Part 1: She Made It To Broadway & Left in a Body Bag - The Killer's Fingerprint Left in Her Blood

It's a Sunday evening in Manhattan, November 27th of 2005, the Sunday, after Thanksgiving. The city is still full, people are visiting family, heading back from long weekends, catching the tail end of the holiday that always feels like it ends too fast. On the upper east side, it's a quiet night, the kind that feels safe, until it doesn't. At 6.59 p.m., a 911 call comes in. The caller is a young man, he's 23 years old, and his name is David. And the first thing that dispatcher notices is how calm he sounds for what he's telling her. David tells the operator he lives in an apartment, and his roommate is on the floor, not moving, and there's blood everywhere. A lot of blood. He says he doesn't know what happened. That he went to go get his car, he was supposed to drive her to work at 7 o'clock, and when he came back, she wasn't answering her phone, she wasn't buzzing him in, so he went upstairs, and he found her. When officers arrive at 355 East 86 Street at 7 o' 7 p.m., David's in the hallway. His eyes are glassy, he tells them he doesn't think his roommate's breathing. He thinks she's dead. The officers push open the door to apartment 2D, and what they find inside would stay with them forever. It wasn't just the overwhelming metallic scent of blood, or the chaos of her things scattered everywhere. It was the sight of Catherine herself. Lying motionless on the floor, in a scene of such brutality, the first question that came to mind was who did this? Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel, and if you've never been here before, I'm Kimberlya, it's nice to finally meet you. But let me take you back to that apartment in Manhattan. When officers stepped through the door of Unit 2D at 355 East 86 Street, they were not prepared for what was on the other side. The living room was undisturbed, it was quiet. There was a small chihuahua sitting on a futon, nothing broken, nothing at a place, but at the back of the apartment in the bedroom. That told an entirely different story. The bed had been shoved up against the doorway, it wasn't against the wall where it belonged, but jammed at an angle across the entrance, like it was pushed there by force. The paramedics had to move it just to get inside the room, and when they did, when they finally got eyes on what was in there, it was a lot to take in. There was blood on the walls, on the floor, all over the furniture, on the sheets, on the surfaces of the room so small, you could barely turn around at it. Detective Stephen Getz, one of the most experienced investigators in Manhattan's 19th precinct, would say that he had never in his career, and at a crime scene, that violent. He said it looked like someone had thrown a bucket of red paint across every inch of that room. And Catherine was on the floor. She's 21 years old, she's in a tank top and gray sweatpants. Paramedics carefully turned her over, and that is when they saw the wound to her neck. It was catastrophic. She had also sustained multiple stab wounds across her face, her torso, her hands, and also what stood out was that her body was still warm. So whatever happened in that room had not happened very long ago. A bloody blueprint pressed into the back of her tank top, another one was on her sheets, and another on the living room floor. And critically, not a single drop of blood beyond the apartment door. So whoever did this, they had not tracked a single footprint into that hallway. They had walked out of that room clean. There was no four century, no broken locks, no shattered windows. It appeared as though this door had been opened from the inside, or someone had a key. And then out in the hallway, perfectly calm, stood this young man who said that he lived there. He said he found her. He said that he left to go get his car. And he was supposed to drive her to work that night. And he came back to find her like this. That young man's name was David. And as far as investigators were concerned, he had a lot of explaining to do. But you know that I'm not just going to drop you into the story just like that. You need context. Who was Catherine? That's what investigators would have to understand to make sense of how she ended up here. And since this is, hey, pretty much an ultra deep dive, I want you to really get to know this woman because she was extraordinary. Catherine Elizabeth Woods came into this world in June of 1984. And even the circumstances around her birth had the certain flair to them. Her parents, Jonathan and Donna Woods were actually from Columbus, Ohio. But Catherine didn't make her entrance there. She was born in Madison, Wisconsin, of all places, because her father had somewhere to be. John Woods was by that point already somewhat of a local legend back home in Columbus. He had been appointed to one of the most prestigious positions in the world of college music. He was the director of the Ohio State University marching band. And if you know anything about Ohio State, you would know that the marching band is not just a marching band. It is a genuine source of pride for this entire state. And John, who was also a music professor at OSU, was the man at the center of it all. And that summer, he had been invited to guess conduct a band festival at the University of Wisconsin. So him and his very pregnant wife, Donna, made the trip. And Catherine chose that moment to arrive. It's a good story. And it's the kind of family that she was born into where music wasn't just a hobby or a career. It was like the air they breathed. The Woods family settled back in Columbus in a suburb called Worthington, a comfortable, tree-lined kind of place. And over the years, John and Donna's family grew. Catherine was joined by her brother, Steven and her sister, Victoria. And from the very beginning, Catherine was the one you would notice first. Growing up with a father who directed one of the most celebrated marching bands in the country meant that Catherine's childhood was filled with music and performance and the energy of a crowd responding to something extraordinary. John loved to tell the story of little Catherine at marching band events, barely old enough to walk. And she's jumping around to the music. This little girl didn't just dance to it. She felt it with her whole body because it meant something to her. And she knew it early when she was only three years old, Catherine sat her parents down. And she announced her plans. She was going to be a dancer, a figure skater, and a horse rider. Because when you're three years old, there's no reason to limit yourself. And Catherine was never the kind of person who did. The figure skating and the horse riding, they became hobbies, but the dancing. That was never going to be just a hobby for Catherine. Donna enrolled Catherine in lessons at a local studio called Dance Reach. It was run by a woman named Mary Rose Bushrow. And it was located just outside of Worthington. And from the beginning, Catherine threw herself in completely ballet, tap dancing, jazz, modern. She didn't dabble. She committed. And even among a studio full of little girls who all wanted to be dancers, something about Catherine stood out to Mary Rose almost immediately. There was this quality to the way that she moved. That was difficult to actually put into words, a natural musicality, a physical intelligence of some kind. The kind of presence, the mage who looked at her, even when she wasn't doing anything spectacular. And Mary Rose had been teaching long enough to know the difference between a talented child. And one who had something genuinely special, in Catherine truly had something genuinely special. The talent, as any serious performer will tell you, only gets you to the starting line, what takes you across the finishes, everything else. And Catherine had that too. The discipline, the hunger, the willingness to stay after class and do it again and push herself past the point where the other kids went home. Mary Rose saw it and she nurtured it carefully because she understood what she was looking at, a future star. And outside of dance, Catherine was well a bit more introverted than most kids her age. But she still forged close lifelong friendships. One of her first and best friends was Emily Pedagrew. They met in the first grade. And by the time they were in elementary school, they had already mapped out their futures with total confidence of a child who doesn't yet know that life won't always cooperate. And their minds Catherine was going to Broadway and Emily was going to be an interior designer. And they were going to live in apartments together. Catherine dancing for a living while living in an apartment designed by Emily. Big dreams. And by the time Catherine was in Worthington, Kilbourne High School, dance had become everything. And she had spent a few years playing the baritone horn. And this was because she wanted to for her father. It was a not to him. She was actually good at it. But by the ninth grade, as John himself would later recall, that was the end of baritone horn. Dance was it. Full stop. She got good grades. She was focused and disciplined in the classroom, the same way she was in the studio. But with every available hour outside of school, it belonged to dance reach. On the weekends, most evenings, any stretch of time that could be claimed, Catherine claimed it. And she spent a dancing. And by now, she had actually become something remarkable to watch. When Catherine performed, there was what her instructors and peers could only describe as a star quality about her a sparkle. This elegance, it felt effortless even when it wasn't. And anyone who dances seriously knows that the most technically demanding work always looks like it cost nothing when it's done at the highest level. And she was superior. In group routines, Catherine was a dancer that your eyes would follow, not because she was trying to pull your focus. It was because she just had that thing that some performers are born with. It just cannot be taught. When she was on stage, you watched her. Competitive dance is not always a kind world, the pressure, the scrutiny, the constant comparison. It breeds jealousy and insecurity in a lot of young people. And not for nothing. But Catherine, she never seemed to bring any of that energy into the room. Her focus and her drive somehow motivated the people around her, rather than intimidating them. Her fellow students wanted to do better because Catherine was doing better. Everyone wanted to be around her. And it wasn't just her striking looks, accentuated by this flowing dark hair she had, the stunning blue eyes and a bright smile. It was actually her kindness, her big heart. She was thoughtful. And it made everyone around her want to be her friend. People frequently actually told her she looked like Angelina Jolie. And she loved that because she was one of her favorite actresses. And when you look at photographs of Catherine from this period in her life, it's not hard to see why people made the comparison. Her closest dance friends were Megan Wilkins and Katie Miller. And together, the three of them built a world around dance that felt in the way that teenage friendships at their best do, like it was their own universe. Road trips to Sandesky, Toledo and Cleveland for competitions and conventions. Performance is at the Columbus Zoo and the Aquarium and the Museum of Art. Christmas shows that filled the calendar and kept them busy and purposeful. Catherine lived for those dance conventions, especially events that were run by instructors who actually worked on Broadway. People who could see you clearly and tell you honestly where you stood. And at one of those conventions, an instructor pulled Catherine aside and asked her if she was already a professional dancer. And she was still in high school. So you can imagine what a compliment that was. When she wasn't dancing or competing, Catherine spent her downtime on other creative pursuits. She did drawing, calligraphy, creative writing. And she listened obsessively to our favorite artist, Annie DeFranco, whose music she found endlessly fascinating. She also loved animals, specifically horses and dogs. And she had two dogs when she was younger. She had Sarah. And the later on she got Josie. And I liked other names or like human girls names and not the typical fluffy or misty or something like that. And by her senior year, Catherine had grown into one of dance reaches most distinguished students. And Mary Rose recognized it in the most meaningful way she could. She made Catherine an apprentice instructor and Catherine, who was patient and playful and endlessly kind was amazing at it. Her younger students adored her. She had a way of making them feel capable without ever making them feel patronized. She pushed them without scaring them. She was in every sense the kind of mentor that a young dancer needs, someone who could see what they were able to achieve before they could even see it in themselves. The impact that she had on the people around her wasn't limited to her fellow dancers. Her younger sister Victoria in the fourth grade at the time was given a school assignment to write about her hero. And Victoria wrote about Catherine, who was 17. But Catherine was worth looking up to. She was the real thing, not just a talented dancer, but a curious creative compassionate and quietly fierce young woman. She had a dream that was specific and serious and she was pursuing it with everything that she had. She just needed the right stage. And she already knew where that stage was going to be. New York City, and I don't think anyone would have expected anywhere else. Catherine had never been the kind of person who did things halfway. She didn't float the idea cautiously or asked for anyone's permission either. She just announced it. She was 17 years old, still in her senior year of high school, and she was already making arrangements. She and her best friend Megan had plans to graduate early. And Catherine had been saving money putting it aside. She had done her research and she had a plan. And if you're a parent, you're probably thinking what John and Donna were. No. But to their enormous credit, they did not panic. They were scared. Their daughter was so young. She had never lived anywhere away from home. And New York City was not Columbus, Ohio, not even by any stretch of the imagination. And the gap between those two worlds in the early 2000s felt vast and genuinely dangerous in ways that were hard to articulate but impossible to dismiss. How would Catherine support herself? Did she know anyone there was a girl from Worthington Street going to be able to navigate one of the most intense urban environments in the country? And John, who had built his entire career at Ohio State, was gently pushing Catherine to consider Ohio State's own highly regarded dance program. She could even stay close to home, develop her technique, and still pursue everything she wanted just later on. And now stay, you know, closer to home in a more structured timeline. Catherine heard every word of it. And then she went ahead and planned her way anyway. And she had a reason. And it was a real one. Dance is not like most careers. The body that carries a dancer through their prime years is on a clock that doesn't stop for anyone. It doesn't stop for college, not for a careful planning, and not for a parent's reasonable fears. Flexibility, agility, physical peak, these things have a window. And Catherine knew that. As she told her mother with clarity, it must have been both impressive, but also heartbreaking. If I don't go now, I never will. And in May of that year, 2002, Catherine found herself a room in a shared apartment in Brooklyn. She packed up her things, and she moved east. She was full of excitement. Everything had fallen into place, and it happened so quickly, maybe too quickly. Because as it turned out, she had been in New York less than a week before she was calling the police. She had been sharing the apartment with a male roommate. He was 34 years old in one night. He tried to force himself on her. Catherine reported it to the police. The man was arrested and charged. And Catherine, who was shaken to her core, went home to Columbus to the safety of her parents. This was the nightmare that John and Donna had feared from the start. And it would have ended the New York chapter for a lot of people. For a 17 year old girl who had barely unpacked her bags before something so unimaginably horrible had happened, going home and staying there would have been completely understandable. But Catherine wasn't wired that way. After taking the time she needed to process what happened to her, she was supported by her family through this a very difficult time. And she made her decision. She was not going to let with that man did stop her from working towards her goal. She was going back. She ultimately chose not to testify against her attacker and the charges were dropped. And I can only imagine how complicated and exhausting that decision really was. But Catherine made that decision on her terms. She wanted to look forward. And she didn't want to look back on that. And her father who understood that nothing was going to stop her short of locking her in her room, he wasn't going to be able to keep her in Ohio. So he did the next best thing. He decided that he was going to be the one who found her apartment this time. It was on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 147 East 85th Street. A better building, a better neighborhood, a much better situation. If his daughter was going to do this, John was going to make sure she was doing it somewhere that gave him a Lisa fighting chance of sleeping at night. And in case you aren't familiar with the Upper East Side, it's one of the most well-known affluent neighborhoods in the entire country, not just New York City, old money, prestige. It's where families like the Rockefellers, the Roosevelt, and the Kennedys lived. When people picture wealthy Manhattan, this is usually what they're picturing. And by the early 2000s, it had one of the lowest crime rates in Manhattan. And in case you want to relate things to pop culture, it's the setting for gossip girl, breakfast at Tiffany's, the Devil Wars Prada, and cruel intentions. So on 4th of July weekend, in 2002, John and Donna drove their daughter back to New York and helped her settle in. Catherine packed the things that mattered the most to her. And among everything she brought, was a stuffed rabbit named Hop Hop. It was an Easter gift that her parents had given her when she was just nine months old. She had it her entire life, and she wasn't going to leave it behind. And as the skyline came into view on that drive, Catherine was every bit as excited as she'd been the first time. Maybe more this time, because she knew what she was walking into. John and Donna helped her get settled in, and then they had to drive away, which was one of the hardest things a parent can do. The Catherine had promised to call them as much as she could, and she would come home to visit. And she would be okay. And she meant every word of it. The other side was more than a good base as an ambitious young dancer could ask for. was once known as the Silk Stalking District, only the wealthiest women could forward silk stockings, so its nickname alone tells you everything you need to know about who historically lived there. It stretched from 59th Street up to 96th, bordered by Central Park and 5th Avenue to the West and the East River on the other side, and by the time Catherine arrived, it was home to just over 200,000 people. Some of the city's finest museums, an identity of coffee shops, diners, delis, and gyms that suited her lifestyle perfectly. And for John and Donna, it was the best available option short of bringing Catherine home. For Catherine, this was her new home. New York City in the summer of 2002 was a city that was still finding its footing. The September 11th attacks had just happened nine months earlier, and the emotional and the logistical weight of that day was still felt by everyone. It was like a cloud that hadn't fully lifted. And yet, in a way that New York always has, this city just kept going. The delis were open, the subway was running, and the auditions continued, and the millions of people who called that city home chose to stay there and to keep building their lives there. And for Catherine, this energy was everything. Life was short. She knew that now, in a way she hadn't before. She had to get to work, and she threw herself into dance immediately. John and Donna generously covered her dance and voice lessons and gave her a monthly allowance of a thousand dollars. That was no small commitment. And one that Catherine definitely didn't take for granted. She supplemented that by landing a job in a dance troupe and picking up some weightlifting shifts at a local breakfast spot called scramblers. The apartment was tiny. Her futon served as both a bed and a couch. The refrigerator was barely larger than the one in a college dorm room. And the bathroom was so small that turning around in the shower required a certain amount of strategy. But none of that bothered her. She had her own space in New York City. She was doing it. And you kind of have to be excited for her. She was just so ambitious and driven. But Catherine knew her competition in New York would be brutal. She was now a small fish in a very very big bond with its theatrical history dating back to 1823. Broadway today is home to over 40 professional theaters all located near Times Square. It's the American pinnacle of commercial music theater both in terms of revenue and performer accomplishment. There are usually 30 to 40 professional productions running at any given time. Some with huge cast that run for many years around 800 performers are employed at any one time. And on that basis, you would think there would be plenty of opportunities. But that's not the case. The life of a performer hoping to make it big on Broadway is punishing. The audition process is ruthless. Rules are a very short term or they're dependent upon the length of a show being run, making this line of work unpredictable, high reward, but also financially high risk. Now Catherine did have some advantages. She was training at the Broadway dance center on West 57th Street, one of the most prestigious dance facilities in the country with a roster of about 40,000 students and alumni that includes names like Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears. Catherine took advanced ballet and jazz classes multiple times a week. Her instructors Deborah Kat and Diana noticed her almost immediately. She picked up combinations quickly and then she would add something new to them, something personal and polished. A quality that was hers. And by the end of every week, Catherine spent at least $100 in tuition alone. She never complained about it. She supplemented her training with regular gym sessions and she taught dance classes to children out in Long Island, which she loved. She was pouring herself into every corner of this dream. She also became a devoted reader of Backstage magazine, which in the industry was the Bible for working performers. She combed through it every week for audition listings. And she went to every single one that she could. Open casting calls for Broadway productions could draw hundreds of dancers and all of them were talented. All of them were hungry, competing for a handful of spots. Catherine would stand in those lines and watch the level of competition and she would feel the full force of what she was up against. Some days she left those rooms feeling energized, electric, like it was only a matter of time, like the right role was right around the corner. And she almost made the cut for a musical called Sweet Charity, which gave her a sense of how close she was getting. But then there were other days where she walked home feeling defeated. The deflation of having given everything and still being cut. That is emotional whiplash and it is relentless. But Catherine never let it stop her. Tomorrow was another day. She would be known to generously tip her cab drivers. She would stop to acknowledge someone who might not have a home that was walking on the same streets as her. She was the person in the room that would remember everyone's name. That was Catherine bringing the Midwest to the Big Apple. Now it was about a month into her new life in the city. The Catherine made a quick trip back home to Columbus. In one evening, she was out with her best friend Megan and Megan's boyfriend and a group of friends. And they were hanging around in this parking lot of a pool hall called the Quarter Flash. And then this guy approached the group. He knew Megan's boyfriend and he was 20 years old and he was laid back with this big smile and a stack of CDs that he said he recorded himself under the name City 270. He was an aspiring rapper and his name was David Hahn. Think M&M, even the blonde hair, the blue eyes, the vibe, all of it. The moment David was in Catherine's orbit, he could not stop staring. And it wasn't just because of how she looked, though she was striking. Any room she walked into people would stare. But it's actually the way that she carried herself, the way that she talked. She was down to earth and warm and genuinely interested in whoever was speaking. For a girl who was actively trying to make it big as a performer in New York City, she had this ability to make other people feel like the most interesting person in the room. And David felt that immediately. And Catherine felt something between them. There was this gentleness to David, even if his exterior was a little rough around the edges. They talked and they kept talking. And by the time the evening ended, something had started between them that wasn't going to stop easily. It could have surprised most people who knew Catherine because they were complete opposites. David's background couldn't have been more different from Catherine's. He hadn't grown up in a comfortable suburb with two parents who came to every recital, paid for every dance lesson. He'd grown up in foster care. Moving between homes in Columbus, after his mother was convicted of drug and child endangerment offenses. The stability and warmth that Catherine always had and was given were things that David had spent his whole life without. He wasn't confident or worldly. He hadn't gone to college. He was trying to build something out of his music career. And the path wasn't easy. And the resources were pretty much non-existent. But what he had was grit and genuineness. And Catherine recognized that and responded to it. He didn't seem to be playing a role. He wasn't performing. And Catherine was surrounded by performers in New York City. David stood out. He wasn't trying to be something he's not. And the couple got closer in the way that long-distance relationships do. They talked on the phone late into the night. David even made the eight and a half hour drive from Columbus to Manhattan to spend weekends with her whenever he could. He was committed. And soon Catherine had some exciting news for her friends and family. David was moving to New York City and he was moving in with her to pursue his rap career. And I know what you might be thinking. They're young. So keep that in mind. And to be fair, Catherine's best friend Megan, she was thrilled for her. She had seen it for herself. How in love they were. And all Catherine's friends liked David a lot. And in September of 2002, it was David's turn to pack up his entire life in Ohio and move to New York City to be with Catherine. But he had dreams of his own. Catherine understood that better than most. Would it meant to chase something difficult? And she believed in him. The couple had a trusting and emotionally safe relationship where they could tell each other anything without the fear of judgment or rejection. She was glad to have someone familiar chasing dreams with her and David was grateful. Catherine was the most inspiring person he had ever met. They jogged together around Central Park. They got to know their neighbors. They even became regulars at Gracie's Corner Diner where the manager Antonio got to know Catherine and David so much. To know their orders by heart, hers was a spinach and egg white omelet. Every time, David and Catherine were building something. It wasn't something big. It was something good and ordinary, which is what most people want. Catherine also got another roommate, Josie, a small black and white chihuahua. And David, he took a series of retail jobs. None of them were particularly stable. He was just trying to get his music career off the ground. And Catherine continued to grind at auditions and classes, teaching and waitressing, fueled by the $1,000 allowance she got from her parents and the force of her own determination. When her friend Katie, from DanceReach, came to visit her in the summer of 2012, 2003, Catherine was so happy, telling her about working with a smaller contemporary dance company and performing as a backup dancer for an up-and-coming hip-up artist. She was in it, she was doing it. It wasn't Broadway yet, but she was on the path. And through all of it, she had David by her side. But time and circumstances have a way of shifting things that start out good and simple. And as the years went on, the financial imbalance of their arrangement became complicated. David was struggling to find work, and the bills didn't stop. Catherine, who was working constantly between her dance commitments, teaching and waitressing, she found herself carrying more than her share of the weight. She had her parents' support, of course. But that was for her own training and expenses, not for two people, and not indefinitely. A romantic relationship with an imbalance that only goes in one direction has a hard time sustaining itself, no matter how genuine the feelings are underneath it. And by the time the two of them had been in New York for a couple of years, the romance had shifted. It happened gradually, not dramatically, not all at once, not in a single defining moment, but as a slow renegotiation of what they were to each other. Catherine cared about David, she loved David, and she always would. But she couldn't keep supporting both of them, and the relationship just couldn't continue as it was. So they ended things, officially, at least. And why say it that way is because David had nowhere to go. And by that time, they had actually moved, back in February of 2005, they had moved to a new apartment, apartment 2D, at 355 East 86 Street, just a block north of their last apartment. It was still very much the Upper East Side, still in the heart of everything. It just didn't have a door, man, it had four floors, and it was a walk up. But it worked. They got friendly with the couple next store in apartment 2J, Brad and his girlfriend Julia, and they still went to the same restaurants where they were regulars. David didn't have family in the city. He didn't have much of a financial cushion, and Catherine knew what life was like without a stable place to land. She could not bring herself to ask him to leave, not yet. So David stayed. First he was still sleeping in her bed like he had done before, but then eventually he moved himself out to the futon in the living room, out of the primary bedroom, and let Catherine keep it to herself. This was a clear acknowledgement of the shift between them. It was an unusual arrangement by most standards, but it was very much Catherine. She always made room for the people she loved. Even when the shape of that love had changed, and by the summer, it truly had. At this point, David did have a dormant job. He was working nights at a building a block away on East 87 Street. It was steady, reliable work. It gave him the income that he could count on, and he also started dog sitting and dog walking for residents of the building where he worked. It was a small side business that kept him busy and brought in a little extra cash. He was doing better. He was finding his footing, but everyone knew things had changed. They weren't hiding it. Catherine even told the manager of Gracie's one morning when she was picking up her usual breakfast. She always had to have her usual, including her coffee, which her friend Megan joked was Catherine's one drug. I can definitely relate to that. But Catherine said that she and David had ended things, but they were still close. They were still friends, and they were still like family. And that thing's giving the last one that Catherine would ever have. She and David spent the entire day together, just the two of them. David had taken on the responsibility of cooking, despite the kitchen being so small, that only one person could fit inside Catherine kept poking her head in, checking on things, which was driving him crazy. And after dinner, they went to the movies and they saw rent. It was the film adaptation of the iconic Broadway musical. It had just opened that week. And of course, Catherine wanted to see it. Afterward, they came home. They settled down, and the day ended quietly. It was by all accounts, a beautiful, ordinary day. The Sunday after, Catherine had plans to go to work. And David was going to drive her like he always did on Sunday nights. It was their routine. There was nothing unusual about it. There was no reason to think anything would be different. So now I have brought you full circle. We are back to that fateful Sunday that we started with. The Sunday after Thanksgiving. The holiday itself is over. The week ahead hasn't started yet. In New York City, the streets were quieter than usual though. A lot of people are still out of town. They're recovering from the four days of family food, travel. And the city had this particular quiet quality about it on Sunday mornings, which is rare enough that people who live there tend to notice it, and appreciate it. For Catherine, that day started out as a good day. She had made plans to meet her friend and coworker Christina Deplant for breakfast before the two of them had a downtown together. Catherine and Christina had been spending a lot more time together because they bonded by work, of course, but by another shared interest as well, faith and spirituality. Something Catherine had been quietly exploring over the past few weeks, carving out a corner in her life that had nothing to do with auditions or choreography or pressure of trying to make it. She hadn't said been attending weekly meditation sessions since early November at the creative light church in the East Village, and she looked forward to it every week. It was a different kind of community from the one that she built around dance. It was slower. It was reflective. In Catherine, who had always been genuinely curious about people and ideas, she took to it immediately. And that morning, the two friends made their way downtown and settled into a two-hour service together. The meditation guide Shirley was so glad to see Catherine walk through the door. In the weeks that Catherine had started coming there, she had made quite the impression on everyone in that room. She was open. She was present. She was warm. And that morning, Catherine seemed completely at ease. She was happy. Not a care in the world. When the service wrapped up around 1 pm, Catherine and Christina said their goodbyes and they went their separate ways. Catherine headed back up town to her apartment. And that afternoon, David was home. He was taking care of a black Labrador that he was dogs sitting for the holiday weekend. It was a big, energetic dog who needed a lot of attention and a lot of walks and had a bad habit of getting into things. And Catherine was spending that day doing her chores and preparing for work that evening. It was just a nice little break after a busy week. She had a lot to look forward to. Christmas was coming up and she was anticipating a trip back home to Ohio to see her friends and family. And there was something else, something that had given her a real lift going into the holiday weekend. She had recently called her parents with exciting news. She told them that she had been given the opportunity to step in the lead role of an off Broadway production called privilege. Feeling in for an actress, that she was understudying after the woman had come down with Claire and Jardis. For Catherine, who had been grinding through auditions and classes and that emotional back and forth of almost but not quite yet for years, it was a glimpse of what was possible, a taste of what she had been working towards all along. And the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, she had been in a class at the Broadway dance center when her instructor Diana pulled her aside. This was a woman with over four decades of Broadway experience, who worked directly and closely with the legendary Bob Fossie himself. She pulled Catherine aside, Diana looked at her and she told her something that Catherine would carry into that final weekend. She said if Bob Fossie were still alive, in Catherine ever auditioned for him, he would hire her. And coming from Diana, who had been in the same room with Fossie, who had watched him work and who absorbed his standards and his vision firsthand, that was not a throwaway compliment. That was the highest possible praise that Catherine could ever receive outside of actually landing a Broadway role. And with more auditions on the horizon, who knew? Maybe that was closer than it had ever been. And Catherine was upbeat, she was hopeful. She was by every account from the people who had spoken to her in the days leading up to that Sunday in one of the best places she had been in a long time. She even talked to her best friend Megan. She called her around 5.40 pm on Sunday and the two of them talked the way they always did. They caught up on everything. Catherine told Megan about Thanksgiving. That's how we know about the meal David cooking her eating so much in that tiny kitchen. We know that from Megan and what they talked about. She talked about the movie they went to afterwards, which of course Catherine had so many opinions on. And she told Megan about the morning she had with Christina, the church service, how much she'd been enjoying those meditation sessions. She even said that things between her and David felt easier lately, that the awkwardness of that transition from their relationship to more of a solid friendship seem to finally be settling in. And it was more comfortable. She was looking forward to Christmas, she was looking forward to coming home. It was a completely ordinary phone call between two lifelong friends on a Sunday afternoon. Catherine sounded like she always did, fully and completely herself. The call lasted just over 20 minutes, ending at 6.03 pm. And after she hung up, Catherine moved around the apartment getting ready for work. She put on a tank top and a pair of sweatpants to something comfortable for the journey there, since she'd changed into a work clothes when she arrived. That was her routine that she knew very well. She and David had a system. He would go get his car, she would finish getting ready, and she would meet him downstairs on the corner of 86th Street and first. avenue. Her call time was 7 p.m. and the drive was only about 10 minutes on a Sunday night with the traffic the way that it usually was. There was plenty of time, but for Catherine, sadly there wasn't. Because in less than an hour, she would be dead. When she was found in her room, it looked like someone had ransacked it, thrown things everywhere, and there was Catherine lying on her right side in a pool of blood. She was dressed in the outfit that she had put on earlier, and her tattoo of the word love on the small of her back was exposed. At 6.59 p.m., David called 911. The operator asked him if he knew how to perform CPR, and David said he had no idea, and Catherine was unresponsive. He pulled on the back of her top, pleading with her to wake up, but she didn't move. And I have a portion of this 911 call that I will play for you. Take the girl, Captain. Captain, take the girl. Oh my goodness. I don't know what happened. Is she there? The head is blood everywhere. I don't even know if she's alive. I'm scared to look at her. As David waited for emergency responders to arrive, he knocked on his neighbor Bradstor. David broke down. As he told Bradstor from Julia, the Catherine wasn't breathing, and that there was blood everywhere. Julia went with David back into 2D, and then when she encountered the horrific scene in the bedroom, she ran to get Brad. And by now, other neighbors wondered what was going on. The black lab had gotten out, and Josie chased the downstairs to the mailroom. And while on his way upstairs, after getting the dogs back, David saw four paramedics and two NYPD officers at the front door of the building. David told them that he didn't think Catherine was breathing. They thought she was dead. It was now 7.07 pm inside that apartment. The police and the paramedics took over this scene. A bloody boot print was on the living room floor, and when paramedics pushed the bed up on its side, so it was leaning against the wall. A guitar was visible on the floor, a couple feet away from Catherine. The neck of that instrument had been smashed. The strings were broken, and it was spattered with blood like the rest of the room. That's also when they noticed Catherine had a bloody boot print on the back of her tank top. The paramedics carefully turned her over, and got her face up, and the front of her shirt was soaked in blood. And most of that blood was coming from the laceration to her neck. It was so severe that she was almost decapitated. And after the officers saw Catherine, covered in blood in her bedroom floor, they stepped back out into the hallway, and they were looking at this young man standing there, and they saw someone who didn't look like they expected. David was standing there. His demeanor for someone who just found a person dead, someone that they care about, it was either gentle or guarded. He wasn't hysterical, he wasn't falling apart, but he had just told them his roommate was dead. And he's just standing there perfectly still, answering questions, and that calmness would follow David everywhere for the next several hours. And in the world of homicide investigations, calmness at the wrong moment tends to get noticed. Detective Stephen Gets arrives at the scene and he takes over. Now Gets was one of the most experienced investigators at Manhattan's 19th precinct, the kind of detective who has seen enough crime scenes in his career, to have developed a finely calibrated sense for when something doesn't add up. He took one look at that bedroom, and he knew immediately that whatever happened in there was not random, this wasn't a burglary gone wrong. This was not a stranger who wandered off the street because the level of violence in this sheer concentrated rage of it, pointed to someone with a personal connection to Catherine. And the absence of any blood trail beyond the apartment door, told Gets something else. Whoever had done this came prepared. They thought about it. They brought extra clothes, extra shoes, to make a clean getaway. Gets turns his attention right to David. He noted the young man's Adidas sneakers, fairly clean. But the bottom of his baggy jeans had spots of blood on them, which David said came from when he climbed over the bed to try to reach Catherine. His body showed no signs of injury, no scratches, no defensive wounds, and nothing that suggested he had been in a struggle. So Gets asked David, if there was anyone he could think of, that would want to harm Catherine. And he drew a blink at first. He could not think of anyone. Catherine didn't have enemies. She wasn't that kind of person. But there was something else on Gets mind before they even gets all that. Because the math of David's evening wasn't sitting right. And before David was even taken downtown to the 19th precinct for a formal interview, Gets wanted to establish the basics of his story. And David told him he left the apartment to get his car around 640 pm. It was his 1987 ultimate bill, which was parked around the corner on 87th Street. He admitted he did not lock the door behind him. Because Catherine was still inside. So he felt like there was no need. Plus he was going to be right back. And she'd be downstairs waiting. Or so he thought he said he was gone about 20 minutes. But why did it take him so long? David explained. He said when he went and got the car, he headed back around the block. And that's when he called Catherine's cell phone so she could come meet him downstairs. He said he called Catherine twice on the way back and got no answer. He buzzed the apartment, got no answer there either and then came upstairs to find her. Simple enough, except that the neighbors had already started to talk. And what the neighbors were saying didn't line up with 20 minutes. This was just a brief rundown. Don't worry. I'm going to get into every single detail. But while David was being escorted down to the police station, the work of understanding what had happened inside apartment 2D was just beginning at 8.50 p.m. Detective John Entaman entered to take over processing the crime scene. And what awaited him was one of the most violent scenes that investigators that they're precinct had ever documented. He was armed with his camera, his training, and the kind of methodical patients that crime scene work demands. Entaman began to slow and careful work of letting the apartment tell its story. He started taking pictures over the course of the time he was in that apartment. He would take over 100 photos, every surface, every angle, every detail that could be captured and preserved before anything was moved or touched. Because crime scenes are like conversations that you only get to have once. In the kitchen, something caught his attention immediately. On the wall, there was a calendar and someone had written a note for that day, Sunday, November 27th. It read, 10.45 a.m. service, 3.24 Lafayette Street, 7th floor, yoga center. It was Catherine's handwriting, her morning, land out. On a calendar, she would never look at again.