Opinion ID: 147061
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Bierenbaum's inconsistent statements

Text: Over the years between Katz's disappearance and his trial for her murder, Bierenbaum offered various accounts of his activities and various theories concerning her whereabouts. Consistently absent from any of his accounts of his activities on Sunday, July 7, 1985 was the fact that he rented an airplane in New Jersey that afternoon and went flying. Bierenbaum gave detailed statements of his activities to both investigating officers in the days following Katz's disappearance. He lied to both officers, telling both of them that he had remained in the apartment until approximately 5:30 p.m. when he left for the party in New Jersey. At 4:30 p.m. he was already in New Jersey, flying his rented airplane. About three weeks after Katz disappeared, Bierenbaum began an affair with Karen Caruana, a nurse educator at Maimonides Medical Center where Bierenbaum was a surgical resident. The affair began while Bierenbaum was vacationing in South Hampton on Long Island during the month of August, and lasted about six weeks. During that period Caruana and Bierenbaum discussed Katz's disappearance. Caruana testified that Bierenbaum told her that his apartment and car had been searched and that he was clean as far as any police investigation was concerned. She stated that he told her this before the end of September. At that time the police had not searched his apartment or car. Bierenbaum told Caruana that he had hired a private investigator who had found evidence that Katz was in California. To the owner of Bierenbaum's vacation rental property in South Hampton, he speculated that Katz had a drug problem and that she had disappeared with drug dealers. He told another renter that he had gone looking for Katz in Central Park, found her towel and suntan lotion, but she was gone. Bierenbaum told Katz's friend Ellen Schwartz that he had spoken with Katz's therapist Dr. Baran, who had told him that Katz was very depressed and she was concerned that Katz might hurt herself. Dr. Baran denied that she'd had such a conversation with Bierenbaum and denied that Katz was suicidal. Two or three months later Bierenbaum told another of Katz's friends, Maryann DeCesare, that he thought she was waitressing by a seaside community. DeCesare said that Bierenbaum often mentioned water, that Katz was outside cooling off. Dr. Roberta Karnofsky, an anesthesiologist, had a year-long relationship with Bierenbaum beginning in fall 1985, while she was a medical student under his supervision. He told Karnofsky that he had gotten into an argument with his wife one day, that she went to cool off in Central Park, that she had been seen one time around the area of Central Park, but had never been seen again. To Karnofsky Bierenbaum speculated that Katz was in a fugue state or that she had run off with someone to the Caribbean. Bierenbaum told Karnofsky that the police had asked him if he had removed the apartment rug or had it cleaned, and that he had answered that he had not. Katz's friend Yvette Feis was in the apartment several days after Katz was reported missing, noticed that the living room rug was gone and asked about it. Bierenbaum told Feis that the cats had fouled the rug and that he was having it cleaned. Dr. Stephanie Youngblood, a chiropractor who lived with Bierenbaum from 1990 to 1993, testified that Bierenbaum told her that Katz had a drug problem, was having extramarital affairs, and that he felt her death was drug-related: [h]e felt she went to Central Park to hang out with her druggie friends.