Viewers know Peter Thomas as the narrator of Forensic Files, but his career started long before anyone had heard of high-velocity blood splatter or age-processed clay busts. Some trivia from a long (1924 to 2016) and productive life:
1.Peter Thomas voiced the 1970 commercial that declared “Tang was chosen to go to the moon with the Apollo astronauts.”
2. He considered himself lucky that his voice didn’t change as he aged. He recorded a Gettysburg audio tour in 1974 and was able to add verbiage 30 years later. His voice matched.
3. As a favor to Johnny Carson, Peter Thomas officiated at the wedding of the talk-show titan’s son Cory Carson to a Naples, Florida, native Angelica D. Carson. Johnny (below) and Peter met when they worked for the The Morning Show on CBS in the 1950s.
4. Peter Thomas postponed his own vacation to help an audio technician save his job. The sound man had messed up a Tropicana commercial recording, so Thomas did it over and never told the guy’s superiors.
5. Of all the Nova episodes he narrated for PBS, “Iceman Murder Mystery” was his favorite.
6. Although Peter Thomas spoke perfectly unaccented North American English, he had foreign-born parents — a father from Wales, a mother from England.
7. He considered the greatest innovations in voice technology to be audio tape (which could be sliced up, so one mistake didn’t mean recording from the beginning again), DAT (digital audio tape), and teleprompters affixed to the camera (instead of off to the side).
8. Don “In a World” Lafontaine (left) and Peter Thomas are considered the two best male narrators of their generation. Apparently, they weren’t rivals and liked each other’s work.
9. He won the audition for an American Express card commercial because he could say the “American Express: Don’t leave home without it” spiel in under five seconds.
10. You needn’t bother searching for Peter Thomas in the bankruptcy court records of the once-rich-and-famous. He lived below his means, invested wisely, and left a well-endowed estate. One Florida property he bought for $1 million was worth $25 million toward the end of his life.
Naples, Florida
Read more about how Peter Thomas rose from the humble son of a schoolteacher and minister to the humble voice of countless commercials and TV shows.— RR
Peter Thomas’ voice has lured me away from all kinds of good intentions: organizing tax documents, cleaning between the sofa cushions with the Dirt Devil crevice tool, going to bed early.
Peter Thomas, seen here in a Lux commercial, did on-camera work in the early days of TV
It’s not easy to describe his voice, although I’ve listened to it for a minimum of 600 collective hours. Thomas was the narrator for Forensic Files, and he’s part of the reason fans like me can’t stop rewatching all 400 episodes of the true-crime series’ 1996 to 2011 run.
Toned up. I guess what’s so inviting about his narration is that his warm, assuring voice is devoid of affectation. He speaks smoothly, although not in a “you’ll get 150 sparkling silver gem studs absolutely free with your BeDazzler” manner. And like all voice artists, he has great diction — but it’s not so crisp as to make it alienating.
“Peter Thomas is the same guy who narrated school documentaries,” says Paul Dowling, executive producer of Forensic Files. “He’s not some sleazy guy from AM radio. He makes it okay to watch.”
Indeed, something about Peter Thomas’ narration enables me to see an episode about a college student who hacked his father to death with an ax — and sleep like a baby afterward.
Randy Thomas, a voiceover artist who narrates the Oscars and Tony Awards, also admires his work on Forensic Files.
“There are some voiceover actors who think they’re doing a good job just because they pronounce the words correctly,” she says. “Peter was different. He had an inquisitive nature about so much of life, and that transferred to whatever he narrated.”
Sunshine boy. My own dream of interviewing Peter Thomas someday — and having that voice all to myself for a little while — expired when he passed away last year, but I had fun researching a bit about his life.
Randy Thomas, narrator for the 2018 Oscars, says Peter Thomas imbued his voice work with a “different sense of wonder for each project”
Thomas was born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1924, to two people who enjoyed speaking aloud and enunciating well: an English teacher and a minister.
“His father told him to paint pictures with words,” says Randy Thomas (no relation, but the two were close friends).
Peter Thomas started acting in school plays as a child and, at age 13, picked up some voice work at a local radio station. A sponsor gave him flying lessons for free because he was too young to receive a real salary legally.
G.I.-normous. At 18, he took a detour, enlisting in the army and then fighting German gunfire in Normandy, France, in 1944. He earned a Purple Heart after suffering a shrapnel wound during the Battle of the Bulge.
After returning to the U.S. and marrying longtime girlfriend Stella Ford Barrineau, he worked at Memphis radio station WMC at night and went to college during the day.
His big break came when a Hamilton Watch Company executive heard Thomas’ voice on a Florida poetry program and invited him to New York City for an audition. He won the gig, and soon nationwide audiences got to hear his voice say: “The passage of time is beyond our control, but it passes beautifully when Hamilton marks the hour.”
No mere vapor. A tidal wave of offers followed. CBS hired Thomas as the New York City anchor of The Morning Show with Jack Parr. Thomas narrated medical shows and educational documentaries and did commercials for Estée Lauder, Coke, American Express (“Don’t leave home without it”), Visine, Listerine (“The taste you hate twice a day”), and Hewlett-Packard.
Thomas’ house in Florida — he returned to the state late in his career — had a recording studio
A 2004 Broadcast Pioneers documentary from Florida station METV recalled how — in the days long before TV assaulted viewers with Preparation H and Cialis commercials — Stella rebuked her husband for narrating a Vicks Mentholatum ad. She didn’t appreciate having to watch ointment rubbed onto an actor’s chest.
Plenty of more-serious work came his way. He snagged narration gigs for the PBS series Nova as well as for the History Channel — the holy grail for voice performers.
Didn’t phone it in. His association with Forensic Files began when the 30-minute docuseries was still in development. “I fell asleep on the couch one night and there was a World War II documentary on,” says show creator Paul Dowling, “and I heard this voice, and he was carrying the whole thing. It was mesmerizing.”
Thomas turned down Medstar Television’s offer for the Forensic Files job at first because he was still earning a fortune from TV commercials and other one-offs. But after some persuading, he agreed.
His approach to the gig reaffirms one of my favorite truisms about life: No matter how talented the worker, there’s no such thing as an easy job. Thomas would spend six hours rehearsing each script at home. Stella would give him feedback.
“Forensic Files is on somewhere in the world at any given time,” says Randy Thomas. “There’s always the consistency of Peter Thomas’ voice behind the microphone, and he’s become the show’s brand.”
He also occasionally contributed to the show editorially.
Thomas (with Paul Dowling) at a ceremony honoring his work on behalf of WW II veterans
“If he didn’t like something I wrote, he’d say, ‘I don’t want to offend you, but can I change this?'” recalls Dowling. “And I said, ‘I can take all the help you can give.’ We never told him to just shut up and do the script, which is how most producers treat talent, and I didn’t find out until his funeral that we were the only ones who didn’t treat him that way.”
Thomas remained in demand for his work through age 90. He died at 91, on April 30, 2016, but his voice lives on — and not just on recordings. His sons, Peter Jr. and Douglas, followed him into the profession. — RR
Update: Read 10 fun facts about Forensic Files narrator Peter Thomas.
How did Forensic Files become the I Love Lucy of true-crime shows — with reruns on every day, everywhere from Montreal to Melbourne? The half-hour series has been compelling fans to procrastinate on their housework and homework and gym schedules for two decades.
Paul Dowling with his daughter, Brae
Since starting this blog last year, I’ve used it to answer lingering questions about specific Forensic Files episodes. With this post, I hope to solve some mysteries about the series as a whole.
Executive producer Paul Dowling, whose Medstar Television made all 400 episodes, allowed me to interrogate him during a phone call:
Forensic Files is shown in 142 countries — why are overseas viewers so interested in U.S. crimes? In many countries, cases aren’t covered in the media the way they are here.
Often the laws are different from American laws. In Great Britain, there is confidentiality until the case is decided. The crime files aren’t open the way they can be in the U.S. Same thing in Canada — you don’t learn about someone being arrested for rape or murder before the case is decided. And if he’s exonerated, you never know about it.
That can give people in other countries the wrong idea about the U.S. Brazil has a murder rate 3x higher than ours. Everyone has guns except for innocent law-abiding people, and when bad guys come to the door, they can’t defend themselves. And then they see American television and think the crime rate is much higher in the U.S.
There was a rape and murder in Brazil in front of 12 people and no one testified. People in Brazil asked me whether I’m afraid to walk the streets in the U.S. I said no, I’m afraid here.
When I was in Paris, I was told to dress like a bum [to prevent robbery].
How do you pack the whole story into 30-minute episodes?We have 22 minutes. It’s like a Broadway musical: Every line of that song has to move the story along.
As you are creating the story, you don’t think, “How will I write this?” You think, “How will I say this?”
You can tell a lot with the pictures you use. If we show a girl holding a fish [that she caught], it says something about who she was.
For every story we did, all 400, before the show aired, I sat down with three people and told them the story. It enabled me to see how the story worked. If their eyes glazed over, I knew the story was going too slowly.
It’s like campfire storytelling — if you want to keep boys and girls awake, you have to tell a good story.
How is it contending with the pressure for Nielsen ratings? Imagine you’re doing a Broadway musical and, at any moment, the audience can stay right in their same seats and have their choice of switching to 500 other musicals.
That’s TV.
TV producers are not evaluated on the value of their show — or how many people watch it. They are evaluated on how many viewers watch the ads during breaks.
You have to have a show that people are emotionally tied to so that they are afraid to get up.
Chloe (left, with pal Kimber) often visited the studio behind the scenes
How do you keep viewers in their seats?When I started the show on TLC in 1996, they wanted us to use teasers. I said no: The show should provide the incentive for viewers to come back. Toward the end of Jeopardy, when they come back from the break, Alex goes right into the Final Jeopardy question — there’s no recap. People don’t want to miss that question.
Viewers of Forensic Files want to know who killed that guy. That’s why you can’t open the show with any hint of who did it.
When we interviewed a killer on camera, we would go to the prison with our own [street] clothes for him to wear. That way, viewers don’t know yet that he did it.
We also use the passive tense in scripts, even though writers are taught not to in school. The passive tense lets you put information out there without saying who did it.
And we also don’t use big fancy words if there’s no need. A screenwriter had me look at a script once, and I said, “What does this word mean? I have two college degrees and I don’t know.” If you were at a picnic or dinner party and someone used that word, how would it make you feel?
Why do you interview the murder victims’ mothers and fathers separately — even if they’re still married? If you have two dogs in the house, there’s always one dominant one. Likewise, sometimes people say things in front of you they wouldn’t say in front of their spouse. There are interview tricks that work with one person but not two at the same time. People are often uncomfortable with silences, so sometimes they’ll blurt out something they wouldn’t [with a spouse present].
A lot of true-crime series show victims’ family members in tears. Why doesn’t Forensic Files? Because it’s manipulative. There are techniques TV producers use to make a person cry. And the viewer feels sorry for the person and gets mad at the TV show for subjecting that person to heartache.
And oftentimes it’s a year or more after the crime, so people are more composed.
We give murder victims’ families a cleaned-up version of the episode they’re in.
You mean a version without graphic footage of wounds, autopsies, etc.? Yes, we tell them that this is the version they’ll want to watch and show their friends.
You recently tweeted that your dog Chloe had passed away at age 15. How was she involved in the show? She used to come in the editing room with us, next to the editor. I was working so hard that I wasn’t home a lot, and my kids would come in with sleeping bags and pizza and the dog would eat pizza behind our backs.
Chloe was here when we did reenactments with German shepherd-style attack dogs. She started running in circles and getting bent out of shape.
So you used real dogs and cats in the reenactments?Yes, and we had a trained squirrel and homing pigeons and a kangaroo once.
What about reenactments of vehicular accidents — did you use stock footage?No. Every crash you see on Forensic Files is something we created. We did a show about boat crashes, and we bought boats. We use cars that are the same model and color [as those in the real accidents]. Some movies edit crashes and fast-forward to a stock shot of the outcome. Forensic Files shows crashes without an edit.
With crashes, you can’t have gasoline in the cars — you don’t want explosions. So sometimes you have motorized pushers. But you have to be fair as far as the speeds used, so a defense attorney doesn’t come back and say to you, “Hey, the real crash was 30 mph, but the show’s was 70 mph.”
Doesn’t all that make accident reenactions awfully expensive?Yes, but there was never a budget limit for re-creations. I never wanted anyone to be hurt in an accident re-creation and to have the director say afterward, “Well, I only had $50,000.”
Were there any episodes that chilled you to the bone, that you couldn’t forget after you went home?Yes, if we hadn’t done one particular episode, three people would be in prison for something they didn’t do. It was for the Norfolk rape and killing of Michelle Moore-Bosko in 1997, and these three people didn’t do it. Someone else confessed to the crime, and the prosecutor wouldn’t act.
Tim Kaine was governor of Virginia then, and he saw the episode [“Eight Men Out,” 2001] and had the state police reinvestigate.
I read that “Bad Blood” — the story of a woman raped by a doctor (John Schneeberger) while she was unconscious — was your favorite episode of Forensic Files. Why? If a forensic hall of fame existed, that victim would belong in it.
The doctor’s DNA didn’t match the rapist’s. The victim was sure the hospital was being paid off to throw the tests or something. So she broke into the doctor’s things and got his Chapstick. She paid for a DNA test with her own money, and it matched the DNA from the rape.
It turned out the doctor had implanted a plastic tube into his arm with somebody else’s blood and was having that blood tested.
The doctor’s wife had been saying on TV that this woman was a slut. And then the wife’s daughter from another marriage who lived with them told her mother that the stepdad [Schneeberger] had been drugging and raping her.
Paul Dowling at the 2016 Mipcom trade show in Cannes. A German network licensed Forensic Files for 10 years because “there are people who aren’t born yet who’ll want to see it”
After talking to various people who watch Forensic Files, I haven’t really been able to identify a demographic pattern. Have you? One thing we know is that a lot of women watch the show for safety reasons — knowledge of safety they can pass along to their daughters.
Can you share any safety tips?We don’t get into victim-shaming, but we do show things that the victims shouldn’t have done regarding situational awareness.
Some girls and women don’t know that there are predators at bars and clubs casing them out. A predator will watch for things like two women walking in together late. He knows that later in the evening they will have parked farther away. So when they’re ready to leave, if one stays and the other goes out to get the car and drive it around, the predator will follow her out to the car.
I tell my daughter and her friends what the FBI says: When you go to your car, have your keys in your hand. If someone with a gun comes up and says to get in the car, throw your keys and purse in one direction and run in the other. The bad guy isn’t expecting this, so he thinks, “I can get the money and car instead of going after her.”♠
This week, instead of recapping an episode of Forensic Files, I’d like to explain a bit about the series itself and the genre it inhabits.
Forensic Files executive producer Paul Dowling
Despite that the show has been around for 20 years and is broadcast in 142 countries, a lot of prospective viewers mistakenly lump it in with other TV fare related to crime.
Forensic Files is a straight-up true-crime series as opposed to the wholly fictional crime dramas (such as CSI ) that dominate network TV.
It also differs from made-for-TV movies (Like Mother Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and Kenny Kimes) that are based on real crimes but also may take dramatic license by making up dialogue and creating composite characters.
Classifying. True-crime shows feature interviews with the real-life investigators and lawyers who worked on the cases and friends and family members of the victims.
These series can’t pack in every element of the story, but they don’t fabricate any either. On the Case with Paula Zahn, 48 Hours Mystery, and certain Dateline NBC shows fall into this category.
Forensic Files belongs to the same genre, but there’s no Erin Moriarty or Keith Morrison hosting the show or appearing on camera during interviews.
Each 30-minute Forensic Files episode is a mini documentary told in a whodunit format with off-camera narration by Peter Thomas. It includes some re-creations of events, but they’re labeled as such and don’t take liberties.
Nothing tawdry. And the producers of Forensic Files have taken pains to make the shows tasteful. You won’t see any interviewees melt down and become hysterical on camera.
And the producers never make viewers wince through oversexualized reenactments with low production values.
“There’s something in TV called ‘permission to watch,'” Forensic Files executive producer Paul Dowling explained an interview with True Crime Truant. “We provide a show you can leave on if your 8-year-old daughter and her friends come in the room.”
If you’ve never seen Forensic Files, you probably haven’t been looking too hard. You can find it somewhere on any given day.
Netflix streaming, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Roku, Apple TV, HLN (which has regular marathon showings), and the Escape channel are a few of the outlets that carry the show. And most of the episodes have been uploaded to YouTube.
Media critic Robert Thompson is a Forensic Files fan
There are 400 episodes of Forensic Files produced from 1996 to 2011. The show is not going away anytime soon, in part because the producers avoided crimes involving celebrities.
“Most viewers don’t know what the cases are, so the Forensic Files episodes don’t get boring,” says Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture at Syracuse University.
And speaking of gripping content, here’s some exciting news: Next week’s post will be a Q&A drawn from an in-depth interview that Forensic Files creator Paul Dowling gave to True Crime Truant.
Dowling divulges some behind-the-scenes secrets and discusses his relationship with the great and unpretentious voice-over artist Peter Thomas.
Cautionary words. And he offers some safety tips that I’ve never heard — advice that can help you remain a fan of true-crime shows rather than the subject of one.
It Got Better (“Treading Not So Lightly,” Forensic Files)
Last week’s post discussed the circumstances surrounding the 1980 hit-and-run accident in Big Spring, Texas, that left Vicky Lyons, at age 4, with severe head and eye injuries.
Vicky Lyons
Vicky was around 25 by the time she appeared in “Treading Not So Lightly,” the 2001 Forensic Files episode about the case, and she spoke of the way her neurological impairments made her feel self-conscious in public.
The closing credits noted she died in 2011 at the age of 34.
That got me curious about what happened to Vicky in the intervening years.
Mat mates. An internet search turned up a video of two semi-costumed women — one of whom was introduced as Vicky Lyons — participating in a wrestling match.
There weren’t any closeups, so it was impossible to tell whether the wrestler was the same Vicky Lyons, until I found an online obituary that made it clear the wrestler was in fact almost certainly the Vicky Lyons of Forensic Files fame.
It referred to her as a “professional woman’s wrestling Diva for the past six years working for the Highspots Wrestling School of Charlotte, N.C.”
Michael Bochicchio, owner of the school, confirmed in an email to ForensicFilesNow.com that it was indeed the same Vicky Lyons, and that she was fondly remembered by many people there.
With her identity assured, I went back and watched the entire wrestling video.
I must say, Vicky kicked ass.
Hard-grapple life. She bounced back after opponent Daffney Unger picked her up and threw her to the mat and put her in a Boston crab hold (you can bet I had to Google that term).
Vicky won the match.
I don’t know too much about wrestling, but it looked more like the Hulk Hogan variety than the kind that leads to varsity letters and the Olympics.
Caleb Konley remembers Vicky for her willingness to help other students at the wrestling school
“We have found nearly every student initially comes in here with a character already in mind,” states the website of the school, now known as Rings Pro Wrestling Training School. “However once they make it past training and begin their careers they almost always find their way into a new character that works better for them.”
Whatever the case, Vicky was obviously having a good time and looking strong.
Dedicated to the art. She clearly had come a long way in her physical rehabilitation since 2001. The match took place around 2005 when Vicky would have been about 28 years old.
“She was a sweet person,” wrestler Caleb Konley told ForensicFilesNow.com in a phone interview on Aug. 17. “I learned pretty early on what happened [with the car accident]. It was an incredible story.”
Vicky was already a student at the school when Konley moved to Charlotte to train there.
At the time of her match with Daffney Unger, Vicky had a few years of training under her belt, Konley noted.
“She showed up for every practice,” Konley said. “She lived for it.”
Social media gal. Vicky’s obituary mentioned she was also studying mass media at the Arts Institute of Charlotte.
Vicky Lyons from a Facebook photo
I came across Vicky’s Facebook page, with pictures of her and her friends and posts about current events and fun things like her favorite lip gloss.
Her last update was posted on April 17, 2011. She died on June 9 of that year.
Accounts vary as to cause of death (possibly an aneurysm) and where it took place (either in her apartment or a hotel room). There was no foul play.
Both Vicky’s parents survived her, according to the obituary. Her father, William Lyons, died three years later, however, at the age of 61.
“Everyone got along with Vicky,” Konley recalled. “She was tough as nails. If you got out of line with her, she’d let you know.”
Vicky Lyons may have started her childhood as a victim of circumstance but, as an adult, she learned how to write her own script.—RR
Q&A with Ricardo Zayas, CPA (“Summer Obsession,” Forensic Files)
There are plenty of TV shows revolving around doctors, lawyers, police officers, private detectives, judges, politicians, inmates, journalists, bounty hunters, and teachers.
Ricardo Zayas, CPA, during his Forensic Files appearance in 2005
Who’s missing from the merry mix?
Accountants.
The folks who audit public companies and tell us how many square feet of our home offices we can deduct rarely pop up on television or in films — except as a voice on the phone warning a beleaguered protagonist, “You’ve got to stop spending this way!”
Excel Adventure. Although there aren’t any scripted or reality TV shows devoted to the everyday drama of being an accountant, those with CPA skills do sometimes take part in exciting criminal cases.
One reason I found the “Summer Obsession” episode of Forensic Files so intriguing was that it enabled an accountant to step — albeit reluctantly — into the spotlight for a moment or two.
In the episode, Ricardo Zayas, CPA, discussed his role in contributing analysis that helped law enforcement build a case against Craig Rabinowitz, an entrepreneur who contended that his wife, Stefanie, accidentally drowned in a bathtub.
At the time of her murder, Stefanie Rabinowitz was getting ready to celebrate her daughter Haley’s first birthday
“For years, the FBI wanted more accountants involved in investigations,” Zayas, now a partner in accounting and advisory services firm Marcum LLP in Philadelphia, told me during a recent phone interview. “I started out as an IRS special agent who focused on financial crimes.”
Evidence in the bag. During the investigation into the 1997 death of Stefanie Rabinowitz, the police discovered a trove of receipts and handwritten financial records hidden in the Main Line, Philadelphia, house that Stefanie, a lawyer, shared with Craig, her husband of seven years.
The authorities provided Zayas with financials and other intelligence obtained during their investigation. He discovered suspicious evidence about what Rabinowitz contended was a thriving wholesale latex-glove venture.
“I said, ‘There’s no business. Here’s where the money went. You figure the rest out,'” Zayas recalled.
His analysis aided the prosecution in its argument that the business existed primarily as a means for Rabinowitz to scam investors out of funds that he used as tip money at Delilah’s Den and to buy gifts for Summer, his favorite dancer there.
The case against Craig Rabinowitz was so strong that he confessed to murder and fraud — and was sent to Houtzdale State Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania
The investigation ultimately determined that Rabinowitz was spending an average of $2,000 a week at Delilah’s Den.
By analyzing the figures handwritten on a yellow legal pad, Zayas helped investigators establish a financial motive for the murder.
Rabinowitz intended to use his wife’s life insurance payout as his ticket out of a financial hell-hole of his own making.
Forever in reruns. Zayas, who answered my questions about the case and his appearance on “Summer Obsession,” said he watched the episode only once.
“Every once in a while, I’d have relatives call and say, ‘I just saw you on TV,'” he said.
Zayas found the experience interesting but, for him, it was enough TV exposure for a lifetime. “I’m happy to have it on my résumé,” he said. Excerpts of our conversation follow:
Why was it important for the investigation to call in an accountant? You’re asking detectives to address issues they don’t have a background to deal with.
They may have some background in financial investigation, but if you put them on the witness stand, they could be asked questions that are difficult. At least I can get past the point when they say, “Are you familiar with financial records?” And I can say, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years.”
Shannon Reinert (or ‘Reinhart’), aka Summer, said Rabinowitz bought her $3,000 worth of Seaman’s furniture, among other gifts for her and her little son
Was the Rabinowitz case memorable? Yes, I worked on racketeering cases that had aspects that were attached to murders in the 1970s and 1980s. There was labor racketeering where people were dying. But this was the first time I was specifically applying financial analysis in a murder case.
Were you shocked by the Rabinowitz case? It was not the usual cup of tea but not shocking. You don’t spend 13 years in the environment I was in and react that way.
Shock is inappropriate — it’s not professional. It’s not in my playbook. I guess, over the years, you understand that other people act in ways you wouldn’t.
Was interpreting the evidence complicated? It was fairly straightforward. For lack of a better term, it was “sources and uses of funds.” Craig Rabinowitz had gone out to people and solicited funds for a business — importing containers of latex gloves.
One of the first questions we asked as we looked at the finances associated with that business was: Is there really evidence of a business? Was he really buying containers of goods?
That was relatively easy to resolve because you could see that there was no indication that he had used funds in furtherance of some business.
It was a circular flow of funds, from person A to person B to American Express — without business expenses. It included frequenting Delilah’s Den.
Stefanie Rabinowitz
Next, working with detectives, we interacted with the people who provided the funds. I would talk to the detectives and we would get information and statements from investors.
I wrote a report and included my thought that there was no business.
Were you happy with the job Forensic Files did portraying the case? I viewed it one time, because my brother and sister-in-law visited and wanted to see it, and I thought it accurately reported what I said and did.
So I guess the appearance didn’t go to your head? The work we do is only one piece of the puzzle that the prosecution will present in court. When you talk to cops and agents, you understand they don’t think [the attention is] about them. The training is such that it takes the focus off you. You don’t want what you did in your work to be a distraction in court.♠
Next: A look at the story of Vicky Lyons, whose injuries became forensic evidence.
Come for the Strippers, Stay for the Duplicity (“Summer Obsession,” Forensic Files)
Craig Rabinowitz had a baby daughter, a lawyer wife, and a house in a wealthy suburban area of Philadelphia.
Craig Rabinowitz
Unfortunately, he didn’t have a career of his own. So he fabricated one, as an entrepreneur who imported and sold surgical gloves wholesale.
Slippery heel. His business, C&C Supplies Inc., never existed, but Rabinowitz fooled just about everyone into thinking it did.
The 34-year-old possessed enough charm and credibility to entice friends and relatives to invest a total of about $800,000 into his faux venture.
His in-laws, Anne and Louis Newman, used their own house as collateral to secure a $96,500 loan he said he needed for his business, according to a May 7, 1997, Philadelphia Inquirer story.
He needed the money, especially once he became a father.
Shannon Reinert capitalized on her short-lived fame, starring in dinner theater and an HBO series
A baby, a pay cut. After giving birth to the couple’s daughter, Stefanie Rabinowitz switched to part-time status at the law firm where she worked, taking a pay cut to $33,000 a year, according to a Washington Post article by reporter Debbie Goldberg.
That wasn’t enough to pay off the couple’s $300,000 mortgage debt or buy a sufficient sum of Delilah’s Dollars — vouchers used to pay exotic dancers, aka strippers — to hold the attention of Shannon Reinert, with whom Craig Rabinowitz became infatuated after seeing her perform at Delilah’s Den.
Last week’s post suggested that the stripper factor contributed in large part to the popularity of “Summer Obsession,” the Forensic Files episode about the Rabinowitz murder.
Guilty displeasure. It’s not just the male viewers who like watching the parade of peroxide and silicone.
Many women feel compelled to compare and contrast themselves with the 1 percent who look commercially attractive in G-strings.
Stefanie Rabinowitz, seen here with her daughter, was a lawyer with degrees from Bryn Mawr College and Temple University
In the case of “Summer Obsession,” however, the opportunity to look at women rubbing themselves against poles may be what attracted so many viewers, but it’s the double-life aspect of Craig Rabinowitz’s story that has kept them interested.
In a bid to neatly rid himself of his debts and marriage and also finance his pursuit of Reinert (known as “Summer” at Delilah’s Den), Rabinowitz came up with a murder-insurance fraud scheme.
Arrogant adulterer. Up until then, he had managed to compartmentalize his thieving and lecherous behavior well enough to avoid raising suspicion among his family and friends.
Rabinowitz garnered so much success with his duplicity that he must have felt invincible on April 29, 1997.
That night, he gave his wife a beverage laced with Ambien, waited until she fell unconscious, and drowned her in the tub. He then called 911 and reported finding her unresponsive.
The staged scene looked enough like an accidental drowning to satisfy the authorities at first.
In keeping with Jewish custom, Craig and his late wife’s parents, the Newmans, planned to bury Stefanie Rabinowitz by the next sundown.
Delilah’s Den interior
Intriguing find. Fortunately, the coroner insisted on a delay in order to do a full autopsy. Forensic pathologist Ian Hood found petechial hemorrhages and other signs that Stefanie was strangled and held underwater until she died.
After searching the couple’s home, police found a crawlspace containing some receipts and handwritten ledgers. With the help of a forensic accountant, detectives used the crude evidence to uncover Rabinowitz’s secret life.
Ricardo Zayas, CPA, determined that Rabinowitz was spending up to $3,000 a week at Delilah’s. He found that C&C Supplies Inc. never bought or sold gloves, or did anything other than help its “owner” dupe investors.
No explaining it away. Rabinowitz, it turned out, had been placating investors by giving them small payments from money newer investors lent him. He was running a Ponzi scheme.
And his investors were expecting him to give them larger payments pronto.
Rabinowitz wanted to use Stefanie’s $1.5 million life insurance payout to make his investors whole, pay off his mortgage, and underwrite his relationship with Summer.
Rabinowitz in high school circa 1981 and in Pennsylvania’s SCI Houtzdale in 2016
Confronted with the extensive evidence against him, Rabinowitz confessed to the murder and financial crimes, ending his double life and starting a singular one as an inmate with no possibility of parole.— RR
Fraud and Murder for Tip Money (“Summer Obsession,” Forensic Files)
The Forensic Files episode about Craig Rabinowitz — a popular Philadelphia husband, father, and entrepreneur who turned out to be a murderer running a fraudulent investing scheme — has racked up 708,819 views on YouTube.
Craig Rabinowitz after his arrest in 1997
Meanwhile, the other five cases covered on this blog to date have attracted barely 1 million views combined.
The closest runner-up, “Grave Danger,” got only 378,577 views, despite that the story of Molly and Clay Daniels’ grave-robbing insurance fraud plot was a global sensation, attracting not only Forensic Files but also Dateline NBC and news outlets as distant as Japan.
Dancers in the dark. Of course, the Daniels fiasco distinguished itself mostly for the ineptitude of its underemployed perpetrators whereas the Rabinowitz case involved a tragic, deadly crime committed amid affluence and social prominence.
Still, I think a great deal of the popularity of “Summer Obsession” comes from one particular factor: It had a stripper.
In this case, one Shannon Reinert (spelled “Reinhart” in some media outlets), who danced under the name Summer.
The gentlemen’s club Rabinowitz frequented
Rabinowitz spent upward of $100,000 on her at Delilah’s Den, the club where Summer danced.
Tempting subject. He led a double life, ultimately swindling his friends and killing his wife, Stefanie Newman Rabinowitz, in an effort to keep himself in lap-dance funds.
Apparently, even a true-crime series as tastefully done as Forensic Files can’t pass up any opportunity to show scenes from a strip club.
The show also featured an on-camera interview with one of Reinert’s former colleagues, Miss Bunny.
Miss Bunny, seen here on “Forensic Files,” went on to appear in the HBO documentary series “G String Divas”
That kind of thing is, it seems, what the people want.
Actually, I can attest to that, although I’ve never been inside a gentlemen’s club.
Brush with the biz. Years ago, I shared a quiet office with two other women. One of them, Shari, augmented her $18,000-a-year salary by working as a topless dancer on weekends.
Come Monday, she’d indulge our curiosity about her avocation.
We were fascinated by the details like the fact that most of the dancers wore wigs on stage to lower the odds a patron would recognize them outside the club.
Or that Shari kept a small satin purse off to the side of the stage to stow the cash discreetly during her sets. She made hundreds of dollars a night, which she hid under floorboards in her apartment.
Shannon Reinert, seen here in 1997, was a dancer and single mother when Rabinowitz met her
Similarly to the way Summer interacted with Craig Rabinowitz, Shari had a couple of faithful customers who gravitated to her and gave her bigger tips than the norm.
Of course, my co-worker and I were only interested in learning about the life of a stripper.
Craig Rabinowitz wanted to actually become part of a stripper’s life.
And the blog post coming up after that one will feature an interview with forensic accountant Ricardo Zayas, who used his CPA skills and a bag of receipts to help police build their case against Rabinowitz.
Q&A with Matt Barnhill (“Family Interrupted,” Forensic Files)
Last week’s post told of a small-time con artist who burrowed into the pockets of a few religious groups in an unsuspecting town — and then promptly fled, leaving those duped feeling shocked and betrayed.
Matt Barnhill
To get some insight into how people on the receiving end of deceits both large and small can recover emotionally, I talked with Matt Barnhill, who has counseled people living with the aftereffects of betrayals ranging from minor theft to murder.
Forensic Files fans will remember Barnhill from his appearance on “Family Interrupted,” the episode about Bart Whitaker’s double homicide in Sugar Land, Texas.
Whitaker arranged to have one of his friends hide in the family’s house and shoot his parents, Tricia and Kent Whitaker, and younger brother, Kevin, as they returned home from a restaurant in 2003.
“My daughter was best friends with Kevin Whitaker,” says Barnhill, who knew the Whitakers from River Pointe Church, where he’s a pastor. “She was 19 at the time. Now she’s a week away from having her third child, and she has a healthy marriage and is incredibly well-adjusted. But having her friend murdered changed her life.”
Barnhill is the founder of Barnhill & Associates Counseling Center, based in Richmond, Texas. He’s still in contact with Kent Whitaker, who recovered from his gunshot wound and lives with the knowledge that his son wanted him out of the way so he could inherit the family’s financial assets.
Below are excerpts from my discussion with Barnhill:
What are the most common forms of betrayal that compel people to seek counseling? Usually it’s related to marital infidelity. Once a woman finds out that her husband was unfaithful, everything he says is suspect — “Did he really like the eggs?”
We also have parents in their 50s and 60s who say, “My son committed adultery, and we never thought he was capable of being unfaithful.” So, even when you’re removed from the betrayal, it’s disturbing.
What about criminal betrayal? I have a counseling client whose son committed a murder. He didn’t betray her, but he betrayed her belief in him.
Forensic Files has had a number of episodes concerning parents whose sons-in-law killed their daughters. Do people in those situations need counseling for life? Not always. Their lives do divide into “before the crime” and “after the crime.” But after people start healing, their lives become less defined by the crime.
Are there commonalities within the various degrees and types of betrayal people experience? Yes, it disrupts your internal radar.
There’s a vicarious trauma, a ripple effect even if it’s just the person who sits next to you at work or a guy who was in the church choir with you, even if he did something relatively minor. I talk to clients whose neighbor did something wrong – someone who was high on their trust meter and then it turns out the person stole money from the school district. And then they don’t know who they can trust anymore.
It makes people ask, “How can I feel safe again? How can I trust people in the same category as Joe?”
After the Whitaker murders, I found myself OCD’ing over whether my doors were locked, even after Bart was in jail.
We call it the trauma of betrayal. It erodes trust.
What is the “trust meter”? Think of trust on a continuum. On the low end is the guy who’s repairing your dishwasher and you stay at home to make sure he doesn’t steal the furniture. Then there’s the repairman your friend recommended, so you might say, “Here’s the key, go inside.” On the high end you might have your child or spouse or parent, those you trust the most.
The higher the trust goes, the more you’ll feel violated by someone who betrays that trust.
The trauma of betrayal destabilizes people’s lives. Two of the most common symptoms are anger and sadness. People are super angry or super sad. Victims have high anxiety.
As a caregiver, I help them restabilize their lives.
That’s sounds like a project. How do you start? You provide clients with a safe, loving environment where they can talk about guilt, shame, and trauma.
Whatever we don’t talk about in counseling is going to come out somewhere else – a hole in the lining of the digestive system or sleep disturbance or lack of appetite. “Secrets make us sick” is a saying here. Depending on how profound the trauma is, we may refer clients to a psychiatrist for medication. Sometimes they need something just to get a good night’s sleep.
I try to educate people about what’s happening to them and what triggers the anxiety related to the trauma. For some people, watching the 6 o’clock news might be a trigger. When you have several triggers at the same time, it’s called flooding.
I ask clients what they would find soothing — listening to music, reading inspirational literature, going to the symphony, sitting on a porch with friends. They come up with a list and I ask which of those things they can do today tomorrow, next week, or their whole lives. Someone might say, “I have to get on the treadmill” or “start eating healthy now.”
Do you counsel both people of faith and those who aren’t religious? Oh, yes, you find a lot of irreligious people here. We get referrals from doctors and other people not from the faith-based community.
Churches tend to have more people who are traumatized because most people believe church is soothing. My opinion is that if a church is able to help people, it will attract people who are traumatized. A church can be warm and comforting. So can a bar where everybody knows your name.
Getting back to the Whitaker tragedy, do you know how Kent Whitaker is doing today, 13 years after the crime? Kent wrote a book called Murdered by Family. He talks about his own healing. He’s remarried to a woman who also has a powerful tale of betrayal and together they help people who are traumatized.♣
Next: A look at another Lone Star State case, the murder of San Antonio educator Diane Tilly detailed in Forensic Files’ “Transaction Failed.”
Q&A with a Former Defense lawyer for Sex Criminals
Last week’s post on “Grave Danger” touched on the issue of lenient sentences for sex offenders — in that case, the 30 days a court gave Clayton Daniels in 2004 for raping his 7-year-old cousin.
Shannon Melendi
Fortunately, Clay won’t have a chance to turn into a repeat offender anytime soon, as he shortly afterward collected a 30-year jail term in connection with an insurance-fraud scheme.
Two times a predator. But what about those who do finish their prison terms and go on to commit other sex crimes? The “Ring Him Up High” episode of Forensic Files tells the story of Emory University student Shannon Melendi, 19, who was murdered by Delta Airlines mechanic Colvin “Butch” Hinton.
Hinton 33, had a previous conviction for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. His first wife had walked in as the crime was in progress and testified that she saw the victim with her mouth taped and ankles and wrists bound.
A judge sentenced Hinton to four years. He got out after serving half that term and then moved to Atlanta, where he met Melendi at a softball game and abducted and killed her in 1994.
Whether you see it on Forensic Files or read about it online or in the newspaper, it does seem that all too frequently, when the authorities catch a sex criminal, it turns out he’s already served time for a similar offense.
View from front lines. Those are the moments when we all want to start ranting: “Why did they let this person back on the streets? Don’t you people (judges, parole boards, etc.) care who you’re unleashing on the law-abiding public? Do all of us villagers have to turn into pitchfork-wielding vigilantes to get justice?”
Colvin “Butch” Hinton is in Georgia’s Hays State Prison
The hope is always that the reason we hear about these repeat-offender cases in the media is that they’re infrequent enough to be newsworthy — in the way that, conversely, we rarely see media reports about motorists receiving parking tickets because it happens all the time.
To get some perspective, I talked to a lawyer who was assigned to defend violent sex predators for a New Jersey state government agency in the last decade.
The lawyer, who requested anonymity, felt that horror stories like that of Shannon Melendi are the rare exceptions rather than the rule. Below are excerpts from our conversation.
Why does the legal system put so many sex criminals back on the streets? Many states don’t. Nobody wants these people back out on the streets. In fact, sometimes they’re held in custody after their sentences are finished.
In the state where I worked, before a violent sex offender could be released at the end of his sentence, the law required that he be seen by a state-appointed mental health professional who assesses his probability of reoffending.
The ones the mental health professionals assess as low risk are released at the end of their sentences. Still, Megan’s Law affects where they can live. Their whereabouts are discoverable.
If they are assessed as still dangerous, in some states, they then are put into a special facility or unit for those at a high risk of reoffending. They don’t get out.
So even when their sentences are over, they can still be held in custody? Yes. One guy couldn’t find a place to live because of Megan’s Law. So he was not let out.
Did you feel the process was fair to the sex offenders themselves? Not entirely.
When sex offenders are in prison, they see mental health professionals periodically. Then those same mental health professionals are the ones who offer an opinion to the court as to whether these people are no longer risks and can be let out of jail.
For you and me, of course, mental health professionals seeing us for therapy must keep all information confidential – the only thing they can reveal is a situation in which the patient is going to commit a crime, something that hasn’t happened yet.
But in the case of a sexually violent offender, a mental health professional can report to the court anything the offender says.
Also, for any other type of crime, even murder, you get out when you’ve served your sentence – no requirement to be assessed first.
Many sex offenders were convicted before the law [requiring assessment before release] existed.
Did all that give you pause? At first, it may seem unfair in some aspects, but then you meet some of the violent sexual predators and you start to come over to the state’s side. You interview people who are playing with themselves under the table.
I had one sex offender tell me that, where he’s from, men rape women — it’s just something they do
Did you meet any sex offenders you had sympathy for? There was one guy in jail for 30 years who committed offenses when he was 17. We all did things as teenagers we would never do now.
Also some offenders would refuse to meet with the mental health professionals to be assessed. They’d say, “Why bother? They’ll just keep me in.”
The common wisdom is that sex offenders reoffend more often than other criminals, but that’s never been proven.
Do you feel Megan’s Law has made kids safer? No. Megan’s law can provide a false sense of security because you can find out if a predator lives near you, but you don’t know about the ones who haven’t been caught yet or even acted yet. You have to watch your children — that’s the bottom line. It’s a dangerous world.♠
Note: An undated story on Florida news website Keynews.com reported that Hinton was (at least once) denied parole.
career started long before anyone had heard of high-velocity blood splatter or age-processed clay busts. Some trivia from a long (1924 to 2016) and productive life:
with the Apollo astronauts.”
4. Peter Thomas postponed his own vacation to help an audio technician save his job. The sound man had messed up a Tropicana commercial recording, so Thomas did it over and never told the guy’s superiors.
8. Don “In a World” Lafontaine (left) and Peter Thomas are considered the two best male narrators of their generation. Apparently, they weren’t rivals and liked each other’s work.
