Married to Evil (2023) s01e03 Episode Script

- Robert promised Stacy
that she would have everything
she wanted.
- He's a good looking guy,
well-educated.
They made each other laugh.
She was happy, so I was happy.
- This one night, the doorbell rang.
There's a woman there
that she doesn't know.
She said that she was looking
for Stacy's husband.
- My involvement
with everything that happened
I didn't know it could have
such a devastating impact
on so many people's lives.
- It was the beginning of hell.
(PHONE RINGING)
(DISPATCHER SPEAKING)
(ROBERT FELDMAN SPEAKING)
(DISPATCHER SPEAKING)
(ROBERT FELDMAN SPEAKING)
- My sister Stacy
had the best personality
of anybody I know.
She was the life of the party.
She just really wanted to have fun.
- Funny is
an understatement.
She was there to make people smile
and feel happy around her.
She would do anything
to make you laugh.
- It looks like she has a doily
on her head.
This is the kind of stuff
she did all the time.
You see that smile?
It's in every picture.
It's contagious.
- I felt like a sister to her.
And because of her
incredible family,
they allowed me
to feel like a sister.
- Stacy's life dream
was to have children
and to be a mum.
- It was almost a given that
that was her life path.
I mean, she
She was incredible
with, with children.
- Right after college,
she was working in marketing.
- Every job she had
was for a fundraising organisation.
Anything to help the greater good
and help people.
- She did meet a guy
that she ended up
falling in love with
and getting engaged to.
Um, he was a wonderful man,
and, um
As the wedding date got closer,
it was clear that,
um, something wasn't right,
and that wedding got, um, cancelled.
- Stacy was devastated.
- She thought that
this was the love of her life.
Her biological clock
started ticking very, very early.
This was not part of her plan.
Her plan included, um,
being married before she was 30,
having kids before she was 30,
and it threw her for a loop.
- I met Stacy very soon
after her engagement
had been broken off.
She was grieving that relationship
for a while but really,
by the time I met her
and got to know her well,
she was good to go,
looking to meet somebody.
Really putting herself out there,
trying to move forward
and, and start dating again.
- She needed a change of scenery.
And wouldn't it be fun
to move to Boston
and take care of her niece?
And she became our nanny
And it was magical.
When I first met him,
it was at our house.
He was coming to pick her up
for a date.
He was very charming,
very likeable
and seemed to be enamoured of her.
- On paper, he looked great.
He's a good looking guy,
well-educated.
They made each other laugh.
She had high hopes for a change.
I think she really loved the idea.
She met him at the right time
in her life, so
- They went to Boston
on their first date
and drove around looking
for a parking metre.
And he had this little trick
that will Jimmy the parking metre
so, that you don't have
to put money in it.
And Stacy thought,
"Wow, isn't that kind of cool?"
And I thought,
"I don't think that's cool at all.
"I think that's stealing."
I didn't like that,
and that was their very first date.
He came from a Jewish family,
a close family.
His parents divorced
when he was a child,
and he had promised her
that divorce would never be
in their future
because of the trauma
that it did to him.
Stacy's heart was broken
when her first engagement
was broken,
and she was guarded
and he was gonna be her forever.
He promised her
that she would have everything
she wanted
that she would be
a stay-at-home mum,
that he was gonna provide
for the family,
that she wasn't
going to have to work.
I never knew
how that was gonna happen,
because he never really had a job.
He was a bit of a scammer.
He always had ways of scamming
the system.
One of the things
he did while he was in Boston,
I'll never forget this.
He went to an electronics store
and took the electronic
out of the box,
filled the box with heavy bricks
and returned the box,
got his money back.
- He did seem like a freeloader.
I wasn't sure about his motivation
to find something
to support a family,
so, I was a little bit concerned.
- Looking back on it
the red flags were there.
One night,
I had invited Stacy and him
to come out for dinner with us,
and Stacy really wanted
to come out with us,
and he refused.
He wanted to stay home and cook.
I knew that
what that meant for Stacy
is that he would
use every dish in the kitchen
and then leave
all the dishes for her,
because he never
wanted to do dishes.
Whatever he wanted, he got.
Whatever he said,
we all followed his rules.
It wasn't about
what Stacy wanted that night.
It was really only about
what he wanted.
- They decided
they would move to Denver, Colorado.
- If he was to be
her Prince Charming
and give her what she wanted
in a marriage,
being a stay-at-home mum
Robert needed to have a job.
We have lots of family in Denver.
So, Stacy thought,
"Well, maybe he'll just come
to Denver with me."
My relatives will help him
get a job, and at least,
you know,
"he'll work, he'll have income."
Stacy was so excited.
She was really ready
to move on to the next stage.
- I think my gut told me,
"He's not deserving yet
to make this move with her
"and to be so immersed
in her incredible family."
And I was worried that
if he did go with her,
she was never coming back.
- About a week
before they were set to move,
she and I went out
for dinner together
and this is probably
the one and only time
I ever put myself out there
like this with her.
I said, "Are you sure
you want him to come with you?
"You are moving to a new place.
"You have so many opportunities.
"Are you sure
this is what you want?"
And she said to me,
and I will never forget it,
she said,
"Susan, he told me
"that he had a tough childhood
"and he had to take care of himself,
"and so,
he's number one in his book.
"He's always gonna be number one,"
and I said,
"Stacy, is that the kind of person
"that you wanna marry?"
And she said the typical,
classic, textbook response.
"He will change for me."
This is one of my greatest regrets.
I think this is one
of all of our greatest regrets
is that we didn't know
what was, what was happening.
We didn't put it all together.
(PHONE RINGING)
(DISPATCHER SPEAKING)
(FELDMAN SPEAKING)
- They were moving in together.
They were setting up the kitchen.
They had a huge fight
about where to place a garbage can.
- He made it
clear
how
he wanted things
and how
they were gonna be.
Stacy had a mind of her own.
She spoke back.
But he wanted things a certain way.
When he wanted something,
he wanted them
his way.
- Stacy actually ended up
leaving him
and moving into my parents house.
Robert apologised and promised,
"It won't happen again."
- I was hopeful that this was it.
But it was maybe a few days,
and then they got back together.
- Stacy was just
too invested at that point
and was looking
for her happily ever after.
- When she told me
that she was engaged
My heart dropped.
While she was thrilled
about her dreams coming true
of getting married
and having babies,
my stomach sunk.
My heart sunk.
I wasn't happy for her.
II pretended.
I put on a show. Um
I never shared my true feelings
with her
about her future.
That's something that I regret,
to this day.
- So, it was a lovely wedding,
and it coincided
with the Oscar awards
that were broadcast around,
it was around the same time.
He had a really great speech
And he used the terms
from the Oscar awards.
For example, producer
The director was his whatever.
He would thank people
and acknowledge them,
the people in his life
and his family,
by giving them titles.
And so, we all assumed
his leading lady,
It was, it was there.
It was there for the taking,
leading lady.
It didn't, it never happened.
He never mentioned Stacy.
It was devastating.
It was embarrassing.
She was mortified.
Directly affected her,
and that was, uh,
yeah, it was sad.
It's a hard way to start.
(CHUCKLES)
- Yep.
See her crown?
She wanted to be a princess.
That's her wedding day.
Do you notice her smile
is not quite the same smile
that we saw in earlier photos?
I wonder about that.
- Uh, they got married in March,
so the following June,
they had their daughter.
Beautiful girl, and, um,
within two years of that,
they had their son.
- Becoming a mum
was her greatest joy,
and she was the best mother ever.
Stacy stopped working
and started living a life
that she always dreamt of.
- His job was commission-based,
so, you really had to be motivated
and work hard.
Um, he didn't.
If he was home,
I remember him sitting.
That's the truth.
I have visions of him just sitting
on the couch in a bathrobe.
He was never working.
- Stacy eventually
went back to work.
She got a great job, again,
in the non-profit industry,
and she was doing
exceptionally well.
- She did it because she needed
to provide for her family.
Her dream of being
a stay-at-home mum was crushed.
- We knew he was
a lowlife and wasn't gonna provide,
you know?
But then, there was this whole
other chapter that started.
A girlfriend and I
went down to Denver
to celebrate my birthday,
and the day we got there,
we needed to use her computer,
so, we went
to their family computer.
We sort of just moved the mouse
and, uh, we were immediately
faced with the open page
of a dating app.
- Jan called me right away
and said she saw a dating website
and that Stacy's husband
had a profile.
- Well, at first, we were confused,
and then we saw that
there was correspondence,
and, whereas we were told that
he had a meeting that night
and he wasn't coming home
for dinner,
um, he, in fact, had a date,
uh, that evening.
I was shocked.
I was scared.
II didn't understand
how it was open
on their family computer
and I didn't know what to do.
I was, I was really upset.
I was, uh very upset.
At that moment, we did nothing.
We didn't tell her.
Neither of us knew what to do.
We did nothing.
If we had to do it over again.
I would've done it differently.
- What if she turned on us?
What if she alienated us?
- I talked to Stacy every evening
after she put the kids to bed,
and there was this one night
that we were doing our daily call,
um, and the doorbell rang.
(DOORBELL RINGS)
She wasn't expecting anyone.
So, she goes to the door.
There's a woman there
that she doesn't know.
She said that she was looking
for Stacy's husband.
It turns out that it was somebody
that he had met on a website,
and she came to the door
looking for him.
- It came out that he was with her,
um, sexually.
Stacy was shocked
and surprised and disgusted.
That's when chaos started.
He claimed he needed to get this sex
wherever he could find it.
As miserable and sad as she was,
she was more forgiving
than maybe she should have been.
I talked to her about it,
and she point-blank said,
"I don't want to be a single mum."
I don't think our society
is supportive of single mums.
I think she felt shame
in the situation that she was in.
She didn't have any friends
that were divorced.
She insisted that they seek therapy.
And he would start
at her insistence,
and he wouldn't finish,
or he wouldn't continue to go.
There would always be an excuse.
He didn't like the person.
He didn't need the help.
- He was making
excuses for himself.
But it was mean.
It was hurtful.
He told her
that he needed her to lose weight
so that he could be attracted
to her again.
How he spoke to her,
it was shocking.
He was rude. He was mean.
I couldn't believe it.
They tried every avenue.
Nothing worked. Nothing helped.
And it didn't stop.
- We talked about her leaving him.
I talked to her about
what she wanted to do about that,
and we had made a plan
that, that she was gonna leave.
But he said to her,
"I will never divorce you.
"I will never let you divorce me,
"because I am a product
of a broken marriage,
"and I will not do
that to my children."
She was crying
and crying and crying.
(SNIFFLES)
And I was listening to her.
I wasn't saying a lot.
I was just listening to her,
and I had this thought,
and I said to myself
"If she ends up dead,
"it's because he's gonna kill her."
- I had been, uh,
divorced for many years.
I had used
several
online dating sites.
Um, didn't have
a whole lot of success
with anything,
and I thought
I would try something new
and try the Tinder app.
His profile picture,
he had a big smile on his face,
um, he was laughing,
and he just looked
like a very happy person.
So, that's what drew me
to his photograph,
and so, I swiped right on Bob.
We met for coffee.
We talked about everything.
He had told me
he was just separated.
He had been separated for two years,
and they were both seeing
other people.
I also opened up about my life.
I told him about
my divorce situation.
We talked about our careers,
about our kids,
what we were looking
for in terms of relationship,
and we talked
about what we liked to do for fun.
Both of us loved to go antiquing
and just hang out in the city
or go to the mountains.
Bob and I really seemed to click.
- On Thursday, we were planning
to get together at a wine bar,
uh, after work.
It was blizzarding that night.
It was a really snowy night.
And he said,
"Why don't I just come to you?"
That evening, you know,
I asked a lot of questions
about his situation with his wife.
Uh, he had explained to me that
the reason
that he separated from her
was because
she was an absentee mother.
Uh, Bob had said,
"I'm always taking the kids skiing
"and to the mountains and camping,
and she's really not involved,
"and I didn't sign up for that."
I thought
"Bob must be
a really dedicated father."
We ended up sleeping together
that night.
I was feeling good about him.
But 15 minutes later,
he sat up in bed and said,
"I gotta go."
I thought, at that point,
"He's lying to me.
He's married or something."
From then,
I started googling "Bob Wolfe"
and nothing came up.
So, at that point,
I decided to do a reverse look-up
on the phone number he gave me.
I found a LinkedIn profile,
and it had a big picture of him.
It said, "Robert W Feldman."
I started googling his wife,
at that point
And what I found was that
she was the president of the PTO
of the kids' grade school.
So, not only was
she not an absentee mother,
but she was a really
dedicated mother
who volunteered her time.
I was really angry.
Bob had disparaged her
and lied to me.
I felt she had the right to know.
I wrote her an email,
and I said,
"Stacy, you don't know me,
but I'm trying to find out
if you and Bob are separated.
If you're not, he's cheating on you.
We slept together once,
and he blew me off after that."
She wrote back at 8:30 and said,
uh, "No, we are not separated.
"I'm done with him now.
I've had it."
I said, "Are you gonna be OK?"
and she said,
"I have a really supportive family
"and lots of friends, "I'll be fine.
"But I really do appreciate
you reaching out."
It was a good conversation.
It was, you know, I was feeling like
I had done the right thing.
I didn't know it could have such
a devastating impact
on so many people's lives.
(PHONE RINGING)
(PHONE RINGING)
- I was getting ready to go out,
and the phone rang,
and one of my kids
answered the phone,
and said, "Grandpa's on the phone."
So, I get on the phone,
and my dad says
"Stacy's dead,"
and I said, "What?"
And he said, "Stacy's dead."
I screamed.
Um, I broke into tears.
I sort of felt like
I was up in the clouds looking in,
and that this really
wasn't happening.
- I remember my 11-year-old daughter
holding me while
I was screaming.
I don't, I don't
remember much.
- Stacy's husband
told the detective that
she wasn't feeling well
and she didn't get out of bed
that morning,
and, um,
he took the children to school,
and when he came home
later in the afternoon
is when he found her dead.
They asked him
if he wanted an autopsy done,
and he, um, said that,
"We are Jewish, and Jewish people,
"um, don't do autopsies,"
and he did not want
to have one done.
But it is just customary
that when, um, a young person dies
without a history of illness
that an autopsy has to be done.
It's mandatory.
- I had had another
bad internet date,
didn't go well, and I got home
and I was just lying in bed
on my phone,
and I thought,
"I wonder if they got divorced."
So, I googled, and
her obituary came up
pretty much immediately.
(SIGHS) Ugh
My stomach just turned.
I looked at the date of her death,
and I realised that
that was around the time
I spoke to her.
And so, I went and looked
at my email to her,
and I realised it was the same day.
- I would text the detective
in the middle of the night, asking,
you know, "Did you look for this,
did you look for that?"
I wanted them to know
that I thought
it was a suspicious death.
There were several members
of my family
who were begging me
to stop pursing his arrest.
They wanted to just be able to
move on,
ifif there is such a thing.
And I was not willing
to accept him getting away with it.
I was on this journey
to make sure that,
that Stacy had justice.
- I looked up the number
for Denver Homicide,
and they were very interested
in what I had to say.
I told them the whole story.
He told me in the interview
that the medical examiner
had ruled her death undetermined.
They were continuing
to follow leads.
I'm a researcher,
and when the detective told me
that the cause of death
was undetermined,
um, I wanted to see it for myself.
I left the detective's office
and I went
to the medical examiner's office,
and I got a copy of the autopsy.
I read the details
and it said she had bruising
about her head and upper body.
She was found with her tongue
clinched between her teeth.
I knew from reading it
that something
Something very wrong had happened.
- I'd wanted to closely examine
the evidence,
looking for clues
that may have been
not appreciated
or missed as part
of the initial investigation.
Robert Feldman told the police
that he came home
and found his wife naked
in the shower.
Didn't know
whether she had drowned, fallen,
had a heart attack.
He didn't know.
The detectives
and the first responders felt
there was something unusual
about his demeanour.
- I listened to the 9-1-1 call.
He sounded over-hysterical,
very dramatic.
(FELDMAN SPEAKING)
- Being found dead in the bathtub
is highly suspicious
of a staged scene.
When I looked at the location
of Stacy's injuries,
it was not what
you would expect to see
from a fall in a bathtub.
Too many. Way too many.
There were,
we call them "pattern imprints,
pattern abrasions,"
which tells me
that when those injuries
were sustained,
that she was clothed.
Yet, she is found naked
in the bathtub.
When I analysed the photographs
from the bathroom,
I saw an imprint of some sort.
That is what you would expect to see
with the sole of a shoe.
Why would your boots be
inside of the bathtub?
The only reason is if you were
trying to pull someone into the tub.
She had injuries to her eyes
from increased pressure
that you see during strangulation,
more than 50 in each eye.
She had bruises on the arms
consistent with her arms
being held down
while she's being assaulted.
This was, in fact,
death from strangulation
or suffocation.
It was clear to me
that one,
this was a staged crime scene,
and two, that Stacy Feldman
had been murdered.
- I walked up on the witness stand.
They asked me to identify Bob,
and I pointed straight at him.
I said, "He's right there,"
and I looked him right in the eye,
and he just stared at me,
a very blank stare.
There was no emotion, no nothing.
- Prosecutors said
Stacy confronted him
about the latest affair
and told him that she's done,
and the marriage is over.
It's one thing to react
and get upset.
But there's that piece,
that evil piece,
that allowed him to hurt her
the way he did and kill her.
- Dr Smock pointed out
every single mark
that she had on her body,
and he pointed out that it was,
um, a violent death
And that she fought back.
And all I could think about,
that whole time
is, "What is Stacy thinking?
Is she thinking about me?
Is she thinking
that she's gonna die?
Is she thinking about her kids?"
I have no idea
how I managed those seven years
between him killing her
and the verdict.
Because of delays that his lawyer
was able to get for him,
because of financial delays,
because of COVID,
we had years of being in limbo.
- Every time we thought
we were gonna get close,
um, we would get our hopes up
and think that it was gonna come
to an end,
and then we would be crushed again.
After the verdict, we were shocked.
We were stunned. We were speechless.
We were elated.
I felt, I felt free.
I felt
that I could breathe again.
The fog was lifted.
- am very, uh, grateful
that Susan McBride came forward.
It put the pieces together
to make it make sense.
- Susan McBride is my hero.
What she did,
how she came forward,
I will forever be, um,
indebted to her and grateful.
- This whole situation
and my involvement
with Robert Feldman
really made me
take a hard look at my life.
I needed a change.
So, I moved to an area
of Northern Tuscany
called Lunigiana in Italy.
I wanted to live a simpler life
in a quieter place where,
oh, knock on wood, these kinds
of things don't happen so much.
A place to really think and,
you know, plan the next chapter
of my life.
- I can't even tell you
how many times a day
I think about Stacy,
how many times a day I want
to pick up the phone and call her.
I, I'm not whole without her.
It's such
a hole in my heart,
in so many people's hearts.
- You know, I hear her.
It sounds weird. (CHUCKLES)
But she had a very distinct laugh.
I hear it a lot.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry
there wasn't more
we could do.
We didn't know what to do.
I don't know what we would've done,
or could've done, but
(SNIFFLES) I miss her tremendously.
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