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Murder She Solved S01E02
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CreativityTranscript
00:00On a chilly November night, in the quiet town of St. Catharines, Ontario,
00:0972-year-old Bruce Furman is returning from his usual bike ride, at the usual time.
00:18As the senior brings his bicycle inside the garage, he meets a violent demise.
00:26When Bruce Furman is found, his body is draped over his bicycle with a stream of blood flowing from his head.
00:36Is he unconscious? Yes, he is.
00:37A bloody pipe wrench matted with hair rests on the work table beside him.
00:42There's blood everywhere.
00:43Who would murder this seemingly quiet retired man? And why?
00:48As the police dig deep into the victim's startling past, they find nothing is as it seems.
00:54You'd open one door and ten more doors would open.
00:57And the truth is more surprising and disturbing than detectives could have imagined.
01:01There's not a lot of cases like this and it's kind of unbelievable.
01:04A foul conspiracy based on loyalty and greed is uncovered.
01:08You don't use your family, especially in such a despicable way.
01:12You don't use your family, whereas you're living in such a proceeding.
01:14You're a tại.
01:15You're a fatter.
01:16You're a fatter.
01:17You're a fatter.
01:18You're a fatter.
01:19You're a fatter.
01:21You're a fatter.
01:23You're a fatter.
01:25Until the last, you're a fatter.
01:38In the quiet city of St. Catharines, 72-year-old Bruce Furman, a father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, is enjoying his retirement.
01:48He rode his bike daily. He's quite active.
01:53He was a good-looking guy and just as charming as anybody you could possibly meet. Fun to be with.
02:02He was very handy. He had a 300-acre hog farm. Farmers, usually, they can build and fix anything.
02:12He used the garage for his wood shop and he built a garden shed and it looked like a little girl's playhouse.
02:21After farming, Bruce had become a realtor and he met his common-law wife, Margaret Banesh, when he sold her home.
02:27They did camping, they had a motorhome, and shopping across the border.
02:34But after eight years together, Bruce and Margaret are splitting up.
02:39My father was living in the basement and Margaret lived upstairs in the house.
02:45Bruce is looking forward to settling the separation and moving on to a new chapter.
02:50I believe he had another 20 years or more of life left in him.
02:57On the evening of November 27, 2001, Bruce and Margaret are each going about their separate lives.
03:08Margaret and her daughter Elizabeth, who is visiting from British Columbia, have gone to see Niagara Falls lit up at night and have a bite to eat.
03:18After Bruce has his dinner, he takes his usual bike ride.
03:22But there is nothing usual about the end of his evening.
03:25At 7 p.m., he returns to his darkened house and enters the garage.
03:44Across the street, neighbors Mark and Michelle Henderson have just put the kids to bed.
03:50We were sitting around watching TV, and the doorbell rang.
03:57And when I went to answer the door, two ladies were standing on the porch.
04:02Margaret and her daughter have come home to make a grisly discovery.
04:06They were quite distraught because they had come home, and Bruce was in the garage with a lot of blood.
04:15Niagara emergency. Do you need police, ambulance, or fire?
04:18Yes, I need an ambulance for the neighbors across the street.
04:21There's blood everywhere.
04:22Has anybody taken a look at him?
04:24Is he breathing?
04:27I don't know.
04:27They don't know.
04:32Emergency personnel race to the home of Bruce Furman and Margaret Banesh.
04:39Police sweep the premises on alert for possible intruders.
04:43But the only person on site is Bruce Furman, and he is most certainly dead.
04:48November 27, 2001.
04:53St. Catharines, Ontario.
04:55Former farmer and real estate agent Bruce Furman has his evening routine disrupted permanently.
05:03When returning home from a bicycle ride, Bruce is bludgeoned with a pipe wrench in his own garage.
05:11At 8.45, his common-law wife and her daughter arrive home to find Bruce dead in a pool of blood.
05:18Detective Sergeant Carrie Harrison is appointed as lead investigator on this gruesome homicide.
05:27There's so much information to take in, and there's so many possibilities.
05:32All you know is you have a victim of a homicide, and, you know, you've got to go from there.
05:37Outside the Furman house, a videographer captures the police activity, while inside, Detective Karen Mertz investigates the murder scene.
05:48The deceased was laying face forward on top of two bicycles.
05:58He had one of his hands still on the handlebars of the bicycle.
06:03His head was near a sawhorse leg, and on top of that sawhorse was a bloody pipe wrench.
06:12Though no one was found in the house, there was clearly an intruder.
06:19From what they were telling us, it could have been a break-and-enter.
06:22It appears to be an attack from behind.
06:26Nobody else is home.
06:27We needed to do a canvas of the neighborhood immediately to see if any other neighbors had seen or noticed anything that was unusual in the neighborhood.
06:37Or even if anybody else had been, you know, a victim of maybe an attempted break-and-enter.
06:43The team continues a thorough examination of the crime scene.
06:47We marked out where the deceased was located on the floor and took photographs.
06:54We bagged his hands.
06:56We tried to preserve the evidence as best we can.
07:01They're combing that garage, and they pay huge attention to the smallest amount of detail.
07:07The only mark the perpetrators have left behind is a single footprint on the back porch.
07:13It was drizzly that night.
07:15Lawns were wet.
07:17Back porches were damp.
07:19The evidence is being washed away even as it is discovered.
07:23There's really no tread pattern that they're able to really give us on that footprint.
07:28The evidence, forensically, is not giving us a whole lot.
07:33What is most perplexing is that no one can see how the intruder entered the garage.
07:39Detective Mike Adamczyk examines the crime scene.
07:43When we went to a look and see where Mr. Fuhrman was, we did check for signs of forced entry, and there was not.
07:49Nobody got inside.
07:50The door was locked.
07:52The house was all, you know, the way they left it.
07:54The theory of a break-and-enter and someone being in the home, things are going to be ransacked.
08:03Things are going to be strewn all over the place, and nothing was touched.
08:08Nothing was out of place.
08:09If an intruder had been discovered during a robbery, murdering a senior seems an unlikely end to the scenario.
08:16It's a pretty serious stand to take to kill somebody.
08:21He was an older gentleman.
08:23They could have pushed him out of the way and ran by and ran out the door and probably got away with it.
08:29If this wasn't a break-and-enter gone wrong, then what could have motivated this savage attack?
08:38Harrison sends Detective Mike Adamczyk to talk to the victim's estranged spouse and her daughter.
08:44They're still at the home of their neighbors who placed the 911 call.
08:49Elizabeth and Margaret were sitting on the couch.
08:52I think they'd been offered a drink by the Hendersons.
08:54They were quite shaken, both of them.
08:57They were hyperventilating.
08:59Margaret was in shock.
09:01She didn't have a whole lot to say and just seemed very disconnected to what was happening.
09:06Elizabeth said she was going to be sick and had to go to the bathroom.
09:11On the front porch, police interview the women.
09:14Margaret is an older lady.
09:16She was in her 70s.
09:18She appeared to be upset.
09:21And Elizabeth seemed to maybe be the one who was in control and trying to be strong for her mother.
09:29Margaret and her daughter seem horrified by Bruce's violent death.
09:33That's just beyond the realm of, you know, anything that you would even think of.
09:39But they also talk openly about the domestic strife between Margaret and Bruce.
09:44Elizabeth lived in British Columbia, but she was here visiting her mom in St. Catharines because her mom was going through some difficult personal issues.
09:56Elizabeth Gatenby has been trying to help the couple reach a separation agreement.
10:00It was several months prior that she came in and was sort of like, I guess, doing negotiations.
10:06Like, even splitting stuff up in the house.
10:09He was living downstairs.
10:10Margaret was up there.
10:11She would go up and down the stairs.
10:12Okay, we'll work this, work this.
10:14Trying to finalize the divorce in a fair way.
10:16But Margaret and Bruce are fighting over everything from figurines to flashlights.
10:21There was a court date, I think, on the Friday.
10:28Not far from Niagara Falls, a shocking murder has occurred in the quiet city of St. Catharines.
10:34Bruce Furman is ambushed in his home and bludgeoned with a pipe wrench after an evening bike ride.
10:41At first glance, it seems this is robbery gone wrong.
10:46But now, police question whether the vicious murder could be the result of a marriage gone south.
10:53Bruce's separation from Margaret Banesh has been particularly bitter.
10:58Sergeant Carrie Harrison considers whether this 69-year-old woman could be responsible for Bruce's death.
11:04We have to be open to everything and, you know, take the information we get and go down each of those paths.
11:15At the time of the murder, Margaret Banesh and her daughter claim to have been at Niagara Falls to see the lights and have some dinner.
11:24Harrison sends detectives to check their alibi.
11:28Meanwhile, she takes the women to the station where Karen Mertz will scan them for any possible blood spatter.
11:34It's very difficult for someone to commit murder and not have some transfer of blood or bodily fluid onto themselves.
11:45We just want to be able to cover our bases and make sure that there's nothing that we need to be concerned with.
11:51No problem. They are totally cooperative with us.
11:55If she could tell us that she was picking up something, that's going to totally change the direction of our investigation.
12:02We found nothing. No bodily fluids. No blood.
12:09Margaret and Elizabeth are clean.
12:13And when detectives return from Niagara Falls, they verify the women's story.
12:18They tell us the location where they went for dinner.
12:24The staff remember both of them, where they sat.
12:28Yes, they were there for dinner. That alibi checks out.
12:31They've even checked the timing of the story in case the women committed the murder and then changed their clothes.
12:37An investigator did do a drive and we had a good understanding of, you know, when they left the falls and how long it would take them to get home.
12:47And that was all within the realm of how it should be.
12:51Before the women leave the station, they give a routine statement recorded on videotape.
12:57When asked about Bruce, Elizabeth Gatenby tells the police that there was a dark side to the quiet retired man the neighbours saw working in his yard.
13:08According to Elizabeth, Bruce was not only trying to get every penny out of the separation, he had already moved on to another woman.
13:17He told my mother that he was seeing someone else.
13:21She made no bones about the fact that she thought, you know, he wasn't a nice man for what he was doing and what he was putting her mother through.
13:32He said he would take her to the cleaners. There was nothing she could do about it.
13:37Elizabeth says Bruce had a very checkered romantic past.
13:41We found out he'd had like eight other relationships and every time it was the same kind of thing, you know.
13:47So the women just like gave him whatever to make him go away.
13:53According to Elizabeth, Bruce had a habit of leaving his partners with an empty bank account.
13:59It was 78 women that he'd been married or common law with that he had befriended.
14:05Initially he'd be a handyman, then dating, move in, marry, and then a short time later, divorce, taking some assets with him.
14:14So this is a pattern.
14:15Though these allegations about Bruce's financial dealings are unconfirmed, Bruce had undoubtedly broken more than a few hearts.
14:24He's made some enemies in his past with what he's done with these women.
14:29There are potentially eight women out there with an axe to grind or a pipe wrench to swing.
14:35When you have that many women involved, I'm sure some of them were quite bitter.
14:40So we'd have to look at every single one of those people to see if their motive was there or opportunity was there.
14:49Detective Adamczyk will meet with the victim's family to get more insight into Bruce's history with women.
14:55When I spoke with the family, they weren't surprised.
15:00They knew what their father was doing.
15:03Diane Carroll's is Bruce Furman's daughter.
15:06Dad wasn't a perfect person.
15:11But who is?
15:13Though Bruce had many relationships, she doesn't think her father set out to swindle the women.
15:20What he seemed to be doing was not thinking about what was going to happen.
15:26You know, he'd get married and then divorced and view somebody else afraid of, you know, and it just went on and on and on like that.
15:35Diane was hopeful about Bruce's new relationship.
15:38At his age, he should be okay now.
15:42He's found Joan, this lovely lady, and he would be fine, settle down, and that would be it.
15:50Adamczyk asked Diane and Dawn if any of the women from Bruce's past could have wanted him dead.
15:56Just minutes from Niagara Falls, in a charming house in a quiet neighborhood,
16:04retiree Bruce Furman, a grandfather and avid handyman, is found bludgeoned in his garage.
16:12The murder weapon is his own hype wrench.
16:16He is discovered by his common-law wife, Margaret, and her daughter, Elizabeth,
16:21and it seems the crime is a break-and-enter gone wrong.
16:24But investigation shows this is not the case.
16:29We did check for signs of force entry, and there was not.
16:32In fact, it seems like the murder could have been motivated by Furman's romantic past.
16:37It took a lot of women off, you know.
16:40He's in the midst of separating from Margaret, and she is his ninth marital partner.
16:46According to Margaret and her daughter, Bruce took each of his ex-wives to the cleaners.
16:52But the investigation turns up no evidence to implicate any of the women from Bruce's past.
16:58It's only when the police talk to Furman's family that they learn something shocking.
17:06According to them, Margaret Banesh had uttered death threats against their father.
17:10My dad had told me at one time that if he was murdered, I would know who had murdered him.
17:17He told me that she had grabbed a knife and had swung it at him.
17:23I asked him to get out of the house.
17:27He said, I can't leave.
17:29If I leave, I'll lose everything.
17:31If threats were made, were they just angry outbursts, or did they foreshadow something more sinister?
17:45Though Margaret has an alibi, police reconsider whether she could have been involved in Bruce's murder.
17:51You get a strong lead in a certain area, then the other ones are put aside.
17:56According to his son, Bruce took Margaret's alleged threats seriously enough to report them to his lawyer.
18:04She actually threw an ashtray at Mr. Furman and told him that, you know, he'd be dead before she would be paying him support.
18:15Bruce's death would not only free Margaret from paying support, she would become the sole heir to his estate.
18:22But Don Furman says his father had recently changed his will to leave everything to his children.
18:30That will that they made out disappeared and was never found.
18:39My brother in Huntsville called lawyers up there to see if anybody had it, and nobody could find it.
18:47Bruce had told his children that Margaret was trying to get her hands on the will.
18:52He came home, and Margaret and two neighbors were looking in the ceiling tile of his bedroom.
18:59Tearing the place apart, he said he knew that we were looking for the will.
19:03What happened to the will is a mystery.
19:06Mr. Furman was complaining that paperwork, important paperwork of his, had gone missing and was going missing.
19:13Though police have good reason to suspect Margaret Banesh, there is nothing that tangibly links her to her ex's murder.
19:24We had a great motive, but no evidence.
19:29That's a big problem.
19:31Sergeant Harrison knows it's a big leap from divorce to murder.
19:35She's an elderly lady.
19:36You're not thinking that, you know, she could carry out something like this.
19:44Margaret's alibi is rock solid, and there was no blood spatter found on her the night of the murder.
19:51If Margaret wanted Bruce dead, someone else must have done the deed.
19:56Is there somebody else stepping up to the plate for her to look after the situation?
20:03Harrison is desperate for some evidence.
20:06There's pressure.
20:07I'm feeling pressure.
20:09I'm calling the plays, and we're not getting any touchdowns.
20:11It's a long shot, but Harrison starts investigating whether Furman's killer could have come in from out of town.
20:20We sent an investigative team out to start to attend every hotel, motel they could think of.
20:26After hitting almost every motel in St. Catharines, Detective Scott Kenny finally enters the QA on Lake Street.
20:35We asked to look at who had been registering in the rooms and obtain the stack of cards.
20:41What Kenny sees will change the direction of the investigation.
20:47The name on the registration card is Elizabeth Gatenby, the daughter of Margaret Banesh.
20:53We know she's staying at her mother's, so a huge flag goes off here.
20:58Why is she renting a motel room when she's staying with her mother?
21:01Police need to find out who occupied that room and whether there's a connection to the murder of Bruce Furman.
21:08We found that there had been a couple young males staying in the room, and we had the room secured because it's very critical to make sure that nothing left the room and no evidence was destroyed.
21:23The motel had no names on file for the two young men, and there is nothing in the room that identifies them.
21:31Elizabeth Gatenby has some hard questions to answer.
21:35During her initial interview, she said she came here by herself, on the bus, with no one else.
21:40Just 20 minutes away from Niagara Falls, the honeymoon is long over for Bruce Furman and Margaret Banesh.
21:54In the midst of their ugly divorce, Bruce has been bludgeoned in his garage.
21:58And his children claim that Margaret had threatened to kill Bruce on more than one occasion.
22:05Could she have orchestrated the murder?
22:08There is no definitive evidence.
22:11Looking for new leads, police search the local motels on the chance that the killer had come in from out of town.
22:18They make a surprising discovery.
22:21Margaret Banesh's daughter, Elizabeth Gatenby, had paid for a motel room she was not staying in.
22:27That leads us to go back to look at the video from the St. Catherine's bus station to check and see who did she arrive there with.
22:38Myself and Greg went to view the videotapes, and that confirmed the fact that she had gotten off the bus with a male, stood there with that male.
22:46He had like a blanket around him.
22:49Sergeant Harrison wants some answers, but she tells Gatenby this interview is just routine, a follow-up to ensure nothing has been missed.
22:59She has another detective ask the questions so that she and Adamczyk can listen in and assess.
23:05I'm going to ask you, first of all, to give me some background.
23:08Gatenby is relaxed and talks at length about herself and her family.
23:12My boys are 25, 18, and 11.
23:17The interviewer steers the conversation towards Elizabeth's trip to Ontario without revealing that the police know anything about the boys.
23:26He talks to her about traveling, you know, spending a couple days on the bus.
23:31Elizabeth met a number of fellow travelers, including a kid who seemed down and out.
23:36He's got, well, I wouldn't call it a beard, and I wouldn't call it a goatee.
23:40I'd kind of call it scruff.
23:42Trying.
23:43Yeah, trying.
23:44A little hard.
23:45That's exactly the name.
23:46I've been there.
23:46Scruff.
23:47Yeah, it was kind of scruff.
23:48If I was his mother, I would say, wipe that off.
23:51Would you get a cat or something?
23:53Elizabeth says that the kid was planning to meet up with a buddy.
23:57He had heard that there was work out this way, so he was going to come, and he was going to try and find some work.
24:01That was his mission.
24:02The youth had no place to stay, and Gatenby used her credit card to get him a room.
24:09Then you can just pay me back, and, you know, we'll be square, and they'll give you a room.
24:13Because if you go in there, they're going to take one look at you and go, not happy.
24:21Elizabeth's story seems to make sense, and it's entirely consistent with her history.
24:26She is the coordinator of a home for youth at risk.
24:29She was an ex-addict herself.
24:32And she, that was her mission, was to take care of homeless kids.
24:37I love what I do.
24:39I love what I do.
24:40Her life's work, so to speak, was to help kids that were, you know, down on their luck.
24:47You know, that's kind of what she did.
24:49But the police have no way to confirm Gatenby's story.
24:52She doesn't know the last names of the kid or his buddy, or where they possibly could be now.
24:58Harrison and Adamczyk can't quite put their suspicions to rest.
25:04Sometimes you get those feelings.
25:05I don't know.
25:05It's hard to say.
25:07She was lying.
25:08She was really good.
25:09No.
25:10Though Gatenby is convincing, her story seems too pat and too detailed.
25:15It's called laying too much track.
25:16Everything was just too perfect.
25:18Some people, you know, tell me what they did in 30 seconds.
25:22It took her probably a half hour, 45 minutes.
25:26Sergeant Harrison keeps the interview going, hoping Elizabeth will talk her way into revealing
25:31whether she is as genuine and candid as she seems.
25:34When the conversation turns back to Margaret, police discover that just weeks before the murder,
25:41Elizabeth's mother had attempted suicide.
25:45She took an overdose of pills.
25:50She couldn't take it anymore.
25:54And she assured me she was okay.
25:56She wouldn't do that again.
25:58But I talked to her a few times and every time I'd say goodbye to her, she'd be crying.
26:04So I finally said to my partner, I've got to go see her.
26:12Gatenby was afraid for her mother's health and stability.
26:17She confesses that her own stress and frustration were getting the better of her.
26:21I wish he would disappear off the face of the earth so that this could all be over.
26:26Gatenby says her shock at Bruce's violent death has been accompanied by a big dose of guilt.
26:32You never in a million years expect that that's what's going to happen.
26:37This isn't the way I wanted it.
26:40The interview leaves many questions unanswered, but police know one thing for sure.
26:47Elizabeth had strong and ample reasons to want Bruce Furman dead.
26:52She said that I wished him dead all this time, and she felt bad that he was actually dead.
26:58Obviously, that's going to put a flag up for me.
27:01Near Niagara Falls, the sleepy town of St. Catharines has been shocked by the murder of Bruce Furman,
27:12a senior who was struck on the head with a pipe wrench when returning home from an evening bike ride.
27:19Police have discovered that Bruce had a string of ex-wives.
27:23But some follow-up reveals that none of them wanted him dead.
27:29The same can't be said for his most recent ex, Margaret Banesh,
27:34who is alleged by Bruce's family to have made death threats.
27:38So far, police can find no evidence to suggest she was involved with his killing.
27:45They have discovered some curious details about her daughter, Elizabeth Gatenby, who is visiting from B.C.
27:52First, she said nothing to police about meeting a down-and-out kid and getting him a hotel in St. Catharines.
28:00There's something, there's more to it than what she's saying.
28:03Second, Gatenby has reason to believe that Bruce was going to drive her mother to suicide.
28:09She admits there were moments when she wished him dead.
28:12I wished he would disappear off the face of the earth so that it just could all be over.
28:16Sgt. Carrie Harrison assigns Karen Mertz to do a forensic workover on Gatenby's rental car
28:24in hopes that it will turn up further evidence.
28:28We examine the inside and the outside of the vehicle with fingerprint powder,
28:32and then we utilize the alternate light source.
28:35It's helping us see what we cannot see with the ambient light.
28:40She examined the car, and there is a fourth-ring fingerprint on the rear door of the car.
28:50We got elimination prints from Elizabeth and Margaret,
28:56so we knew that fingerprint wasn't theirs.
28:58Forensic detective Terry Smith will use an automated computer system
29:05to see if the print belongs to a known offender.
29:07The Canadian database is upwards of 4.3 million sets of fingerprints,
29:14so 43 million individual fingers, if you will.
29:18The odds of a match are slim to none.
29:21It's a rental car, so the chances of fingerprints being in that car would not be unusual.
29:28So I can't say we were overly excited.
29:35Finally, Carrie Harrison gets the break in the case that she's been waiting for.
29:40The turning point was running this fingerprint.
29:45That one fingerprint is what started the ball rolling.
29:50The print is matched to a known criminal,
29:53and he lives in Kimberley, British Columbia,
29:56not far from Elizabeth Gatenby's hometown of Trail.
30:01The RCMP are waiting for him when he returns from his trip to Ontario.
30:07What is shocking is that this criminal is just a kid,
30:11a young offender who must remain anonymous.
30:13He's a 17-year-old kid,
30:16very much into the marijuana dealing of that community.
30:22Three days after the murder,
30:24detectives from St. Catharines, Ontario,
30:27fly to Kimberley, B.C.
30:28to confront the young offender with the fingerprint evidence.
30:32He tells investigators that he was requested to come to St. Catharines to kill a guy.
30:44The guy he was asked to kill was Mr. Bruce Furman.
30:48When investigators ask who hired him,
30:54they get an answer that is more surprising and bizarre than they could have expected.
31:00Byron, son of Elizabeth Gatenby, who lives and works in Whistler.
31:06The young offender says that he was hired by the 18-year-old son of Elizabeth Gatenby
31:13and grandson of Margaret Banesh.
31:17This is the turning point.
31:19Byron Gatenby is arrested in Whistler, B.C.,
31:22where he ekes out a living as a prep cook.
31:25Detective Adam Chick flies out to interrogate him,
31:28but he does some background checking before the interview.
31:32I went to where he lived.
31:34He was crashing on someone's couch.
31:37Interviewed people he were hanging out with.
31:39Couldn't believe that he was arrested for first-degree murder.
31:42Most people considered him quite a gentle person.
31:45I did a history of any involvement with the police that Byron had.
31:51And we found some indications that he had a very, very tough child.
31:56Elizabeth Gatenby has mentioned that she had a serious drug addiction when Byron was young.
32:02What kind of an upbringing did he have?
32:04What kind of a life?
32:06Like, was Elizabeth really a mother to him?
32:10Byron has had problems with drugs and alcohol himself.
32:16In Whistler, B.C., the police grill Byron.
32:20It was a long interview.
32:22I'm talking, I think it was five to six hours.
32:24And he wouldn't come clean with it whatsoever.
32:28Byron makes a one-way trip back to St. Catharines, where Harrison and the team ratchet up the pressure.
32:36I think at some point he realizes the jig's up and he finally comes through with the truth.
32:43On December 9th, 2001, Byron makes a confession on tape.
32:49He tells police how he and the kid from Kimberly lay in wait for Bruce Furman.
32:56At precisely seven o'clock, Bruce Furman comes through the door, just in time for his usual evening television show.
33:07The young offender was standing behind the door.
33:11The door closes right there.
33:13Pops him.
33:14Pops him with what?
33:15A wrench of some sort.
33:18He stumbles down, falls over his bike.
33:22Pops him again.
33:23And that would be Byron's cue to come out of the tool room where he would potentially strangle him.
33:30I gave him a boot.
33:31I gave him a kick.
33:33And I looked at him.
33:36I actually looked at him and I just jammed up.
33:38Couldn't do anything.
33:39Couldn't move.
33:40I was saying finish it.
33:41Do it.
33:41Something to that effect.
33:44And I couldn't do it.
33:46The young offender finishes the job.
33:49Give him a couple more shots.
33:53And, uh, we went to, we went to run.
34:07Only six days after 72-year-old Bruce Furman was bludgeoned in his garage,
34:16Sergeant Carrie Harrison and her team are homing in on the conspirators to this murder.
34:22The victim was found by his estranged spouse, Margaret Banesh, and her daughter, Elizabeth Gatenby,
34:29and both women are under investigation.
34:32Banesh is alleged to have uttered death threats against Bruce Furman,
34:36and Gatenby paid for a motel for two young men.
34:39One is a 17-year-old pot dealer who says he was hired to kill Bruce.
34:45The other is Elizabeth's 18-year-old son, Byron Gatenby.
34:50After hours of interrogation, Byron has confessed to hiring the 17-year-old.
34:56The two boys lay in wait for Bruce in the garage.
34:59Byron was planning to strangle Bruce himself, but he froze,
35:04and the kid from Kimberly savagely attacked the old man with a pipe wrench.
35:11Now, police want to know how far this conspiracy to commit homicide extends.
35:16Did Byron act alone, or did the matriarchs in Byron's family mastermind the murder?
35:22There's not a lot of cases like this. It's kind of... It's crazy.
35:28To get the answers, Detective Adamczyk puts the pressure on Byron.
35:32I told him, I said, you know your mother's using you. You know that.
35:36And you're going to rot in jail, and she's going to get away with this.
35:40And he put his head down. He said, I'm going to go to hell for this.
35:45And he looked at me, and he just gave it all up.
35:48The truth is an unsettling tale of blood loyalties.
35:55For Byron, the murder was all about protecting his grandmother.
36:00She was looking at Bruce Vermin as a common law.
36:04He was threatening her physically, emotionally,
36:07putting in a common law divorce.
36:10trying to commit suicide multiple times.
36:20That's the only thing that was really close to him still was his grandmother, Margaret.
36:23He really cared about.
36:24I think, you know, he truly wanted to help his grandmother.
36:28And maybe this was the only way, or it was put to him that this was the only way he could help her.
36:33And Elizabeth indicated that, you know, he was abusing her,
36:37and he was taking all of her money, and sort of built up this whole thing.
36:42He was manipulated by a master of manipulation.
36:45That's what he was done.
36:46And his own mother.
36:48Elizabeth Gatenby asked her son to murder Bruce Furman.
36:52And it was decided that we're going to let him take everything.
36:59Who decided to stop this?
37:01My mother and I.
37:07So, I made the trip to go out here to kill him.
37:14It's almost inconceivable to think that a mother would bring her own son into this situation.
37:23I've seen some pretty weird things, but I've never seen that.
37:27When you, you know, get your own child to kill somebody.
37:32Elizabeth encouraged Byron to hire someone to help do the job.
37:36He found the young offender, who he knew from the streets.
37:39He was a drug user.
37:41With Byron and the other teen conscripted as assassins,
37:45Elizabeth takes care of the logistics.
37:47She arranged, like, all the bus tickets to be picked up.
37:50She had code words for when they were supposed to do things.
37:53Bought them one-piece industrial suits, gloves.
37:57The boy on the bus with Elizabeth is actually her son.
38:01The young offender arrives a day later.
38:05Elizabeth gets the boys a motel in St. Catharines, but they move to Niagara Falls on the day of the murder.
38:12Elizabeth takes her mother, and they go to Niagara Falls.
38:18They park the car in the lot of this hotel.
38:22She leaves the keys in the back door handle of the car.
38:27That's the understanding.
38:28So then the boys can now come and take the rental car.
38:31Byron and the young offender will use the rental car to drive to St. Catharines to kill Bruce Furman.
38:44Elizabeth gave them his schedule.
38:47He was by the minute.
38:48They knew when, where he was going to be.
38:50They pretty much know exactly what time they have to be in that garage.
38:55They went, got the key, let themselves in, and waited for him.
39:01Afterwards, the boys drive back to Niagara Falls and park outside the restaurant, where Elizabeth and Margaret are finishing dinner.
39:13So Elizabeth knows that they've returned.
39:15She came out, and I told her it was done.
39:22Grandma didn't have to worry about them anymore.
39:25And Elizabeth gives some money for them to go out and party.
39:33And when Elizabeth and Margaret get home, they make the discovery they make.
39:38And, you know, immediately go across the street where Elizabeth puts on an Academy Award performance.
39:47And we start rolling.
39:50No one but Elizabeth knows if she acted out of love for her mother or with an eye towards her own inheritance.
39:58If Bruce was out of the picture, then her mom would have everything.
40:03And eventually, maybe that would carry on down to her.
40:07When Adam Chick arrests Elizabeth Gatenby, she is as cool as ever.
40:13Told her she was under arrest for murder.
40:14Didn't flinch.
40:15I think she was so confident that she was untouchable.
40:19As for Margaret Benesh, her grandson denies that she had any involvement with the murder.
40:25Grandma never knew what was going on.
40:27She never had a clue.
40:29Even if she wasn't involved, I don't think Byron would turn his grandmother in.
40:36But the police still don't know where the money for the hit was supposed to come from.
40:40Elizabeth didn't have any money.
40:43Byron didn't have any money.
40:45But the money had to come from somewhere.
40:46That's one of the mysteries.
40:47Where did the money come from?
40:50But nothing could be brought towards Margaret.
40:52We definitely tried to look at banking information and banking accounts.
40:56But, you know, we weren't able to find anything.
41:00There is never any evidence that Margaret Benesh conspired in Furman's death.
41:05Many of the investigators feel that she may have.
41:10But the way we look at it is, you know, call your first witness.
41:14We can't.
41:15There's nothing, nothing.
41:17And we looked at everything.
41:18There was nothing that we could find to prove that she had knowledge.
41:28Elizabeth Gatenby pleads innocent to the charge of first-degree murder.
41:33This mother and youth advocate claims she simply wanted the boys to scare Bruce Furman, not kill him.
41:39But Gatenby is found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
41:43Elizabeth's son, Byron, pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and serves six years.
41:51The 17-year-old who bludgeoned Bruce Furman takes a plea for first-degree murder.
41:57He is given just six years in prison, the maximum youth sentence.
42:02We're getting the people responsible for this homicide.
42:06You know, that's a relief.
42:08But it's such a tragic, such a tragic story.
42:12Margaret Vinesh continues to live alone in the home she shared with Bruce Furman.
42:19It bothers me that she stays there and that anybody would stay there knowing that a person was murdered so brutally.
42:26I can't imagine living in a house where someone you once cared deeply for was murdered.
42:33And by your own daughter and, you know, grandson.
42:37I can't imagine living in a house like that.
42:40I don't know how she does it.
42:42I don't know how she does it.
42:43I don't know how she pins her me out in prison.
42:45I don't know what the situation has been given to.
42:48But who does it?
42:49I don't know how she does it.
42:49It does not know how she plays with her son ultra-speaking child.
42:55Don't know how many can't do it.
42:57I don't know how many.
42:59I know how many, of course, people areowered.
43:00Those who have some creating beauty.
43:01I can imagine having tourism.
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