think that you can make a at least have that
Speaker 5: as you're not sure, you're not saying for certain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now I read the transcript and the interesting thing
Speaker 3: is Martinez he was offered a plea deal, and you know,
Speaker 3: and he's a stubborn, stubborn man and kind of believe
Speaker 3: he's the sort of man. He's in prison, he writes
Speaker 3: me all the time and just kind of one or
Speaker 3: in in the water, and he he has valid, valid points.
Speaker 3: You know, he's fired. I don't know how many attorneys
Speaker 3: and Appella attorneys. He actually has an appellate case because
Speaker 3: there are a few mistakes done. But you know, his
Speaker 3: his credibility gets thrown out the windows as soon as
Speaker 3: he starts getting emotional and pointing fingers. But he was
Speaker 3: offered a plea deal. But his plea deal was they
Speaker 3: wanted him to give up Barbara, and when it dow
Speaker 3: it and he kept saying, you know, it wasn't true,
Speaker 3: and then they offered him nothing. He would have gotten
Speaker 3: twenty years, which is what he got, so they didn't
Speaker 3: give him. It wasn't a good deal, and I don't
Speaker 3: know that he would have taken it, but it wasn't
Speaker 3: was not a good plea deal. And they wanted him
Speaker 3: to turn in Barbara because they had nothing on her.
Speaker 3: But Barbara was so scared and they finally by the
Speaker 3: time they indicted her, they stuck her in Rikers in isolation,
Speaker 3: So for two years she was in about two years
Speaker 3: she was in isolation, and they recorded her conversations, which
Speaker 3: they do. Everybody knows that, you know, when you're in jail,
Speaker 3: they record everything. They didn't tell her what they had,
Speaker 3: but she apparently discussed the case with a friend. It
Speaker 3: never came out what was said, it was sealed. She
Speaker 3: ran Barbara ran out of money. Her attorney didn't want
Speaker 3: to go to trial because she couldn't pay him. And
Speaker 3: the trial was to start one day the next day,
Speaker 3: and she pleaded out at a secret hearing that no, no,
Speaker 3: none of the media was notified of. It wasn't posted
Speaker 3: at the wasn't posted at the courthouse or anything. And
Speaker 3: she pleaded out to sixty six I think at the
Speaker 3: time sixty seven. She pleaded out in twenty ten because
Speaker 3: she said she didn't want her sons to have to
Speaker 3: go through the trial. You know, they're grown and married
Speaker 3: and kids and stuff, that she didn't want them to
Speaker 3: go through the trial. And it you know, I talked
Speaker 3: to Robin Sack says, you know who Robin is.
Speaker 5: She's a former.
Speaker 3: DA and yeah, she's great. She's she read a lot
Speaker 3: about it and got up to speed on it. And
Speaker 3: she said, nobody, nobody pleads out in the eleventh hour
Speaker 3: on a flimsy case like that, on strictly circumstantial she
Speaker 3: should have gone to trial. She was scared to death
Speaker 3: that they scared her. The only way they got her
Speaker 3: was to have it played out. I don't think she
Speaker 3: would have been convicted.
Speaker 5: But you know, that's what I didn't That's when I
Speaker 5: didn't get just sorry, that's when I didn't get.
Speaker 3: Through your booked over it.
Speaker 5: It sounds like there was there was a couple of
Speaker 5: reasons why she may have done this because she really,
Speaker 5: it seemed almost even though this woman seemed very very hardened,
Speaker 5: that she really didn't want any more humiliation in court.
Speaker 5: And the one son was was prepared to go there
Speaker 5: and say some things, you know, he was very prepared.
Speaker 3: To do that. Yeah, her sons were, Yeah, her sons were.
Speaker 3: Her sons were split. You know, Billy was William, the
Speaker 3: younger one sided with his mother and only you know,
Speaker 3: something like six months before his father died did they reconcile.
Speaker 3: And then he he wanted to help his mother in
Speaker 3: sad and so he started started mediating so to speak
Speaker 3: with his parents and got that interview lined up. You know,
Speaker 3: Barbara made a lot of phone calls that day as
Speaker 3: well to her parents, to Martinez too. Martinez was calling
Speaker 3: her parents. There were a lot of phone calls out
Speaker 3: kind of looked weird. Most of them were like thirty
Speaker 3: second calls where you call and leave a message. So
Speaker 3: the fact she couldn't get them and just kept calling,
Speaker 3: you know, and I mean who you know? Who knows?
Speaker 3: I mean when somebody dies in her family, I think
Speaker 3: everybody makes a lot of phone calls. But she did it.
Speaker 3: She didn't look good and she was panicked out, totally
Speaker 3: panicked out, and yeah, she didn't want the humiliation. So
Speaker 3: it's it's hard to say, I frankly, if she did it.
Speaker 3: If she did it and Martinez did it, I and
Speaker 3: there are lots of kind of weird witnesses who came
Speaker 3: forward and talked about his behavi of your after George died.
Speaker 3: I think he wore her down and finally to the
Speaker 3: point where she just went, oh okay, and didn't think
Speaker 3: he would do it and go through with it if
Speaker 3: that happened, and I think that's the most probable thing,
Speaker 3: and then with flabbergasted when he actually went through it,
Speaker 3: because I think the fact that she had a meeting
Speaker 3: that afternoon the day he was killed, I think that
Speaker 3: says she didn't expect him to be killed that day.
Speaker 3: She had a meeting all set up, and he was
Speaker 3: debbling with her, he was going to give her half,
Speaker 3: So I think that's that was a real point that
Speaker 3: sort of stuck in my cross, you know. And the
Speaker 3: maiden was the panic calling you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: and then calling him and calling him and going, oh
Speaker 3: my god, you know, what did you do? Sort of
Speaker 3: saying I don't know if that's that's the only thing
Speaker 3: I can figure. Otherwise Martinez did it on his own
Speaker 3: and she didn't know about it. You know, there's not
Speaker 3: a whole lot of I mean, did you think there
Speaker 3: was a lot of evidence against him other than people say, oh,
Speaker 3: the guy, one guy got a plea deal, you know,
Speaker 3: the sleazy guy got a plea deal to know the
Speaker 3: time if he would rat on him and he Well, here's.
Speaker 5: The thing I want to ask you, what was your
Speaker 5: opinion of the witness's credibility and the witnesses the content
Speaker 5: of the stories that they told when they testified, or
Speaker 5: will it the statements?
Speaker 3: I think it was all I mean, I mean to
Speaker 3: read the transcript Haunt.
Speaker 5: Well for our audience sake, what exactly did they say,
Speaker 5: because it seemed to hinge on the testimony of these
Speaker 5: these couple of friends that he apparently Martinez the lawyer
Speaker 5: apparently said to him the confession basically that he made
Speaker 5: to these people.
Speaker 3: It wasn't. Then his wife who was to you know,
Speaker 3: she she was worried, is what. It took two interviews
Speaker 3: eleven hours long total, back to back to get her
Speaker 3: to come up. But yeah, he told me he was
Speaker 3: going to have him killed. It took eleven hours to
Speaker 3: get that out of her, and it was not recorded.
Speaker 3: And then he he had this guy who was a
Speaker 3: realtor and renting an office space and they went to
Speaker 3: a spaghetti house or whatever it was one night and
Speaker 3: and and Martinez was had been drinking and this guy
Speaker 3: claimed that he was his name Peter. Uh. There were
Speaker 3: a lot of palls in the story. But what's his
Speaker 3: last name? Italian? And especially the sea. Sorry, I don't
Speaker 3: don't have it off the top of my head. And
Speaker 3: they had they had dinner together and it wasn't. He
Speaker 3: later claimed that he said, I'm going to tell you
Speaker 3: something that nobody I've never told anybody. And he was
Speaker 3: in the DA's office in New Jersey. This guy was
Speaker 3: and Martinez called him, wanted to get together with him,
Speaker 3: and hughser he was in the DA's office and and
Speaker 3: he went he told him who it was, and they went, oh, wow,
Speaker 3: that's Manuel Martinez the DA and Manhattan's been trying to
Speaker 3: get him for years and something lit up with the
Speaker 3: so called witness and he agreed to be wired. And
Speaker 3: and so you read the transcript on the on the
Speaker 3: tape that was the supposed confession, right right. I don't
Speaker 3: think they had it. I don't think they had it.
Speaker 3: He goes, and he goes, well, Manny, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't want to end up like Cocan, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't want to end up like that guy. And he goes,
Speaker 3: what and then Martinez goes, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: And that he really Martinez appeared confused because he kept
Speaker 3: saying stuff like that, trying to get Manuel Martinez the attorney,
Speaker 3: you you know, give something incriminating and it really I
Speaker 3: thought was a real stretch. But boy, the jury bought it.
Speaker 3: You know, here's all astonish and it was translated, and
Speaker 3: that to me was they That was what they hinged
Speaker 3: their entire case on, you know, which is kind of
Speaker 3: it was a guy who like happened to get a
Speaker 3: He didn't call him, he paged him. Happened Martinez. You know,
Speaker 3: then he finds pages him in the middle of his
Speaker 3: his agreement going on with the check sam check scam.
Speaker 3: They stole some government checks. This guy didn't was laundering them,
Speaker 3: and he needed an out. And he soon found out
Speaker 3: how eager everybody was to get manual and he's like, wow, okay,
Speaker 3: let's go with that one. And he did. I don't
Speaker 3: believe his I don't believe the confession.
Speaker 5: Well, what was the prosecution's theory in terms of of
Speaker 5: how Martinez, who was not much of a of a
Speaker 5: well it was not a criminal lawyer. He was a
Speaker 5: sort of an evictions kind of guy, you know, so
Speaker 5: he was not so how would how would somebody like
Speaker 5: Barbara who eventually hired the esteemed and very very very
Speaker 5: expensive Barry Levin, how would why was she be dealing
Speaker 5: with Martinez? And why was Martinez the guy that you
Speaker 5: would use as a goal between between a hit man?
Speaker 5: What was their theory there?
Speaker 3: Actually did exactly Yeah, what she what? She was looking
Speaker 3: for someone who was Puerto rican who could go with
Speaker 3: her to Puerto Rico because he practiced law at one point,
Speaker 3: he got a law degree in Puerto Rico. He graduated
Speaker 3: from college there and then he went to New York.
Speaker 3: Took him years, by the way in New York to
Speaker 3: pass the bar So she found him in the phone
Speaker 3: book and she went to his office which was in
Speaker 3: downtown Manhattan, and he had he owned a building and
Speaker 3: he rented space and there was sort of kind of
Speaker 3: low level people who rented space from him, and they
Speaker 3: all ganged up on him. At some point. Everybody kind
Speaker 3: of got something from it, you know, everybody was motivated
Speaker 3: by something, and that was the connection. They were looking
Speaker 3: for someone who could have done it, and they hung
Speaker 3: their hat on Martinez. So because of the circumstances in
Speaker 3: both cases against Martinez, but he was such a terrible,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of figure with some sleazy behavior that
Speaker 3: you know, the jury bought it. It was amazing, and
Speaker 3: then they hinged. They still couldn't get Barbara. They kept
Speaker 3: trying to get him, you know, at the last minute
Speaker 3: to admit it, and he goes, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: admit anything. I didn't do anything. But he was a
Speaker 3: little off his rocker and so he you know, he's
Speaker 3: just during the trial, he was firing letters and having
Speaker 3: weird behavior during the trial. He wasn't a sympathetic figure.
Speaker 3: I'm not convinced with.
Speaker 2: Lucky land slots you can get lucky just about anywhere.
Speaker 1: Nearly beloved. We are gathered here today. Has anyone seen
Speaker 1: the bride and groom?
Speaker 4: Mury?
Speaker 1: Sorry, we're here. We were getting lucky in the limo
Speaker 1: when we lost track of time. No Lucky Land casino
Speaker 1: with cash prizes that add up quicker than a guess
Speaker 1: registered in lu case, I pronounce you Lucky pay.
Speaker 2: For free at Lucky landslots dot com. Dagley bonuses are waiting.
Speaker 2: No purchase necessary boid. We're prohibited by lock eight team
Speaker 2: plus terms and conditions applaing. See website for details.
Speaker 3: So really, I'm not I think that her behavior was weird.
Speaker 3: I think his behavior was weird. I'm not sure their killers.
Speaker 3: I'm not ninety nine percent sure. You know, it's not
Speaker 3: it's not that heavy that it didn't happen that way.
Speaker 3: But I do believe a scenario was painted and that's
Speaker 3: what they flew with and you know, and got her.
Speaker 3: And I don't think she would have been convicted if
Speaker 3: she'd gone to trial. She got twelve years and time
Speaker 3: service at.
Speaker 5: Least twelve, at least twelve twelve to thirty six, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they said it'll be twelve. It was. Everybody
Speaker 3: has said it's going to be twelve, and that she'll
Speaker 3: be out when she's like seventy nine, you know, I
Speaker 3: think it is seventy seventy six something like that. But
Speaker 3: and she got for time served. Now actually she'll be
Speaker 3: out in ten because she got for time served, so
Speaker 3: to be seventy seventy seven. Now they're not going to
Speaker 3: give her anymore. I don't think she's you know, she's
Speaker 3: a good inmate, and that's what everybody said, that's all
Speaker 3: it would be. But it's it's I mean, the case
Speaker 3: just I mean when when I read the transcripts and
Speaker 3: it was like, god, dang it, they don't have it.
Speaker 3: It's the only direction they went in in you know,
Speaker 3: march And is so sleazy that you know he's up
Speaker 3: to something. The guys and he made fun of George
Speaker 3: in his office and lots of people saw it, you know,
Speaker 3: making fun of him when he supposedly died. Oh God
Speaker 3: help me, I'm dying. Because he did say I'm dying.
Speaker 3: And they connected the dots to the supposed shooter, and
Speaker 3: I'm telling you that was that link was very then.
Speaker 3: I've talked to his wife. The supposed shooter. They didn't
Speaker 3: bring him in for questioning. They went to jail at
Speaker 3: some point after he'd been arrested on some you know,
Speaker 3: robbery case that he'd never committed a violent crime, and
Speaker 3: they didn't they didn't have anything to take him in on,
Speaker 3: and he consented I didn't do it, so they didn't
Speaker 3: want to bring him. They could have brought him to
Speaker 3: court and they didn't. He It was interesting the shooter
Speaker 3: wasn't a witness, you know, the supposed shooter wasn't brought
Speaker 3: in the court as a witness because he didn't do it,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean.
Speaker 5: Well, they don't have it.
Speaker 3: And if the two of them conspired, I don't believe
Speaker 3: it was the man they named Okay, it didn't have anybody,
Speaker 3: and they hung it on him, tried to make a
Speaker 3: connection to him. And the connection was you know, six
Speaker 3: degrees of you know, in the six degrees of separation
Speaker 3: or whatever it is. That's how that's how flimsy the
Speaker 3: connection was. I mean, you read that part right.
Speaker 5: It was sure.
Speaker 3: I mean, did you go through it. I mean it
Speaker 3: seemed to you as if, Wow, they got the guy,
Speaker 3: you know, they got it, and they nailed it. That's
Speaker 3: just what I see is that in case that two
Speaker 3: people are in prison.
Speaker 5: The thing is that there's all kinds of things that
Speaker 5: are done beforehanded wardire's to sort of edit material as well.
Speaker 5: So I don't know, I mean, it's not that compelling.
Speaker 5: It's not that compelling a case of It's like you say,
Speaker 5: you're you're naming a shooter, but you don't have him.
Speaker 5: No grand jury's indicted him or anything. Nobody's actually mentioned shooter. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and and and and Martinez has not admitted that this
Speaker 5: is the guy. I've seen a lot of circumstantial it's vocal.
Speaker 3: That it isn't. And yeah, it was a crimey case,
Speaker 3: but you know, he made Martinez made so many mistakes,
Speaker 3: so many I mean, he writes the judges all over
Speaker 3: the world, you know, and then he claims he wasn't
Speaker 3: you know, they didn't they didn't get him out in
Speaker 3: Mexico properly, and that that was an illegal extra extradition.
Speaker 3: And you know, he just goes after that, and then
Speaker 3: he fires an attorney who doesn't agree with him, but
Speaker 3: he can get an attorney. He's got a new appella attorney.
Speaker 3: Now he still has an appellate case, which is interesting.
Speaker 3: I find, you know that he's not a sentence a
Speaker 3: character and you know, but I'm you know, I'm not.
Speaker 3: I'm not. It's an interesting story. I got two people
Speaker 3: in prison for a crime that who's the shooter?
Speaker 5: You know, Well he doesn't have much people pull the trigger. No,
Speaker 5: but he doesn't have much of a compelling case. When
Speaker 5: Barbara agrees to a plea agreement and pleads guilty, you know, so.
Speaker 3: They just they wore her out. They held that she
Speaker 3: was on medication. They isolated her for two years, and
Speaker 3: they she didn't know what they had on her. She
Speaker 3: didn't hear it, she didn't hear the conversations. I frankly
Speaker 3: don't think it was it was damning. I don't. Her
Speaker 3: attorney wanted out of the case because she was out
Speaker 3: of money, and she she didn't really know what was
Speaker 3: against her. And I think she was just tired and
Speaker 3: she was, you know, she was on a lot of medication.
Speaker 3: The interesting thing is as soon as she pleaded it
Speaker 3: out and as soon as she was sent because there's
Speaker 3: two separate hearings, one for pleading and one for the sentence,
Speaker 3: and as soon as she was sentenced in court, the
Speaker 3: judge said, because at the plea agreement hearing, they say,
Speaker 3: keep her isolated, and wrikers continue giving her medication, you know,
Speaker 3: and then the second she pleaded out, it's like, nope,
Speaker 3: she's no longer an isolation. Let her get into the
Speaker 3: general population, take her off of medication. I find that.
Speaker 3: I found that really interesting because it's, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't take medication myself, but I know people have. And
Speaker 3: I don't think you can go off that stuff suddenly
Speaker 3: for bipolar or whatever, psychotherapy drugs, whatever they are. I
Speaker 3: think you have to wean yourself off of them. And
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, she was high and dry. They
Speaker 3: got what they wanted, and boom, she was out of isolation.
Speaker 3: I found that really interesting.
Speaker 5: Well, there's no mercy there, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: No, but it's I mean, you kind of kind of
Speaker 3: it's a fascinating case because it, you know, blessed their hearts.
Speaker 3: They pulled it off the DA on a circumstantial case,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 5: And Barbara was not so sympathetic though, because even though
Speaker 5: she was, Barbara wasn't.
Speaker 3: Well in some ways she was she was pitifully sympathetic.
Speaker 3: Barbara was, you know, And and I interviewed a friend
Speaker 3: of hers and who was just flabbergasted about it, and
Speaker 3: and yeah, she was money grubbing, and she you know,
Speaker 3: she filed for bankruptcy when she was hiding money, and
Speaker 3: the bankruptcy court wasn't. She lied to the bankruptcy court
Speaker 3: and they called her on it and the case was dismissed.
Speaker 3: And so she, you know, she didn't help herself at all.
Speaker 3: You know, she she screwed up. I mean, you have to.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're going to defend yourself, my gosh,
Speaker 3: you defending your life, you know.
Speaker 5: And she sort of money.
Speaker 3: From everything, yes, and yep, and she got it into
Speaker 3: payments a little bit apart, you know, by a year
Speaker 3: or so, I think. So she got you know, she
Speaker 3: got two million at one point and then two point
Speaker 3: eight or two point three at some point. Because the
Speaker 3: insurance this is interesting. The insurance company did their own
Speaker 3: separate investigation, and they hired a private eye to do it.
Speaker 3: And this was a top notch private eye. They could
Speaker 3: find no fault that Barbara killed her, no proof that
Speaker 3: Barbara killed her husband, and so they gave her the money.
Speaker 3: They didn't want to give it to her. They could
Speaker 3: find that it was months and months that they embarked
Speaker 3: on this and he ended up testifying the the The
Speaker 3: private eye ended up testifying at bankruptcy court that no,
Speaker 3: we could find we could find no evidence that she
Speaker 3: killed her husband. I that was compelling, you know, and
Speaker 3: that would have been admissible in court had she gone
Speaker 3: to trial, you know, to say what private investigator said,
Speaker 3: there wasn't any evidence that she had anything to do
Speaker 3: with her husband's death. I think she was a scaredy cat,
Speaker 3: and you know, I mean maybe she did.
Speaker 5: I don't know, but I never saw I never saw
Speaker 5: that decision that. I never read that decision that way. Though.
Speaker 5: The way I saw it was that I was awfully
Speaker 5: surprised that an insurance company went to that extent to
Speaker 5: suspect her of death in this case, rather than just say,
Speaker 5: and I think that that is a testament. I thought
Speaker 5: reading that that was a testament to how unusual that
Speaker 5: is and how much compelling evidence in their mind there
Speaker 5: was to at least confide it. Because I didn't see
Speaker 5: this what they thought.
Speaker 3: In They bought into the DA, They bought into the
Speaker 3: DA's story, they bought into that, and then when they
Speaker 3: went out there and embarked on their own, they're like,
Speaker 3: it's not there. We don't have it. Had she been
Speaker 3: thinking straight and had I don't know why her well,
Speaker 3: when you know, her attorneys didn't tell her. She went
Speaker 3: through attorneys like Socks, had like four or five of them,
Speaker 3: and when an attorney didn't agree with her, she fired them.
Speaker 5: Well, she have very though. She had Bury eleven at
Speaker 5: some point.
Speaker 3: Finally, but you know, he's older and he's tired. But
Speaker 3: she also had top attorneys when the case first got started,
Speaker 3: some of the top attorneys in Manhattan, and when they
Speaker 3: didn't agree with her or do something she wanted, she
Speaker 3: fired them. It's never good to do that. You want continuity.
Speaker 3: Had she had kept her wits about her and not
Speaker 3: been medicated and stuff and looked at it. I mean,
Speaker 3: that was such a good thing. When the insurance company,
Speaker 3: it was so in her favor that a private eye
Speaker 3: found couldn't find any evidence that boy, the attorney should
Speaker 3: have run with that. Barry Elevin never and I talked
Speaker 3: to him a lot, and I talked to the deputy
Speaker 3: district attorney on the case. Barry Levin thought that it
Speaker 3: was such a flimsy case that there was no chance
Speaker 3: he was going to have her out. She wasn't gonna
Speaker 3: you know, she wasn't going to have to go to
Speaker 3: jail pending the trials she did. He couldn't get her
Speaker 3: out on bail. Everything was stacked against him. He was
Speaker 3: surprised that it was such a junk case that he
Speaker 3: couldn't get anywhere with it. And I think that attitude,
Speaker 3: probably early on, probably didn't help her. He just went out,
Speaker 3: this is nothing, we're going to get her out. I
Speaker 3: talked to him before she was arrested, and I was
Speaker 3: going to interview her, and then she got indicted and arrested,
Speaker 3: and then she never came out again. She turned herself in.
Speaker 3: She made arrangements to turn herself in two days later
Speaker 3: with Barry Levin. And it's just I think that she
Speaker 3: if she if she thought about it and had gone
Speaker 3: through all the evidence and they'd done everything, they had
Speaker 3: a lot of things in their favor, but they didn't
Speaker 3: handle it right, even the bankruptcy. And and you know,
Speaker 3: Manuel Martinez had a terrible attorney. You got that right
Speaker 3: from reading it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, it really damaged. It damages her completely too,
Speaker 5: that Martinez has a conviction, because then there's.
Speaker 3: That of course cartwheels. Yeah. Yeah, But if I were
Speaker 3: had been Martinez's lawyer. I want to drag that well,
Speaker 3: they did. They brought that They brought that investigator. I
Speaker 3: see twenty thinks that they brought him into court. No, no,
Speaker 3: they didn't. I was surprised her attorney didn't bring that
Speaker 3: public or that private eye in who didn't field her
Speaker 3: as a case, because you know, there's a different burden
Speaker 3: of proof in private cases than there are in state cases.
Speaker 3: So they could go in a lot of directions the
Speaker 3: private I could. And I mean if I were if
Speaker 3: I had been been Martinez's attorney, I would have dragged
Speaker 3: that guy in to testify. He didn't present, and his
Speaker 3: attorney said, this is this is BS. You're not going
Speaker 3: to lose. So he didn't present any witnesses, and so
Speaker 3: he just he thought, too, this is so flimsy, this
Speaker 3: is so ridiculous. There's no ways going to be convicted.
Speaker 3: So it's all really really, it's a fascinating look at
Speaker 3: a case that was just one hundred percent circumstantial and
Speaker 3: not very good circumstantial evidence, and two people are in prison,
Speaker 3: you know, and then the shooter isn't. So I mean,
Speaker 3: if it weren't so sad, you know, because I do
Speaker 3: feel I do fill in a lot of ways, Barbara,
Speaker 3: I think it was way over her head. I think
Speaker 3: that at one point she wasn't as greedy as she was.
Speaker 3: I mean, her friend said she was a dear, dear friend.
Speaker 3: She had daughter said that Barbara had a really good
Speaker 3: side to her. But boy, that didn't come out. You know,
Speaker 3: So a lot of ways I feel sorry for because
Speaker 3: she was so over her head and and I you know,
Speaker 3: I'm just not. I'm just not. She just got tired
Speaker 3: and pleaded out. I would as love to see her fight,
Speaker 3: wouldn't you have loved to see her fight?
Speaker 5: Well? Sure, what was her behavior like at trial? What
Speaker 5: was her demeanor like? In her behavior?
Speaker 3: Don't face she was doped up. They had her on
Speaker 3: drugs right, well, she was on before she went in,
Speaker 3: so they just continued it. She was she was, I
Speaker 3: mean sometimes her eyes were half open and she she
Speaker 3: it was. She didn't handle the death right. She didn't
Speaker 3: handle you know, she was all about the money. She
Speaker 3: appeared very greedy, and she was used to a certain
Speaker 3: lifestyle and she was just you know, it was all
Speaker 3: about the younger woman. And she cried and cried. I mean,
Speaker 3: two years into it, she's still crying and instead of
Speaker 3: trying to get on with her life. And she hated
Speaker 3: George so much, and Mary Louise, and she took his
Speaker 3: clothes and threw him in front of the building, you know,
Speaker 3: jumped them in boxes in front of the building. And
Speaker 3: she just was a woman who just couldn't see out
Speaker 3: of her grief and losing her husband. And her behavior
Speaker 3: was a little erratic. But that doesn't mean she's a killer,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? Sure in that respect, I
Speaker 3: think it's a fascinating case because i'm you know, and
Speaker 3: then and then you know, my book got vetted and
Speaker 3: it was interesting, you know, one of the people who
Speaker 3: vetted it, they kind of wanted me to go stronger
Speaker 3: with some of the evidence. And I'm like, well, that's
Speaker 3: it does not there's not there's not anything more, you know,
Speaker 3: that's all they had.
Speaker 5: There's reasonable doubt. There's reasonable doubt in your mind.
Speaker 3: Yes, And Robin Sach was my god, I can you
Speaker 3: know she's at the end of the book because they
Speaker 3: quoted her. And and I also got a ballistics guy
Speaker 3: and had him look at, you know, kind of the
Speaker 3: whole scenario and bringing in a bringing in a gun
Speaker 3: when there wasn't a gun and having the jury pass
Speaker 3: it around and like the.
Speaker 5: Murderjudicial hunt, that's very prejudicial, and it wouldn't and it
Speaker 5: really that that could be a source, that could be
Speaker 5: a bonus contention, that appeal, because that's not the weapon,
Speaker 5: like you say, and that's only can be prejudicial to
Speaker 5: the to the jury to imply again something they don't
Speaker 5: even have, you know, that's that's very odd.
Speaker 3: So Martine was, he'd sit there sullen, and he'd be
Speaker 3: making faces and his head would be down and to
Speaker 3: be shoved, and he'd be glaring. He just glared at
Speaker 3: the assistant DA. You know, you never want to do
Speaker 3: that because you know, Assistant DA. I think I think
Speaker 3: anybody who prosecutes the case, they can't they can't like
Speaker 3: the person they're prosecuting. They can't bring themselves to do that,
Speaker 3: so they don't like them and the whole thing, and
Speaker 3: you have to just flow with it. I've sat through trials.
Speaker 3: You probably have to. You can't. You can't respond to
Speaker 3: their behavior. It's how they get through it. And he
Speaker 3: just glared. Martinez glared at I mean, and he looked
Speaker 3: real onerous, you know, And I think that they the
Speaker 3: jury saw it him. You know, he was his own
Speaker 3: worst enemy. And like you said, that really did his conviction,
Speaker 3: really did Barbara Coganan. But they still didn't have her.
Speaker 3: You know. It took them threatening to bring out, you know,
Speaker 3: the conversations that she supposedly had in jail, and we'll
Speaker 3: still never know what those convers stations.
Speaker 5: Were, right, you know, yeah, I think I think I
Speaker 5: wouldn't even know what it was. Yeah, you know, I don't.
Speaker 5: I don't know with with with a guy like Levin,
Speaker 5: if she just didn't get a pretty good deal, because
Speaker 5: you're looking at twelve years is a pretty good deal
Speaker 5: if you are guilty or ten years. You know that's true.
Speaker 3: She got a get She was out of money, Yeah,
Speaker 3: she was out of money. She was tired, out of
Speaker 3: money and tired and and you know, medicated, and in
Speaker 3: jail at Rikers, I mean, Rikers isn't a pretty place
Speaker 3: to be, no, and in isolation twenty three hours a day,
Speaker 3: and you know, you it, I mean I think it
Speaker 3: took its toll. She was a little off balanced emotionally
Speaker 3: before she went to jail, you know, so it it
Speaker 3: it's and she was out of money. She did it.
Speaker 3: It was really and then she was trying to win
Speaker 3: win her one. I'm back, you know, and that was sad.
Speaker 3: You know. Scott stood up at the sentence scene and
Speaker 3: you know, looked at his mother and said, I love you,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean it makes me I get choked up.
Speaker 3: You know, you're my mom. I still love you, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, and hopefully we can be a family again.
Speaker 3: And it was so sad. And I think it's sad.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people lost a lot, and
Speaker 3: I think she lost a lot. I think the boys,
Speaker 3: you know, the grown Sons lost a lot, and George
Speaker 3: Cogan lost his life. And Mary Louise who she's in
Speaker 3: the UK now, she didn't testify, but she they read
Speaker 3: her statement. She was an interesting character. She wasn't very sympathetic,
Speaker 3: you know, so you know, Barbara had her fired and
Speaker 3: you know she was vindictive. Barbara was and I don't
Speaker 3: think that worked in her favor, right, She just you know,
Speaker 3: she she's the kind She was the kind of woman.
Speaker 3: And you probably met people like this every you know,
Speaker 3: if you if you read the book or saw the
Speaker 3: movie Ordinary People. Everything's nice and smooth. As long as
Speaker 3: there's nothing out of the ordinary. You throw a monkey
Speaker 3: wrench in it, and those people can't deal with it.
Speaker 3: That's who Barba Cogan was. She could handle life. Everything
Speaker 3: was good, she could run a business. But boy, you
Speaker 3: put a big monkey wrench in something out of the ordinary. Barbara,
Speaker 3: Barbara did not handle it well. And I think that,
Speaker 3: you know, she was her own worst enemy. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not convinced that. I mean, I sure would like
Speaker 3: to see know who the shooter is, and I think
Speaker 3: that person should have been brought to justice. My question
Speaker 3: afterward to the assistant DA was, Okay, you're going after
Speaker 3: the shooter. Yeah, we don't need to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't see why you wouldn't do that too,
Speaker 5: to wrap up this entire case and make sure you
Speaker 5: have all the answers, I mean.
Speaker 3: Have any evidence against him and bring him forward. It's
Speaker 3: dead nothing.
Speaker 5: Yeah. The thing is, I think if they if they
Speaker 5: would have if they would have offered a lawyer, and
Speaker 5: whether you know Martinez a savvy lawyer or not, they
Speaker 5: would have offered this lawyer the usual kind of we
Speaker 5: will help you out if you give us, give us
Speaker 5: this person, and they couldn't even break this guy. It
Speaker 5: seems out of character because yeah, suddenly he's he's a
Speaker 5: real tough guy to not to crack. But he's just
Speaker 5: confessing to his friends what he did and how he
Speaker 5: did it. It's kind of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he wanted to break down to the attorney and
Speaker 3: save it for the DA and save himself. He wanted
Speaker 3: he wouldn't even have a talk with them. I mean,
Speaker 3: he basically sent the letters and told them to go
Speaker 3: f themselves. And he he wanted to even entertain it,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 5: He Yeah, that doesn't You're right, it was insulted by it.
Speaker 3: He didn't handle it well either.
Speaker 5: No, but he it does. It does. Your argument is
Speaker 5: some evidence for your argument is that he wouldn't give
Speaker 5: her up. He wouldn't. He wouldn't do it, right, I've
Speaker 5: just done a lot.
Speaker 3: If he did do it, he he was so pompous
Speaker 3: that he wasn't going to give her up. But I
Speaker 3: don't think that's the case. I don't think there was
Speaker 3: anything there to give her up for. And so he
Speaker 3: absolutely They said that he paid first it was one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand, and then they said it was fifty thousand,
Speaker 3: and that he went and got money from her parents,
Speaker 3: who were her parents were just regular working people. They
Speaker 3: never could find the money and in the transcripts that
Speaker 3: if he paid. She paid him fifty thousand dollars and
Speaker 3: then he paid a shooter. After that, there should have
Speaker 3: been a track record, and there wasn't. They couldn't find
Speaker 3: the money. She wrote him a couple of checks that
Speaker 3: added to five thousand dollars because he did he did
Speaker 3: CPA work, you know, for her parents, no notary public.
Speaker 3: He was a notary public and so he did some
Speaker 3: things like that, quite a bit of documents for her parents.
Speaker 3: And then she wrote him a couple of checks at
Speaker 3: different times, and then when he went to next to
Speaker 3: Puerto Rico, she paid for everything, and so five thousand
Speaker 3: dollars that's all she ever gave him. So that wasn't
Speaker 3: a bone of contention with the the jury. You know, they
Speaker 3: threw out a sum of money of fifty thousand and
Speaker 3: then one hundred thousand. It's like make up your mind,
Speaker 3: but there was no They have no proof of that,
Speaker 3: but they said it like it was a fact, and
Speaker 3: they bought It's incredible. That's a lot of money, even
Speaker 3: though mafia doesn't pay fifty thousand for a hit, you know.
Speaker 5: What I mean, Well, just as a middleman, even you know,
Speaker 5: so obviously that she is going to do something. Was
Speaker 5: he doing? You know a lawyer is going to do
Speaker 5: something for free? Show me show me this lawyer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but no fifty yeah but fifty. Yeah. It's a
Speaker 3: it's a it's a pesky case. I mean, I tried
Speaker 3: to get to as much of it as I could,
Speaker 3: and I think I did and it just did it.
Speaker 3: It was I would thank you, It just was. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm looking through everything that I'm reading and I read
Speaker 3: the transcripts over and over and over and it just
Speaker 3: wasn't there. But hey, more power to the assistant. DA
Speaker 3: you got it. You got a conviction, two of them.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, it's strange, though, what you have is
Speaker 5: the phenomena of every almost every state in the US,
Speaker 5: if not every state in the US now has a
Speaker 5: university law course that's pouring over cases, cold cases and
Speaker 5: not cold cases, but convictions, wrongful potential wrongful convictions. And
Speaker 5: so while you have you know, applauding the the district
Speaker 5: attorney for putting people away tough on crime, you also
Speaker 5: have this wrongful convictions.
Speaker 3: Though it's uh, yeah, they want they want to get
Speaker 3: their man, no matter what they want to solve the case,
Speaker 3: and that's unfortunate. Yeah, yeah, and it just it was
Speaker 3: a fact. And then the fact that they hid the
Speaker 3: sentence scene, they hid that from reporters. Nobody knew about it,
Speaker 3: you know. And then I have a friend, a friend
Speaker 3: in New York who was picking up some documents. She's
Speaker 3: a crime writer, and she was picking up some documents
Speaker 3: for me and they didn't have the file. She was
Speaker 3: copying the file for me and barbaras flown. They said, well,
Speaker 3: it's in the courtroom. She said, what's it doing in
Speaker 3: the courtroom? Were they're having a hearing today? And it
Speaker 3: wasn't publicized that. You know, there's a board where they
Speaker 3: show all the cases. Sure, and then the media can
Speaker 3: see it every day. It wasn't up. They didn't post it.
Speaker 3: So she ran to the courtroom and she was there
Speaker 3: for the sentencing, not the sentencing, but for the pleating out,
Speaker 3: which was you know, I had my eyes and ears there.
Speaker 3: That was odd. And the media they wrote about it.
Speaker 3: They were really ticked off about it, the media that
Speaker 3: this big thing happened and you guys, you know, didn't
Speaker 3: tell us. It was odd. So she wanted to all Yeah,
Speaker 3: they didn't want it to fall through. They wanted everything
Speaker 3: to go smoothly to get their conviction, So it just
Speaker 3: kind of stinks, kind of stinks. Yeah, Well, the Investigation
Speaker 3: Discovery interview Joel Seideman, the assistant DA I was interviewed
Speaker 3: for it, and that's going to run in April.
Speaker 5: Oh great, I'll be looking forward to.
Speaker 3: So there's an Investigation Discovery show on the case that
Speaker 3: I think it's going to be. I think they're going
Speaker 3: to do a good job.
Speaker 5: Sure or they do, you know. You know what's interesting
Speaker 5: too is that there is some hope for Barbara because
Speaker 5: of people like yourself. Sometimes it ignites this, you know,
Speaker 5: second look at this in retrospect, and so hopefully maybe
Speaker 5: you know your instincts are right on this, and maybe
Speaker 5: there's something will happen because of that, because I've seen
Speaker 5: cases where that kind of pressure, you know, a sixty
Speaker 5: minutes article. And now, of course the Investigation Discovery is
Speaker 5: the lead in that, you know, twenty four to seven,
Speaker 5: these kinds of documentaries and programs. So you know, I
Speaker 5: wish your luck with that because if.
Speaker 3: You really were kind of signed a signed an iron
Speaker 3: clad I don't think she can. I don't think there's
Speaker 3: any way out for her, it's pretty iron clad what
Speaker 3: she signed, and I don't know that she doesn't have
Speaker 3: a fire in her belly. It would have to be
Speaker 3: somebody else to go after it. And then you've got
Speaker 3: to get past Martinez and kind of his you know,
Speaker 3: sort of bottom feeder mentality and kind of you know,
Speaker 3: it's hard to get past.
Speaker 5: That and her admission too, because that FLEA agreement isn't admission.
Speaker 5: So it's like a confession. And that's where prosecutors never,
Speaker 5: never want to back up from a confession because.
Speaker 3: And I can tell you the news media in New
Speaker 3: York just bought it hook Line and Singer. They bought
Speaker 3: the whole the DA's premise, oh completely. But they never
Speaker 3: saw anything else. You know, nobody dug really deep. I
Speaker 3: was surprised, no one in New York. I mean I
Speaker 3: expected it to have a big piece in a magazine
Speaker 3: or something. Nobody did anything deep at the time or
Speaker 3: even after. The DA was feeding a couple of news
Speaker 3: reporters with things as the years went on, but nobody
Speaker 3: ever dug deep. They just bought it. I found that
Speaker 3: really interesting, you know, so they they all believed it.
Speaker 5: I think, go ahead, no, no, what what were.
Speaker 3: You going to say?
Speaker 5: Oh, no, I interrupted you, so I said to go ahead. No.
Speaker 3: I just think that it's I would have liked to
Speaker 3: see somebody go after the case. Usually on a big case,
Speaker 3: you do and you see some really in depth reporting,
Speaker 3: and that was never done here. They just did their
Speaker 3: daily stories and nobody dug deep on it, and I
Speaker 3: found that really interesting.
Speaker 5: Well, I think what they thought was that this seems
Speaker 5: very typical. You're getting a lot of these kinds of stories,
Speaker 5: widow of women killing husbands, arranging to kill husbands, a
Speaker 5: lot of stories, but this one. I think they just
Speaker 5: had enough salacious material here so that they said, oh, well,
Speaker 5: this is the kind of story. What they we'll run with.
Speaker 5: I see a media not wanting to change the sort
Speaker 5: of course of the story too much, especially.
Speaker 3: And that's what everything read. Everything, everything single story read
Speaker 3: that way, and it's you know, it's just it's to me,
Speaker 3: it's a really sad case. All everybody lost, everybody lost
Speaker 3: their mess, and it's a sad case. And I think
Speaker 3: we still don't know, we still don't know the truth
Speaker 3: about George and the family. Of course, you know the
Speaker 3: Kogan family all the way around, they're one hundred percent convinced,
Speaker 3: and and and I just I'm just they're probably going
Speaker 3: to be disappointed when they read it. But it's I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: I mean, I went into it thinking, Wow, this is
Speaker 3: absolutely guilty, and you get into everything and you go,
Speaker 3: what is going on? You know, this just doesn't it's
Speaker 3: not it's not ironclad by any means. It was kind
Speaker 3: of a bad, circumstantial case that they got convicted. But
Speaker 3: it's not anything that I think you'd hold a party
Speaker 3: over in the DA's office, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Very not a real proud moment.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, I think they're very I think really honestly,
Speaker 5: I think especially prosecution is convinced of something when they're
Speaker 5: doing it. I think there is obviously a lot of
Speaker 5: evidence of cases where people have done illegal things to
Speaker 5: frame people who they believe are scum anyway, But you know,
Speaker 5: but those cases are different. I think the prosecution really
Speaker 5: believes in what they're doing and that's why they make
Speaker 5: some you know, they stick to certain things. That's why
Speaker 5: they would hammer. They would hammer a witness for two
Speaker 5: days so they get a confession. Like you say, it
Speaker 5: seems odd when you get eleven hour confession just to
Speaker 5: get or in an interview and you just get a
Speaker 5: little bit of information. So you know, we all, you know,
Speaker 5: the people in the know here and a lot of
Speaker 5: the audience is very educated watching programs on false confessions
Speaker 5: and how convictions can get done with a you know,
Speaker 5: a rabid media and somebody an election year and a
Speaker 5: police force that's all pressured, and you know, things happen.
Speaker 5: Innocent people were keenly arrested and often convicted.
Speaker 3: So yeah, they run to the goal post, they run
Speaker 3: to the wrong goalpost, you know, but I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: they're convinced, and they have to in order to prosecute
Speaker 3: a case, they have to believe in it. They have
Speaker 3: to believe they did it. Otherwise how could they possibly
Speaker 3: prosecute That's that's that goes back to Martinez didn't get
Speaker 3: that here. He was an attorney, but you know it
Speaker 3: wasn't a litigator, and and you know, he was going
Speaker 3: to family court and he's you know, evicting people from
Speaker 3: apartments and he was it was over his head. And
Speaker 3: so he'd sit there and glare at the DA which
Speaker 3: was really in favor of the DA, and made himself
Speaker 3: look bad it's just like, roll with it, dude. You know,
Speaker 3: this is the way it works in court. Don't look
Speaker 3: like it affects you, you know. And I think some
Speaker 3: I think lots of clients, you know, lots of defendants
Speaker 3: are coached and told that by their attorneys. Try, you know,
Speaker 3: try to sit there and don't don't buy into what
Speaker 3: they're doing, you know, because they kind of throw the
Speaker 3: kitchen sink at the wall and hope something sticks. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's precisely what was done here. A lot of
Speaker 3: times there's there's bogus evidence that's you know, stuff brought
Speaker 3: in to make it look like evidence when it's not.
Speaker 3: And I and I and I feel a lot of
Speaker 3: that happened here. You know. It's it's just there wasn't much.
Speaker 3: But they you know, they they brought back you know,
Speaker 3: they brought back guilty, you know. And he was he
Speaker 3: was just some founded Martinez was you know, he kept
Speaker 3: saying I was writing a book about him, and and
Speaker 3: I was writing letters. No, I'm not writing a book
Speaker 3: about you, writing about the case. You happen to be
Speaker 3: in it, you know, you're you're a big piece of it.
Speaker 3: This is not the Manny Martinez story. You know what
Speaker 3: I mean, Yeah, mailing my letters to the media and
Speaker 3: I'd say, you know, let me let me get this Claire,
Speaker 3: please do not do that. And know this, I'm giving
Speaker 3: both sides of the story. This is you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: he's not going to like it when he reads it
Speaker 3: because he thought it was going to be all pro him.
Speaker 3: And you know, he wasn't the most likable guy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: well I recorded everything that happened high.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3: Well fright, yeah, yes, the way you see it. And yeah,
Speaker 3: and he wasn't likable. I mean you kind of got
Speaker 3: that right. He wasn't sympathetic at all.
Speaker 5: No, he wasn't.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, my character and so I had to straighten
Speaker 3: amount a couple of times.
Speaker 5: One thing to remember though, when we talk about the prosecution,
Speaker 5: and I think this is what I think the big
Speaker 5: portion of the audience, uh, is that are people that
Speaker 5: are regular citizens are affected and shocked by crimes, but
Speaker 5: they're reading about it, and they're fascinated by the minds
Speaker 5: and of the killers and the trials and the mentality, yes,
Speaker 5: and motivation for everybody to do what they do in
Speaker 5: this in these stories. But to be fair, prosecution really
Speaker 5: I think has to believe that these people are guilty
Speaker 5: and they may come with with it, buy yeah, they
Speaker 5: believe it. Where defense lawyer really has much more wide
Speaker 5: open sort of viewpoint in terms of, well, he may
Speaker 5: be guilty, he may be guilty, but but it doesn't
Speaker 5: but they can't prove he's guilty, so then he would
Speaker 5: be innocent in terms of the law. So they have
Speaker 5: they have a more we'll say liberal attitude of work,
Speaker 5: where the prosecution doesn't have that ability. The prosecution don't
Speaker 5: say I think.
Speaker 3: There is and I don't, you know, like I say, yeah,
Speaker 3: and I do. I mean, I like, you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: I you know, I've I've covered a lot of cases
Speaker 3: in their assistant DA's and DA's you know, the district
Speaker 3: attorneys I've actually liked. And I don't go into a
Speaker 3: trial thinking that they're they're convicting somebody wrongfully. But and
Speaker 3: you know, and so I do do respect them in
Speaker 3: the job they do. And I could be wrong, you know,
Speaker 3: but everything I just kind of called it as I
Speaker 3: saw it. But I did give both sides to this story.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't paint him out to be an
Speaker 3: angel at all, Norah Barbara, you know, And I say,
Speaker 3: you know, it's just there are a lot of weird
Speaker 3: things that happened in this case. It was hard to
Speaker 3: sort out those players. You know, there are a lot
Speaker 3: of Italians, a lot of people from Puerto Rico, all
Speaker 3: across New York and it went from you know, spanning
Speaker 3: nineteen years. It was a tough case to report. It
Speaker 3: took me two years to write.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, it's it, you know, it was.
Speaker 3: To boil it down, you know, and get to the
Speaker 3: crux event.
Speaker 5: It's very much a true crime mystery. And why how
Speaker 5: that's different is that it's not like a fictional story
Speaker 5: in that at the end of this you're still not sure.
Speaker 5: And that's the thing that's that's what you imparted this
Speaker 5: is that it's not despite the trial, despite some of
Speaker 5: the evidence, some of the sense of this, some things
Speaker 5: just still remained to not make sense, and you've just
Speaker 5: left with this sort of mystery. So I think you've
Speaker 5: you've captured that that it's a very not a clear
Speaker 5: cut case, despite what you might.
Speaker 3: Think a lot. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's not. And you don't typically find that in true
Speaker 3: crime stories. You do have a resolution and you you know,
Speaker 3: and it's it's a matter of reporting it. But this
Speaker 3: one was a really stumper and a fascinating It really
Speaker 3: was a fascinating, you know, case to the publisher at
Speaker 3: Saint Martin's Press, and they gave me a lot of
Speaker 3: documents to read and said, you know, do you think
Speaker 3: you could fight into this one? I'm like, it was fascinating,
Speaker 3: and I loved reporting it, you know, I loved going
Speaker 3: to New York and talking to the dormant. And the
Speaker 3: dormant is absolutely convinced, you know, and he liked George.
Speaker 3: He called him is his pisano because they were from
Speaker 3: Puerto Rico, and and was was convinced because Barbara was
Speaker 3: kind of doing bad things, you know, during that divorce.
Speaker 3: She was just so greedy and just couldn't see the
Speaker 3: force for the dreams. She couldn't get past herself and
Speaker 3: her own greed to just kind of grieve the marriage
Speaker 3: and try to get done and over with and move on.
Speaker 3: She was stuck, and it sort of it ate up
Speaker 3: at her and that really was to her detriment, and
Speaker 3: the way the whole case went, you know. And then
Speaker 3: and it really hinged on, you know, that first day
Speaker 3: at the at the scene right after he was shot,
Speaker 3: with Mary Louise going it was a wife, it was
Speaker 3: a wife, she did it. That's it. That's what they
Speaker 3: went with.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Absolutely, Well it looks like it from a lot
Speaker 5: of you know, a lot of viewpoints. But the thing is,
Speaker 5: that's what happens. When you have a circumstantial case, you
Speaker 5: you have some doubt, but it does rely on what
Speaker 5: happens with those witnesses at court and if you have
Speaker 5: exerts expert testimony, lots of times it's who knows. And
Speaker 5: that's what's fascinating. That's why we the true crime reader,
Speaker 5: the true crime fan really loves reading these things over
Speaker 5: and over again as new stories come out, because you
Speaker 5: really do get a sense of trials. You know, I've
Speaker 5: watched Law and Order for years. There's so many some
Speaker 5: of the most popular programs, the most popular series, and
Speaker 5: the most popular movies are about procedural you know, about
Speaker 5: how do trials work and how juries operate, and so
Speaker 5: it's really fascinating the people. And this book is a
Speaker 5: prime example of that kind of story. So I want
Speaker 5: to thank you very much to it's a great book.
Speaker 5: I want to tell people they've been listening to the
Speaker 5: Millionaire's Wife. That's the new book by Kathy Scott, and
Speaker 5: we've been talking about that this evening. Millionaires The Millionaire's
Speaker 5: Wife by Kathy Scott. Thank you very much Kathy for
Speaker 5: coming on the program. I hope I wish you the
Speaker 5: best of luck with this, but I'm sure this is
Speaker 5: going to be another big best seller for you, So.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Released on
Speaker 3: March twenty seventh, but people can pre order on Amazon.
Speaker 3: It's doing very well in pre sales. Actually, it does
Speaker 3: really like a mystery, so thank you so much, Dan,
Speaker 3: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you very much, Kathy, and get a hold
Speaker 5: of me as soon as you've got something else cooking.
Speaker 5: I know you work like you're busy as a beaver
Speaker 5: here writing new tales of mystery and true crime madness.
Speaker 3: So get a hold of coming out so I'll let
Speaker 3: you know when it's nailed.
Speaker 5: Okay, great, we'll be looking forward to that. Well, thank
Speaker 5: you very much, Kathy. Have a great night.
Speaker 3: Good night, my pleasure, goodnight, good night.