The Girlfriends S2/E1: A Double Mitzvah

Novel.

Hey listener, I just wanted to give you a heads up on what to expect from this series. As always, The Girlfriends is about solidarity, sisterhood, and uplifting women's voices, but this is also a story about violence of the most terrible kind against women. There's going to be mentions of murder, and we'll also reference drug and alcohol use. Above all, we're going to talk a lot about missing

With familial Yeah, this is it.

I think it might get that one over there.

Oh you go the wine?

Yeah? What's that old saying? Men come and go, but girlfriends are for life. Well, hi, girlfriend, we are back. It's a dark, cold evening on the sixth night of Hanukah in twenty twenty three. Myself, my good Nindy, and my producer Anna are in New York visiting the Lane Cats. This is the first time we've all been in the same room together, and we've got a lot of catching up to do, so we'd best start pouring the wine.

Did you want me to.

Open up something you bought?

The red on the table or the pink in the refrigerator or both.

Oh.

The last time I saw any of these ladies, we were recording Season one of The Girlfriends. We told the story of how we came together and helped law enforcement solve a fifteen year old cold case, and as a result, we put my fucking asshole ex boyfriend Bob behind bars for the murder of his wife, Gail Cats. Now you can listen to that first, if you haven't already.

After we wrapped this series.

I felt like I finally put that strange part of my life in the past. But that was wishful thinking, because it turns out that lurking within one cold case was another, the case of our lost sister. In nineteen eighty nine, a few years after Gail Cats disappeared, a woman's torso washed up on Staten Island. She was then misidentified as Gail Cats, and after spending nearly a decade buried in the Cat's family plot, she was exhumed for

Right with us.

There is this Jewish.

Belief that after death, your name is still connected to your soul, and so saying somebody's name after they died is part of how we remember them. We need to give our girl her name back so that we can honor her properly.

We owe that to her, We owe it to.

Every murdered and missing woman whose stories go untold because those stories matter, and because no girlfriend gets left behind, We've decided to come together again to try and find out who she is once and for all. We've got Gail's sister, Elaine Katz, who is a powerhouse of a lawyer. Most importantly for this new investigation, Elaine spent nine years believing that our Jane Doe was her sister and has been wondering who she really is ever since.

When they told me that they had made the wrongful identification, that was a very blow point.

Then there's Mindy Shapiro, my dear friend, who once not so dearly set me up with that aforementioned murderer.

I mean me, at least I say he's perfect on paper. See what you think I thought? I said the.

Exact same thing about him, perfect on paper, exact same words.

Mindy's also a fabulous doctor and the girlfriend's answered to Sherlock Holmes with the nose.

For digging into the unknown.

And finally, our most recent recruit, producer Anna aka Anna the Vegan aka the British One. Anna wrote and produced the first series of the podcast and has been officially adopted as a member of our club and adopted in general.

I have no children.

You could be my daughter. You can be my daughter.

So where do we start? This is a thirty five year old cold case, a case that couldn't be solved by the police, the medical examiners, or anyone else. As I'm sure you've picked up, We're not professional detectives. We're just three nosy Jewish ladies and one tofu eating producer.

But we really really care.

I'm determined that by the end of the series, not only will we know this missing girlfriend's name, but we will know her story.

So back to that question, where do we start? Well, how bad?

At the beginning, I'm Carol Fisher and from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts, this is the girlfriends Our Lost Sister, Episode one a double mitzvah.

Okay, where are we?

Statton Island Fairy?

I think you go?

This is free, that's.

Free, truth be told.

I don't know how you're meant to open up a cold case, but in all my years working in hospice care, one thing I've learned is that there's a reason we often lean on ceremony and ritual when remembering the dead. It brings order to what we can understand, which is why myself, Mindy and producer Anna are heading to Staten Island.

We're on a pilgrimage back.

To the place where our lost sister first appeared before she got irreversibly tangled up with the story of Gailcats and our lives. We get ushered onto the ferry and grab a seat downstairs, leaving the other tourists shivering on deck.

It is h I'm really lucky.

It's not raining. M h.

Even if it's a little cold.

It's a little cold is an understated I'm happy to know I got it, but I will give New York it stews. Despite the cold, it's a beautiful day. There isn't a cloud in the sky, and the water is shimmering, reflecting the Manhattan Skyline back onto its own high rise windows. Just for a moment, we feel like we're on vacation, with Mindy Shapiro in the role of tour guide.

Statue of Liberty, hey Hey, New York, New Ywick.

As we move past Brooklyn and then through the industrial parts of the Bay, I wonder if we're retracing a journey our Jane Doe could have taken through the water before her torso washed up on the shore on May twenty one, nineteen eighty nine. It gives me a kind of spooky feeling to imagine we're following in her footsteps, so to speak.

Everybody seems to be going out our boat docks at Saint George's Terminal in Staten Island.

We follow the crowd into a building which has the vibe of a small town strip mall, and after an embarrassing amount of time spent trying to find the exit, we eventually make it out.

Okay Street.

Where on the street Okay.

After a short drive, we arrive at Front Street, the location where the torso first washed ashore. When we get out of the car, we emerge into a new industrial landscape. There's apartment buildings, offices, and construction sites, and in front of.

Us, well, here are the piers.

Most of the piers are fenced off due to building works, and we can't spot an entry point, so I get creative joy wirecutters. As we're looking for a spot to enter totally legally, we notice that none of these piers are matching the location we had in our minds. We always imagined that she was found on the water's edge, but there's no beaches here, it's just water right up to the ocean wall. So we walk a little further out and that's when we see it.

I'm just looking at a little beachhead right over there. Yeah, like, this kind of beach area.

Looks more like what I imagined.

And I swear I heard that it washed.

Washed Sure, sure I remember those words.

Yeah, this feels way more like it.

Yeah, this seems right.

We arrived at some rail lanes fencing off a shingle beach with some old wooden posts jutting out of the water. It's a remarkably peaceful scene with the waves crashing gently onto the pebbles, and probably for the first time in our goddamn lives, all three of us shut up.

The whole thing is so horrific.

But standing here, this is actually quite a beautiful scene beneath the bridge and the New York skyline and the sound of the water. So as violent and horrific as her death would have been, you know, maybe there is some karma, that there's some calmness and beauty to where her her heart was found.

You know, it also makes me really think about Gail and how she was just discarded into the water. Bob Beerenbaum, my ex boyfriend, and Gail Katz's husband, threw Gail's body out of a plane into the Atlantic Ocean. It's unlikely that Gail's body will ever be found, which only makes our investigation into our Jane Doo's identity all the more meaningful. To think of someone's life taken not only way too short, but then disposed of the way it was, and then

So I thought i'd read something.

There's this beautiful poem that people often read at funerals called remember Me, And if you listen to the words, I think you'll agree that it's fitting. To the living, I am gone, to the sorrowful, I will never return to the angry I was cheated, But to the happy I am at peace, And.

To the faithful.

I have never left. I cannot speak, but I can listen. I cannot be seen, but.

I can be heard.

So as you stand upon a shore, gazing at a beautiful sea, as you look upon a flower and admire its simplicity, remember me, Remember me in your heart, your thoughts, and your memories of the times we loved, the times we cried, the times we fought, the times we laughed. For if you always think of me, I will never have gone. That's really pretty.

I think this was very perfect and Elaine would be pleased. Yeah, well, we didn't do this for Gail.

Well, because we didn't have closure for Gail. No, you know, and so this is.

Just a double mitzvah.

A mitzvah is a good deed, and we hope that this whole series will be a mitzvah, a chance for us to not only identify this missing woman, but to honor her, to honor Gail Katz, and in doing so, to honor all women who are missing or unidentified. I'm sure this won't be a seamless journey. We're taking a leap into the unknown here, and anything could happen. But I can promise you one thing. It's going to be fueled by a whole lot of love and a bunch of.

Food and good wine.

Which brings me to the next step in our investigation. We're going back to Elaine's home for food and of course some wine, but also because she's managed to dig out a stash of files that may hold the key to identifying our lost sister.

Be sure, you guys, I'm hungry.

I'm gonna I have food myself into.

A stupid When you arrive in any Jewish mother's house, she will always have more than you need on the table. We can't help it, and a lain Cats is no exception. So yes, I cry. I'll take your many bottles of wine, your cheese, your chocolates and crackers, even if I'm not actually hungry, because there's no better way of showing your love to a Jewish mother than consuming whatever she puts in front of you. And they're nestled in among the

By the way, I am made a second at all of my documents from the medical Examiner, which are quite extensive.

I believe it's all of Elaine's files from our sister Gail's case.

You know there's a lot there.

Look at all these now, yeah, the postillios.

As we start flicking through them, it takes me and Mindy back to the nineties when a group of us girlfriends were investigating Gail's disappearance and drinking wine. And now thirty years on, we're round another table with more wine. But our club has grown, our sisterhood is stronger. This time we're joined by Anna Elaine, and we're all here to do something momentous in honor of the women who can't be here.

I need to always feel like I'm doing something in memory of and in honor of my sister in order to live with the sadness of all of it.

Does it come in way? Sor said constant?

I had to tell you, it's constant as always.

It's this constant pain that's driving Elane to help us identify this Jane Doe. After all, her torso spent nearly a decade in her sister Gail's grave and Elaine doesn't even know her name. But that's not the only reason she wants to help. Elaine knows what it's like to have a loved one disappear and to be left so long without any answers.

That was something that was really important to me, reuniting the family with the torso, giving another family closure.

As another glass of wine is poured, we turn our attention back to the files. We want to find out how our Jane Doe was ever misidentified as Gail.

In the first place.

In the box of files we find a document that talks about a number of complaints from the Cat's family to the Manhattan Medical Examiner. It seems like in nineteen ninety, the year after the torso was identified as Gail Cats, that communication had really broken down between the Cat's family

The police had them too.

So with growing pressure from all sides, in nineteen ninety, the medical examiners decided to proceed with DNA testing. They first asked the Catses if they could exhume the body, but then they go back on themselves and they say that actually they may not need to exhume the torso because they kept some bone fragments.

Without my knowing, they kept a piece of her for further testing without our permission. I had a little enough piece to start with, and you took a piece. You kept a peace.

Yes, the DNA testing was inconclusive. The science just wasn't there yet. We find a handwritten note in the box of files that says, if DNA cannot be done, we'll stand by ID. And so that's how our lost sister continued to be known as gael Cats for eight more years. So what evidence did they have to make such a big call will it all seems pretty thin to me. Both women were light skinned and slim, and each of

According to the medical examiner, this.

Was the most persuasive piece of evidence they had to suggest that this torso belonged to Galecats, But even the radiologists at the time said that definite idea is not possible, but that it was probably the same patient. Probably really, but there's one major fact that they seem to have

Our heads about it. We'll have to add this.

To our long list of questions for the medical examiner. But it's getting late, and that's a job for another day. In the taxi home, Mindy and Anna are chatting away, excited to see what more they can learn from the files. But I just keep hearing that phrase go around in my head. Probably the same patient that Probably it didn't just mess up Gail's case, it also stopped any further investigation into our lost sister's true identity for years. There could be a family out there looking for her and

Do it yourself.

It's the morning after Elaine gave us the files, Anna and Mindy are riding on the New York Subway, each of them nursing a slight red wine hangover. So what better time to read an autopsy report. These documents obviously don't make for easy reading, not least because doctor Mindy's getting a taste of her own medicine.

This is not fair making me read another doctor's writing. No. No.

Eventually, Mindy manages to decipher the reports. They're from June nineteen eighty nine, one month after the torso washed up on Staten Island and was first investigated by the medical examiners.

I'm reading that autopsy report. It was pretty futrip, was it.

Yeah. We're not going to share the more sensitive details about her remains, because our girl has already had so much taken from her. But there's one important detail we can share with you.

Just a heads up.

The next section contains some details that might be hard to listen to.

It was clear that both.

Her limbs and head had been deliberately cut off, meaning the end of her life was a violent, horrible act. She didn't just fall off some boat into shark infested waters.

And there's more.

So we're looking at the toxicology report from the New York City Medical Examiner's data.

It's important to note that her torso has been in the water for a while, so not everything will show up, but they do detect something something that showed that our Jane Doe had recently taken cocaine. But it's New York in the eighties, so a bit of cocaine in the system. Frankly doesn't really narrow down our list of potential victims.

Our lost sister could still be anyone.

But if she was killed by someone or she's been registered as a missing person, then we might be able to find her case online. And if there's one thing Mindy's good at, it's going deep into dark corners of the web.

So I go to a site Unsolved the Murders. Oh god, yeah, but you didn't give me anything to go on, baby, I have.

Nothing nothing, I've got nothing. Okay, I got bupp Gus. I got buff gus here.

So, unfortunately, there's no huge, flashing website that says Staten Island Torso cold case solved. But Mindy's got a hunch that a vital clue about our lost sister's identity could be sitting somewhere in the archives of the New York City Medical Examiners, and I think it's safe to say she's been pestering them.

I have written about eighteen emails to the office of the Medical Examiner, and they basically say, unless you're the family, you can't really get this information. I said, well, she's an identified how could there be any family And I don't know that I'm not.

I don't know that I'm not the family. What is family really?

Because calling this Jane Do our lost sister is no accident.

We've been thinking about her for a long time.

And at one point Elaine Kat truly believed she was her sister.

She certainly feels like family to us. I told them.

About Gail and how he got there, and they said, well, do you want to speak with media? And I said no, I don't want to speak with media, and you go, well, what are you going to do with this information.

Well, hopefully solve a thirty five year old cold case and talk about it on this podcast, and they.

Go, well, you need to speak with legal.

Okay.

So I'm waiting to hear from Lee. If I don't hear from legal, because I'm pushing in.

I'm a New Yorker and I know where they live.

I'll go and say I want to speak to legal.

Guess what we never heard from legal. So we turn up the heat and file a Freedom of information access request, but we're still waiting to hear back.

It looks like if we're going to.

Get anywhere, we're going to need to start knocking on some doors, whether people want us to or not. Coming up next on The girlfriends Our Lost Sister, Doctor Detective Mindy Shapiro takes to the streets.

Hi, it's doctor Shapiro, and I'd like to speak with the deputy medical Examiner. I'd like all information that I can find about that torso. Could you say perpetrator for me?

Perpetrator were trying to identify this torso, which is maybe a fool errand I don't.

Think it is.

The girlfriends Our Last Sister is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from novel, visit novel dot Audio. The show is hosted by me, Carol Fisher, and our chief investigator is Mindy Shapiro. To find me on social media, search Carol A.

Fisher. That's Carol with an E.

The season is written and produced by Anna Sinfield and Lee Meyer. Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr. The editor is Joe Wheeler.

Max O'Brien is.

Our executive producer. Our fact checker is Dannia Suleiman. Production management from Shurie Houston and Charlotte Woolf. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander, Additional engineering by Daniel Kempson, Music supervision by Anna Sinfield and Nicholas Alexander. Original music composed and performed by Luisa Gerstein and produced by Luisa Gerstine and Nicholas Alexander. The series artwork was designed by Christina Limpol. Story development by Anna Sinfield. Willard Foxton is

Team at w MEE and Especial.

Shout out to Vince Hayward, who's my life partner in true Crime, for taking on the role of girlfriend's confidante and lead tech support

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