Christopher Benedetto and Janette Piro - 606
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From Wondery. How you doing tonight, Aaron? I'm doing well, Justin. How are you? I'm doing good. So we did a poll the other day. You asked our patrons what they want to hear and what were some of their answers.

Well, interestingly enough, they wanted to hear many more cases of missing persons. And they also wanted to hear us talking about things in ASMR. Noted. So yeah, we actually have already, you've already come up with an idea for this. So many ideas.

So the great news is in 2025, we're going to be continuing our Patreon, but we've listened to the people and we have a few new ideas. So if you haven't been there in a while and want to check out the new stuff, get to our Patreon by going to patreon.com slash generation Y.

So, Aaron, tonight's case is a, well, when it came out, it was a mysterious disappearance. And I would say when a couple disappears, typically you think, well, did they disappear together? Did the husband do it and get rid of the wife and then take off?

There's so many different rabbit holes you can go down and things. And this is one of those cases where, you know, if you don't know much about it, you can go down some rabbit holes and think some different things before we get to the resolution. So I found it very interesting to read about how this all unfolds. What are we talking about tonight?

Well, tonight we're talking about the November 16th, 1998 disappearance of Christopher Benedetto and his wife, Jeanette Pirro, in Singer Island, Florida. And it doesn't remain a disappearance, at least for the most part. But yes, this is definitely a case that I found to be very interesting. So who were these people?

Christopher J. Benedetto was born February 9th, 1956. Now, he and his future wife were originally from Flushing, Queens. He grew up fishing and enjoyed going to Florida when he could. And as an adult, Christopher worked as a carpenter and even ran his own small business.

The couple, Christopher and Jeanette, met while he was renovating his sister's house. He was the contractor, and Jeanette was the interior designer. And according to Chris's brother, Michael, there was this instant attraction between the two. And because they were so close, they had such a great time together, they ended up getting married in 1990 while on a trip to Florida.

In 1995, Chris was working a job and fell from some scaffolding and got a serious injury. The accident resulted in multiple surgeries, and he ended up having to have some rods placed in his back. He became permanently disabled and could no longer work. This is going to cause him chronic pain, and he ended up walking with a cane. And Jeanette helped him during his recovery.

But according to the Palm Beach Post, Chris will end up winning a $2 million settlement from the construction site's contractor's insurance. The doctor advised him to leave New York because if he ever slipped and fell on the ice, he could be paralyzed for life. And as we know, New York streets are pretty dangerous when it comes to people and ice and all the weather.

So Florida seems like the best choice for him to go and live a better life in. Yeah, and Chris already loved Florida, and Jeanette was all too happy to go with him. So they purchased a house in an upscale community, and they became close friends with their neighbors. In 1997, Chris and Jeanette founded Dolphin Enterprises, Inc., a boat brokerage, but the company wasn't that successful.

Chris spent most of his time fishing, and the Palm Beach Post reported that he went out every day. He absolutely loved it. And that leads us to November of 1998, because it's that morning, early morning, on November 11th, when Chris got up early to go fishing. This is a typical day for Chris. He loves fishing. He lives in Florida. He's living the life.

Janet went to the spa with her friends that day, and she and Chris had plans to meet up with their neighbors for dinner. She was seen by neighbors in the afternoon, and it was thought that she and Chris were supposed to go show up for dinner, but it's about a half hour later that they're supposed to go to this dinner party, and they're not showing up.

Now they're neighbors, you know, this is not like, Hey Aaron, we got a dinner party going on next month. You live across town, you're running late. This is your neighbor. And so when they're not showing up, the neighbors are thinking, Hey, where are you? They're calling, they're going next door, knocking on the door saying, is everything okay?

David Nicholson and his wife were concerned because Chris and Jeanette didn't show up. Nicholson's wife asked another neighbor to knock on the door and check on the couple. Like we said, people were calling, they were checking. And they also noticed that the forerunner that belonged to Chris and Jeanette was missing.

David Nicholson talked with the Palm Beach Post saying it was so uncharacteristic of them. You couldn't ask for better neighbors and we spent a lot of time with them. So, you know, when you ask someone, what do you know about this? And they would say, every time there were plans, we would meet up and this is the first time it never happened. And now we don't know where they are. That's about as big a red flag as you can get.

And after a few days with no word from the couple, neighbors called Chris's relatives in New York. This was on November 14th.

The neighbors were worried. Newspapers were piling up on their door. Mail was piling up in the mailbox. These are all great neighbors. They have keys to each other's houses because they can house sit and look after each other's pets and whatnot. So they let themselves into Chris and Jeanette's house with the keys. And they found no sign of Christopher and Jeanette. There was no sign of any kind of trip whatsoever.

Suitcases and medications, Chris's wallet and cell phone were all there, present in the home. He had also left thousands of dollars worth of fishing gear on his boat and had left the motor running. So what happened here? They just disappeared.

So this gets all the way back to Chris's brothers, Michael and Paul. They flew into Florida on November 18th and reported him missing on November 19th, according to the Palm Beach Post. Their cousin, Arthur Esposito, a detective in Titusville, Florida, also got involved in the search efforts because they have law enforcement backgrounds in their family.

Michael and Paul stayed in Chris and Jeanette's home while they were in Florida because they're just like, well, if they come home, we're here. What's the point of getting a hotel? Maybe we'll find some more evidence here. Maybe they'll call. Maybe something will happen. And we know they're gone. We know something bad has happened. So this is where they set up their search headquarters.

Now they know the Toyota 4Runner is missing. So if the couple's gone, maybe they drove off in that.

The other vehicle that the couple owned was a BMW that was in the garage. So the police who were notified this couple was missing, they issued a be on the lookout for that vehicle, the forerunner that was missing. And by November 20th, the FBI was involved in the search due to the unusual circumstances and time delays since the couple disappeared. Chris and Jeanette's neighbors had also called her sister, Regina, who lived in New Jersey.

And her husband, Michael Copeland, came to Florida to help. He went to different marinas in the area, and he spoke to someone who said Chris and Jeanette went on a friend's boat to the Bahamas and would be back. According to Oxygen, you can get to the Bahamas easily from Singer Island. It's about 70 miles away, and it takes three hours if the conditions are good. But in November, well, there are strong winds and currents, which can be dangerous.

And at no point did they say they were going on this trip to the Bahamas. They were supposed to have dinner plans, but this is the only lead that at least Michael's come up with thus far.

Family friend Ben Demonstranti, who lived close to the couple, allowed them to dock their boat on his waterfront property. And Chris and Jeanette used this boat for deep sea fishing. Demonstranti thought it was unusual for Chris and Jeanette to leave without telling anyone since they weren't known as a spontaneous couple.

Now, it's on November 21st that the missing 4Runner is found in a parking lot of the Embassy Suites Hotel in Palm Beach Shores. However, Oxygen reported that the vehicle was found on the night of November 16th, but

A few days difference, not sure if it matters at this point in the investigation. Police thought it was possible they left the vehicle when meeting with friends for their alleged trip to the Bahamas. So they're thinking, well, if they did go to the Bahamas, they parked their vehicle at this hotel and then went from there. But the search effort's been going on. They don't know where they are.

And we have family members staying at the home, but they're about to wrap things up because they're done with their search. They feel like they don't have any more they can do. So they're like, okay, you know what? Let's just close the house up. Let's turn off anything that's running because we don't want to run the electricity bill up. So they go down into the garage to turn off a deep freeze freezer. And what happens next, Aaron?

Yeah. Unfortunately, Chris's brothers, as you said, they're going through the home, they get into the garage and they're shutting off this freezer and they discover Jeanette's body inside the freezer in the garage.

At first, they weren't able to tell who it was because this person was put in the freezer headfirst and upside down. But upon closer inspection, they realized this was Jeanette. She had ligature marks on her neck as well as a braided rope double tied around her neck. The freezer appeared to have been purposefully hidden behind the BMW. And Jeanette's sister, Regina, flew down to Florida to make the official identification on November 24th.

And this is a terrible discovery. I mean, I don't fault them for not going and searching the entire home, especially a deep freeze in the garage, because they're thinking this couple's missing. Their vehicle is found miles away. It's possible they went to the Bahamas. I mean, I'm sure they walked through the house, but we have, what, eight people in the house, including neighbors and family, walking through the house. If this was a crime scene...

It's kind of tainted now, don't you think?

Yeah, it's possible. But when they say eight people, it actually doesn't sound that bad to me. It's just if one of those eight people or more of them are involved in what's happened here, that's a real problem. But I was surprised it wasn't more than eight. And at this point, Aaron, I'm thinking, well, they've been missing. Now we've found the wife's body at the home. Husband's still missing. I'm thinking husband killed the wife and took off.

That's my normal train of thought here. And it makes sense, although as far as we can tell, everyone believed that this was a very close couple. And so where's the motive? But I guess we're going to get to that and talk more about what happened here. But there were questions about this. How come so many people were allowed to go through the house? And the official who responded to this said, we couldn't see anything that led us to believe a crime had been committed.

If there had been, the crime scene would have already been contaminated. And the Palm Beach Post reported that police walked through the house on November 20th and asked the family to stay out of certain areas until they could get a search warrant.

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So there was some idea that there are certain things they want to look at, but no way in any shape or form did they expect to find a body in the house. Chris's cousin Esposito recalled that when he first went into the house, he smelled Clorox or Lysol, some kind of cleaning agent. But he didn't think much of it because, hey, Chris always kept his house very clean. And this is a nice neighborhood. This is a nice house. You clean things up. So

Even though he kind of was like, I think I smell something, that didn't trigger any alarm bells for him. Esposito said several New York City officers came down to help with the search. They looked at the home but understood that it had already been contaminated by the neighbors and the family that had been there. They checked for blood and signs of struggle.

They checked the carpet for discoloration. They didn't find anything that indicated there had been a crime committed here. It was actually Chris's brother, Paul, who first discovered Jeanette in the freezer. And when he did discover her, he screamed. He stumbled backward and he ran into the living room. Mike then saw the body and broke down. And it was Arthur Esposito who called 911. Now, Esposito said it was...

It was tucked underneath a counter like a workbench. He's explaining where the freezer was. You had to walk around the BMW parked on the far side of the garage to get to it. You couldn't open the lid without pulling it out. So obviously someone put Jeanette in the freezer and they moved it so that it wouldn't be an obvious place to look anyway if you're just walking around. You wouldn't even notice it.

You have to move the car, too, to get this freezer pulled out. Like, they really took the time to get this out of the way. So investigators, they're thinking it's possible that Chris Benedetto killed his wife, Jeanette Piro, and then fled because the forerunner's missing. And so they started looking into the couple's background.

Searching for new leads. Riviera Beach detective Pat Galligan said, Everyone is a suspect, including Mr. Benedetto. Family, friends, associates, we're exploring every avenue. And for Arthur, he thought the motive had to do with Chris and Jeanette's money because they had that settlement, that payout from his injury. Which that kind of gives motive. We've seen it happen in other cases, whether it's life insurance policies or payouts.

Or lottery winnings. Yeah, there's a whole litany of things that give people motive. So this makes sense. We found her body and he's missing. He's the prime suspect. Jeanette's autopsy was completed December 1st. It was obvious that Jeanette had been strangled. Chief medical examiner Dr. Martin said the body's frozen condition made it easy to determine cause of death, but not time of death.

Obviously, investigators are looking at everyone, and one of the early suspects was Jeanette's brother-in-law, Michael Koblen. The investigators looked at bank records and saw that there was no activity since the couple were last confirmed to be alive. And when the police spoke to Chris and Jeanette's neighbor, Ben Demonstranti, they learned that Demonstranti heard Chris and an unknown man near Chris's boat around 8 a.m. on November 11th.

And Ben heard Chris say, grab the rods before the boat departed. Now, he didn't think much of it at the time because that sounds like something that Chris would say before he went fishing. The boat returned a couple hours later and parked at his dock. But Chris wasn't on the boat. The unknown man then got in Chris's vehicle and drove off.

This is huge because you have a neighbor who knows Chris very well, knows his vehicle, and is seeing someone else show back up without Chris and driving off in Chris's vehicle. I mean, this is the first lead they've had here. And now, is this man in cahoots with Chris or has this man disposed of Chris?

Yeah, so detectives, they searched Chris's boat and Damonstrante noticed the second anchor was missing. Ropes missing from the boat matched the rope used on Jeanette. Investigators brought in Chris's brothers and Michael Copeland to Ben Damonstrante to see if he recognized any of them. And Ben told investigators that Michael Copeland was the man with Chris on the morning of November 11th. So they are going to bring him in for an interview.

During his interview, Michael Koblen said he was in New Jersey when Chris and Jeanette disappeared as wife Regina supported his alibi saying, yep, he was back here. So this is kind of hard to pin down who was where at the time of their disappearance. Yeah. And Regina is supporting his alibi and that's Jeanette's sister.

Now, relatives, they're surprised by this accusation because, according to them, Chris and Michael were very close. And they wondered if somehow Ben Demonstranti, the neighbor, was mistaken. Now, Koblen was a frequent visitor to Chris and Jeanette's home. Chris and Michael owned a trucking company together called Mark Industries. Koblen held 51% interest. Chris held 49%. Chris invested most of his settlement into this venture.

Now, when the police checked Copeland's American Express card, they found that a third party named Mike Carey booked a flight on November 10th, 1998, which is the day before, from when this all went down, from Newark, New Jersey to West Palm Beach. And this Mike Carey flew back on November 12th. So, of course, the police want to know who's Mike Carey.

Yeah, that's very convenient to have somebody flying down from exactly where you are located to exactly where this crime is committed and then fly home.

Yeah, the day before and the day after. It's so strange. So they want to know who this is. In June of 1999, they found phone records indicating that a Florida number called Regina Copeland's mobile phone on the day Chris and Jeanette disappeared. So an investigator called the number and learned that it was for the Rutledge Inn, which is a hotel within walking distance of Chris and Jeanette's house. So they're looking through hotel records. Investigators found a registration card

So investigators are thinking maybe this Mike Carey person doesn't exist and it's an alias being used by a certain someone else, right?

Yeah. So they bring in handwriting experts from the FBI who, after analysis, are very certain that Mike Carey, well, that's Michael Copeland because their writing is so similar.

So now they have evidence that Michael Covland was on Singer Island when Chris and Jeanette disappeared. So it doesn't matter how close they were. I mean, people said that about couples where one killed the other. So the police go back to Chris's financial records and learned that Chris loaned Michael $165,000.

And it's in November of 2000, Chris's family sued the Koblens to recover that loan because apparently he wasn't paying it back. Chris's family pressured the Riviera Beach police and federal investigators to solve the murders and were now offering $100,000 reward.

Saying, hey, we think we have the suspects here. There is motive here. Now we're going to offer a reward, hoping that they start turning on each other.

And at this point, the Koblens will end up filing for bankruptcy because of this lawsuit. Now, Chris's family pressured the Riviera Beach police and federal investigators to solve the murders and offered a $100,000 reward. But this lawsuit that was filed against the Koblens, well, that petition was dismissed in August of 2002. Investigators worked with the Department of Justice to review phone records from the boat Koblen stayed on while on Singer Island.

They found that someone on the boat called DeAngelis Jewelers in New York City during his stay. So they're looking into this and they discover that Jeanette's engagement ring, diamond earrings, and her watches were missing. Jeanette had recorded a video in July of 1998 showing her valuables for insurance purposes. And Chris's safe deposit box contained certification from DeAngelis Jewelers showing the valuables were worth $58,300.

So in May of 2003, the investigators visited DeAngelis Jewelers and a worker confirmed that Michael Koblen is a person who came in to sell a ring believed to belong to Jeanette Pirro, but there's no receipt for the transactions. They just recall this happening. So they have some evidence pointing at Michael Koblen, but these investigators, they don't feel like they have enough evidence to

But the jeweler told the police that Michael had an appointment in a few weeks and agreed to wear a wire. So maybe they'll be able to collect some evidence here. And at one point during the appointment, the jeweler had asked Michael, what if, and they're referring to the investigators, what if they come in asking about the pieces? And Michael responded, as far as I'm concerned, you never saw them again. Because all that would do is definitely throw me under the bus. So...

There's an understanding here. He's doing something illegal, but he's going to do it anyway. I guess this is worth the risk.

A quick recap here. He said he was in Jersey, but another person under the name of Mike Carey or something goes down to Florida at the same time, stays at a hotel. The registration handwriting matches his. Then they have financial records, and then they have somebody who's claiming he's selling all of the wife's jewelry to this jewelry shop. I think we're connecting the dots here.

Yeah, so on June 27, 2003, investigators finally feel like they have enough, and Michael Koblen was arrested on five charges, two counts of murder, stalking, stealing over $100,000 worth of jewelry, and transporting it out of state and conspiring with another to hinder the investigation. So according to the investigation, it's believed that Michael and Chris went out on Chris's boat and argued about the loan. Koblen then incapacitated Chris, tied him to the anchor, and threw him overboard.

The currents would have carried his body out into the ocean, meaning he'll probably never be located. Then Koblen killed Jeanette because she could have identified him as the last person with Chris. So they're saying there's a co-conspirator here, Justin, but it's not named in the indictment, although we could probably guess that it's Regina, Jeanette's sister.

Yeah, because she's the one that tried to back up his alibi when questioned about where he was on the day of the disappearance. And she communicated with her husband by phone when he was out of town when she said he wasn't out of town. It's just, it's so strange.

She knew where he was and she lied to investigators. So Michael and this unnamed co-conspirator lied to investigators about his whereabouts on the day of the disappearance, claiming he was in New Jersey. The co-conspirator told the same lie under oath in a bankruptcy proceeding on April 11th, 2002. This is the day that Regina Covland gave sworn testimony in the bankruptcy case. So again, we can do this simple math.

So they're being sued for the $165,000. They're doing a bankruptcy case, and she has now repeated this lie, but once under oath. So not a good look. The indictment also said that Koblen and the co-conspirator lied about the financial relationship between Chris and Koblen and would harass, intimidate, and threaten potential witnesses.

In March 1999, Michael Copeland was beaten outside an office complex in West Orange. He was in critical condition and was unable to talk. His skull was fractured and his pants and underwear were torn off. Now, the police, they never determined if this was related to the murders. I mean, what do you think? This is strange, right? I mean, how do you see this, Justin, that Michael Copeland is beaten severely and his clothes are ripped off? Yeah.

in 1999, March of 1999. Either this is a random act of violence or Chris and Jeanette's family members and loved ones are thinking, justice isn't working fast enough. Well, I think there's another possibility. I mean, he's obviously been in some dire straits and who knows who else he's at odds with. But yeah, it's a real good question about what happened to him. But yeah, he wasn't able to talk.

Now, obviously, Michael Koblen goes on trial. That's February 28th, 2005. The prosecution argued that Michael Koblen killed Chris Benedetto on his boat and then returned to the house to kill Jeanette. He traveled to Florida using the alias Mike Carey, and he killed Chris because he still owed him $95,000 in business loans.

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Documents presented at trial showed the trucking company had no federal or state licenses and paid no taxes. So they're kind of operating under false pretenses here. The defense argued that Michael came to Palm Beach County to have an affair and drug dealers killed Chris and Jeanette. They pointed out that Michael cooperated with police by giving fingerprints, writing samples, DNA samples, and his family helped pay for the funeral.

Okay, just because you cooperated and helped pay for a funeral doesn't mean that you're innocent. And the fact that you lied about going and now they're saying, oh, he lied because he was having an affair. But then why would his wife back up his alibi if he's having it? This defense is a mess. Can we disagree on that?

No, I mean, you have to do what you have to do. And I don't know what other path they could take here, except for he did it. How can we minimize this? And random drug dealers killed him. Okay. Well, I realize that this is the late 90s and cocaine and Scarface goes on in Florida, but come on. Unless we can point to Chris having interactions with drug dealers and a whole criminal process

Side life. I don't know where this theory comes from. Well, we see this a lot in criminal cases, Justin, where the defense will always come up with, well, drug dealers did this.

Or roving bands of Satanists. I don't know. So the prosecution played a tape from Koblenz's lawsuit deposition where he said he was in Florida the week the police were searching for Chris and Jeanette, but not the week before. He claimed he could not remember the last time he was in Florida before the search. He said he was already coming to Florida for a fishing tournament in the Bahamas. And an acquaintance of Michael's testified he did not know of any tournaments scheduled that week.

So the jury, they listened to a tape of Michael Koblenz interview, which took place before Jeanette was found. But after he was identified as the one who drove off alone in Chris's vehicle, Koblenz insisted he was in New Jersey at the time of the murders. He said the witness must be mistaken. Of course. Yeah, they're mistaken. It doesn't know what they're talking about. The cops are arresting you and they find drugs in your pants and you're like, oh, they're not my pants. No.

Now, the defense questioned Riviera Beach officer Russell Payne. He wrote a report two and a half years after the murders, and it was six pages long. They noted that no one did an intense search of the home or boat after Jeanette was found. Payne testified that was because it started off as a missing persons case, and the house was not considered a crime scene at the time. This reminds me of another case.

The prosecution presented the freezer where Jeanette was found and argued that Michael put her body in the freezer, returned to New Jersey, and planned to dispose of the body the following week, but Jeanette was frozen to the side so he couldn't even move her. That's kind of morbid, but this sounds like a solid plan because he obviously has gotten rid of Chris out on the ocean, and I'm assuming he was planning to do the same thing with Jeanette.

Neighbor Thomas LaRose testified that around 5.30 p.m. on the evening of November 11th, he, his wife, and another couple were waiting for Chris to return from fishing so they could all go to dinner. Jeanette was in her front yard and she said she had talked to them and they were on the way, meaning Chris and whoever he was with.

However, Benjamin Demonstranti testified he heard Chris talking to another man on the morning of November 11th. He saw Michael Koblen return alone at 11 a.m. This was over six hours before LaRose said Jeanette described her call from Chris.

So at trial, Thomas LaRose was unsure of the exact words that Jeanette said because his wife is saying, I heard Jeanette say Chris, but Thomas LaRose hadn't testified to that effect. And so the defense was trying to pick this apart saying, you don't even know what Jeanette said.

But I find this to be kind of a moot point. I mean, there's a lot of other evidence here. So Thomas LaRose, he does testify. He talks about seeing Chris's SUV in the driveway on the evening of November 11th. He said the departure for dinner was delayed because someone had to take a business call. He stepped outside over 10 minutes later, the SUV was gone. So he didn't actually see anybody leaving it. It's just gone 10 minutes later. And the

And the owner of a jewelry shop testified that Michael Koblen came to her store after Jeanette was found and offered to sell her diamonds, but she told him she didn't buy from the public. And the jewelry store owner, Larry Hoffman, testified that Koblen showed him a ring that looked like the one he designed for Jeanette Pirro, which was worth $58,000 or so. He also had two pairs of earrings and a diamond tennis bracelet. Altogether, this jewelry was worth almost $94,000.

So regardless of whether there's a miscommunication in a statement or whether he saw somebody leave in an SUV, this jewelry store owner is saying, no, this person came in to sell me her jewelry, the dead woman's jewelry. So I guess it doesn't really matter if you saw him driving the SUV or if somebody said them or him. It doesn't matter anymore.

Well, I'm a big believer that one of the things that defense attorneys like to do in court, especially when they have a difficult case, is to sound perturbed about different aspects of the case so that they can appear frustrated and feel like this case isn't as solid as the prosecution wants it to seem like it is. And, you know, hopefully embed something in the jury to think, well, there are problems with this, even if the problems don't really amount to much.

It's confusing the jury and trying to poke holes and all the statements. Now, this jewelry store owner testified that Michael Copeland told him that Jeanette was dead and Christopher was missing. Copeland said he incurred a lot of expenses during the search, and so he took the jewelry from the safe, trying to explain why he had it. He said, I want you to fence it, and Hoffman agreed to do it. This jewelry store owner agreed.

Hoffman warned Koblen he could only get a fraction of the value because it was a distress sale. He sold the jewelry in Manhattan for $25,000 and took $2,000 commission. So the FBI agents caught Hoffman and offered him partial immunity if he would wear a wire for another meeting with Koblen. Hoffman testified under an agreement that his testimony could not be used against him.

I mean, because he's obviously bought jewelry that he knew was stolen or from a bad place. So they're saying, hey, we're not going to go after you for this. If you wear this wire, work with us and get this guy to admit what he did and where the origin of this jewelry is from. So on this tape, the jurors are hearing Koblen telling Hoffman that the authorities can't know what they did because all that would do is would definitely throw me under the bus and

And on this tape, Koblen apologized for getting Hoffman involved and actually recommended a lawyer. And Hoffman asked, what if they ask about the pieces? And like we said earlier, Koblen responded, as far as I'm concerned, you never saw them again. He promised the police would never get a word out of me no matter what. Why do I need a lawyer? Why do I need any of these things if this is just a regular transaction? The defense, they're going to try to poke holes in this.

They're going to attack Hoffman's credibility. They got him to admit that his business was almost completely cash, like a cash business. No receipts, no records kept, which a lot of businesses that are cash businesses, it's because credit card fees are high. And if you are a criminal, you don't want to report your profits or your books to the IRS because you don't want to pay taxes. So...

The defense is saying this guy is a criminal. This is why you can't believe him. But this is exactly why somebody who murdered somebody would go sell high-priced jewelry to somebody like this because they don't keep logs or receipts or anything, too. So it kind of works both ways, right?

Yeah, and they can say all this, but once again, there's stuff that's being recorded here and being played back for the jury that they can hear with their own ears. I don't understand how they can even attempt to poke holes in this, but I guess you have to try.

An FBI agent testified that they were led to Hoffman based on calls made to him by Koblen. So they found him during the investigation. The defense called three witnesses. One of them was Koblen's own daughter, Andrea. The defense argued that Koblen could not have killed Jeanette, stolen her jewelry, stuffed Jeanette's body into the freezer, and cleaned up in the 45-minute window laid out by the prosecutors. So that's their final shot to try and clear their client.

So now they've gone from, he says he was in New Jersey, he wasn't even in Florida, to, yeah, I was there, but I was having an affair with somebody, to, oh, well, according to the prosecutor, there's only a 45-minute timeline, and he couldn't have done it in that 45-minute timeline, which is completely disregarding the lies, the made-up alibi, the witnesses that lied to his alibi, the

then him selling jewelry to a jewelry store. And what is this affair? Who is the woman he's having an affair with? Did they bring her on the stand? Nothing they claim here is provable. They did not bring any evidence to back up their defense claims here. They just tried to discredit everybody. And now they're saying it was too small of a window for him to commit this crime.

man, Aaron, if I was on this jury, I would have a hard time looking at this defense and taking it seriously.

Well, they also, the defense, pointed out that there was no partnership in the trucking firm because, you know, we talked about Chris having a 49% stake and Michael having a 51% stake. But according to the defense, there's no partnership. Chris had loaned Copeland all the money for this. And they said that the government was desperate to find a motive. And if there was no motive, there was reasonable doubt.

Disregarding the lawsuit to get this money. Oh my God. Assistant US attorney, Stephen Carlton noted that Copeland made many mistakes. He gave different alibis. First, he was home in New Jersey, that he was fishing in New England. Then he was having an affair with his ex-wife in South Florida. So they came up with somebody, they came up with a name.

But he said that Koblenz's big mistake was not counting on investigators looking at his credit card and phone records or analyzing handwriting samples to link him to the alias Mike Carey. I mean, why is he coming up with an alias, right? It's because he's doing something wrong. He also didn't count on a neighbor, meaning Ben, seeing him come back alone in Chris's boat. And also, he never counted on Jeanette's body getting stuck to the sides of the freezer in

which prevented him from disposing of Jeanette. So March 9th, 2005, Michael Koblen was convicted of all five counts against him, first degree murder, interstate stalking, killing a witness, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and interstate transport of stolen property. And if you're wondering about the killing of a witness, that is Jeanette Pirro.

I think this played out exactly how it should, and I think this investigation was pretty spot on. Because again, while you're listening to this, you think the husband, was he the one that did this? And he got away with it and disappeared. But then when you find his boat came back, there was other people that were involved, and there's this whole conflict between he and Copeland.

Now, Michael Koblen, he ended up dying December 28, 2006 at a hospital in Springfield, Missouri. It was due to congestive heart failure. But his case was under appeal at the time of his death. And early the next year, on February 15th, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit issued the following decision. After review, the court grants the motion filed by defendant Michael Koblen's counsel to dismiss this appeal as moot.

because the defendant died in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons while his appeal remained pending before this court. The court remands the case to the district court to vacate the judgment and dismiss the indictment. So Justin, this case, obviously one that could have been confusing because Michael Copeland did his, I guess his best to obscure what he was up to. He had the support of his wife. But here's the thing. When we see criminals get caught

and the evidence starts to mount against them, it's not because these people weren't thinking. It wasn't because they didn't have a plan. The problem is, is you can't control everybody else. He can't control whether or not a neighbor will see him come back without Chris. He can't control whether someone else who knows his plan or knows what he was up to, he doesn't know whether they're going to talk. He can't control that.

So when it comes down to it, you can't control everything. So if you think you can get away with murder, you think you can get away with crimes, as long as one other person knows, you're not safe. That's what I would say. Because while he had people who didn't talk, he had some who did. And that's all it took because you don't have to believe the jewelry store owner. You don't have to believe Hoffman. But what you can believe is the recording that happened when he was wearing the wire.

And that should tell everyone everything they need to know about how this went down and why, because it was about the money. That's why he never paid Chris back. He didn't want to lose any money. I don't want to say how I would have done this and gotten away with it, but why would you bring the boat back?

Why not dump the boat somewhere, you know, and then leave? Why go try to sell this jewelry? There's so many ways. I'm like, you could have just burned the boat in the middle of the ocean and no one would have known. Swam back to shore. You could have taken this jewelry and gone to the other side of the country or another country.

and sold it for money. There's a hundred ways where he could have concealed his activities here, but thank God criminals are dumb and this guy got caught. It was such a witness trail and paper trail pointing back to him. Yeah, it didn't work and it so often doesn't, but thankfully the investigators were able to follow everything he did. Music

Hey Prime members, you can listen to Generation Y ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either. Until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life.

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