Finger-Sucking Surgeon on Trial for Enemy Lawyer’s Murder

He's intelligent, but he's not a lawyer. And yet, this Ivy League-educated surgeon is now acting as his own attorney. And why do you hurt yourself? Yes, you should. And it's not just any case. It's a murder case, allegedly rooted in revenge and premeditation. I knew right away that he had something to do with it. With a shocking alleged cover-up. One by one, he starts to meticulously suck on each of his fingers. He's using his tongue and getting up underneath it and slurping. He's using his teeth almost as a nail file, trying to destroy any trace of evidence. But is this doctor turned defendant, even taking these allegations seriously? I have checked to this microphone being here. All right, fine, then we'll just take it away, OK? Will you take it away right now? Yeah, sure. This is Scandal, presented by Lawn Cron. I'm Sierra Gillespie. [MUSIC PLAYING] Tarpon Springs is an upscale city on Florida's Gulf Coast. There are waterfront properties, country club memberships, and mansions-engated communities where central Florida's elite call home. When such person was, Dr. Tomash or Tom Kazowski, a plastic surgeon with some major credentials, he studied at Dartmouth Medical School, learning a BS in biochemistry, a BA in business, and an MA in biomedical sciences. But Tom no longer calls a high-end mansion home. Instead, his current address is the Pinellas County Jail in Clearwater, Florida. That's because in 2023, Tom went from medical doctor to murder suspect. For when Tom's known enemy, Stephen Cosby, goes missing, those who know and best immediately suspect Tom is behind it all. The first thing that pops into my mind is, oh my god, what has happened, what did this guy do to him? Tom has been charged with first-degree murder in Stephen's death, and this case is out of Florida, meaning he's facing the possibility of the death penalty if he's convicted. He's pleaded not guilty and is opted for a bench trial over a jury trial and to act as his own attorney. Now, the trial started on Monday, and there's been a fair share of drama, like for instance, when Tom raises a concern about a microphone. I have a check to this microphone being here. But don't talk to yourself too loudly, because you might interrupt things, OK? That OK, with you? Well, you can talk to yourself in a soft tone of voice, OK? Yeah, sure. And again, Tom elected to represent himself, and interestingly, for the first few days of the trial, he hardly participated in his defense at all. He didn't even present an opening statement, and then refused to ask any questions on cross-examination. [INAUDIBLE] Again. [INAUDIBLE] And again. I'll pass the witness to Dr. Salske. [INAUDIBLE] He finally decided to ask some questions on Thursday. [INAUDIBLE] He's been seen smiling in court, raising his hand, and straight up just looking bored on multiple different occasions. But before I get into all that, I want to give some background on the case. Tom is charged with Stephen's murder, but it's not your typical homicide case. And as we sit here today, has Stephen been found? No. Stephen and Tom were introduced several years ago in the midst of a lawsuit that Tom filed back in May of 2019. She was being sued for alleged conspiracy to, I guess, defraud him out of-- I don't know some sort of money that he believed he was entitled to from these people. She did not own the company. She had her own small business. That was, I guess, why she was a contractor. But she was not in a position to be able to pay him anything or even pay me realistically. That witness, Jacob Pillsbury, was representing an individual that Tom was suing. And Stephen wrapped a group of other doctors who were also facing suit. These people were very wealthy doctors with many businesses that are well known in the area. Some of these businesses are-- I'm sure they have a substantial amount of money that he could have recovered from them, had his case had any merit. OK, so it relates to where Doc is asking what kind of business were they in? They were doctors. They owned-- it was a plastic surgery clinic, which was who he worked with. It was a chiropractor's office. It was a surgery center. I mean, we're talking massive money in these businesses. I would imagine. I mean, obviously, I don't know that for sure, but we're talking about wealthy people, very wealthy people. According to Pillsbury, Tom was mad that these individuals had not paid him for services he provided as a plastic surgeon. And that's really the basis of this lawsuit. But sooner rather than later, the arguments went from a legal filing to what seemed like a vendetta. He filed a motion for sanctions against Steve, which I could not really understand his justification for realistically. He made a bunch of completely unwarranted, inappropriate accusations about Steve throughout the litigation, which were absurd. And as a part of that motion for sanctions, which included some of those allegations, he asked that Steve be removed as defense counsel, which I've never seen anybody do before. During one incident at Stephen's Law Offices, Tom alleged the approach to him in a menacing manner. Do you remember if he told you about something specific that happened between him and Tom and Steve? Yes. That the-- I don't want to use a curse word. The f-ing doctor called him a scumbag, something like that. Did he say what it was for? The bathroom. He did. And did you start to become a friend to the safety after you brought him up? I did. What? He was unusual. It was the main thing. Practicing laws, adversarial. But this did not feel the same as other cases that he was working. It felt like it had gone outside of that normal scope. So I just became-- started becoming afraid. In March 2022, Tom's attorney withdrew from the case. And instead of dropping the case or binding a new attorney, Tom decided to act as his own. Dr. Kazowski is an Ivy League-educated plastic surgeon. He went to Dartmouth. He's intelligent. But he's not a lawyer. He did not understand how the law worked. He did not understand how this process worked. And that made it very difficult for Stephen and Jake Pillsbury to work with him. For example, he started demanding discovery that it had already been provided. It was so much of a dispute. The Judge Mascarella, who was the presiding judge over that civil litigation, had to appoint a special master to handle all of these discovery disputes. I was just curious about the issue. And this relates to maybe Dr. Kazowski looking for the skill and interest. Discovery was pretty contentious. Dr. Kazowski did not think he was getting everything that he was entitled to. And I was trying to figure it out. Right. Well, his behavior throughout the course was like, if he's something that we did not, did be dealing with. Yes, he was terrible to deal with. He made accusations about Steve, which were completely unreasonable and unwarranted. He was not fun to be around. And I personally find it offensive when people openly lie to courts. And it's upsetting to me when people do that because it breaks the justice system when you do that. And it was just constant with him. And so I did not like dealing with him. I didn't like being in the same room with him. I didn't like talking to him. And like the sound of his voice, I didn't like the way he treated other people. According to prosecutors, Tom then made things personal. On March 20th, around 3 o'clock in the morning, he starts to do some research on his phone. Specifically, he starts to research a paralytic called succinylcholine. Specifically, he was searching for the duration of action, the possible dangers of intramuscular succinylcholine. And he read multiple scholarly articles on how this paralytic works. And your honor will hear from an anesthesiologist. This paralytic can be lethal at the right dose. But at a lower dose, what it does is it affects the ability for someone to resist. It weakens their body. It affects their ability to fight back. But they are cognizant of everything that is going on. They can feel everything that happens to them. You will learn that if someone was stuck with a paralytic, and there was a large blood-ledding event in the bathroom, they could feel and see everything that was happening to them. You'll also learn that it's a drug that plastic surgeons often keep or surgery offices, often keep in emergency situations. That research was done just hours before Stephen was last seen. Steven went to work at the blanchored law firm like normal. And for a while, that day seemed just that normal until a co-workers' dog started to act strange. "Can you describe my, what kind of, um, three of the dogs?" Uh, she's a corgi Jack Russell, mix. "What about her being changed who was he today?" She was just agitated and not herself. She usually sleeps on a poof in the office, no matter if clients come in or out. And just her stirring around kind of whining, I was like something, I just felt weird, so I decided to get up and check just to see what was going on. From there I opened the door and I saw that Steve's office was empty and I went to Jake and I just said something, just feels bad. By Jake, she means Jake Blanchard, Steven's co-worker and best friend. He was even the best man in Steven's wedding to Michael. "I couldn't ask for a better employee, you know, he just, he was punctual, he was, he was, he was ambitious, he was excited, he was smart driven and, um, in a lot of ways, you know, he became better at me in certain things and so it was really fun to see." After Rebecca sounded the alarm, Jake too went inside Steven's office and it looked as if he had just left for a moment. His Pandora radio station was still on. He looked like he was in the middle of an email and he left a bunch of personal things behind. Stephen had a meeting that day, scheduled with his clients and Tom Kazowski, so Jake reached out to Jacob Pillsbury. "He asked me if, if Steve had shown up, I told him no and I said why, what's going on?" "Oh my God, what has happened, what did this guy do to him?" Then I am telling myself, like don't be silly, like you can, you know, this is, like, don't jump to conclusions on something you don't know what happened and then, and this guy treated him like he was like the worst person in the world, like he was some nightmare and he wasn't and so it was just very obvious, like this is, this is the person that did this and we knew he was scary already, just by the way he behaved and the way he is, like, yeah, I knew right away that he had something to do with it. I mean, I knew, I didn't have proof at that point, like I don't, but I knew." The only reason he would have missed a court date was if something bad happened was if he were dead. Back at the law offices, Stephen's co-workers weren't yet looking for proof, they simply wanted to find him, so Jake checked the men's bathroom. "What did you notice when he walked in the bathroom?" "When I walked to the door, I noticed some blood on the door." "The door?" "Yeah?" "Did you smell anything at that time?" "Well, probably, like, within a three or four feet of the office, I smelled bleach. Some sort of chemical smell, but I don't think it's bleach." "And how far away were you in the door when you were in the bathroom?" Three or four feet, I'd say, but then I could just kind of like, you could smell it. "Was that normal for just a weekday, you know, around 11 o'clock, was that normal for just smell like that?" "No." "Do you open the bathroom for?" "Yes, I'm going." "When you open the bathroom door, what do you see?" "I was right, I looked over a tunnel, and nobody's there, and there's some blood on the stall to the left, and then the stall door was open. I see paint that looks like was rubbed off or removed. There was a spot on the floor that was darker than the rest, and then I looked at the toilet, and then there was, and I saw one of the toilets." "So, what's your state of mind at this point, to see this mess in the bathroom and see if this stuff is better, this car is better, this mystery is not responding to you, what are your thoughts?" "I'm worried, and just sick to my stomach." "And so, do you decide to call 911?" "Yes." When the 911 call is played out in court, Jake visibly breaks down cry. "When the first responders arrive at the scene, they're concerned immediately. There was blood underneath it on the outside of the toilet bowl, and some splatter throughout the bathroom area." "Did you see some kind of in the area, the urinal as well?" "Yes." "There was along the exterior wall of the bathroom stall." "Would you saw that bathroom, did you think that was a normal situation for this?" "No, that was my second, like red flag." "Yes, if you will." "Because, according to those closest to Stephen, he wouldn't just disappear, so the next step to find him is to comb through security camera video." "That person is talking along the side of the door, isn't it?" "It is." "They hear you hearing the thoughts, I showed it." "They do." "That's the approximate 834, I have a March 21st." "Correct." "As you can see, I'm now entering the age realm of building big." "Correct." Investigators now believe that person was Tom Kazowski walking into Stephen's law firm. They say he was seen hours later, allegedly loading Stephen's body into an unregistered gray Toyota. "At some point on March 21st, do you see someone walking out wheeling a wagon?" "I do." "Okay, and do you remember around what time that was?" "That male left at 10-22 a.m." "Okay, and at some point is that wagon then taken to where that Toyota Tundra was parked?" "Yes." "And is the Toyota Tundra then seen leaving that location?" "It is." "And around what time is that?" "The Toyota Tundra leads around, I think the time stamp on that video was 11-16 a.m." "It had the wagon and the wagon had a large content of something in it covered by like a red or orange blanket, which is what you'll see in the surveillance video." According to prosecutors, Tom then hatched a plan to dispose of Stephen's body. His coffin was a dumpster. His hearse was a dump truck. And his burial site, where he lays to rest, and tiny, unidentifiable little pieces, is that the Collier County landfill. He was thrown away like garbage. And that's all at the hands of really the only person that made Stephen Cawsey his enemy. And that's Dr. Kazowski. And every day, the workers for the landfill drive over the garbage with heavy duty machinery. You'll hear they have bulldozers that are 89,000 pounds running over the garbage, and that they are trained to run over it until you cannot recognize what it is anymore. It gets compacted to about a third of its size, pushed around for days, filled with filler on some occasions, turned into confetti essentially. And after three long, hot days of searching that landfill, they were not able to find Stephen anywhere. When Tom is arrested on March 25, 2023, he does something. shock it. Others tell him not to touch anything or wash his hands before a body warrant is able to be served. At one point, while in the bathroom, Tom begins to wash his hands, but he does something else too. And then it's going to depict him, slipping his handcuffs from behind his back to the front of his person, and begin to place his fingers in his mouth, and immediately start meticulously kind of scraping his fingernails on his teeth to clean them and to suck on his fingers and cuticles. "Before the body warrant, his aim would be served." Prosecutors believe this was Tom trying to remove possible DNA from his hands that would connect him to Stephen's disappearance and death, and for that, they charged him with a top crime. The state has to prove three elements. One, Stephen Cosby is dead. Two, the death was caused by the criminal act of Dr. Tomas Kuzowski. At three, there was a premeditating premeditation while killing Stephen Cosby. I've laid out the prosecution side of things extensively, and that's because for most of this week, it's all we had. Tom didn't even present an opening statement or cross-examine any witnesses. That is, until Thursday. The first bit of Tom's cross-examine was pretty basic. Thank you very much. "To my knowledge, it was Sandra Lee Copeland that lifted that lift." "Thank you very much, ma'am." But he really went in when it came to expert testimony. "I'd first like to ask you, previously you said in your deposition to this case, as well as I think you might have testified that kind of to sum up the results, there was none of my DNA actually found in the bathroom at 1501 B-belcher." "Is that correct?" "I have a 26 on my request number 7, which is the swaths for an immense bathroom exterior door. That provides very strong support for the proposition that Thomas Kuzosky is a contributor to DNA results." "Of course, on the exterior door, there was some DNA of mine found, correct?" "That was represented to be from exterior door, yes." "My question was whether my DNA was found inside the bathroom/carcerated glance, I must say anything, but that's my guess of carcerated glance, I really wanted to take time to go to make sure." The cross-exam continued for a while, Tom getting really specific about the intricacies about evidence collection. "So basically, if you got this resort, this wouldn't hold up in court as saying like there's his DNA is on that piece of it, on that paper." "All right, I'll relieve Jackson, you can answer it as best he can." "Well, it's not my job whether it holds up in court or not, my job is to give you scientific evidence and to give you a statistical result of what that means. So just because something's a low stat doesn't mean it's not a correct set." "Okay, right." "So you would say that my DNA, without a shadow of a doubt, is on this paper doubt." "I would not say that, I would say it provides very strong support for it." And that's really where we are right now, in the case against Dr. Tomash Kazewski. The trials expected to continue this week and there's still a lot of questions ahead, like for instance, will Dr. Tom put on a defense? After all, the burden of proof is on the state. Only time will tell. We're going to keep following this case and bring you the latest details right here on Lawncrime. And that is where today's episode of Scandal leaves us for now. If you like what you saw and you want to see more or connect with me on social media, you can find me on places like Instagram at Sierra Gillespie. Thanks for watching today's episode of Scandal. As always, I'm your host Sierra Gillespie, and I'll see you next time.