1: The Good Jewish Doctor
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Text BVJOBS to 97211 to apply. Novel. Hey, listener. I just wanted you to know what to expect from this series before you dive in. At its core, this is a story about solidarity and sisterhood, but it's also a story about domestic violence. There's going to be mentions of physical and emotional abuse, as well as murder and suicide.

But at the center of all of it, there is a woman who I celebrate in life and death. This is her story, my story, and the story of lots of other inspiring and brave women who often choose to laugh instead of cry. So you can expect some humor and joy, too.

If you want a taster before we get into the deep stuff, then this first episode is mostly just fun. Check it out and then decide. If you do listen and are impacted by any of our themes, you can reach out to Know More, a domestic violence charity we've partnered with.

They have lots of great resources to help you or your loved ones. You can find them at nomore.org. That's N-O-M-O-R-E dot org. Oh, and just one final thing. I happen to swear like a sailor, and so do some of the other people in this show. That's just who we are, so no problem if it's not for you. Did you find his old house? No. Okay, so it's around here.

But I don't remember where. I know the vicinity. When I met him, he was already in this house that never really finished. It had an unfinished backyard and boxes that never got unpacked. Just because he'd never go around to it? You know, I just think that he never could settle his life. I think he was always running from the truth and it was all about image. Mm-hmm.

So the house from the outside looked good. I'm Carol Fisher. I don't usually spend my time lurking around my ex-boyfriend's houses. I actually live a fairly normal life. I work in end-of-life health care. I'm also a mother, a grandmother, and a wife. What I'm not is a podcaster. So everything about this is so new to me. But I have my producer, Anna, who's here to help me with that.

And it turns out the first thing I need help with is timekeeping. The reason Anna's here is because I'm ready to talk about my boyfriend Bob, the one with all the boxes. Everyone has exes that they think about after the breakup. But this one, it's unique.

I've been thinking about Bob for nearly 30 years, and it really did start with that unfinished house of his in Bacoli Ranch, Las Vegas, Nevada. I remember finding it so odd because the house was so nice downstairs with the fancy kitchen and a comfortable living room.

But upstairs, most of the rooms were unfinished. They were stacked high with moving boxes from when he had arrived five years earlier. And sometimes, well, I'd go into one of the rooms to get something or just to be nosy or both. And that's when I saw it hiding amongst the boxes, a trunk with the luggage label on it that read, Gail Katz Bierenbaum.

I never asked Bob about that trunk. In fact, I didn't ask Bob a lot of things. But now here we are, 28 plus years later, and I am finally ready to open that box. E-I

Everybody thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. He spoke several languages. He did medical missionary work. He's a doctor. He's a doctor. That's all she talked about. He was a pilot. He had his own claim. He was Jewish. He was the shit. How much better could it get? She said, oh, you obviously don't know about the skeletons in his closet. And I go, what skeletons in the closet?

Run. Run, girlfriend, run. Now shit's getting real. My mother said to me, have you spoken to Gail? Do you know where Gail is? I'll be honest with you, if I saw him right now, I'd spit on him. We very quickly began to realize what a sick fuck Bob was. From the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio, you're listening to The Girlfriends. Episode 1, The Good Jewish Doctor. Because I'm a good Jew.

Our story starts in 1989 in my small hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada. It's New Year's Eve and the entire city was celebrating the start of a new decade.

Gina Perry's throwing one of her famous parties over in Spanish Oaks, which is this new Mediterranean-inspired townhouse complex just off Sahara Avenue in the middle of Las Vegas. Think terracotta tiles, swimming pools, and heavy iron doors. Hey. Hi. Nice to see you. Lovely job you're doing.

Now, Gina's real Las Vegas old stock. Her grandfather came over from Italy in the 1920s when the town's population was just less than 5,000. He wound up in Vegas founding our first luxury hotel, the Hotel Apache. ♪

Then there's Gina's mother. She was an original Las Vegas showgirl. It's the kind of heritage that really teaches you how to always buy one champagne bottle too many and how to turn the music up just loud enough. Here's Gina. There was a lot of people in the house, in the living room. It was very convivial. People were laughing and drinking. But like any party in Las Vegas, it wasn't all social.

Gina's brother worked in real estate and had invited some of his commercial investors over to schmooze, many of which were physicians from around the city. My brother's friend invited Bob Berenbaum. Bob's been brought here by his childhood friend, Scott Baranoff, a urologist who really made it big in Las Vegas. He'd recently managed to convince Bob to move over from New York to take up a new residency as a plastic surgeon.

I had no idea that Bob was going to be there. I didn't know who Bob was. I remember that he was dressed really nice. I think he had on like a tux or something.

And everybody was dressed sharp, but it was not necessarily a tux-type situation. Bob was tall, and he had cropped, dark, curly hair. But the thing everyone seemed to notice about Bob was his piercing, dark eyes. You know, he was just the town's newest, most eligible bachelor. Gina starts introducing him to her friends, including her neighbor, a local chiropractor named Stephanie Youngblood.

Her look was, you know, cool and chic. That's kind of how I think of her as like a European model type. But she came in looking good, and Bob was already there. They seemed to really hit it off. And throughout the evening, Gina would pass by them sitting on her big white couch. After the party, I went to see Stephanie for chiropractic.

And she said, you remember that guy, Bob, you introduced me to? And I said, the one that came to the party was Scott. And she said, yeah, he's unbelievable. He's too good to be true. He speaks five languages. He's a gourmand. He's got a plane. He asked me if I wanted to get high and I didn't understand what he meant, but he meant go flying.

I had never saw Stephanie excited like this, but she was like when you fall in love with whoever you happen to fall in love with, and you go through that little giddy phase where it's just like, oh my God, this person's so fantastic. It wasn't just Stephanie that noticed him. We all did. Well, anybody listening to the description of this guy would think he was incredible. For us single Jewish ladies in Las Vegas in the 90s, he was the holy grail.

And it wasn't just us. Our mothers also wanted us to find that rare gem, a good Jewish doctor. Which is like not the easiest thing in the world because we all know all the same people. This is my friend, Mindy Shapiro. We were all on this hunt for love together. And so everyone sort of played matchmaker. I mean, moms would introduce us to their sons as we broke the fast at Yom Kippur.

Couples would host blind dates. They would disguise them as dinner parties, but still zilch until there was Bob. The word was out and another Jewish doctor had arrived. I don't know if I know how you met Bob. Oh, I met him in the garage of Sunrise. So are you like in the garage stalking him? No, I was walking into the... It was innocent. It was totally innocent.

The first time Mindy set eyes on Bob was at work in the doctor's parking area at Sunrise Hospital. Though Mindy, like everyone, knew who Bob was, it was his janky car that caught her attention first. A busted up, but really objectively cool, mustard yellow Datsun 240Z with a personalized number plate that read Nip and Tuck.

In Las Vegas, your car is a very important symbol of who you are. I drove a Honda Civic sedan with close to 100,000 miles on it. And my first day at work, I was preceded into the garage by a Rolls Royce. So that there was someone who also had a unfashionable car.

was something I could relate to.

This is Dr. Reserve parking, so I introduce myself and he introduces himself and he's wearing a suit, which in Las Vegas is a very odd thing, but he was carrying his jacket and you could see an Armani label out of the jacket pocket. And here's this tall, good-looking guy with a beat-up car and

a label and his shirt tail hanging out. And I thought, yeah, he's more East Coast. This should be a welcome change. So that is how I met Bob. The only problem is Stephanie latched onto Bob first. And to be fair, their relationship looked perfect.

They went on ski trips and Stephanie spent time with his family. They'd go flying all over the country in Bob's plane. In fact, it was not uncommon for them to go to San Francisco just for the evening for dinner. Eventually, the news got around that they had gotten engaged. And just like that, another Jewish doctor was off the market for now.

Oh, hey, we're invited to the Johnson Summer Pool Party this Saturday. I said we'd bring our famous potato salad. Oh, Saturday? But that's when the Blinds guys come in to give us a quote. Those appointments take forever. Oh, yeah, I meant to tell you. I already found everything we need at Blinds.com. They're totally online, so we don't have to wait around all day just to get a quote. I talked to a Blinds.com designer, and they're sending us free samples.

Oh, Blinds.com? I've heard of them. Yeah, they've been around for over 25 years. But not everyone knows they can also handle the measuring and installation for a fraction of what the other guys charge. Plus, they have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Well, Blinds.com sounds like a no-brainer. Guess I'll cancel... Already done. That gives you time to make the potato salad. Yes, dear.

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Over the next few years, Bob and Mindy worked together regularly on the different floors at Sunrise Hospital. I was a doctor who worked in the intensive care unit. So often people who were in the ICU have wounds that need care. And so I might run into him there. More often than not, their paths would cross in the doctor's lounge, which, true to Gray's anatomy, is where all the juiciest gossip is shared.

After a few years of Stephanie and Bob dating, word got out in that lounge that their engagement was off. Mindy had just gone through a breakup herself. And he said, well, we should go out to dinner sometime. And I said, yeah, that would be great. I just thought, we know each other now four or five years. Time has gone by. We could go to dinner as friends. And I said, you pick the place.

So Bob picks this little-known restaurant called the Garlic Cafe down on Decatur Boulevard and Twain Avenue. And as the name suggests, garlic creeps into every dish from the drinks to the dessert. There's even garlic in the ice cream. They talked about work, friends back east, and what it was like to be new to Las Vegas. ♪

And by the end of the evening and three courses of garlic down, they call it a night. Nobody offers up a kiss. Next day, I'm still reeking of garlic. And it's like one of those smells that's in your pores. You just can't get rid of it. And I'm in the doctor's lounge and

And someone comes up to me and says, oh, I hear you went to dinner at the Garlic Cafe. And I start sniffing myself, thinking that I stink like garlic. Still, he goes, no, Bob was here and he told me you two had gone out and da-da-da-da-da-da, and that you're his new girlfriend. Oh.

At which point my eyes did one of those, uh, boing things. Because as chatty as I may be, I'm pretty private about my life, especially separating my professional and personal life. And so that for me was like a real red flag.

But Mindy chalked it up to a little over-enthusiasm after a successful date. Doctors are, you know, on the whole, a socially awkward crowd. It wouldn't be fair to pass Bob up completely because of one indiscretion. So when he called up to arrange date number two, she said yes.

He called and said, let's do something different. Have you been out to the Red Rocks? There's some amazing petroglyphs there. You should really see them. I'll make us a picnic and we'll go out to the Red Rocks. On the day of their picnic, Bob pulled up outside Mindy's house in his Grand Cherokee Jeep, this time with the license plate Nip and Truck.

It was red with gold wheels and decked out without back gear, lights, bars, and cranks. Mindy clambered into the high seat and they set off west, off-road and into the desert, the bright lights of the strip disappearing behind them. It was totally barren. Beautiful iron ore, red rocks, glorious in the way that nature seasons things.

You know, he made this very lovely picnic with no garlic. But it started to get dark. And my New Yorker instinct is like, you don't like to be in isolated places at dark. Bob walked over to the Jeep and switched on his beams, spotlighting Mindy as she picked up an emergency call from the hospital.

One of her patients was in critical need of some care and nobody could agree on what course of action to take. And Mindy was getting really pissed off. And he says, you know, you shouldn't get that angry. Your anger doesn't help in those situations. And I said, I know I can't help it, but that's just the way I'm wired. And he goes...

I understand, but you can change that. And I thought, that is a very interesting comment. Mindy sat with Bob's comment the whole journey home out of the dark desert and back to the lights of our neon city. Was he speaking from experience? It felt like such an odd thing to say. Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.

Again, the following day in the doctor's lounge, like 20 more people. Oh, I hear you went out hiking with Bob. I hear you went hiking with Bob. I hear you went. It's like.

To the point where I ran into him at the doctor's lounge and I said, I enjoyed our evening. It was lovely. I really do not like people to know my whereabouts outside of the hospital. Please don't relay that again. And he looked at me like a wounded puppy.

Like, I had just, you know, slapped him on the nose. He didn't say he was sorry. He said, okay, okay, okay, yeah. I don't want to be identified as Bob's girlfriend. To the point where one of the docs who knew him in the doctor's lounge said, oh, has he given you the ring yet? I'm going, what? I've been on two dates with the guy.

And then I said, you know, I don't know that this is going to work, but I have this girlfriend that I think you really might like to meet. Her name is Carol. So I give Carol's number out. And then I called Carol and I said, I've given your name to this doctor. I think you might get along. He's perfect on paper. See what you think.

Carol, that's me. And this phone call from Mindy is how I started dating Bob.

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For 25 years, Brightview Senior Living Associates have been committed to creating a vibrant culture and delivering exceptional services, making Brightview a great place to work and live. If you're looking for a rewarding opportunity to serve your local community and grow, we want you to join our team. Brightview Senior Living is growing and actively seeking vibrant associates to join our community teams, including directors, healthcare, activities, hospitality, and dining. Apply today at careers.brightviewseniorliving.com. Equal employment opportunities.

Text BVJOBS to 97211 to apply. All right, so you need to finish off telling me about the first date, though, because we skated past that one. Okay, so first date. That's my producer, Anna, again. And while this show is about investigating Bob, I've really also had to investigate myself. And Anna, well, she's here to keep me on track with that.

The truth is, I have a tendency to want to forget about this period of my life, and I've really done a pretty good job of ignoring it until now. But I guess this is a moment where you shit or get off the pot, and I've been sitting on this podcast pot for at least 20 minutes now.

So here we go. Just start at the beginning. If you were nervous, what you were wearing, as much as you can remember, what you ate. So you want me to touch on all that? Yeah, if you could just paint the picture as much as possible. So I remember being very excited to go on a date with Bob and to meet him.

It was an interesting situation because I already knew what he looked like. I had met him before. We had been at similar events. But, you know, I had never spent time with him, you know, in that way of dating someone.

And the first phone call was a lot of fun where he certainly let me know things about him. You know, I think I made a comment, oh, you're bilingual. And his comment was, you know, I speak like five or seven languages. And, you know, so he always had like a comeback to my remarks in a very fun, playful way. And he showed up and he had that really nice voice.

red Cherokee Jeep that I had always wanted. And red was always my favorite color back then. He opened my door and put me in the car and got me out of the car. He certainly was attentive. We went out for Indian food and it was kind of a little joint that was owned by a cardiologist. So we're at the restaurant and we're in a booth and we're sitting in the back of the restaurant. I want to know more about him. He knows a little bit more about me than I know about him.

And so I start to suggest that, you know, hey, we're of age here and we all have baggage and, you know, he knows I have a daughter. And so I'm asking him, you know, tell me about yourself. And he's been a little vague and, you know, is very comfortable talking about his practice as a plastic surgeon, but not real comfortable talking about his past.

So I'm asking him these questions and I, in a joking way, say to him, well, what did you do murder your wife? And his response was, well, what do you know? He's kind of squirming and you could just sense that he was uncomfortable. And he said, OK, I'm going to tell you this story, but you can't tell anybody. This isn't a story that people in Las Vegas know.

And he proceeded to tell me that he had gone through a really intense residency as part of his training in New York at the time. He had been married and his wife wasn't handling the long hours well. She was really uncomfortable with being alone a lot and she was very needy. She had dabbled in drugs and she had developed a drug problem. She was using more and more drugs.

She was partying a lot with friends and sometimes wouldn't come home or she'd be intoxicated when he got home and that things were really tense and uptight. And so the conclusion to that story is that she just was missing. She was nowhere to be found. And he made assumptions that she either killed herself because she had a history of depression coupled with a drug addiction

she met someone and went off partying and just never came home. But he then explained to me that he had been accused of murdering her. It had been suggested that he was part of foul play. And he came to Las Vegas to get a new start and to not bring that with him, which is why he never wanted me to tell this story or talk to people about it.

This was a new chapter with a new beginning, and he was leaving that ending behind. You know, it sounded like a plausible story. It certainly was a story that I wanted to believe. Okay, I know what you're thinking. Why didn't I run out of that restaurant? I get it, and I don't know if I have the words to explain why I stayed. But I felt bad for Bob, and to be perfectly honest, I had a crush on him.

Here I was, 36 years of age. I had burned through two marriages. I was raising a daughter on my own, and there was no way I was about to pass up on a Jewish doctor with a plane who spoke five languages. So I took his word for it and parked the conversation. We headed back to his house. We went upstairs. I glanced into the spare room to see piles of boxes and that trunk with the name on it.

Gail Kat Bierenbaum, Bob's missing wife. Oh, oh.

Coming up on The Girlfriends. We created our own little game of Clue, you know. One of our favorite sayings is Gail and I were the opposite side of the same coin. We were very popular in school. I was into boys. Gail was into love. She had met this doctor. She was very excited about it. Doctor, surgeon, pilot. She was enamored. She's weeping and I'm like, what's up? And she said, Bob tried to kill the cat.

Elaine called me and asked me if I'd talked to Gail. No, why? She went for a jog and she never came home. I remember her screaming at the top of her lungs. We need to find her. I said, oh my God. I knew right away he killed her. I would call him and I would say, I know you killed my sister. Everyone knows she killed my sister. And you're not going to get away with it.

I will always hound you and haunt you. The Girlfriends is produced by Novel for iHeartRadio. For more from Novel, visit novel.audio. The series is hosted by me, Carol Fisher, and produced by Anna Sinfield. Our assistant producer is Julian Manugara-Patton. And our researcher is Madeline Parr.

The editor is Veronica Simmons. Max O'Brien is our executive producer. Our fact checker is Valeria Rocha. Production management from Cherie Houston and Charlotte Wolfe. Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander.

Music supervision by Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Louisa Gerstein. Story development by Isaac Fisher. Willard Foxton is creative director of development. Special thanks to Sean Glynn, David Waters, Mithily Rao, Katrina Norvell, David Wasserman, and Bethann Macaluso.

We did reach out to Bob and his legal team to ask if he'd like to comment on the podcast, but we never heard back.

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For 25 years, Brightview Senior Living Associates have been committed to creating a vibrant culture and delivering exceptional services, making Brightview a great place to work and live. If you're looking for a rewarding opportunity to serve your local community and grow, we want you to join our team. Brightview Senior Living is growing and actively seeking vibrant associates to join our community teams, including directors, healthcare, activities, hospitality, and dining.

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