Robert Bierenbaum Trial: 2000

Police investigators and Alayne Katz, Gail's sister, never bought into the picture of Robert Bierenbaum as a put-upon husband. They suspected him of murder from the beginning, even if there wasn't much evidence or even a corpse. Immediately after Gail's disappearance, Alayne launched a campaign against him, writing letters to his New York neighbors and to hospitals where he worked, and would take credit for driving him from New York. In 1989, she believed that a female torso washed ashore on Staten Island was that of her dead sister. However, in 1997, when Alayne and her brother Steven had the body exhumed, a DNA test revealed the body was not Gail's.

Alayne told reporters that her sister had confided to her that Bierenbaum once dunked her cat in a toilet boil and was often violent. Indeed, on November 12, 1983, Gail had filed a police report claiming that her husband had choked her until she lost consciousness. Later, police investigators traveled to Las Vegas where they questioned acquaintances of Bierenbaum, some of whom fed their suspicions with hearsay comments. But what finally convinced police and prosecutors they had enough evidence to make a murder case was what Bierenbaum hadn't told them—that he had taken an airplane out for a two-hour flight on the day his wife disappeared. Moreover, although airport records later verified the trip, it appeared he had attempted to alter the flight log. Brought back from North Dakota, Bierenbaum was arraigned in New York City on December 8, 1999, and freed on bail to await trial.

Dr. Robert Bierenbaum and his wife Janet leave court during his trial for the murder of his first wife Gail. (AP/Wide World Photos)