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A Plan to Kill - Season 2 - Episode 04: Payment Plan
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00:06The
00:07Neighbors on Singer Island and family members reported that this couple was missing.
00:13They have been missing for over a week, and I started getting very worried about them.
00:20Where have they gone? They didn't tell anybody. Their absence made no sense.
00:24When the wife is missing and the husband's missing, you don't know if one of them killed the other.
00:31One of the brothers opened the freezer, and he let out a primal scream.
00:36Much to his horror, he saw a frozen body.
00:40What kind of person could do something like that?
00:44All along, the suspect was planning to commit murder.
00:48Talking to witnesses, two people went out fishing.
00:51The boat came back. Just one person gets off the boat.
00:55We knew that we had the murderer completely circled and surrounded.
01:02It wasn't a heat of the moment. It wasn't a passion killing.
01:06He had premeditated and planned this whole thing out.
01:27The Singer Island of 1998 was very quaint. The homes were built close together. Most of them are on the
01:34water.
01:36It was always a safe community.
01:40And it was very rare that there was any crime on Singer Island.
01:52My boss called me and said, hey, Greg, I want you to work this case. There's something that's not quite
01:57right.
01:57I got to the house. There was a lot of police activity.
02:01And there were civilians going in and out of the house.
02:04But there was no crime scene tape.
02:06We learned that the Riviera Beach Police Department was there to do a welfare check
02:10because family members told the police that this couple was missing.
02:15Jeanette Pirro and Chris Benedetto, they should be here.
02:18We haven't seen them for five days.
02:20They were all genuinely concerned and wanted the police to check in with them.
02:28So the police go in the house.
02:31Nothing is out of place.
02:32There's no sign of a burglary struggle or anything.
02:36But they do notice things that should be with a couple if they're on a trip.
02:41Like Chris's medications are still there.
02:43Chris's wallet's there. Chris's cell phone's there.
02:46Interviewing the neighbors, the police just knew it was completely out of character for Chris and Jeanette
02:51to just disappear when nobody would know where they were.
02:54Then the neighbors told law enforcement detailed accounts
02:58and the reason why they were concerned about Chris and Jeanette.
03:04No one's heard a word from either one of them.
03:07It was very unnerving.
03:10And there was an overwhelmed feeling of what could have happened.
03:18Five days before this, on Wednesday, November 11th,
03:23Chris and Jeanette had plans to meet up with their neighbors and have dinner.
03:28But Chris and Jeanette never showed up.
03:32Then, over the next couple days, neighbors start to notice
03:35mail's not been taken out of the mailbox.
03:39Also, Chris's forerunner's not at the house.
03:41It should be there.
03:43Because for Chris and Jeanette to just get up and leave and not have called somebody
03:46to say, hey, we're going out of town for a couple days, that's just not them.
03:51I called Chris and Jeanette's home.
03:54There was no answer.
03:57It wasn't normal.
03:59And I started getting very, very worried about them.
04:04Their absence made no sense to any of the neighbors.
04:07Something is amiss.
04:09Where is Chris Benedetto?
04:11Where is Jeanette Pirro?
04:12Where is Jeanette Pirro?
04:16It's been four days.
04:17And the neighbors start reaching out to relatives to see if they have any information.
04:23They have a number for Jeanette Pirro's sister, Regina Coblin, married to Michael Coblin, or Big Mike.
04:31The neighbors called up to Brick, New Jersey Sunday evening, informed Regina that Chris and Jeanette had not been seen
04:42for four days.
04:44But Regina Coblin had no idea where they were.
04:51Next, the neighbors called the Benedetto family.
04:54Chris Benedetto's brothers, Paul and George Benedetto, who were police officers in the state of New York, began to mobilize
05:01and make plans to try to come down to Florida a few days later to initiate a search for Chris
05:07Benedetto and Jeanette Pirro.
05:13The next day, Monday morning, is when the family called law enforcement and they went out and did the welfare
05:19check.
05:20And the bolo is issued for Chris Benedetto's vehicle, the Toyota 4Runner.
05:26Chris's brothers can't get out of work for another day.
05:32So Mike Coblin is married to Jeanette's sister, travels down to Florida the next day.
05:38Mike would come down and fish with Chris all the time.
05:41They were friends.
05:43He has keys, so he ends up staying at Chris and Jeanette's house after he gets here.
05:49Big Mike, an avid fisherman, knew the area that spent a lot of time that day visiting local Singer Island
05:56marinas and asking questions about whether or not anyone had seen Chris and Jeanette.
06:02And then talking to someone at the sailfish marina.
06:05Mike Coblin learned that Chris and Jeanette had gone to the Bahamas with another couple on their boat.
06:12He shares that information with the neighbors and then Chris's brothers in New York.
06:18When I heard that Chris and Jeanette went to the Bahamas with some friends during hurricane season and they left
06:25without telling anybody, I felt that couldn't be true.
06:30Chris and Jeanette wouldn't do that.
06:32So I knew that story was bogus.
06:36Chris and Jeanette always made meticulous plans, but this time they didn't tell anybody.
06:42So the neighbors and Chris's brothers had real doubts and thought Big Mike was given bad information with regard to
06:50a fishing trip to the Bahamas.
06:54Chris's brothers, they just know something's not right.
06:58They're not sure what, so they do what good police do.
07:03The next day, Chris's brothers, Paul and George Benedetto, flew down to Florida to Canva, Singer Island with Michael Coblin.
07:14They get missing posters printed up.
07:17They are going around to businesses.
07:19They are talking to people.
07:21Being in law enforcement, they were confident that they can find Chris and Jeanette.
07:27That night, Paul and George slept in the Benedetto house.
07:31But there wasn't enough room at the house.
07:34So Michael Coblin stayed on his friend's fishing yacht at a marina.
07:44The Benedetto brothers hadn't had any luck.
07:48So the next day, they formally filed a missing persons report.
07:52The Revere Beach police then put on the local news that this couple was missing.
07:58Chris's brothers and the brother-in-law were all working together,
08:02trying to get anyone that knew anything about this case to come forward.
08:08As time went on and Chris and Jeanette were still missing, I was worried for them because they were friends
08:14of mine.
08:15And nobody knows what happened.
08:20At this point, Chris and Jeanette have been missing for 11 days.
08:24No one has seen or heard from them.
08:26And the police don't have any investigative leads.
08:30But then a break in the case occurred.
08:34A valet at the embassy suites in Singer Island contacted law enforcement that there was a vehicle that might be
08:40related to the missing persons report that was in the news.
08:44A deputy responded to the scene.
08:47And in fact, it was Chris Benedetto's truck.
08:52It was seized and taken to a different location.
08:56So that obviously raised some questions.
08:59Who drove it there?
09:01Is this the last place someone may have seen Chris and Jeanette?
09:04Or how long has it been there?
09:06If something happened to Chris and Jeanette, if it happened in the car, there should be some sort of evidence
09:10in the car.
09:12But the car was like the house.
09:14There was nothing discovered from it.
09:18At that time, the Benedetto brothers concluded that their efforts to find their brother and Jeanette Pirro were unsuccessful.
09:26They decided to tidy up and secure the house and go back to New York the next day and let
09:32law enforcement in South Florida take over.
09:40So the next morning, while turning the electricity off, the Benedetto brothers discovered there was a bait freezer wedged underneath
09:50a workbench in the garage to avoid the smell of rotting and thawing bait fish.
09:58And they planned to empty out the fish that were in there.
10:03So one of the Benedetto brothers opened it and he let out a primal screen of shock and horror.
10:16Instead of seeing frozen fish, he saw much to his horror, a frozen body.
10:25The police were wondering, had the husband killed his wife?
10:28Was it a stranger?
10:30Who could have done this?
10:32The 4.03 carat princess cut diamond ring.
10:37She wore it all the time.
10:39What happened to the ring?
10:41It was not recovered in the house.
10:44It was not recovered at autopsy.
10:46So now we have evidence he was in the house the day that she was killed.
10:51He took that ring either against her will or off a dead body.
11:06The Benedetto brothers decide to unpack the bait freezer in the garage.
11:11Paul Benedetto opened the freezer, expecting to see frozen bait fish.
11:19Instead, he was horrified to see a frozen human corpse, which he believed was his sister-in-law, Jeanette Pirro.
11:36Up until that freezer was opened, this was being viewed as a missing persons case, because there had been no
11:42indication a crime had occurred.
11:44Once the body is discovered, now you have a homicide investigation.
11:53All of a sudden the police come out, the crime scene tape goes up, then you have newspaper reporters and
11:59you have television reporters to cover the case.
12:01Now forensics technicians go into process the house, because the entire house becomes a crime scene.
12:09Investigators went over the house with a fine tooth comb, looking for evidence.
12:14I arrive at the scene and the freezer is open.
12:18I just can't imagine what it took to put her in there and literally shove her body in that position.
12:27It's just so degrading.
12:33The body was frozen into the freezer. There was no way that she could be physically removed from the freezer
12:40without losing evidence.
12:43The police had come out with a van and they actually took the entire bait freezer out of the garage.
12:52The medical examiner performs the autopsy. The body was identified as Jeanette Pirro.
13:06You could clearly see the striations of a braided rope around her neck.
13:16The medical examiner determined that Jeanette Pirro's cause of death was manual strangulation.
13:24To me it wasn't a random crime, it was a personal crime.
13:27You know, the person's behind you and ripping down on this rope.
13:32And we have noticed that there's no scraping on the nails.
13:37So it was somebody she knew, somebody that she was comfortable with.
13:41Because they were able to get up close and personal, get control of her that fast before she could defend
13:46herself.
13:52I was watching the news and I learned that they found Jeanette Pirro's body in a bathed freezer in the
14:00garage.
14:00I was shocked.
14:03I was shocked.
14:06And then my wife was crying.
14:08Her and Jeanette were close.
14:10We were devastated.
14:12What kind of person could do something like that?
14:17Many crime scenes are replete with fingerprints, DNA, blood.
14:24But this particular crime scene was very, very difficult because there was no physical evidence.
14:32It was pristine.
14:35On top of that, there was no sign of Chris in the house.
14:41Chris had been missing for 11 days.
14:43And there's no indication where he is or what he's doing.
14:48In any type of domestic situation, if one of the spouses ends up dead, a surviving spouse is always an
14:58initial suspect.
14:59With regard to Chris, this case was no different.
15:03You need to sit down and take additional statements about Chris and Jeanette from the brothers, friends, and the neighbors.
15:14Through that interview, we learned that Chris and Jeanette met on a blind date in New York.
15:20And as it's been explained, love at first sight.
15:25Chris was deeply in love with Jeanette.
15:28And he bought an outlandish four-carat princess-cut diamond ring for her.
15:35And she wore it all the time.
15:40Jeanette Pirro was a very remarkable woman.
15:44She was kind.
15:45She was thoughtful.
15:46She was very compassionate.
15:50And she had an eye for beauty.
15:53Jeanette was a statuesque, graceful, elegant,
15:58interior designer,
16:00life of the party.
16:03Chris Benedetto was a gregarious,
16:06former construction worker
16:09who came from a huge family up in New York City.
16:12Five brothers, two sisters.
16:15All of them very, very close.
16:19Chris suffered a significant accident.
16:23He had fallen from scaffolding and it broke his back.
16:27He had to have surgery on his back.
16:29Three or four rods ended up being placed to keep it together.
16:32A settlement that came out of the accident was over a million dollars.
16:37That led to Chris and Jeanette coming to Singer Island and purchasing the house and a boat.
16:44Changing their lifestyle because of the injury.
16:48Chris, when he retired down here, he fished most days.
16:51He had a 23-foot open fisherman boat center console.
16:56Chris and Jeanette lived on a street called Dolphin that wasn't on the water.
17:02So they kept their boat at our house, at my dock.
17:07They were a wonderful couple.
17:11Every day they went fishing, they would leave fish in the cooler for me.
17:16And Chris and Jeanette would sit with us and have a beer together.
17:22They loved to socialize.
17:24They were just very happy, energetic people.
17:32Everything you're hearing from the family and from the neighbors about their relationship, nothing makes sense that Chris did this.
17:38Because everybody knew they were in love with one another.
17:41But then again, given the fact that Chris is missing, strangulation is an up-close and personal crime.
17:48As an investigator, to do my job correctly, I've got to look at Chris and say,
17:56What if?
18:06Once Jeanette Pirro's body was discovered, there was then some questions in the minds of detectives.
18:12Where is Chris Benedetto?
18:15Could Chris have done this?
18:19We very quickly developed a complete financial picture on Christopher Benedetto.
18:25He didn't have any really outstanding debts that were owed to other parties.
18:30No large withdrawals from ATMs, no activity on the credit cards, no activities on any of the bank accounts.
18:38That's very unusual in this day and age.
18:41His financial existence seemed to have stopped on Wednesday, November 11th, 1998.
18:50Chris is missing and he's not accessed any of the money available to him to support himself.
18:57So that obviously raised concern.
19:00Because one, he's going to need the money to live.
19:03Two, he's going to need money for his medications.
19:05And no activity has taken place to indicate any of that's going on.
19:10So to us, looking at it, Chris wasn't responsible for Jeanette's murder.
19:17And at this point, you have to presume that Chris is a victim himself.
19:30Chris and Jeanette were my friends and I just couldn't put the pieces together.
19:35What, what could have happened?
19:37But after the news, it dawned on me that I had some information to divulge to the police about this
19:44situation.
19:45Thinking back to November 11th, I could have been the last person that heard Chris's voice the day he went
19:52missing.
19:58On November 11th, around 8am, I heard a vehicle pull up and park where Chris usually parked.
20:07And then I heard Chris say, grab the rods.
20:15Then I heard the boat warming up out there at the dock.
20:18And then the boat left.
20:22Around 11am, I'm in the backyard and Chris's boat came back.
20:28It docked.
20:30And then I noticed Chris wasn't on the boat.
20:32And there was someone else on the boat, a heavyset man, over six foot, probably over 200 pounds, that I've
20:40never seen before.
20:43Thinking back to that day, that was very peculiar.
20:46So I called the Riviera Beach Police Department.
20:50The man averted his eyes whenever Ben looked over and he got off the boat and briskly walked to Chris's
20:59truck, got in the vehicle and drove away.
21:03Ben Demonstranti described him as a swarthy, stocky, big-bellied person, way over six foot.
21:12That description could be any of the Benedetto brothers or the brother-in-law, Michael Koblen.
21:19And strangulation is very personal.
21:21So law enforcement wanted to eliminate any of them as a potential suspect.
21:27The detectives asked me if they could bring someone back and I could ID them if that was the person
21:34I saw that day.
21:35And I said, absolutely.
21:38Detectives then processed the boat at my dock.
21:42They were doing forensic work.
21:44And then I noticed in the front hatch and the bow, there was no anchor line and there was no
21:50anchor.
21:51And I mentioned to the police officers, Chris would never not have an anchor on this boat.
22:00After we'd searched the boat, there was nothing indicative that a crime took place on the boat.
22:05Everything was clean.
22:07Yes, you got rope missing, you got an anchor missing, but nothing else.
22:10So very frustrating.
22:12The Riviera Beach Police Department then conduct what we informally call a show up because the Benedetto brothers and Koblen
22:21were big guys.
22:22So they wanted to see if Ben Demonstrani saw one of them on the boat.
22:29A couple hours later, a police car pulled up.
22:33I was standing out front and three people got out of the back seat.
22:37Two I've never seen before in my life.
22:39The third was the heavyset gentleman I saw on the boat that day.
22:47He looked at me and he gave me the bone chilling, most frightening look I've ever seen in my life.
22:57It just set shivers up my spine.
23:10Three people got out of the back seat of the detective's vehicle.
23:13The first two gentlemen, I didn't know who they were at that time.
23:17The third was the man that I saw come in on the boat that day without Chris.
23:24I'm 100% sure of it.
23:27Demonstrani immediately said, that's the guy.
23:31It was Jeanette Pirro's brother-in-law, Michael Koblen.
23:40Mike Koblen's been identified as the last person seen on the boat on November 11th.
23:45And Chris didn't get off it.
23:48Chris's brothers introduced themselves to me and I said, that person that I ID'd, he either knows what happened to
23:57Chris or he did something to Chris.
24:01The Benedetto brothers could not fathom that Michael Koblen could have been the murderer because their families were so intertwined
24:10and close.
24:12Mike is married to Jeanette's sister.
24:15Mike would come down and fish with Chris all the time.
24:18Now you're like, okay, why?
24:22Michael Koblen was interviewed by the Riviera Beach Police Department.
24:27But Koblen immediately said he wanted a lawyer, flew back to New Jersey and never submitted to another interview.
24:34And now investigators think that he is a suspect in the murder of Jeanette Pirro.
24:43At this point, we need an assist on the federal side, the resources of the FBI because of the interstate
24:50nature of the investigation.
24:52And we start to subpoena all financial records related to Mike Koblen to see what it might develop to us.
25:04Once we got Koblen's financial records, we discovered that Chris had lent over $150,000 to Michael Koblen for his
25:16trucking business in New Jersey.
25:20Next, we sat down with the Benedetto family from New York to see if they had any knowledge about the
25:26extent of the loan.
25:27The Benedetto family reported information that Chris had invested in Michael's business.
25:34But Koblen's trucking business was not doing well.
25:38And he had filed a case in bankruptcy court and only paid back about $50,000.
25:44But there was still around $100,000 that Chris Benedetto was still owed.
25:53Did it come to a head? Did Chris say, you haven't paid me any of my money back? I need
25:57the money.
25:59Koblen, the last person that was seen on the boat with Chris, hasn't repaid it alone.
26:04I think, at this point, it's like, Mike Koblen's our guy.
26:10Koblen became our prime suspect, but we still had to find enough evidence to make an arrest, proof beyond a
26:17reasonable doubt.
26:17So the FBI subpoenas, conditional financial records, travel records, credit card records, and phone records related to Mike Koblen.
26:28The FBI has a particular expertise in interstate cases, but the process moves very slowly.
26:38You have to issue one subpoena, wait for the response, analyze the records, decide what additional leads are going to
26:47be developed, then issue another subpoena.
26:50It's like building a house out of bricks, one brick at a time.
26:58We finally do get the American Express account that we subpoenaed for Mike Koblen.
27:04The American Express records revealed that Michael Koblen had opened multiple subaccounts for his trucking business to the name of
27:13Michael Koblen, Regina Koblen, his wife.
27:16But there was also a Mike Carey, K-E-R-R-Y.
27:24Now, interestingly enough, there was only one charge on the American Express account of Mike Carey,
27:32and that was a plane ticket from Newark, New Jersey to West Palm Beach, Florida,
27:39the day before Chris and Jeanette disappeared with a return flight on the 12th.
27:50Now, we've got to figure out who that person is.
27:54Is he a potential suspect, potential witness, or is he not involved in the case?
27:58We do an exhaustive search of Mike Carey's in the continental United States,
28:04and none of Mike Carey's when spoke to New Koblen or had ever lived in New Jersey or had ever
28:09worked for the trucking company.
28:11We've also done subpoenas for phone calls going into Koblen's residence in New Jersey.
28:18So we come across telephone calls to the Koblen residence from Singer Island on November 11th,
28:26the day Chris and Jeanette disappeared.
28:31Those telephone records from Koblen's home showed a phone number associated with the Rutledge Inn,
28:38an old-fashioned motel across the street from Chris Benedetto's subdivision on Singer Island,
28:44and just a few blocks from where Chris's truck was found in the Embassy Suites parking lot.
28:51So the investigators went to the Rutledge Inn and asked,
28:55do you have guest registration records?
28:57They sent them to an old dusty room where they had boxes and boxes of records lasting decades.
29:03We sat down and went through box by box, registration by registration.
29:09Three hours later, we discovered a registration card in the name of Mike Carey
29:16that was at the hotel on November 10th and had checked out on November 12th.
29:24That puts Mike Carey on Singer Island.
29:27The last day, Chris and Jeanette were seen alive.
29:32Now, when you check into a hotel, old school,
29:35you'd have to sign a guest registration card and to ride where you lived.
29:40And where did he list his home?
29:43The same location in Brick, New Jersey, where Michael Koblen lived.
29:49Does that mean that Mike Carey was Michael Koblen?
30:00Now we've got Mike Carey using Mike Koblen's home address on a registration card for the Rutledge Inn.
30:07That doesn't make sense to us.
30:11Now we had to prove that Mike Carey was Michael Koblen.
30:19This is where old-fashioned gum-chew detective work comes into play.
30:27Arrangements are made through the FBI in New York to bring Michael Koblen in to have him complete handwriting exemplars.
30:36Handwriting exemplars are pages and pages of your own handwriting written down at the direction of an agent.
30:44So an agent would say, write a series of names.
30:48John Smith, Billy Bob.
30:51In the middle of the list of names, the FBI agent inserted Mike Carey.
30:59Agents then provided that card to the FBI National Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.
31:08They analyzed the handwriting and determined that the person who wrote Mike Carey on the Rutledge Inn registration card on
31:18the afternoon of November 10, 1998,
31:22was, in fact, Michael Koblen.
31:28So, we circumstantially had him present on Singer Island during the time of the murder.
31:39Also, the Rutledge Inn noted that the first call for Mike Carey to reserve a room was made in October,
31:49a month before the murders.
31:52So, he'd been lying about everything.
31:55All along, it was Michael Koblen who was planning to travel to Florida under that alias to murder Chris and
32:02Jeanette.
32:04I believe Mike Koblen couldn't repay the loan, so he decided he had to kill Chris and Jeanette.
32:11You see the stuff in the credit cards.
32:13You see the phone calls, the travel under the alias.
32:17It wasn't a passion killing.
32:20It wasn't a heat of the moment killing.
32:22This was planned.
32:32In early October, Michael Koblen buys a plane ticket and makes a hotel reservation under an alias Mike Carey.
32:40On November 10, Koblen flies down to West Palm Beach from Newark, New Jersey, and checks into the Rutledge Inn
32:46under his alias.
32:48On November 11, Koblen went fishing with Chris.
32:52Once on the water, I believe Koblen somehow incapacitates Chris.
32:57Wraps the anchor line around Chris's body and dumps it overboard into the Gulf Stream.
33:06Then Koblen returns to Singer Island, to the dock at my house.
33:10Koblen then drove Chris's Toyota 4Runner away from Demonstrani's house, back to Chris and Jeanette's home.
33:19Koblen enters the home, strangles Jeanette with rope from the boat, and puts her nude body in the bay freezer.
33:27Then Koblen drove away in the Toyota 4Runner and leaves it at the Embassy Suites and walks to the Rutledge
33:34Inn.
33:35The next morning, Koblen checks out of the Rutledge Inn, takes a cab to the airport, and flies back to
33:41New Jersey, all under his alias.
33:48But this case was difficult.
33:51There was no physical evidence for Jeanette's murder.
33:56No crime scene for Chris's murder.
34:00And we had no body.
34:02So how do we prove to a jury that Koblen had committed the murders?
34:08We've got to start retracing everything again.
34:12Review the work we developed and see if you missed anything.
34:19During the crime scene search of Chris and Jeanette's house, we found a video that Chris and Jeanette made for
34:26insurance reasons.
34:28Two pen fifties, and approximately seven spin reels.
34:34They documented jewelry, Chris's fishing equipment, anything that they would potentially make an insurance claim for them.
34:43This is our BMW, my bicycle.
34:49Jeanette was wearing her engagement ring, the last she was seen by anybody.
34:53But Jeanette's ring was not recovered in the house, was not recovered at autopsy.
34:59It was the only item we could definitely say was missing from inside Chris and Jeanette's house.
35:05The original appraisal for Jeanette's four-carat princess-cut diamond ring was for $58,000.
35:14After what we had learned from Koblen's finances, we believed the ring was stolen by Koblen.
35:22And the linchpin, in this case, was what happened to the ring.
35:30We know that on November 17th, when Chris and Jeanette were missing, Koblen stayed on the fishing yacht named Absolutely.
35:39So we decided to secure subpoenas for phone calls from the Absolutely, hoping to develop an investigative lead.
35:48The night Koblen stayed on the Absolutely, the phone records showed that Michael Koblen was telephoning De Angelis Jewelers in
35:56New York City.
35:58So we subpoenaed the owner of De Angelis Jewelers, Larry Hoffman.
36:05The story that he told was that he received a phone call from Michael Koblen, and he wanted to know
36:13if Larry Hoffman could sell some jewelry for him.
36:17Several days later, up in New York City, Larry Hoffman said that Koblen brought a four-carat ring to him,
36:25and that he paid Koblen approximately $25,000, and that he, Hoffman, reduced it into a number of smaller diamonds
36:34and then sold it in the course of his regular business.
36:37Once we got that story, we decided that we needed to bait the trap and pull in the big fish,
36:44Mike Koblen.
36:47So the investigative team convinced Hoffman that he would contact Michael Koblen and tell him that he, Hoffman, had received
36:56a subpoena to come testify in front of a Florida grand jury and see how Michael Koblen would react.
37:06Hoffman made the phone call.
37:08The FBI then had Larry Hoffman wired.
37:12And sure enough, a few days later, Hoffman received a visitor in the form of Michael Koblen.
37:19What if they, what if they asked about the, uh, the pieces?
37:24I understand you never, you never saw them.
37:27What do you think?
37:28Because all I would, though, would definitely show me under the bus.
37:32Exactly.
37:34When we heard those final words out of Koblen's mouth, we knew that for him, it was game over.
37:42Michael Koblen was admitting he sold Jeanette's ring.
37:47And he took that ring either against Jeanette's will or off a dead body.
38:09The day we heard that recording from Hoffman's jewelry store, we knew that we had Michael Koblen completely circled and
38:21surrounded.
38:25Jeanette was wearing her engagement ring, the last she was seen by anybody.
38:29So now we have evidence that Mike Koblen had been in the house the day Jeanette was killed.
38:39So at that point, our investigation was over, and now it was time to bring Michael Koblen to justice.
38:50Finally, in June of 2003, in Brooklyn, New Jersey, we affected the rest of Michael Koblen for killing Chris and
38:59Jeanette.
39:06As you read the police report, you realize that Mike Koblen had premeditated and planned this whole thing out.
39:13The fact that money had been loaned to Mike Koblen by Chris Benedetto and Jeanette Pirro.
39:17The fact that he had used an alias, he seemed to be someone who was desperate to survive, and he
39:26felt like the only way that he could accomplish his goal was by killing his relatives.
39:32Our theory is that after he had killed Chris Benedetto, Michael Koblen knew there was only one person that knew
39:40he was in Florida, and that was Jeanette Pirro.
39:43And he had to eliminate her as a witness, because it was a federal case.
39:48The West Palm Beach grand jury charged Michael Koblen with two counts of murder, one count of murdering a federal
39:57witness, and one count of interstate stalking a federal witness.
40:06The trial begins.
40:08The trial begins. The entire Benedetto family attended, and they sat right behind the prosecution table.
40:15We felt a huge burden on us to not lose.
40:21It was palpable pressure.
40:30The prosecution paint the picture for the jury of the scheme that Mike Koblen came up with.
40:36Despite Koblen's effort to meticulously plan everything ahead of time, the one thing he didn't plan on was Ben Demonstrani
40:45being at home in his backyard when he brought the boat back.
40:50Plan destroyed.
40:54The federal prosecutor, they asked me to identify any person in the courtroom that I saw come back that day
41:02on Chris Benedetto's boat.
41:06I took a deep breath, and I looked right at Mr. Koblen.
41:11Prosecutors asked him, how sure are you? And Demonstrani immediately responded, I'd bet my life on it.
41:24The jury has reached a verdict.
41:27Guilty.
41:32Chris and Jeanette got the justice they deserved.
41:35We proved the magnitude and the enormity of his plan.
41:40And Koblen was sentenced to two consecutive life in prison terms.
41:57A little time after the trial, I paid for the memorial bench in honor of Chris and Jeanette.
42:04And I put their names on it.
42:06It's right there on the ocean, a beautiful place.
42:10Every time I walk by their bench, I tell Chris and Jeanette that I miss them.
42:31It's only three months, but the view is Cite, and he caught the burial bench as the
42:33To an end of this tunnel, how to walk by their foot
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