Surgeon Who Murdered Wife Confesses To Killing 30 Years Later

A surgeon who murdered his wife admitted to the killing more than 30 years later. Watch a clip from a new documentary about the killer here:

Robert Bierenbaum was convicted of killing his wife Gail Katz in 2000, but he maintained his innocence for decades.

Gail went missing in 1985 and her body has never been found. However, former surgeon and pilot Bierenbaum admitted to throwing her body out of a plane last December during a parole board hearing.

According to a transcript of the hearing obtained by ABC News, he said: "I wanted her to stop yelling at me and I attacked her."

He went on to reveal that he strangled her because he was 'immature' and 'didn't understand how to deal with his anger'.

He added: "I went flying. I opened the door and then took her body out of the airplane over the ocean."

ABC

The admission came as a shock and a relief to prosecutors, who had presented this exact theory during the murder trial back in 2000.

Dan Bibb, one of the prosecutors who brought Bierenbaum to justice, said: "I was like, 'Holy s**t, are you kidding me?'.

"I was stunned because I always thought that that day would never come, that he would own up, take responsibility for having killed his wife."

He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and his next parole hearing is scheduled for November.

The story of the murder will be told in the next episode of ABC's 20/20, which will air on Friday (22 October) at 9pm ET, and will be available to stream on Hulu the next day.

In the documentary, Gail's sister, Alayne Katz, talks about how their relationship turned toxic, recounting a time when he choked Gail into unconsciousness for smoking on the balcony.

ABC

Alayne said: "If this had happened in 2021 ... Robert Bierenbaum would have been in handcuffs immediately.

"The fact that this was [1983] ... nothing was done about it."

Following Gail's disappearance on 7 July 1985, Alayne was in no doubt about what had happened.

"She's not with me, and she's not with my parents, and at that moment I know that my sister's dead," Alayne Katz said.

"And if she's not alive there's only one person who is a likely suspect to murder her, and it's Bob. There's no other suspect."

Topics: US News, crime

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey