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  • 4 days ago
Murder She Solved S01E02
Transcript
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.
01:12In the quiet city of St. Catherine's, 72 years later.
01:39In the quiet city of St. Catharines, 72-year-old Bruce Furman, a father, grandfather and great-grandfather, is enjoying his retirement.
01:49He rode his bike daily. He was quite active.
01:54He was a good-looking guy and just as charming as anybody you could possibly meet. Fun to be with.
02:03He 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.
02:28They did camping, they had a motor home and shopping across the border.
02:35But 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.
02:59On 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.
03:17After Bruce has his dinner, he takes his usual bike ride.
03:22But there is nothing usual about the end of his evening.
03:26At 7pm, he returns to his darkened house and enters the garage.
03:35Across 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.
03:55And 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.
04:07They were quite distraught because they had come home and Bruce was in the garage with a lot of blood.
04:14Niagara 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?
04:26I don't know.
04:28They don't know.
04:29They don't know.
04:30They don't know.
04:31They don't know.
04:32They don't know.
04:33They don't know.
04:34Emergency 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.
04:47And he is most certainly dead.
04:50November 27, 2001. St. Catharines, Ontario.
04:55Former farmer and real estate agent Bruce Furman has his evening routine disrupted permanently.
05:04When 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.
05:19Detective 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.
05:38Outside the Furman house, a videographer captures the police activity,
05:44while inside, Detective Karen Mertz investigates the murder scene.
05:49The deceased was laying face forward on top of two bicycles.
05:56He had one of his hands still on the handlebars of the bicycle.
06:02His head was near a sawhorse leg, and on top of that sawhorse was a bloody pipe wrench.
06:14Though no one was found in the house, there was clearly an intruder.
06:18From what they were telling us, it could have been a break-and-enter.
06:23It appears to be an attack from behind.
06:25Nobody else is home.
06:28We needed to do a canvas of the neighborhood immediately to see if any other neighbors
06:33had 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.
06:48We marked out where the deceased was located on the floor and took photographs.
06:53We bagged his hands.
06:55We tried to preserve the evidence as best we can.
07:00They're combing that garage, and they pay huge attention to the smallest amount of detail.
07:06The 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.
07:16Back porches were damp.
07:18The 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.
07:27The 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.
07:48There was not.
07:49Nobody got inside.
07:51The door was locked.
07:52The house was all, you know, the way they left it.
07:55The 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.
08:07Nothing 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?
08:37Harrison 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.
08:48Elizabeth and Margaret were sitting on the couch.
08:51I 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.
09:02She 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.
09:17She's in her 70s.
09:18You know, she 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.
09:55Elizabeth 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.
10:08He was living downstairs. Margaret was upstairs.
10:10She would go up and down the stairs.
10:12Okay, we'll work this, work this, trying 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.
10:26Not 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.
10:57Sergeant 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.
11:23Harrison 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.
12:03We 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.
12:20They 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 neighbors saw working in his yard.
13:07According 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.
13:31He 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 that he had like eight other relationships and every time it was the same kind of thing, you know.
13:48The 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 lot with that he had befriended.
14:04Initially, he'd be a handyman, then dating, move in, marry, and then short time later, divorce, taking some assets with him.
14:14So this is a pattern.
14:16Though 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.
14:28There 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.
14:48Detective Adamczyk will meet with the victim's family to get more insight into Bruce's history with women.
14:57When I spoke with the family, they weren't surprised. They knew what their father was doing.
15:02Diane 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.
15:19What 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 be somebody else afraid of, you know, and we just went on and on and on like that.
15:34Diane was hopeful about Bruce's new relationship.
15:38At his age, he should be okay now. He'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.
15:59Just 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.
16:11The 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.
16:25But investigation shows this is not the case.
16:29We did check for signs of forced entry, and there was not.
16:32In fact, it seems like the murder could have been motivated by Furman's romantic past.
16:37There's a lot of women off, you know.
16:41He'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.
16:59It's only when the police talk to Furman's family that they learn something shocking.
17:05According 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. If I leave, I'll lose everything.
17:33And he really did anyways.
17:36If threats were made, were they just angry outbursts?
17:41Or did they foreshadow something more sinister?
17:44Though 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.
18:03She actually threw an ashtray at Mr. Furman and told him that, you know,
18:10he'd be dead before she would be paying him support.
18:15Bruce's death would not only free Margaret from paying support,
18:19she would become the sole heir to his estate.
18:23But Don Furman says his father had recently changed his will to leave everything to his children.
18:31That 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 they 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 was, had gone missing and was going missing.
19:15Though 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.
19:30That's a big problem.
19:31Sergeant Harrison knows it's a big leap from divorce to murder.
19:35She's an elderly lady.
19:37You're not thinking that, you know, she could carry out something like this.
19:43Margaret's alibi is rock solid and there was no blood spatter found on her the night of the murder.
19:50If 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. I'm feeling pressure. I'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.
20:33We asked to look at who had been registering in the rooms and obtain the stack of cards.
20:40What Kenny sees will change the direction of the investigation.
20:45The name on the registration card is Elizabeth Gatenby, the daughter of Margaret Banesh.
20:52We know she's staying at her mother's, so a huge flag goes off here.
20:57Why is she renting a motel room when she's staying with her mother?
21:02Police need to find out who occupied that room and whether there's a connection to the murder of Bruce Furman.
21:09We found that there had been a couple young males staying in the room.
21:13And we had the room secured because it was very critical to make sure that nothing left the room and no evidence was destroyed.
21:24The 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.
21:41Just 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.
22:00And his children claim that Margaret had threatened to kill Bruce on more than one occasion.
22:06Did she have orchestrated the murder? There 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.
22:19They make a surprising discovery. Margaret Banesh's daughter, Elizabeth Gatenby, had paid for a motel room she was not staying in.
22:28That 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.
22:41And that confirmed the fact that she had gotten off the bus with a male, stood there with that male.
22:47He had like a blanket around him.
22:50Sergeant 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.
23:45Exactly.
23:46I've been there.
23:47Scruff.
23:48Yeah, it was kind of scruff.
23:49If 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.
23:59So he was going to come and he was going to try and find some work.
24:02That was his mission.
24:03The youth had no place to stay and Gatenby used her credit card to get him a room.
24:08Then you can just pay me back and, you know, we'll be square and people, you know, 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.
24:20Elizabeth'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 and she, that was her mission, was to take care of homeless kids.
24:37I love what I do.
24:38I love what I do.
24:39Her life's work, so to speak, was to help kids that were, you know, down on their luck.
24:46You know, that's kind of what she did.
24:48But 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.
25:03Sometimes you get those feelings.
25:04I don't know.
25:05It's hard to say.
25:06She was lying.
25:07She was really good.
25:08No.
25:09Though Gatenby is convincing, her story seems too pat and too detailed.
25:14It'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.
25:25Sergeant Harrison keeps the interview going, hoping Elizabeth will talk her way into revealing
25:31whether she is as genuine and candid as she seems.
25:35When the conversation turns back to Margaret, police discover that just weeks before the murder,
25:41Elizabeth's mother had attempted suicide.
25:44She took an overdose of pills because she 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.
26:08So I finally said to my partner, I've got to go see her.
26:11Gatenby was afraid for her mother's health and stability.
26:16She confesses that her own stress and frustration were getting the better of her.
26:22I 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 to fall.
26:40The interview leaves many questions unanswered, but police know one thing for sure.
26:46Elizabeth had strong and ample reasons to want Bruce Furman dead.
26:52She said that I wished him dead all this time.
26:55And 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.
27:11A senior who was struck on the head with a pipe wrench when returning home from an evening bike ride.
27:17Police have discovered that Bruce had a string of ex-wives.
27:24But some follow-up reveals that none of them wanted him dead.
27:29The same can't be said for his most recent ex, Margaret Benesh, who is alleged by Bruce's family to have made death threats.
27:39So 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 BC.
27:53First, 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.
28:18Sergeant Kerry Harrison assigns Karen Mertz to do a forensic workover on Gatenby's rental car,
28:24in hopes that it will turn up further evidence.
28:27We examined the inside and the outside of the vehicle with fingerprint powder,
28:32and then we utilized the alternate light source.
28:37It'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.
28:59Forensic detective Terry Smith will use an automated computer system to see if the print belongs to a known offender.
29:07The Canadian database is upwards of 4.3 million sets of fingerprints.
29:13So 43 million individual fingers, if you will.
29:17The odds of a match are slim to none.
29:21It's a rental car.
29:23So the chances of fingerprints being in that car would not be unusual.
29:29So I can't say we were overly excited.
29:35Finally, Kerry 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.
29:49The print is matched to a known criminal.
29:53And he lives in Kimberley, British Columbia, not far from Elizabeth Gatenby's hometown of Trail.
30:00The 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, a young offender who must remain anonymous.
30:14He's a 17-year-old kid, very much into the marijuana dealing of that community.
30:22Three days after the murder, detectives from St. Catharines, Ontario fly to Kimberley, B.C.
30:29to 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.
30:43The guy he was asked to kill was Mr. Bruce Furman.
30:52When investigators ask who hired him, they get an answer that is more surprising and bizarre than they could have expected.
30:59Byron, 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 and grandson of Margaret Banesh.
31:16This is the turning point.
31:18Byron Gatenby is arrested in Whistler, B.C., where he ekes out a living as a prep cook.
31:25Detective Adam Chick flies out to interrogate him, but he does some background checking before the interview.
31:32I went to where he lived. He was crashing on someone's couch.
31:35I interviewed people he was hanging out with.
31:39I couldn'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 childhood.
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? What kind of a life? Like, was Elizabeth really a mother to him?
32:11Byron has had problems with drugs and alcohol himself.
32:16In Whistler, B.C., the police grill Byron.
32:20It was a long interview. I'm talking, I think it was five to six hours.
32:24And he wouldn't come clean with it whatsoever.
32:29Byron 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.
32:44On December 9th, 2001, Byron makes a confession on tape.
32:50He tells police how he and the kid from Kimberly lay in wait for Bruce Furman.
32:57At precisely seven o'clock, Bruce Furman comes through the door.
33:04Just in time for his usual evening television show.
33:08The young offender was standing behind the door.
33:11The door closes right there. Pops him.
33:14Pops him with what? A wrench of some sort.
33:18He stumbles down. Falls over his bike.
33:22Pops him again.
33:24And 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. I gave him a kick.
33:33And I looked at him. I actually looked at him and I just jammed up.
33:38Couldn't do anything. Couldn't move.
33:40I was saying finish it. Do it. Something to that effect.
33:43And I couldn't do it.
33:46The young offender finishes the job.
33:49I gave him a couple more shots.
33:52I gave him a couple shots.
33:54And, uh, we went to, we went to run.
33:59Only 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.
34:23The 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.
34:40One 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.
35:00Byron 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.
35:44And he looked at me and he just gave it all up.
35:50The truth is an unsettling tale of blood loyalties.
35:55For Byron, the murder was all about protecting his grandmother.
36:00She was living with Bruce Berman as a common law.
36:04He was threatening her physically, emotionally.
36:08Putting in a common law divorce.
36:12Trying 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 was put to him that this was the only way he could help her.
36:33Elizabeth indicated that, you know, he was abusing her and he was going to take 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. And his own mother.
36:48Elizabeth Gatenby asked her son to murder Bruce Fuhrman.
36:52And it was decided that we're going to let him take everything.
36:58Who decided to stop this?
37:02My 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.
37:31Elizabeth encouraged Byron to hire someone to help do the job.
37:36He found the young offender who he knew from the streets. He was a drug user.
37:41With Byron and the other teen conscripted as assassins, Elizabeth takes care of the logistics.
37:47She arranged, like, all the bus tickets to be picked up. She 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.
38:02The young offender arrives a day later.
38:05Elizabeth gets the boys a motel in St. Catharines.
38:09But they moved to Niagara Falls on the day of the murder.
38:14Elizabeth 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.
38:34Byron 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.
39:04Afterwards, the boys drive back to Niagara Falls and park outside the restaurant,
39:10where Elizabeth and Margaret are finishing dinner.
39:13So Elizabeth knows that they've returned.
39:16She came out and I told her it was done.
39:20Grandma didn't have to worry about them anymore.
39:26And 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.
39:57If Bruce was out of the picture, then her mom would have everything and eventually maybe that would carry on down to her.
40:07When Adam Chick arrests Elizabeth Gatenby, she is as cool as ever.
40:12I told 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.
40:30Even if she was 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.
40:44But 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.
40:57But, 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.
41:09But 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.
41:19There 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.
41:44Elizabeth's son Byron pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and served 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.
42:13Margaret Benesh 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.
42:32And 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.