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Season Six: Two Lawyers and a Doctor Walk into the Bar
186 Plays13 days ago
In today’s episode, we talk about three cases involving legal shenanigans.
https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2023/04/FELONY-COMPLAINT-HOLLEY.pdf
https://www.justiceformegan.com/
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Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Introduction & Podcast Format
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:58
Speaker
So we do these kind of multi-part cases that are on like one thing. And then we do some cases that are like multiple parts within it that are just like stories that don't quite merit their own deep dive, I guess would be the word.
Theme: 'Legal Shenanigans'
00:01:15
Speaker
Or episode, but they have a theme. Yeah, they usually have a theme. I think today's theme would be adequately described if I use the words... Legal shenanigans.
00:01:27
Speaker
Sure. um Some of these are updates and some of these were new things for people.
The Tacoma Lawyer Case: An Overview
00:01:33
Speaker
i I pulled three of them and i you know they had been stuck in the back of my mind. So I was like, I want to cover those.
00:01:41
Speaker
And the first one, actually, it happened earlier in the year and I sat on it thinking maybe something else might go down. I think the reason it ended up in my feed is because it had the word lawyer And then the guy had four or five names.
00:01:57
Speaker
So it was like, you'll like this. But I first read about this, I think right when he got arrested and I kind of blew it off.
00:02:08
Speaker
it was It's an interesting story and it's kind of, well, it's terrifying for the prosecution's witness in this case. It's not like a um like a murder story or something. So I pause at calling it like lighthearted, but I think it's less than some of these other ones we're going to get to in a second.
00:02:29
Speaker
I pulled an article from the News Tribune that had a little write-up on it.
Crimes and Conviction of Christopher Hendry
00:02:33
Speaker
It's from February 1st, and a guy named Peter Talbot wrote this. And it says, Tacoma lawyer who stalked college student he met on dating site sentenced to prison.
00:02:45
Speaker
I blew it off because I was picturing like I've had all these grinder tender murder things in my feed for a while. And I've sort of ignored those.
00:02:59
Speaker
Um, some of them are very interesting. ah there was this whole thing you and I looked at that I, I think it was sort of nicknamed the tick tock murders and,
00:03:12
Speaker
I watched it. I watched the whole trial. And at the end of it, I was like, that's pretty straight up what happened here. I have no idea why this is on all the court feeds as a ah live trial. um But this was not your normal Grindr Tinder murder situation.
00:03:30
Speaker
wasn't a murder to start with. But the description here is really worth getting into. And it just says, a Tacoma lawyer convicted by a jury of stalking, harassing, and extorting a 21-year-old college student that he met through a dating website and then represented as her attorney was sentenced Friday to nearly 10 years in prison.
00:03:56
Speaker
All right. So we've got 21-year-old college student. And we have this gentleman, Christopher Jason Paul Hendry. He's 45 years old Now, he had already been found guilty back in December.
00:04:11
Speaker
And what he was guilty of was three counts of stalking, two counts of second degree extortion, felony harassment with a threat to kill, 11 counts of violating a protective order, and five counts of violating a court order.
00:04:29
Speaker
And I gotta say, like right off the top, that is definitely stalking behavior. If you're if they're able to put that together, And like that's what you're charged with. You're either the unluckiest person on the planet or you have some serious OCD problem going All I can think to myself is like the person either side of this, okay the defendant or the victim even, sitting and thinking to themselves, why why was I ever on that dating website?
00:04:57
Speaker
yeah Yeah. We're to get to that in a second because it has like some interesting thoughts there. So CJPH... who is the defendant here. I'm not saying his whole name over and over.
00:05:09
Speaker
He's a U.S. Army veteran, and he earned his license to practice law in 2019. So basically had it for five years, decided he didn't want to do that anymore. Just didn't want to resign in a different way.
00:05:22
Speaker
He was previously the sole practitioner of a practice called Hendry Law, which is his last name.
Sentencing and Impact on Victim
00:05:30
Speaker
That was a firm focused on personal injury, estate planning, and employment law.
00:05:35
Speaker
He was also an intern for the Pierce County Prosecutor's Office from 2017 to 2019, which makes this weirder.
00:05:46
Speaker
He was in school. Yeah, yeah. I figured he was a 203L doing his work. ah The punishment is handed down by Judge Jennifer Andrews. She imposed nine years and nine months, so almost 10 years, for his...
00:06:02
Speaker
for his set up here. He's found guilty by a jury, but she includes multiple sentencing enhancements because the jurors found that he was committing the felony stalking and the extortion and harassment with a sexual motivation.
00:06:17
Speaker
He will be required to register as a sex offender. And as defense attorney said Friday, he will inevitably lose his license with the Washington state bar association, which I assume is because it's impossible to pass a character and fitness exam when you've been convicted in this.
00:06:36
Speaker
ah The deputy prosecuting attorney that was overseeing this was Corrine Snepp. She argued for a lengthier sentence, um aiming to get, this looks like 150 months, so about 12 and a half years.
00:06:51
Speaker
She said that CJPH had used his role as the victim's attorney to collect personal information from her, then harassed and stalked her. See, you're only allowed to do that if you're a police officer. If you're an attorney, it's a crime.
00:07:07
Speaker
The defendant terrorized the victim for over a year, and he did it after a court order had been signed and another court order had been signed. After this, he was repeatedly taken into custody, given more court orders, and released.
00:07:23
Speaker
He completely disregarded the court's orders in this case, and his main point became the purpose of destroying the victim's life. So according to all these court records that they've gathered here, and Mr. Talbot has put an order for us.
00:07:39
Speaker
CJPH and the victim met in November, 2021 through ah dating website that connects older men with women looking for a quote sugar daddy or a man to offer financial support in exchange for companionship and hookups.
00:07:55
Speaker
The name of this website is quote secret benefits.com. The victim was attending a college in Pierce County. She had been charged with DUI the month after she began talking with CJPH, and he said he would represent her pro bono.
00:08:12
Speaker
So pro bono typically means they're going to represent you free of charge, or they're going to tax the state, or they're going to tax like whatever funds are available for like the support to represent you, and they're going to do their part for free.
00:08:28
Speaker
I think he had a different definition in mind. Yes. His pro bono, I don't want to say it on True Crime Excess, but there is a hell of a pun in here.
00:08:39
Speaker
The victim tells the News Tribune the relationship had begun to spiral into uncomfortable territory after he like volunteers to represent her.
00:08:50
Speaker
So they had this sexual relationship in January 2022. That includes one encounter at the woman's dorm room that the woman alleged was not consensual. At this point in time, this leads her to obtaining a sexual assault protection order against CJPH.
00:09:10
Speaker
They had subsequent sexual encounters that the woman did not allege were non-consensual. In February 2022, so the next month, so the next month The woman tried to end the relationship with CJPH and she began to receive harassing text messages and emails.
00:09:30
Speaker
So according to the prosecuting attorney's office, they said that CJPH was sending horrifying messages about the woman to everyone. He was posting her personal information about her online.
00:09:42
Speaker
He sent letters, emails, messages, information to her school in an attempt to humiliate her. He was arrested And he posted a $100,000 bail bond.
00:09:54
Speaker
So he was released. But then, according to the prosecutors, he went right back to sending her messages. He was sending her messages that were designed for her to know that she could not escape from him no matter what.
00:10:07
Speaker
This is from a lawyer in our community who knows better than the average civilian the importance of a court order. That is a quote from Corrine. CJPH's defense attorney, Aaron White, of the South Sound Law Group,
00:10:20
Speaker
said the case had never made sense to her. She tells the judge that CJPH was one of the best clients she'd ever had. She said, never once did I see that side of him that the state is so convinced is there.
00:10:32
Speaker
Even today, before this, when we're meeting in the jail, he is the one picking me up, and he is the one saying that everything is going to be okay. Requesting a lower end sentence, Aaron White highlighted CJPH's military service, which included four to six combat deployments in Iraq that left him with a severe back injury and nerve damage affecting his feet.
00:10:56
Speaker
She also said that he'd been diagnosed with major depressive disorder in this case, and he had not been there for his wife. I really bear the lead on that one. It's not funny, but yeah, you're right. They did.
00:11:10
Speaker
So according to Aaron White, the wife had been diagnosed with stage four cancer. And Aaron White says he lost his freedom, he lost his reputation, his job, his ability to practice law, all the things that he had gone forward to do for seven years, it's all gone.
00:11:24
Speaker
When it was CJPH's turn to speak, he stood and said he was sorry to the victim in the case that she had to endure months of endless harassment. No one deserves that, he said. And he said he knew the court was waiting to hear him take responsibility, but he would not and could not compromise his integrity.
00:11:41
Speaker
He says, I'm sorry that the victim felt unsafe, but I did not commit these crimes and I cannot admit to them. He apologized to his wife for seeking an extramarital affair and for his, quote, selfish and despicable, end quote, acts that had preceded this whole cascade of tragedy.
00:11:59
Speaker
As he began to talk about his wife's cancer diagnosis, he handed the letter he was reading from to his attorney and sat down and cried. Aaron White, his attorney, finished reading it to the court. And before handing down CJPH's sentence, Judge Andrews said the case made no sense to her either, but she said that she believed the evidence in the case was overwhelming.
00:12:21
Speaker
And she ended with, I have a man in front of me with everything that most defendants don't have, willing to risk everything. And I think that makes the behavior the behaviors egregious.
00:12:33
Speaker
And I have to agree with Judge Andrews on that, that um if even half of what they're alleging here is true in this jury trial that they put forward. and food Like, this guy threw away his entire life for this.
00:12:47
Speaker
He did. um But if we go back to... ah was it? Secret... Benefits. Secret benefits. So, the whole...
00:13:00
Speaker
um The whole concept behind that is like the whole sugar, i guess it's sugar daddies. I don't know if they have like an opposite, like if older financially stable women also look for younger men there.
00:13:15
Speaker
But um the the way that this case goes, it obviously was older financially stable men looking for younger females that they could have relationships with, right? Yeah.
00:13:33
Speaker
yeah Sugar daddy type relationships. so And if you think about that dynamic for a second, now I'm not putting anybody down. People can do whatever they want, but that is setting someone up for ah potential disaster I mean, not so not that like regular dating sites aren't setting people up for potential disasters too, but if you think about the power dynamic of a sugar daddy situation, right?
00:14:03
Speaker
Yeah. it's It's not a great... it's not a great idea um for a lot of people. You have to be very emotionally stable ah to begin with, which typically would lead one not to be in that type of situation.
00:14:18
Speaker
But have a feeling what happened with him, if I calculated correctly, he became, he got his law license when he was about 40. Give or take, yeah.
00:14:31
Speaker
Okay. And, you know, sounds like his wife had cancer, I guess. I mean, that's not really brought up and it's not really relevant, except that maybe...
00:14:43
Speaker
It seems to be being used as sort of... like it could be they're taking advantage of that situation or they're exaggerating it but it kind of reads like they're just trying to put up a couple of mitigating factors and say... i think they're i think they're both using it for the sympathy factor, but also looking at it from the perspective of his life had already been crazy. I just don't know what the timing of it all is because they don't get into that.
00:15:07
Speaker
Well, sure. but and So he could have been perhaps... ah seeking companionship because his wife was sick, like something to that effect, right?
00:15:18
Speaker
Right. And, you know, he loves his wife, but it's so stressful or whatever that, you know, he went elsewhere. But it seems to me like perhaps everything sort of culminated at, you know, 40, which, you know, is midlife.
00:15:32
Speaker
Right. and he thought he was setting up a situation that he wanted, and then it didn't go the way he wanted it to. Right. Which is exactly where it spiraled out of control, right? Yeah. Where if she had not tried to get rid of him, not have anything to do with him or whatever, i don't know exactly how that all went down, but it it's almost like it fed him.
00:16:02
Speaker
to yeah try even harder. And that's like a, you know, that's a really bad control issue. And it's fortunate no one got hurt, honestly, because it seems like, now, the non-consensual sexual encounter in her dorm room, and then the subsequent consensual encounter encounters, I mean, was she sending him mixed messages?
00:16:31
Speaker
um You know, I don't like to speculate real deep on that. But, I mean, ultimately, like i I think that their whole arrangement from the beginning is' a little weird.
00:16:48
Speaker
You know? Yeah, I i agree. um i And I don't think... He wasn't charged with rape, right? No, he was he was not... He wasn't charged with any kind of sexual assault, but they make the allegation clear in here that one of the things he's violating...
00:17:07
Speaker
is ah sexual assault protective order, which you do have to at least allege there's been an assault to get those. I think Right, I see. um And, you know, i don't know if if you know, no means no, whatever. It just seems that's a really odd thing to have it then, but, you know, subsequent encounters were consensual.
00:17:28
Speaker
Well, what's going on, right? I will also say the fact that he's 45 and she's 21. right. yeah I would say right now in 2025, people that are 45 versus people that are 21, they came from completely different worlds.
00:17:48
Speaker
They did, yeah. And it is, i think that's going to slap a lot of people in the face, honestly. i agree, yeah.
00:17:59
Speaker
Because the expectations involved, and especially when you're talking about like a romantic relationship or encounters or whatever it was, right?
00:18:12
Speaker
I feel like even 21-year-old female going on a sugar like It doesn't mean she's given up all of her opportunities to say no to whatever is put out there, right?
00:18:27
Speaker
Yes. And I feel like a 45-year-old man could think that they could buy their way into anything. and that could And that could backfire. you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I mean, look, where you're right about the the different ages. This could definitely all backfire.
00:18:45
Speaker
they put out her name in a press release a couple years ago when this all started. Because this, like... This went on for 2022 and 2023. Like we're coming in on the tail end of all of this, but if people want to go down a rabbit hole, it's worth poking around and and like looking at the different court documents. Washington's pretty open about them.
00:19:06
Speaker
um And they're operating in such gray area here on both sides of this. So if we take away this the sexual assault element and we take away the stalking for just a minute, they're both doing something very, very wrong.
00:19:21
Speaker
Because sugaring is basically sex work. when you're and And you can go on and. If you really want to like go down that path about secret benefits, I did for this episode. Go read a ton about it.
00:19:32
Speaker
There are entire subreddits dedicated to like reviewing different like sugar baby, sugar adult, whatever...
00:19:45
Speaker
mama or daddy or whatever, like you could go in and read about like all the websites and like this website was a terrible experience from the jump. Like for these people, like they're paying per message. Like it gets very expensive, very quickly.
00:19:57
Speaker
Even if you don't get to the actual part where you're paying someone for the relationship that you're paying for. And it is a gray area. Cause like, it doesn't have to be out and out sex work, but like ultimately like that's, that's the actual goal.
00:20:11
Speaker
Well, and see to me, And i'm not I'm not saying about this particular case. It just put it in my mind. i can totally see a situation where a poor sugar daddy, and I say poor, I mean like emotionally poor, not financially. Right.
00:20:31
Speaker
Gets sucked into a situation, especially since he's married. Right. Where he's getting like blackmailed. Yeah, and so that's the other side of this is, so she's in a gray area doing that for money.
00:20:47
Speaker
No matter how we look at that, she's in a gray area. Correct, i and he's in a ah gray area for offering it, right? Right, for offering the money, but also he goes into the gray area of like offering legal services when he intends on having a sexual relationship with a client.
00:21:06
Speaker
And that's a completely different kind of gray area. Right. And just to be clear, according to the article, at least, they had started their encounter, at least online, before ah the, d you know, a DUI is a fairly basic type of court case, right? I mean, I know it can be very taxing on somebody, but the ideal thing would be to for him to have had Somebody like had a friend do it, right? Yes.
00:21:36
Speaker
um Not himself. Call it a favor. It would be more acceptable, less gray, but still gray. Yeah, a little gray, but I mean, again, it's, it's pretty cut and dry. It's a pretty cut and dry situation,
Legal Complexities and False Claims
00:21:48
Speaker
right? Either there is evidence and there's going to be a certain punishment or there's not, and there's not. Right. right And so either way, but I have a feeling there was, um, now I don't know the context afterwards, right? I don't know all of it. I just, I know it went through the process of beat he was convicted by a jury,
00:22:10
Speaker
And so i guess I respect that process. However, i can see some interesting nuances here that I find to be a little bit unexpected. i don't know if they're true or not.
00:22:23
Speaker
I hate it for this whole situation. That's a bad thing to have happen, I think. It's a bad thing for the victim that went through it. If, you know, the defendant, the defendant's going to do time, right? Right.
00:22:38
Speaker
Oh, yeah. A lot of time. and He's a sex offender for life, too, because of this. And it makes me wonder, like, well, I don't know that that experience was worth that.
00:22:51
Speaker
I went out and read, like, a lot about him. um he
00:23:00
Speaker
He's either a liar in the way that he presents himself to the world, which I think I'm leaning that way. um or he has a very serious mental health problem.
00:23:12
Speaker
Potentially both. That is possible. Like, he he presents his military service as, like, it's completely overblown. At least like to some at least to some degree,
00:23:25
Speaker
um he yeah I'm just going to say it. He's lying. Like, he's lying about what he did because he couldn't have done what he says he did. um And it's like, it's a really weird nuance, but like, it stuck out to me because he didn't put it on his LinkedIn. He put it on this like one page. That's kind of him trying to build his first personal injury law practice set up.
00:23:50
Speaker
And once I saw that, I was like, okay, I don't believe him on any of this stuff over here. Yeah. Do you think that this type of case ever happens if they didn't meet on secret benefits? No, no, no. Like, so this guy, like the way that shit works, he kind of presents himself as like this alpha warrior too.
00:24:11
Speaker
So if money's exchanged hands, I can't help but think that like, there's a part of this guy that like thinks there's a little ownership going on. Well, and there's expectation with money. Yeah. I um i don't feel like he, and and this is just my assumptions, okay, but I don't feel like he necessarily was actual, you know, financially well off enough to be a true sugar daddy. Maybe he just had more money than he'd had previously in life.
00:24:40
Speaker
And, you know, the the as you're making that transition, he may have had greater expectations than anybody else would have had in a similar situation, right? Yeah.
00:24:52
Speaker
Yeah, that coupled with probably he's a novice at the whole idea. Exactly. And then also, again, i don't know much about the history of it, but if he decided to cheat on his wife and this is what he got out of it, he might have had a lot of resentment, which might have fueled a lot of that whatever was going on that ended him up in this court case, right? This criminal trial and being convicted.
00:25:19
Speaker
You know, I picture this whole situation. I feel horrible for her being assaulted by this man. And then I look at him and I'm like, how do you go? 45. He clearly says multiple places online. He is disabled with a debilitating back injury.
00:25:38
Speaker
How do you like think to yourself, you know what I want to do tonight? I want to find a 21 year old girl online that I pay to take me to her dorm room. to have sex that my body can't handle in a bed that I won't be able to manage with a person who is completely out of my league if for no other reason than youth.
00:26:00
Speaker
It's a weird situation. yeah It's a weird situation. And I feel like there might have been quite a few flags being raised before we got here. Yeah, this is a whole game of flag football.
00:26:13
Speaker
yeah Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, know, I brought this one up because I found it interesting that this is a lawyer. you know, this is a lawyer behaving this way. He's lost everything. probably not anymore. he's No, no, but it that you can't take away from him and that at the time he committed these crimes. Correct. You're right.
00:26:31
Speaker
You're right. He understood the law. He was being given court orders. I know if he's bonding out on the amounts they're describing and bonding out on, which is like a $100,000 bond, if you put down 10% bond you can get out.
00:26:43
Speaker
So that means you pay 10 grand, you go away unless it's unsecured. So on that bond, there will be a release order. And that release order, which a lawyer can clearly read, it will definitely tell you to stay away from and have no contact indirect or otherwise.
00:26:59
Speaker
And probably a lot of other language that says, don't contact this girl in any way. Like even beyond the protective order, don't contact the witness in your case.
00:27:12
Speaker
Well, sure. And, you know, that makes me wonder, like, there has to be an element of so of obsession or something going on there that would cause him to ah continue to contact her. i do wonder if he was on Zoloft.
00:27:27
Speaker
Maybe. That's possible, like some kind of medication issue. I'm i'm being... A little bit sarcastic with just the Zoloft, but I do wonder if there was something chemically going on. there There had to have been something going on because, like even the judge said, he, more than an average citizen, and he would understand what these orders were telling him.
00:27:49
Speaker
And it defies logic at some point, right? No matter how mad you are at somebody else. no matter, no matter what's happening, it defies logic at one of those violation times for you to continue doing it.
00:28:05
Speaker
So either she was setting him up to fall really hard or there was something wrong with him and he continued violating it. Right. And they found that he was guilty of the charges. So, you know, there was some sort of evidence, I, ah i guess, and it It's a weird situation to find. i i just I imagine this guy didn't think this was where he was going to end up. you know In my five, ten-year plan, i doubt very seriously this was on the agenda.
00:28:34
Speaker
Yeah, this one is interesting to me. But unfortunately, there's not much more to this story than what we just said. Nope, he's going to go to jail, and then he'll be a, I think, it did they say for life? A registered sex offender for life?
00:28:48
Speaker
I heard that, but i I couldn't back up that before we started recording. And i tried to look up like how they tier things out there. i don't think he qualifies for like the worst predator in Washington State, but I still think that crimes being as plentiful as they were might...
00:29:07
Speaker
lend him to like a 30-year registry or a lifetime registry. um So I don't know that for sure, but like he's going to at least be a sex offender for 10 years after he gets out in roughly 10 years, nine years, nine months.
00:29:24
Speaker
Yeah. Just take a deep breath before you decide you're going to stalk somebody yeah it's weird so that's february that he gets sentenced and then he goes off to prison ah the next case involves lawyers it's not as lawyery as this one but then maybe it's more lawyer just in a different role this case uh i used a news article for this one on a tampa bay the tampa bay times And this was published May 28th.
00:29:57
Speaker
As far as I can tell, it still contains like the best new information for this ongoing bizarre thing that's happening. ah This involves a guy named Thomas Kozowski. Have you heard about Thomas Kozowski?
00:30:12
Speaker
Just when I was looking up, us covering it. Okay. So he's a Pinellas, Florida plastic surgeon.
00:30:22
Speaker
He's on trial for the murder of an attorney in Largo, Florida. So he tells a judge during a status hearing, they have a homicide status hearing down there at the end of May, that he had not been able to hire a new attorney after his previous defense team withdrew from the case.
00:30:44
Speaker
And then he finally told the judge, who's named, the judge is Joseph Baloney, I think it's B-U-L-O-N-E, and I'm sure it's pronounced Balone or something else, but it kind of seems like Baloney to me.
00:30:58
Speaker
Thomas Kosowski said that no one was willing to help him. And he said that he and his mother do not have the money to hire a private attorney. So my impression of this is that he spent money on some defense attorneys and he found out ah a very hard lesson about being accused of capital burden of an attorney.
00:31:15
Speaker
And that is, on the one hand, not that many attorneys want to work with you And on the other hand, if you kill an attorney, there's a strong possibility of a conflict with other attorneys that they have worked with, worked across from, been in court with, any number of things.
00:31:35
Speaker
Uh, so he may end up with a a public defender. So that's what Judge Maloney asked him. He said, well, then maybe I should appoint the public defender, right? Uh, he's standing there in his orange jail clothes and Thomas Skazowski just, uh, I mean, uh, uh,
00:31:51
Speaker
Tomaz, I guess. i don't know how you pronounce the first name. It looks like Thomas, but it's T-O-M-A-S-Z. He just shrugs. And ah the judge asked him if he wants to represent himself or if he wanted a public defender. And the defendant did like gather his wits about him enough to say that he did not think he should be representing himself.
00:32:12
Speaker
So they pointed the Pinellas Pasco Public Defender's Office to represent the defendant. And he's charged in the first-degree murder of a man named Stephen Cozzi, C-O-Z-Z-I.
00:32:24
Speaker
if like They call this office the Tampa Bay Times, and Pinellas Pascoe says exactly what I was just saying. They say they believe there's probably a conflict. So what happens in that instance, for those of you wondering out there, most good public defender's offices in major metro areas, and they will keep a list on hand of accredited attorneys who work as what's known as a conflict attorney, say you are represented by the office that I work for.
00:32:57
Speaker
And later on, you get off of your charges, but they were serious felonies. So you were exposed to a couple of attorneys in my office during your time that you were waiting trial.
00:33:11
Speaker
been there was a prosecution's witness in that case, and that was someone that we're just going call Thomas. So you and Thomas are linked to a case.
Conflicts of Interest in Legal Representation
00:33:22
Speaker
Your spouses and any of the other people who potentially could have been called as witnesses are then in conflict with all of the attorneys you worked with.
00:33:32
Speaker
If your spouse were to come into my office having been charged in a crime, then they would have to go to a conflict attorney to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Because they need someone who's going to be able to zealously defend them.
00:33:46
Speaker
And the same is true with like witnesses and and experts kind of across the board. So in this instance, they this guy has killed an attorney.
00:33:59
Speaker
The headline on this caught my attention, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. It says, Pinellas doctor accused of killing attorney to get court appointed lawyer. So when I first read this, I was like, wait a second.
00:34:12
Speaker
I don't think that that's what it is. They're accusing him of killing an attorney to get a lawyer? God, no. But I think that could be one of his problems.
00:34:24
Speaker
Yeah, that is definitely going be his problem. So the judge is going to end up like having to go through... what's known as like a capital defender setup.
00:34:36
Speaker
Capital defenders are different than just regular public defenders because in most jurisdictions, if you're taking on capital cases, you have to be like aware of the different procedures that happen in a capital case in order to adequately defend effectively, you know, someone charged with a capital crime.
00:34:56
Speaker
So in Florida, I learned that that's called the Capital Collateral Registry, and it's actually maintained by the JAC there, which is the Justice Administrative Commission.
00:35:06
Speaker
These are attorneys they keep on hand who are willing to take on these cases under the guise of being in the public defender's office. And they're paid for their work. It's not pro bono, like we had mentioned previously um in the other case. it's It's paid work. It's just not very well paid.
00:35:24
Speaker
But they have a list of people willing to do it. And some of those people are doing it for the trial experience. They're doing it because they have a ah zealous soft spot for justice as true crime enthusiasts. or their you know they're really just there because they meet the qualifications and the requirements.
00:35:41
Speaker
And some of those cases are the cases that get a lot of attention. I think sometimes that's the thing that they're there for is like the ability to get more cases from that case.
00:35:53
Speaker
Right. And i went a little bit further and I just wanted to say that in his case, there are 336 documents that have been filed and the majority of them are appointments and withdrawals of additional counsel.
00:36:15
Speaker
Because we're trying to find people that are qualified to take this case. The last person, there was a, ah they finally appointed, see, that was in May, right?
00:36:27
Speaker
Yes. there's May 28th is the rough date we're dealing with here. There's been one, two, three. There's been four attorneys since then that have been appointed and withdrawn.
00:36:42
Speaker
Yeah, I saw that there was another status hearing coming up for June 25th, and it's likely going to be delayed because that's Tuesday. ah Wednesday. Yeah, more than likely. And so I guess the moral here is now he didn't kill the attorney to get a public defender.
00:37:04
Speaker
no, no. no that i was I was making fun of the headline of the case of the article I picked. It seems like the moral of the story here is like, don't kill attorneys.
00:37:15
Speaker
Nobody will represent you. Yeah. This case is actually set already for trial, by the way. um Well, when that article had come out, it was like 10 days before his trial was supposed to start because way back in the beginning of the filings, I believe that he and he invoked his constitutional right to a speedy trial.
00:37:35
Speaker
Correct. But then that attorney withdrew.
00:37:41
Speaker
Correct. So where are we in life that this dude, um he is literally, I don't know if they're seeking the death penalty or not. I have the feeling that there's not even been enough. There's not been an attorney on the case long enough to even have that kind of, you know, conference to decide. But and it seems to me like it is a little bit crazy that a death, a potential death ah sentence defendant is having this issue. I would, I wonder what's going on, you know, because in the official filings, they of course don't, they, they put the like, um the diplomatic appropriate sort of, this is why i need to be off the case.
00:38:33
Speaker
We don't get the other side of it. We'll get a little bit of it here. Do you want to hear like some of the things that are being said? Okay, so in a May 1st hearing, the judge here granted a motion filed by Kosowski's defense team to withdraw from this case, even though it's been set to go to trial in June of 2025 for a while.
00:38:52
Speaker
One of those attorneys was named Bjorn Brunvund. He cited comments that Kosowski and his mother had made during video jail calls indicating they were unhappy with his representation.
00:39:05
Speaker
Kosowski said during the calls that he didn't want to pay Brunvund and was considering filing a grievance or complaint against him. So he basically threatens a bar complaint there. And what he doesn't realize is like, so those jail calls are frequently pulled by the prosecutors and included in discovery because they want to give you as much possible. And sometimes it's because they're being thorough and sometimes it's because they're taking a dig at you.
00:39:29
Speaker
And in this case, it's why because they're taking a dig at whoever the defense was.
00:39:34
Speaker
Or letting them know, right? Yes. It would sort of be there. Because to me, that that sounds like a like they're plotting to not pay, which is an odd thing to be concerned about when you're potentially facing the death penalty.
00:39:52
Speaker
Yes, it is. So he also said during the hearing that he had other reasons he didn't want to share with the judge in open court. But Kozowski didn't want... the lawyer to speak to the judge without him being there as well. So he didn't want any kind of ex parte communication, which I don't think that would technically be ex parte. He didn't want any communication between the judge and the attorneys without him being there.
00:40:15
Speaker
So the judge at that point, not ex parte, that it's appropriate, but ex parte is when the other party is there without you. Right. The judge grants the motion, tells him to find a new lawyer, and then he just he's not able to hire a new lawyer.
00:40:29
Speaker
so they have a new hearing where he says he can't. The judge gives him two more weeks. Now, to be clear, Kozowski's been in jail without bond since his arrest back in March of 2023. At the time, Kozowski was representing himself in a lawsuit that he filed over a medical billing dispute.
00:40:48
Speaker
According to all of this, the person who disappeared and then was found dead in this case, Stephen Cozzi, represented one of the defendants in that case. After one particularly heated deposition, witnesses recalled the doctor followed the lawyer into a restroom within the law office and called him a scumbag.
00:41:08
Speaker
According to Stephen Cozzi's husband, it was about this time that Stephen Cozzi began to fear for his safety. On March 23rd, 2023, Stephen Cosby went to work in his office, but surveillance videos showed that he never left.
00:41:24
Speaker
He did not call into a telephone hearing that was related to Tomasz Kozowski's lawsuit scheduled for that morning, but Kozowski was there. a fellow lawyer found Stephen Cosby's phone and personal items at his desk, where his computer was open to the text of an unsent email.
00:41:42
Speaker
An investigator would find blood in the office's bathroom. Videos also showed a person who detectives believe was Kosowski entering the law office that morning with a cart and later leaving with a large object on top of it.
Pinellas Doctor Case: Evidence and Challenges
00:41:56
Speaker
Other surveillance video obtained by police showed the man driving a Toyota Tundra to Kosowski's Tarpon Springs home. While conducting a search warrant on Kosowski's home, investigators found blood in his garage and in the Toyota Tundra that was caught on surveillance footage.
00:42:11
Speaker
Later on that day that Stephen Cosby went missing, Kozowski's red Toyota Corolla was picked up on license plate readers in the Miami area. When Kozowski was arrested in Tarpon Springs a few days later, police found bloodied ballistic vest, duct tape, a paralyzing agent, syringes with sedatives, brass knuckles, a taser, and $300,000 in cash.
00:42:36
Speaker
Kozowski's DNA was also found in the Corolla's trunk. So according to court documents, Kozowski's blood was mixed with Kozowski's DNA, in a sample collected from the garage floor of Kozowski's home on Seaview Drive in Tarbin Springs. And both men's DNA was found on evidence taken from outside of the restroom door at Stephen Kozzi's office.
00:42:57
Speaker
Investigators suspect that Kozowski dumped Stephen Kozzi's body in a dumpster off US-41 in Collier County. And according to this article, i don't know if this is 100% accurate, the body's never been found.
00:43:11
Speaker
So I'm going to go with that for now because this is Tampa Bay Times reporting that. and And we're going to say his body's not been found. perfect That's exactly why nobody's going to represent him.
00:43:22
Speaker
Yeah. So what's interesting about this is the best ah thing that can come out of this for the defendant here, which sounds terrible, is the potential for this to be considered a violation of his constitutional right to counsel in the Sixth Amendment.
00:43:39
Speaker
Yeah, he's going need an attorney to raise that for him. No, I understand that. But what I'm saying is, like, in terms of time and space, like, they're going to have to move forward. And a lot of this stuff, whether we agree with it or not, is potentially grounds for some level of appellate action later.
00:44:00
Speaker
Even though, like you said, it will take an attorney. Correct. And I do see a trend here, though, but... If you take it and if you consider what you just were talking about. So this dude was, did you say he was pro se in some sort of issue? in ah and a, men i like a billing lawsuit. Yeah.
00:44:21
Speaker
Okay. And so he had sued somebody or he was being sued. It looks to me like he's suing to collect money from someone. Okay. Well, it's even weirder that you would go up against like,
00:44:37
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. That's really weird. And he clearly had $300,000 cash at that time.
00:44:45
Speaker
And so what on earth, earth but um it's going to you're going to be really hard pressed to find ah that. That's a lot of evidence ah that you've got that you just spoke of as far as the vehicle being on video and,
00:45:04
Speaker
ah blood being found, and that's a lot ah pointing in the direction of guilt, right? I mean, it's certainly bolstering a prosecution's case, yes.
00:45:15
Speaker
And it's interesting to me that you know defense attorneys will do a lot of things, but maybe this is the line. Maybe they won't defend somebody that very possibly killed another attorney. And this wasn't a personal thing. This was over a, ah a pra this was over business, right? A billing issue. Yeah.
00:45:41
Speaker
And, and the attorney wasn't personally known to the defendant. I don't believe it. And he was just doing a job, right? Yes. And so that's going to be doing it well.
00:45:52
Speaker
That's going to be really tough for anybody to defend. I think, It's fascinating. Yeah, it was fascinating. What are these documents you're sending me?
00:46:05
Speaker
Those are just the very latest on like the appointment. This is after the article. Right. It's the appointment of um the attorney that was appointed to him, and then that attorney practically immediately withdrawing. With a conflict or something.
00:46:21
Speaker
Oh, yeah, this person has scheduling conflicts. like They have a lot of trials coming on And that's the other thing you're going to run into, like I will say this. If you guys want to go just down a rabbit hole and you like legal stuff, because I know I've had some people like talk to me about different legal things through email and some of the rare social media appearances um I've made.
00:46:43
Speaker
the Legal stuff has come up. A lot of times I have this very old Twitter account for True Crime Access, and um people send things there. I've noticed a lot of those are missing people or custody cases.
00:46:56
Speaker
And um I try to get back to all of them. If you're one of those type people that just likes reading legal documents that have sort of an obscure edge to them, this is the case for that.
00:47:08
Speaker
This guy's name again is Thomas Kozowski, K-O-S-O-W-S-K-I. His first name is T-O-M-A-S-Z. He's a Pinellas County, Florida,
00:47:20
Speaker
county florida plastic surgeon when all this begins. He's been in jail for over two years. And Meg is just sending me paperwork on it because like there's a lot. There's a plethora of paperwork to read on this case.
00:47:37
Speaker
um Unfortunately, it kind of looks pretty straightforward to me as ah like from the discovery perspective. If they really have all of this and all this matches up, it would be hard to overcome that.
00:47:50
Speaker
But I've seen cases like this where
00:47:54
Speaker
like That last name is throwing me off and I haven't heard this guy talk. Have you heard him talk anywhere? Does he have an accent? I haven't heard him. If this guy were from someplace, had a big family, because mom's involved here, i could see like a brother or like a stepdad or like a close friend um committing these acts on his behalf if there was something going on.
00:48:17
Speaker
i don't think that's the case. I just think that would be a possibility to explain some of it. But the rest of it, I think this guy did it, and like it's going to be very difficult to find counsel for him. If he does get off, it'll be on a constitutional violation for not being able to get into trial.
00:48:35
Speaker
I think that um it's going to be really hard, though. ah So what you had raised as a typical defense, yeah as a defense attorney, it's almost like they won't cross that line here because it was an attorney just doing their job that was killed.
00:48:51
Speaker
It could be that, too. And like what's interesting about him is he doesn't strike me off the cuff. It's having a lot of friends and whatnot that they could point to and say there's an alternative person.
00:49:03
Speaker
um It just... ah He clearly is accused of murdering an adversary in what to me looks like a civil slash administrative business matter.
00:49:20
Speaker
That does not bode well. It's not going to, honestly. It's not, and and especially if it's... This is like... Any professional's worst nightmare, right? As far as Kind of, yeah. Kind of.
00:49:37
Speaker
Just, you know, going about their business and and going into work one day. And then, like, as far as the surveillance shows, he never left the office again, but ah a guy with a cart did, right? Yeah.
00:49:51
Speaker
That happened to be driving the same vehicle this dude did. And it's concerning, right? That's a very concerning. Yeah, then they track that vehicle back to the house and they find the DNA all over the place. He has all this crazy stuff in his car.
00:50:06
Speaker
And how is it that somebody that's ah a medical doctor, he's a plastic surgeon, how can it that somebody that's so smart be so stupid? Oh, I could totally see like God complex coming into play here.
00:50:20
Speaker
It just seems like you would think that one all the way through and be like, I wonder like how that's going to end. Yeah. I don't, I don't think, I think with a lot of this stuff you and I cover, there's not a lot of critical thinking and there's certainly not a lot of thinking things through.
00:50:34
Speaker
Definitely not. I feel like that's pretty much the moral of the story for everyone that commits a heinous crime and gets caught. They just didn't think that all the way through. Cause it's never worth it. Yeah. i We, I've got like one last story to segue through.
00:50:49
Speaker
I'll say this, like,
00:50:53
Speaker
I used to be of the mindset, just don't put yourself in that situation.
00:50:59
Speaker
I don't know that people plan on this, though. That's that's what I was about to say. i think we've, like, either i was naive in thinking that the percentage was so low of random acts that, like, it would never affect me, blah, blah, blah.
00:51:14
Speaker
Or... Maybe the acts were less prevalent when the population was lower and social media was less prevalent. I'm sure there's like a number of reasons. But like like in the short period of 24 months, like I've gone to like having people threaten me for things. like like And I'm on their side.
00:51:37
Speaker
And then a similar thing had happened and to someone else very close to me. like like These things are playing out in court. And like, you don't realize like how quickly something can be taken seriously.
00:51:50
Speaker
And ah like one of them was an open-ended threat to the person that's close to me. And the the threat to me was someone that like I was supposed to be working for. And I felt like I was diligently working for them. but like having talked about these two cases, particularly the lawyer out of Washington and now the plastic surgeon out of Pinellas, like,
00:52:15
Speaker
like sometimes rational thinking, and I'm not even getting to critical thinking, just rational thinking completely escapes people and they make a decision that is so impulsive and has such long ranging and reaching effects on their life and other people's lives that they don't even realize it. Like, you know, like we've, we've seen things in the news recently about conspiracy theories and about And that that can go the direction of politics or true crime or like some of it's just like totally like normal blase stuff is suddenly turned into this thing to put under a microscope.
00:52:59
Speaker
But like what people aren't realizing is that the person holding the microscope is like a toddler. And it's like this image from a cartoon. So the microscope, yes, it's actually being pointed at something, but like you're looking through it thinking this person has put the microscope on the answer.
00:53:17
Speaker
And they're just trying to magnify the sun and kill the ants walking through the beam of like the magnifying glass that they're holding up. So you're you're not understanding that part.
00:53:30
Speaker
and And how many people get thrust into that situation? They had no idea that they were about to be under that magnifying glass. Right. right Right. And like, and and it's not even because you are the defendant or you are the victim or you are the witness. Sometimes you're just like a tangential person doing your job, like in a totally normal way. Like for instance, I don't think to myself, if I've got to go do a deposition or I'm sitting in on somebody's deposition, which The shit that I do for that is typically criminal.
00:54:05
Speaker
And it's usually like someone on the defendant side, someone on the prosecution side. I don't do the experts, the lawyers do the experts, but I do, you know, like the witness, the witnesses from both sides where I sit down and ask them questions and we record it and we make statements out of it and the affidavits are signed.
00:54:22
Speaker
But my point is, I don't think of that in a criminal situation as something that like, I need to go in and like be really guarded and protect myself.
00:54:34
Speaker
And people say nasty things to you. Like when that is going on, let alone a billing issue deposition. no kidding. Right. So this guy ends up figuring out that like, you know, local bars, like low. And I don't mean bars, like alcoholic places, like bar associations, like,
00:54:54
Speaker
for lawyers in a local area. They're made as like networking organizations. So lawyers across the spectrum, meaning criminal, civil, family, they come together because they're under a single set of rules, usually for the state organization.
00:55:12
Speaker
And then there can be different local things going on. They elect officers, they have social functions, they get together, they become friendly with each other. And that's because they want to expand the boundaries of their own career.
00:55:25
Speaker
And it could be because they want another job. it could be because they just want to know a lawyer who does X, Y, Z. So it's not just a matter of like, were they sitting in court together? did they work in the same office?
00:55:37
Speaker
These people are intertwined in a way that like their lives are sort of built around the same things. And now you've got to ask one of them to step forward and to defend someone accused of ripping a hole in that fabric.
00:55:56
Speaker
It's going to be a tough sell, and it sounds like that's exactly what's happening in court. I think it ends up, in my opinion, what ends up happening here is this goes to a different jurisdiction altogether.
00:56:08
Speaker
So change of venue, new set of lawyers, everything.
Eliza Sherman Case: Unsolved Mystery
00:56:14
Speaker
Yeah, hopefully this dude figures out He finds somebody to represent him. I mean, I don't know. It's got to be somebody from out of town, right? I feel like this is going to be in this limbo for a while. Because of the just looking just clicking through these documents, that's pretty much all that's happened. Attorneys come in, attorneys withdraw. Attorneys come in attorneys withdraw. Somebody's got to take the case.
00:56:39
Speaker
Yeah. They do. I have one more. This was not as long. It's an old case. Do you have anything else on the Pinellas Plastic Surgeon Having legal troubles. We'll see what happens. With legal troubles.
00:56:51
Speaker
Yeah, we'll see what happens with that as it goes forward. and um So this kind of surprised me. this came it came out of nowhere and also did not come out of nowhere.
00:57:02
Speaker
I think we talked about this case once by the time. That's what I was thinking is that we talked about it. um it It feels like something, because I know i focus on a couple different things in Cleveland. It's outside of the time frame of our first season, but like like it's something I feel like we would have poked into because it does involve a lawyer.
00:57:21
Speaker
um But but here ah here's what the the article said I got out of NBC News from May 3rd, 2025. There's a little bit more information coming out now. um It says Elisa Sherman or Eliza Sherman, A-L-I-Z-A, was stabbed more than 10 times outside of attorney's office in downtown Cleveland.
00:57:42
Speaker
Arrests made. So this is March 24, 2013 case. And that's more, that's 12 years. grand jury...
00:57:49
Speaker
and so that's more that's twelve years um so a grand jury has indicted a man on charges related to the fatal stabbing of a 53-year-old nurse and mother of four while she was waiting outside her attorney's office building.
00:58:08
Speaker
The indictments include one count of aggravated murder, one count of conspiracy, six counts of murder, and two counts of kidnapping. so Security footage, again, more security footage, captured a hooded person running from the scene of the crime, but the person was never identified.
00:58:27
Speaker
The case had remained unsolved for a long period of time. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations took on Eliza Sherman's case in 2021. This is months after NBC's Dateline had featured the case, speaking with her daughter Jennifer, ah eight years after the killing.
00:58:43
Speaker
The Sherman family has waited over a decade for answers regarding their mother's homicide. That's according to Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael C. O'Malley. though Through the tenacious work of multiple law enforcement agencies, evidence was accumulated that paints the unmistakable picture of who orchestrated and participated in the brutal murder of Eliza Sherman.
00:59:06
Speaker
The indictment states that on the Sunday that Eliza Sherman was killed, the perpetrator texted her to meet at the office building at 4.30 p.m. and to let him know when she was leaving.
00:59:17
Speaker
And while she waited outside the office building, Either the indicted or an unnamed co-conspirator approached her from behind, stabbed her more than 10 times, leading to her death. It also alleges that there were ah many calls between them and that the perpetrator had called before and after ah her death.
00:59:39
Speaker
Grandieri's indictment um indicates that the reasons for the murder were kind of strange. But it was to prevent ah Eliza Sherman's divorce trial from moving forward. It was scheduled to start the following day.
00:59:57
Speaker
ah There was an investigation underway for someone having sent bomb threats to the courthouse. And the perpetrator was found to be behaving this way and in multiple cases.
01:00:09
Speaker
But here's the crazy part. The person they arrest and indict or trying to prosecute for this is Gregory Moore. It's Eliza Sherman's divorce attorney. He's 51 years old now. He was 38 or 39 back when this happened.
01:00:26
Speaker
Right. And he was clearly not balancing his workload very well because he was not prepared to go forward with ah court proceedings. And he resorted to killing someone, his client.
01:00:46
Speaker
I am having difficulty. Okay. So in the other case, we have a person finding out that killing an attorney was a terrible idea and having trouble maintaining having an attorney after this.
01:01:00
Speaker
Even if this guy's let off, he's never going to get a client again because like the opposite end of that is it's really bad business as an attorney to kill your clients. Yeah.
01:01:12
Speaker
It's also like really bad business to kill anyone just because you're not ready for trial. that's a terrible time management solution for those of you maybe wondering at home.
01:01:23
Speaker
And he was, so he was, okay, you said this, but I feel like it can't be emphasized enough. He was also being investigated for sending bomb threats into the courthouse when he had to make appearances in other cases. Yeah, yeah.
01:01:37
Speaker
In 2017, so that's four years after the murder, he actually pleads guilty to inducing panic related to these bomb threats. And for, I think he had a felony obstruction charge that's like dumbed down to a falsification charge for purposes of a plea, but basically indicating that he had given authorities back then misleading statements related to the investigation into Eliza Sherman's murder.
01:02:03
Speaker
So they couldn't tell if he was a terrible person or the actual perpetrator. And even in these documents, they indicate that like, I guess they might just be covering all their bases, but they indicate it's either him or it's someone he hired.
01:02:18
Speaker
Right. Because they couldn't find any motive anywhere else. Right. Right. And it's very interesting to me that I don't know what it is about the personality it takes to, i mean, cause you know, you said it was stuff was still happening in 2017. Like did this on? Like,
01:02:37
Speaker
how long did this go on like Well, that stuff is him paying for the fake bomb threats. Right. And all he had to do was say, you know what? I'm not cut out for this job.
01:02:51
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Because that's essentially what it boils down to. Right. He didn't have something that was necessary to move forward. And that's the weirdest thing to me. I'm sure he had. taken So I imagine he had taken money for cases and that's why he wouldn't just like say, i can't do this. Right. Yeah. um And obviously, as soon as you go into court and there's a judge and another attorney there, like they can call you out on your garbage. Right. Yeah.
01:03:22
Speaker
And because he couldn't just say, look, I don't know what I'm doing, which I would highly advise that as opposed to killing your client.
01:03:35
Speaker
Yeah. like Right. Cause you know, I feel like it would be, that's just, it's sickening to me that somebody would, you know, say, well, I can't do this. So let me kill her. i i have no idea what he's thinking when he does that. I mean,
01:03:52
Speaker
What burns him here, according to this indictment, which is interesting, um im this is a little bit more popular of a case than we normally would do in terms of it's been covered by a lot of content creators because like it's this murder mystery.
01:04:06
Speaker
But according to this document they put out, the the indictment itself, it states that like what like puts the handcuffs on its wrist, so to speak,
01:04:19
Speaker
is his behavior surrounding how he interacted with his phone that week and the things that he was doing to like bounce off one tower and another tower and turning his phone off and on.
01:04:30
Speaker
I can imagine this being a situation where he was like even pulling the battery if he had that kind of phone. um And he ends up chucking the phone all together and getting a brand new phone so that even if the authorities were to come to him with a search warrant, it's a brand new phone.
01:04:45
Speaker
It won't have like the information. But ultimately, what's changed a little bit in this case is they're better able to understand and analyze the information they had back then. So it's kind of like dna like where you've got the evidence laying there in front of you, but like maybe it takes a little less like to to make a match. Or maybe genetic genealogy comes along and you got a new way to search for people.
01:05:12
Speaker
It's just, it's the digital evidence that's like this now where they're able to see what these different annotations they had before mean with actual relation to towers and switches and devices.
01:05:29
Speaker
And can you imagine being so anxious over a situation that you're going to all that trouble that's just going to be un found out, you know, 12 years later or however long it's been? I think if they said they had taken over the case in like 21 maybe. Yeah.
01:05:44
Speaker
So can you imagine like you're sweating it so bad and like… I almost feel like he didn't even really want to kill his client. That's just the only way he saw out of that situation. i don't even know how that works.
01:05:58
Speaker
Like, how does it get to the point that like, that's a solution? Like, how did this guy make it through law school and pass the bar and all of those things? I like, and the only thing I can think of, and I have no evidence of this is pure speculation.
01:06:12
Speaker
When I think of an attorney doing something like that, I think of someone who is probably using either illicit or prescription off-label drugs. Yeah.
01:06:23
Speaker
Like if you're using drugs, particularly like if like Adderall has been your thing in the past and like, it worked and you were able to get through things and you've moved on to math. Like I could see that. No, I have no evidence of this in this case. I'm just saying that is ah thing I could see making murder seem plausible.
01:06:40
Speaker
was going to say, if you feel like you had a better explanation, you might want to drop back to drugs because that, it doesn't explain it, but it at least makes, you know, sense as far as your brain was messed up. Right.
01:06:56
Speaker
Yeah, and so like maybe there's some mitigating something in here, but the truth is, like you said, like it would have actually been better if he hadn't done all that stuff.
01:07:07
Speaker
like Don't make the phone calls. but Just don't have any contact with him. Don't call her after her death. like Just like go to court and act like everything's normal and wonder where she is. Right. And that's where it's sort of like, okay, so you're planning all of this cover-up out, right? Yep.
01:07:24
Speaker
Instead of just saying, hey, let me find you another better de divorce a attorney that can handle this. Because, you know, there's tons of attorneys everywhere that'll take on stuff. Of course, again, i think it was probably a financial thing, Yeah, yeah. because He had already taken money, and you know who knows what he didn't do in that case if the trial was supposed to start, right? Yeah.
01:07:46
Speaker
And it i so I still feel like, just deep down in my soul, that I could walk into a courtroom and say, Your Honor, i have bamboozled my client far before I would ever consider murdering them.
01:08:02
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, I think, okay, if murder's on the table, okay, right? and and correct me if I'm wrong here, maybe, maybe there's some other lesser crimes on the table.
01:08:17
Speaker
Things like, things like, don't go to court that day. Just don't show up. You get your bar license. no No, you won't even lose your license. You'll get a letter of censure. You'll to explain yourself to a judge.
01:08:31
Speaker
But like, is obstruction in a civil court matter that leads to a bar complaint really off the table here? Well, he's now going to go to jail for murder, so... I'm thinking maybe he could have done some other things here. and maybe Maybe not the bomb threats, even.
01:08:46
Speaker
I also think that, like, he is not a good attorney. I mean, how juvenile is the bomb threat thing, though? Well, that's that's exactly right. Like, how juvenile is that? Think of, like...
01:08:59
Speaker
I don't know about you. I've never once considered ever calling in a bomb threat. I think that that is, it's sort of, it seems like it would be like sort of old and barbaric at this point to do something like that. But I remember as a kid being in school and there being bomb threats. Do you remember? i remember there being bomb threats and I remember all the different drills and rehearsals we had growing up.
01:09:21
Speaker
Right. Which to me seems, i mean, it's sort of asinine that that even has to happen. But like, it and Well, I would definitely not do that now because if you think you're going to get away with something you do on your cell phone now, I would say you're probably wrong.
01:09:38
Speaker
But it think of the chaos that he put on, you know, what was the charge like inflicting panic or inducing panic? Inducing panic, yeah.
01:09:50
Speaker
And that's exactly what he was doing. And to me, that just seems like a whole lot more work than just bowing out of a situation you're too incompetent to handle.
01:10:00
Speaker
I really want to know more information about this. You said it was sort of a popular case. I imagine for a long time it was probably like, I bet it took a long time for them to come to like this conclusion like level-headedly. Because, of course, you would immediately think that something, because it's always the last person, right? The last person the person's with, right? Yeah. and this it in this case, she was waiting outside his office, right, when it happened. Yeah.
01:10:28
Speaker
And so there would automatically be a connection to him. And I wonder how many investigators were like, well, that seems odd, but certainly her attorney wouldn't have killed her because that would be stupid.
01:10:40
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, i so, okay. i I remember hearing a lot of people cover this case and it was also open-ended. The last thing I remember hearing about it before this announcement was July of last year.
01:10:57
Speaker
So we had different newsletters and this was in a newsletter. So it's not a mainstream media source. So I'm not gonna cite it. I got a newsletter and it was about her husband.
01:11:10
Speaker
and And she was getting divorced from. Yeah. So the guy that was involved in the divorce and I'm sharing it because it's interesting. I'm not sharing it because has any inside baseball or anything.
01:11:22
Speaker
I'm sure people can find it on the internet. If you go looking, I'm just not going to post the source of it. So it says, ah this is, July 11th, 2024, says, Dr. Sanford Sherman, the estranged husband of the late Eliza Sherman, recently recently died in Florida.
01:11:43
Speaker
Eliza Sherman was a 53-year-old in vitro fertilization nurse and Beechwood mother who was murdered in downtown Cleveland, March 24th, 2013, two days before a divorce trial with Sanford Sherman, her husband, was set to start.
01:11:56
Speaker
Her murder remains unsolved 11 years later. Sanford Sherman, 68, so he would have been in his 50s, 57 or so, 56, 57. um He was never named a suspect by police in the murder of Eliza Sherman, but he died earlier this month in Pompano Beach, Florida.
01:12:16
Speaker
Records show that dating back to November 2nd, 2000, Beechwood police were called to the Sherman house 22 times for reports of domestic disturbance. After Eliza Sherman's death, her daughter, Jennifer Sherman, filed a civil lawsuit against Stanford Sherman for charges including counts of conversion, breach of fuduciary fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, civil remedy for criminal acts, and civil conspiracy related to Eliza Sherman's estate.
01:12:42
Speaker
Over the course of the civil trial, depositions connected to the case involved Sanford Sherman admitting to an extramarital affair, details of a defamation lawsuit involving an exotic dancer, and a reference to a conversation where Sanford solicited advice on how to commit the perfect murder.
01:13:00
Speaker
The suit also alleges that in early 2013, during the divorce case's discovery process, forensic accounting showed a Merrill Lynch financial account in Eliza's name only was secretly opened by Sanford Sherman in May of 2000. Between and he allegedly made more than million dollars in deposits into this account the shoot The suit showed that in 2004, Sanford Sherman forged a durable power of attorney, which allowed him to withdraw funds from this account.
01:13:31
Speaker
And in the following six years, so by 2010, the account was emptied. Sanford Sherman retired and closed his Seventh Circle practice in 2004. He later moved to Florida after Eliza Sherman's death.
01:13:45
Speaker
Eliza Sherman was outside the office of her divorce attorney, Gregory Moore, at the Stafford & Stafford Law Firm on Erieview Plaza in downtown Cleveland when she was stabbed 11 times by a still-unidentified assailant wearing a face covering.
01:14:01
Speaker
The investigation into Eliza Sherman's murder was turned over to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations in 2021 and was previously investigated by Cleveland police. BCI was recently informed of Stanford Sherman's death and the investigation into Eliza Sherman's murder remains active and ongoing.
01:14:20
Speaker
So I say all this because...
01:14:27
Speaker
that guy never knew what happened to his estranged wife. And all that time like all this stuff is terrible. None of that stuff is murder. What the heck? What was all that going on? i don't know Like, I don't under, like, like, honestly, the reason I'm not giving the source on this is because it's an obscure thing that I got.
01:14:49
Speaker
i know it's on the internet, but it's like, it's actually kind of weird to find it. And I'm sure people have found it even now as I finish my sentence. because I know people are really good at doing that. But that's reasonable doubt.
01:15:04
Speaker
No kidding. And I wonder. Because all Moore has to say is that the reason for the crazy communications with his client was because he feared Sanford Sherman too.
01:15:19
Speaker
Yeah. And that guy clearly stole a bunch of money. ah Yeah, no kidding. According to this. So if like any of this is provable, that's reasonable doubt in the murder case.
01:15:33
Speaker
Yeah, i don't I don't know. It seems like... um i'm not saying I'm just giving you an alternative. I mean... yeah sure. Yeah, I hear you. way juries are going these days.
01:15:46
Speaker
ah So he stole a bunch of money and
01:15:52
Speaker
I wonder how that affected like the amount of money that was available to Moore. I don't know. like As far as like what was happening on the back end of the divorce, right?
01:16:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That could have been a part of it, too. like My thinking is maybe Eliza Sherman thought she had ever how many millions of dollars more than she actually had.
01:16:17
Speaker
Well, or he, or she had money and, but he took a page out of the husband's playbook. I don't know. i don't know what's happening here. i don't either. I've just was, I had read that ah in email and i I went back through my emails and couldn't find it, but then I was able to remember some of the verbiage and I put it in and I found this. Well, that's interesting. And so Gregory Moore still alive, right? And he's been charged. yeah He was, he's been indicted. He's been, he's been indicted. Yep.
01:16:47
Speaker
And so ah that was a little bit earlier this year. So we should see what happens with that, right? yep was going to say, like, poor Eliza Sherman. I was kind of rolling with this piece of this newsletter thing because, in my opinion, this kind of shows, like, how – okay, so if you and I just take everything on face value, Gregory Moore has been indicted, probably did this, right?
01:17:13
Speaker
but At least according to what we can see publicly available right now. This destroyed these people. Not Eliza Sherman. She died. Clearly she was destroyed.
01:17:25
Speaker
But they I'm sure Sanford Sherman had a hand in his own destruction. But oh yeah his daughter is losing her mind. And I promise you, i do not know Jennifer Sherman. I've never met her. know nothing about her.
01:17:40
Speaker
I promise you. For a while. She thought that her father killed her mother.
01:17:48
Speaker
Well, right. And I presume that the attorney saw that that way. The opening? Yeah. Yeah. yeah Yeah, this is a wild one. a weird situation. It is, yeah. I'm interested to see how that one plays out. But I figured that was kind of a good way to wrap up this legal troubles case. And I thought this would be all about basically lawyers. I know there's a plastic surgeon in there, but he has lawyer problems.
01:18:16
Speaker
Exactly. And while you can't really, like this isn't light-hearted stuff, it's obviously serious because you know there were murders and But it is always interesting to see this side of it, right? Because we're not covering the case. We're covering the li the legalistics of it. Yeah.
01:18:36
Speaker
Yeah, we're covering the legalistics of it. Anytime you can get a little bit of an insight into how somebody's brain is working, right like you can see here like none of it makes any sense. And i would actually say – actually – actually The first case, ah the attorney that was... Stalking the secret benefits girl? Yeah. I would say, like man, i'm looking back, he has to know that you know that was a bad idea. And then I would say with this case, like certainly an attorney would never just kill their client to get out of going to trial, right? man.
01:19:14
Speaker
But, I mean, here you go, unless something else comes up. But I think that he put two and two together, right And he got 22 out of it. Yeah. Yeah. he he he he He saw some kind of writing on the wall, but that writing didn't make any sense.
01:19:30
Speaker
But think about it, though. It took 12 years. that right? 12 years. 12 years he's been out free walking around. Yeah. And who knows what else he did.
01:19:43
Speaker
Yeah, that that would be interesting. But i think i think that's kind of not going to be as much as you think. and like I could see some stuff going on. But like once you're under the level of scrutiny he's under to the point that like they're indicting him on the other stuff, which is 2017, they're taking his plea.
01:20:03
Speaker
He's not going to anything at that point. You're You're under the the type of – magnifying glass where like i don't i don't know that you point it directly at the ants anymore because people are going catch that yeah you're right and he
Upcoming Topics Teaser
01:20:18
Speaker
you know if he was he was a divorce attorney so maybe not a criminal defense attorney because i feel like a criminal defense attorney would have realized this will never work yeah except it did for 13 years got We may come back around to this one. We've got a couple of um like one-off episodes coming up on some older cases.
01:20:39
Speaker
ah There's a serial killer coming up, and at some point there's a big corruption case that we're going to cover. There's a couple of really interesting missing persons cases. um One we've alluded to before, i think that's finally going to become an episode. There's ah a case we have down here that was a missing persons case, it's now up some level of homicide case that's going to be coming out.
01:21:02
Speaker
So we have a summer full of stuff for you. Just is is kind of what I'm getting out here. And we will swing back around. We're going to do ah a long form series on a series of unsolved murders, but it's how we wrap all of that up and sort of catch up on whatever's going on in true crime. um I think it'll be, it'll probably be like Halloween. It'll be a like a holiday time, which hopefully we'll have something cool coming up later in the year.
01:21:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's all I have it. Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabradiCreations.com. If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or a five-star rating.
01:21:40
Speaker
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01:21:53
Speaker
I break things like guitars.
01:22:02
Speaker
took it too far.
01:22:12
Speaker
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01:22:42
Speaker
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