Part 3: She Made It To Broadway & Left in a Body Bag - The Killer's Fingerprint Left in Her Blood

A 21-year-old classically trained dancer is found dead by her ex-boyfriend who was still living with her in her New York City apartment. By the time investigators started pulling her phone records, they already had different men telling very different stories. But Catherine wasn't alive to explain who was telling the truth. So the evidence had to do it for her. Piece by piece, what investigators started to uncover was disturbing and nothing like anyone had expected. Hi everyone, I'm Kimber Lea from True Crime with Kimber, where I bring you weekly deep dive true crime cases focusing on facts and sharing each case with compassion and thorough research. If you want even more content, including ad-free episodes, check out my podcast on Spotify. When you subscribe to Spotify Premium, you can listen without any commercial interruption. So check it out. I want to warn you right away. This is a part two of this case that I started a few days ago here on my channel. So if you want to go back and watch part one, which I highly recommend because this story is layered and the setup matters to me and I think it would matter to you going forward, but I am going to give you a quick update. But if you are coming back from part one or you rather just listen to me recap and jump right into part two without going back, I'm going to get you back up to speed so quickly. So we can get right into it. So here's what we know. On the evening of Sunday, November 27th of 2005, 21-year-old Catherine Elizabeth Woods was found stabbed to death in her apartment located at 355 East 86th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York. Catherine was a professionally trained dancer from Columbus, Ohio. She was the daughter of John Woods, who was the director of the Ohio State Marching Band. She had moved to New York at only 17 to prepare for her new job. pursue her dreams are performing on Broadway. She was talented, driven, deeply loved by everyone that knew her, and by every account, she was in a genuinely good place in her life. And in the days before her murder, she was happy. She was looking forward to Christmas. She was looking forward to coming home, but she never made it. The man who found her body was her roommate slash ex-boyfriend, 23-year-old David Hahn, also an aspiring rapper. Now, if David had grown up in foster care in Columbus, Ohio, he followed Catherine to New York in 2002, and the two of them had built a life together before eventually transitioning from romantic to friends, but still being intimate and sharing an apartment together. On the evening, Catherine was killed. David told investigators he had gone to get his car to drive her to work. When he came back, she wasn't answering. He went up to her and said, and found her on her bedroom floor. The crime scene was absolutely devastating. There was blood on practically every surface, and there was no forced entry, and no blood tracked into the main hallway of the apartment building. So whoever did this had walked out of there clean. But before they made it into that hallway, there were boot prints on the living room floor and on Catherine's bedsheets and pressed directly into the back of her shirt in blood. There was also a smashed guitar covered in blood, and on the bedroom wall, partially concealed behind the mattress, was a blood smear with what appeared to be a handprint, also in blood. Now, Detective Stephen Getz was the investigator that took the lead in this investigation. He was from the 19th Precinct, and Detective John Entenmann processed this entire crime scene. He took over 100 photographs, and he collected hairs that were found in Catherine's left hand, which were short and light in color. And he made one of the most important decisions in the entire crime scene. He made one of the most important decisions of this entire case. He ordered a section of the bedroom wall cut out and sent to the crime lab. He also had the floor cut out where the boot print was located. The autopsy was performed by Dr. Michael Greenberg, and it confirmed what the scene already suggested. Three catastrophic wounds to Catherine's neck. Two of them were horizontal, and they were four and a half inches long. The other five and a half inches long. The third was a stab wound, an inch and three quarters in length. All three went in two inches deep. They severed two of Catherine's jugular veins and partially severed her carotid artery. The wounds had also severed her vocal cords. She could not scream afterward. Now, Catherine had also sustained a jagged stab wound to her left cheek that penetrated into her mouth. There were two wounds near her left ear, wounds to her torso and left shoulder, and a blunt force injury above her left eye. There were abrasions across her forehead as well, and she fought back hard because there were 20 additional wounds to her left ear. Catherine's neck was also severed, and she suffered additional defensive injuries across her hands and arms. In the estimation of the medical examiner, he believed the entire attack lasted no more than five minutes. So, keep that in mind. Five minutes. Catherine's toxicology came back completely clean. There were no substances or alcohol in her system whatsoever. So, let's go back to her boyfriend, David. He was immediately the primary suspect, and usually those closest to the victim are looked at first, and it was no different in this case. So far, his timeline didn't exactly add up. He told the police he left the apartment around 6.40 p.m., but his co-workers, who he stopped and talked to on the way to get his car and come back, placed him at their building, talking to them around 6.20 p.m. And then there was a neighbor directly above Catherine that heard screaming and a violent struggle at 6.25 p.m. David was brought in for a lengthy interrogation, operated completely, gave DNA, fingerprints, a full strip search, everything, and then was released without an arrest. There simply wasn't enough to hold him. But before he left that police department, David mentioned something when the detective asked him if he was sure that there was no one in Catherine's life that she said had any issues with her. And David remembered something. So, he gave them a name of a guy. Catherine had said this guy was making her feel in comfortable. Now, David thought the guy's name was Paul Vincent, maybe, and that he remembered the name from a homemade CD. It had this guy's name, personal information on it, back at the apartment. Investigators found it exactly where David said it would be. Now, was that a setup? Was that a convenient way to shift the focus off of him? Maybe. But the name wasn't Paul Vincent. The police were at Paul's door. He comes in for a five-hour interview and drops a bombshell. He tells investigators he and Catherine met at the gym while he was working as a personal trainer, and they had been in a relationship for almost a year. That he loved her, that he had been deeply concerned for her safety. And then he gave a detailed alibi for the day. And he said, "The day of her murder." A low-key afternoon with a friend, a football game at a bar, home by midnight. Paul was cooperative, emotional. He cried, which, to note, David never did. And Paul asked, "Did you catch who did this?" Paul was the opposite of David as well. He was older by a couple years. He was 25, raised in the Bronx. He was educated as well. At age 11, he was admitted to one of New York's most elite private schools, the Buckley School, and then Poly Prep Country Day School. He was on an academic and artistic scholarship. And then he went on to get a fine arts degree from Boston University, and he was the class of 2003. He studied abroad in his junior year in London at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. He had a very impressive resume, but now he was back in New York, signed to a casting agency called Hardin & Curtis Associates, chasing his own Broadway dream, the same way Catherine was chasing hers. He was a triple threat. He could sing, he could dance, he could act. He even was the frontman of a band called Monolith. It was a rock band. They played venues all around New York City. He and Catherine bonded over their shared dream of making it big on Broadway. He painted David, though, as a moocher, a guy Catherine wanted out of her life, but she was too nice to pull the cord. He explained that David did not pull his weight, and Catherine didn't want him to be out on the street. So she let him continue to live with her. But he was merely a roommate, and that David had called Paul in a threatening manner, telling him, "Back off. Stop contacting Catherine." When Paul talked to her about it, he said that she told him that David was just jealous and trying to come between them. Paul also explained that he was worried about Catherine because she had started to work at a gentleman's club, and she was already in a place where she had had a bad experience. A guy laced her drink, and Paul had to come rescue her. He went so far as to say, "I'm not going to do it again. I'm going to do it again. I'm going to do it again." He was so worried about Catherine that he told him to stop doing this. He was so worried, and Catherine was furious. She told him that it wasn't his business. She needed to work there temporarily to save money for more voice and dance lessons, and it had no bearing on her professional dance career. It was well known that some dancers supplement their income with dancing and gentleman's clubs, and it was not a full review, if you know what I mean. It was top-off only. But anyway, Paul didn't like it, and he was scared that Catherine was getting involved with a bad group of people recently. Then detectives went back to David with more questions, and that's when David told them about a Sunday afternoon noon back in June when Paul had apparently showed up at their apartment uninvited, buzzed the door until Catherine told him to go away, and then somehow ended up inside their apartment anyway. Now, about that conversation, eventually David wanted to know what was going on. Catherine said, give me a moment. I need to deal with this situation. And this guy walks past David and outside onto the street and David follows closely behind. This is when Paul is straight up with David and tells him, I've been dating Catherine for nearly a year. Now, Catherine, when confronted by David, says that Paul is crazy. He's unstable and that he has a way of fixating on things that are not real, but convincing himself that they're true. So when we ended in part one, there were two completely different versions of all three of these people, Paul, David, and Catherine. Catherine's dead though, and she cannot reconcile the inconsistencies, but the evidence will. The truth will come out. So let's jump back into it. We're going to go back to David being questioned for the second time about those confrontations with Paul. He's telling them about when Paul comes to their apartment. And I mentioned this right at the end of part one, but I really think it's worth revisiting. David says, Catherine told him, do not go down to the gate. Paul is standing at that gate buzzing the intercom to their unit. David goes down anyway, because as he explained to investigators, he wasn't going to stand around and let someone make Catherine feel uncomfortable, especially in her own home. David goes down, but doesn't see anyone there, which he's kind of confused about. He looks down the streets nearby, nobody's walking around. So he makes his way back to the unit. And that's when he notices that somehow Paul has made it inside their apartment. Catherine is angry and angry at David for having some kind of confrontation. But Catherine motions to David to give her a moment. She needs to handle this. He waits in the hall. When Paul comes out, he wants to talk and they walk together. Now, Paul seemed genuinely surprised, according to David, to learn that David and Catherine were still living together, still sharing an apartment and a bed, because Catherine had apparently told Paul that David was just a remain out. Someone she felt sorry for, a person who couldn't support himself and didn't contribute to their bills. Well, that really bothered David. He told the investigators he knew what he had contributed and what he hadn't. And he knew what he and Catherine actually were to one another, regardless of how this other person described it. But Paul had said his piece, and they parted ways on Second Avenue. David goes back upstairs, and when he walks into the apartment and looks at Catherine, he tells her what Paul told him. That they had been dating for nearly a year, that they had been sleeping together, all of it. Catherine doesn't even hesitate. She tells David, "Don't listen to a word that Paul tells you. He's crazy. Yes, I know him. We met at the gym. And in the beginning, yes, we occasionally grabbed food together. We were friendly, but that was it. That was all it was. She and Paul were not together and never had been together." David needed to understand her about this. She explained further that Paul was not well, he was unstable, and he had a way of, like I told you, getting so fixated on things, things that were not real, and he convinced himself that they were. So here's David, looking at the woman he loves, and he's choosing to believe her, because that's what you do when you love someone. Even if they look you in the eye and tell you something, you're giving them the benefit out when the signs all point to something else. But something shifted at that moment. The way things do when you learn something that you can't unlearn can be very, very, very different. Catherine knew who that was at the door, buzzing in. She tried to keep David away, and she had known exactly immediately how to explain it all away. So David let it go. In the back of his mind, he was thinking, and for weeks, he and Catherine went about their routine, the dogs. She had one named Josie, a little chihuahua, and David did dog-sitting for extra money. They still went to their regular corner diner, and Sunday nights, he drove her to work. But the name was still there in the back of David's mind, where he couldn't believe it. He couldn't stay. Paul. Paul. Who was he? And this is what David tells investigators about why he called this man to confront him, because in July, it happened again. Catherine told David Paul was calling her nonstop, and she didn't want him calling her anymore. She said it was making her feel uncomfortable, and she wanted to make it stop. David tells investigators he's not a confrontational person, and he reminds them, I let that whole June buzzer incident go away with without making a scene. I gave Catherine every benefit of every doubt, and I picked up the phone, and I called Paul himself. That's why David called him according to him. So you see how there's these stories going back and forth. He told Paul, stop calling, leave Catherine alone, that she did not want to hear from him anymore, and he needed to respect that. David said that Paul did back off, but David would spend the rest of the year trying not to think too about what he knew, and especially about what he didn't know, about the things Catherine told him and the things that she didn't, about a man named Paul who had stood on Second Avenue and told him a year's worth of things that Catherine had asked him not to believe. So yes, he admits he confronted Paul, but that was after Catherine called him crazy and said Paul made her feel uncomfortable. Okay, so what about the Gentleman's Club? The investigators want to know, is that true? Was Paul making that part up too? David doesn't hesitate. He reveals that Catherine had been working at a club called Privilege from April through July, and for the past few months, she'd been dancing at a new club called Flash Dancers. He said that's where he was supposed to be driving her the night she was killed. That was their routine. He took her there every Sunday. Now, the police still need to confirm this, so they go to both clubs, and at Privilege, the manager, Anthony Regina, told investigators that Catherine worked there under the name Ava, and that she was very sweet, and she was really trying to make it into show business. She was classically trained, and it was sad when this happens to anyone, meaning she was murdered, but she was really trying to make it. Those were his words. Then investigators talked to Chloe, who actually hired Catherine, and she said she looked at her, and she thought to herself, what is this girl doing here? Because she looked like the girl next door. She said she was probably the sweetest girl that ever was. She said she was probably the sweetest girl that ever walked in there, and the most innocent, and it seemed that way. When Chloe asked Catherine what made her want to start dancing, it was simple. She said, because I want to try and work on Broadway. Now, Jennifer, a fellow dancer at Privilege, she told investigators that in this industry, you get a lot of egos and snotty girls, and she said Catherine just came in and was very bright and open and wanted to talk to everybody, and then there was Flash Dancers. The newest club she'd been working out, and the staff initially denied that Catherine had danced there, but once they realized that one of their current dancers had been murdered, they confirmed she was on their books as Ava, and that's all they really got from management. They seem standoffish because I think it's a bad look for a dancer that had been working there to be found dead, but what's important right now is this confirmed what both Paul and then eventually David had told investigators, that Catherine had worked at both of these clubs. David told them he protected her secret while she was alive because she trusted him with it, but he made sure to let them know he wasn't the only one she told. Her friends knew about this, including some from Columbus, Ohio, like Megan, who actually stayed with Catherine and David that summer. Megan came to New York to make money, and she actually joined Catherine in dancing. Catherine's other friend, Katie Miller, also knew, and it's true she wasn't thrilled. She tried to talk her out of it. She was like, this isn't you, and Catherine said, I know, I know, but Catherine didn't think it was that big of a deal. Of course, her parents didn't know at the time, and neither did any of her dance instructors, but there were other professional dancers who had done dancing in adult clubs to get by, and then went on to have very successful careers on Broadway. Catherine knew it had no impact on her job. But speaking of her parents, they too were being interviewed, and they admitted that when Paul told them about Catherine working at the Gentleman's Clubs, specifically the one called Privilege, they were confused. Catherine had told them that she was understudying in an off-Broadway production, and guess what she told them it was called? Privilege. Well, the theater where it was supposedly running had no record of Catherine ever being a cast member, and in fact, Privilege was just the name of the club where she was previously dancing. So her father picks up the phone at the time, he calls Privilege directly, and he asks for his daughter Catherine. They say nobody by that name works there, but we know that's because she went by Ava. Now, part of the confusion that John and Donna, her parents, felt was that Catherine never asked them for money, or indicated that she was in any financial trouble. So they said they blamed themselves for missing some kind of signs in their conversations with her. They didn't know why she felt the need to be dishonest with them. Now, John asked about the call from Paul, and he said, "You know, I was very impressed that Paul was looking out for my daughter's welfare." and he thanked the young man for bringing this to his attention, but he added that Catherine had never told anyone, hadn't told them, about anyone named Paul, especially as a person she had been dating. So they wondered, what else was she keeping from them? John was deeply worried, so he jumped on a plane to Manhattan and he confronted his daughter. He said she was furious at Paul that he had broken her trust, and she said that everything Paul told her about her drink, having something in it, her being violated, it was a complete lie. Now, I feel like I should not even have to say anything about this, but I just quickly need to say something I think is very important here, because this becomes part of the headlines literally as soon as the media caught wind that Catherine worked at these adult establishments. It's all over the news for shock value. Articles were written about her, and she was a big fan of her, and she was a big fan of her. And she was a big fan of her, and she was a big fan of her. And she was a big fan of her, and she was a big fan of her, and she was a big fan of her. We're saying exotic dancer murdered or professional dancer turned stripper. And for New York, these tabloids, the case had all the elements of a truly tragic, good Midwest girl gone bad in the big city story. The sordid New York headlines focusing entirely on labeling Catherine as a stripper, rather than focusing on who she actually was as a person, her dreams, her fears, and everything else that goes into fully humanizing someone. That was just all gone. Catherine was a young woman trying to make a living in one of the world's most expensive cities. And dancing is a way for women to quickly earn money when they need to pay their rent and many other expenses. And it's really none of our business how they're doing that. And this was not part of Catherine's career plan. It was a detour to help her save a couple of shifts here and there enough to help her get by while still allowing her time to attend classes and go to auditions. And I got to tell you, I looked at it because I wanted to find out how much she was making. The money was very good. Depending on how many shifts she did. Her manager said that Catherine would earn between 1000 and 2000 a week and she only worked one day a week. And sometimes she made $5,000 in just one night. And she saved all of it, putting it straight towards dance and voice lessons. I guess what I'm trying to say here is, I don't want to judge someone that I don't know. And the facts all point to what I just told you. The fact that she'd been working as a dancer, though, raised other questions for the police. Was David the jealous type? Catherine, she was talented. She was beautiful. Maybe the thought of other guys seeing her without her top on wasn't easy for David to deal with, even after they broke up. And maybe over time, he hit his breaking point. But then there was another guy mentioned. Paul mentioned this Joe guy. He said Joe met Catherine at Flash Dancers recently. So detectives still had not worked out whether this person existed and they needed to track him down. Investigators had to keep open minds. It was entirely possible that Joe or someone else entirely with some kind of interest in Catherine was responsible for her murder. And that brings me to Catherine's building, which is one of the confusing parts of this case. Investigators needed to figure out how easy is it to just slip inside, to walk from the street through the entrance of her building and inside her unit. Now, Catherine's building wasn't lining the street. Her front door to get into the main building part was not right on the street. Instead, the entrance was a few dozen feet back from the sidewalk. It was off an alley, which I'm showing you here. This alley is behind a wrought iron fence. And this wasn't the safest building design. And that's why they put this wrought iron gate there to enhance security. Building management installed a lock on this gate with an intercom at the alley entrance. You would have to buzz residents to have them let you in. I'm sure you've heard about this before. Now, there was another lock on the main building entrance, which you would get to after you walk down the alley. But if you have ever lived in a big city, you would know. Delivery people will often buzz any apartment, and they'll just say FedEx, and they can gain entry. So despite these security measures, I'm putting them in air quotes, the problem with Catherine's building was twofold. The lock on the gate out front didn't always catch when it shut, meaning it could be pushed open easily. And the lock on the front door was broken. So anyone could access the building. Residents had reported this issue to the building management, but it was still broken at the time of Catherine's murder. So had Catherine's killer been watching her? And were they lying in wait outside the gate in that alley waiting for someone to leave so they could work their way inside? Now, while investigators tried to track Joe down as their next lead, her poor family had to arrange her funeral. Her dad flew to New York, and he could only describe this later as being in a fog. The director, of one of the most celebrated marching bands in the country, a man who had spent his entire career commanding hundreds of musicians through the most demanding performances imaginable, who had led Ohio State University marching band through presidential inaugural parades, and Rose Bowls, and Thanksgiving Day parades watched by millions, that same man had to get on a plane to go claim his daughter's body. And it really goes to show you, you have no idea what the person sitting next to you is going through, so I just have to remember that all the time. Now, he tells reporters that are standing outside Catherine's building as he's trying to get in that she was on her way to a successful career, that Catherine was a beautiful girl. Fulfill a dream and was on her way, and then this happened, and I just cannot. That was all he could manage to say. That was all there was to say. She was on her way. She was beautiful. And now she's gone. And then there was the task of going inside her apartment, of walking back through the front door of apartment 2D, belongings of a life that had been so violently interrupted, and that job fell to John and Donna. And together, they walked through their daughter's room that still smelled like her, past the mirror that she would use to get ready, and they packed up the things that mattered the most. Even her stuffed rabbit, Hop-Hop, that had been with her since she was nine months old and had made every journey with her. Her dance shoes, the drawings, the calligraphy, notes in her handwriting that were scattered around the apartment, now covered in blood. And then they turned around, and they brought their daughter back home. John said it was probably the hardest thing he had ever done in his entire life, and I can only imagine the heartbreak. Back in Columbus, the community was already mourning. John Woods, he wasn't just well-known, he was woven into the fabric of that city in a way that very few people are. When the Woods family was hurting, Columbus hurt with them. Now, the coverage I mentioned that had been circulating in New York on the tabloids, that was not making things easier. The headlines were ugly. They reduced her to a topless dancer. Things like, dancer, let a double life. Exotic dancer found murdered. The big city that Catherine had loved had turned her into a two-word headline, a type, a cautionary tale. The New York Daily News ran a story all about how Catherine's parents hadn't known that she worked at the Gentleman's Club. As if her parents' ignorance of one chapter in her life was the point of the whole story. It wasn't. It reduces a person to one tiny detail. Can you imagine that happening to you? One detail about her life. And that becomes your whole personality, which was entirely unfair. And Catherine couldn't defend herself. Now, a writer out in Columbus named Mike Harden, he addressed this directly in a column he wrote for the Columbus Dispatch on December 1st, the day before Catherine's funeral. He noted that on the day after her murder, the New York Post had correctly described Catherine as an aspiring Broadway dancer. Within what he called a New York minute, Catherine was a Broadway dancer. But the coverage shifted entirely, demoting her, in his words, to just a topless dancer with a secret life. One that ultimately got her killed, which was all assumptions, by the way. This writer asked plainly whether the New York Post journalist had simply wanted Catherine to fit a stereotype, whether they needed her to be some naive Midwestern girl who had gone wrong in the big city because that story was easy to sell. Then the truth, which was she was talented, trained, driven, and that a monster chose to take her from this world. A monster that was still lurking in their streets. So maybe they should pay attention to that fact. Now, the Columbus Dispatch readers, they wrote tons of letters to those New York publications. They wanted this family to be protected, to have their privacy respected. They wanted sensitivity towards Catherine. They wanted the girl that they knew to be treated as a human being rather than a monster. had lost one of its own. Catherine's funeral was held at 3 p.m. on Friday, December 2nd, 2005 at Linworth United Methodist Church. And for two hours, the people who love Catherine in every chapter of her life came to pay their last respects and say goodbye. And they came from everywhere. Her high school friends, ones that she danced with, people from the Ohio State University community that had watched her father raise this family. And when the service began, the Ohio State Marching Band, all 225 of its members took their places in their game day uniforms, not performance attire, game day uniforms. That is how important this day was. This was a day that called for everything. And they performed with a kind of reverence that only comes from musicians who understood what they were doing was for John, their director, their colleague, their friend, and for the daughter that he had lost. It was beautiful. They played Amazing Grace. They played Carmen Ohio, which is the alma mater of Ohio State. And in that church in Columbus, with music filling every corner of that room, you just knew that she was so loved. And John and Donna understood that their daughter had always been born into music. That was the first language she ever knew. And it was the right way and the only way to bring her home. there were screens at the front of the church that were showing pictures of Catherine from birth to her last year on earth. And the front of the program that every person in that church was holding in their hands as they listened to that band play was the essay that Catherine's little sister Victoria had written in the fourth grade. The one where a nine-year-old little girl looked up to her 17-year-old big sister and decided without a doubt that she was her hero. Her friends, Danielle Curran and Katie Miller, walked to the front of the church and they danced. It was a heartfelt ballet performance right there in the front of Catherine's coffin. Two dancers saying goodbye to a third in the only language that had ever made complete sense to them. And then came the words. Now many of her friends spoke, but Sahaja Parsa said something that gathered everyone together in one place. She said, she danced into our lives and she danced into our hearts. She was always someone you could rely on to make you laugh and chase your tears away. Now after the service, Mary Rose Bushrow, who had taught Catherine from the time that she was only three years old, opened her studio, Dance Reach, for the wake. The studio where it all started. And the people who loved her gathered there in the memory of her. The way they always gathered around Catherine because there was nowhere else they would have rather been. But there was one person that wasn't in attendance. David. Now he had traveled all the way back to Columbus ready to go to the funeral. But Catherine's parents asked him not to come. And he honored that. Whatever complicated feelings were between them, the grief and all the questions that still lingered, David understood and he didn't push it. He didn't argue with them. But John and Donna also knew what David had meant to their daughter. They knew how much he loved her. They knew that despite everything that they were feeling and thinking, there could be a possibility that David was simply an innocent young man who had just lost one of the most important people in his life. And now he was being asked to grieve from a distance. So they made a compromise, which I have to commend. Before the crowds arrived, before the band took their places, before the friends and the cameras and the reporters gathered outside the church, they gave David a chance to be alone with Catherine. Just him and her. Whatever he needed to say in that quiet moment when no one was watching. And then he left. And after the funeral, Catherine was cremated. She was home now. Her ashes were resting on a mantelpiece of her family's home in Columbus alongside a pair of her dance shoes. And while Catherine had been laid to rest, the investigation was still very much alive. They had pulled Catherine's phone records. And sure enough, they included calls from a man named Joe Cabrera, including one at 8:55 p.m. the night before she died. And they found Joe. And they brought him in for questioning. When Joe Cabrera came in for his interview, the moment he walked through the door, investigators are sizing him up. They're trying to get a read on him. He's good-looking, he's confident, he's outgoing. And he doesn't seem nervous. He didn't seem like someone that had anything to hide. And his story is simple. He tells investigators he only knew Catherine for a month. He said he met her on October 21st at Flashdancers, where he had been celebrating a friend's birthday. Now, he wanted to make it clear this wasn't the kind of place he made a habit to go to, but it was a birthday. And a group of them just ended up there for the evening. But at some point during that night, Joe found himself having a conversation with a dancer named Ava, who we know as Catherine. And as he put it, he was captivated by her. Not just by the way she looked, though, even though she was so striking, with dark hair and her big smile. But he said it was a conversation itself. She was funny, she was sharp, and she seemed genuinely interested in what he was saying. It sounds totally like Catherine. She didn't feel like someone pretending to be interested in him because he was a customer. When Joe asked, if he could have her phone number, she declined. But she did offer him her email address instead. And three days later, on October 24th, Joe sat down and wrote to her. He gave the investigators that email. And it read, quote, "Hi. I just wanted to say it was great meeting you. I hope I get to see you again. I'll look for you and your love tattoo. Have you decided what your Halloween costume will be?" End quote. Simple. Trying to get to know her better, seeing if maybe she's interested in being friends or hanging out in the future. Not sure if he would even get a response since giving out an email is kind of more of a professional avenue to communicate, or even an option when someone really isn't interested, but they don't want to, like, hurt your feelings. But Joe said he was surprised when he saw that she did write him back. It was the very next day. Her email read, quote, "Hey, you. It's nice to hear from you. And I'm happy to know that you guys had a good time. It's always nice when there are people in the club that I don't have to pretend to enjoy. It makes my job easier. No Halloween costume yet. Last night I worked and I had several people suggest I be a schoolgirl. Several suggest a hula dancer. And there was one vote for being a pussycat. Very funny. Perhaps drunk strip club attendees are not the best people to ask for advice." End quote. Joe then replied, quote, "It's so great to hear from you. I wasn't sure if I was going to get a response. I am sure you have so many people falling for you. And believe me, I see how that's not hard to do. That it must get tired. I felt totally captivated by you. I'm partial to the whole schoolgirl look, which I can only imagine would look so sexy on you. But I'm sure that whatever you decide on, it won't be staying on for long." Smiley face. End quote. Well, then. I mean, it was flirtatious, a little bolder than you would probably be in person, a little more honest about what he was thinking about. But it's over text. Over the weeks that followed, Catherine did give Joe her cell phone number. And in early November, the two of them went on a date, a proper evening out downtown, away from the club, the stage name, and the whole constructed world of Ava. And on that date, Catherine told Joe she did not currently have a boyfriend, but she mentioned, "I'm not sure I'm going to get a boyfriend. I'm not sure I'm going to get a boyfriend. She was very close with her ex. However, she didn't say his name or didn't go into detail about their living arrangements. When the evening ended, they shared a cab. And here's a detail that's small, but says something that showed about who Catherine was, that she was guarded in a way. She doesn't know Joe. And as the cab moved north through Manhattan and approached her neighborhood, Catherine didn't have the driver pull up outside of her building. She had him drop her off at the corner of 86th Street and 1st Avenue. She didn't have the driver pull up outside of her building. Just down from the building, but not at it. At that point, she gets out, she thanks Joe, and she walked the rest of the way by herself. Joe continued to Washington Heights, where he lived, and he told the investigators he didn't know Catherine's exact address. And he never asked her. He barely knew her last name. It was only after he saw her picture in the newspaper that he had more information about her. On November 24th, three days before she was killed, Catherine called Joe and left her home. She said she hoped they could get together soon. And just after Thanksgiving, Joe called her back and he wished her a happy holidays. He said they talked for about an hour. He said that was the last contact between them. Like David and Paul, Joe cooperated with the police. He gave his fingerprints and he allowed full access to his emails with Catherine. He answered every question without hesitation and without an attorney present. And when detectives looked at everything they had in front of them, there just wasn't anything there. No red flags, no obsession, no pattern of unwanted contact, no evidence of anything other than a man who had met a woman he thought was captivating and interesting at the club, gone on a date with her, and called her to wish happy holidays. The stalker that Paul had described to investigators, the threatening presence Catherine had apparently confided to him about Joe, did not exist. it was the opposite clearly joe was a guy that katherine was interested in getting to know he didn't seem like someone she would tell paul or david about and not someone she would be afraid of so investigators clear joe and they move on but the fact that paul had named him had specifically pointed investigators towards a man named joe as a possible suspect tells you something and it told detective get something because paul knew that investigators were going to pull katherine's phone records he knew that joe's number and calls between him and katherine would be in those records he knew that paul had admitted that he had gone through katherine's phone gets realized that paul framed joe as a potential threat and he handed investigators a lead that looked like concern for katherine's safety and that functioned as a redirect away from himself i'm sure you understand what's going on here but i'm sure you understand what's going on here but i'm sure you happening here. David didn't do anything like that. And that was the same move that Paul had made with Catherine's father. With this information, investigators want to find out what other people had to say about Paul. Because from the looks of it, Paul was trying to get there first, kind of control the narrative, make sure someone else is in frame before anyone is looking too closely at him. The question that Detective Getz keeps coming back to was simple. If the relationship was as real as Paul said it was, if Catherine loved him and had chosen him and told him things she hadn't told anyone else, then were there any witnesses to this? Were there any people in Catherine's world who could confirm any of it? Her own father said he had never heard of Paul, but she had also never told him about other aspects of her life either. And in five hours of talking, Paul had named his own friends, his own bandmates, his own personal training clients, who he talked to about Catherine and would know Catherine. And every single person who would corroborate his version of events was someone from his world, not Catherine's. So investigators started making calls. And what they found told a story that was almost the exact opposite of the one Paul had been telling. First of all, his gym co-workers had a different version of how Paul even approached Catherine to begin with. He actually saw her, she was dancing, and bragged to his friends, I'm going to go get her number. But he didn't. So he resorted to handing her one of his CDs with his number on it, trying to sell her training sessions. And he bragged to her about all of his accomplishments. And eventually, it's true. Catherine did see him again at the gym, and they went to lunch. As she told David, they did. But they only saw each other when Catherine went to the gym, because he worked there. And one of Paul's closest friends, Jackie Levi, had told them that the whole time this had unfolded from the beginning, he knew how serious Paul was about Catherine, in a way that he hadn't been serious about someone in a very long time, if ever. But this was all in reference to what Paul had told his friends about his feelings for Catherine. And then there was Paul's bandmate, the guitarist, Alex Rude. Alex, unlike Jackie, had met Catherine, but only one time. One time. Despite the fact that Paul was claiming that they supposedly were in a year-long, deeply meaningful, and genuinely loving relationship. None of the other guys in the band had ever met her. She had come out to one of the shows in August of 2005, and she was introduced to Alex, briefly. And that was it. That was the entirety of Catherine's presence in the social world Paul shared with the people closest to him. One concert, one introduction, five minutes long, with other people in the crowd. But Paul had talked about her to Alex extensively, but not about how much he loved her, or how well things were going between them. No, he told him about how worried he was. Paul told Alex he was concerned that Catherine was now making adult films, that he didn't like her working at the clubs to begin with, and how he thought that she had now gone into sex work. Why? Because she had hotel matchbooks. That was it, matchbooks. As if someone could not simply hang out at a hotel and watch a movie. And that was it. That was it. That was it. But Paul explained that he was frightened for her safety. Same story, different audience. And then there was Stephanie Bucci. Stephanie had known Paul as a personal training client, and she considered him a friend for a while. And in the weeks leading up to Catherine's murder, she had a front row seat to exactly how Paul was acting or coping with Catherine's desire not to be involved with Paul. The short answer was he was not doing well. He had been complaining, to Stephanie, for weeks about Catherine, referring to her as his girlfriend. He seemed genuinely upset that she was doing things that he didn't approve of, including what he kept calling adult movies. It sounds like a broken record, because it was. He was so needy in a way that worried Stephanie. He kept asking, why am I not good enough for Catherine? He had this assumption that women should want him, that someone would be lucky to have him. And I couldn't help but think of Gaston from The Beauty and the Beast. I'm not trying to be funny here, but that's what I imagined. Don't I deserve the best? Now, I could go into the subliminal conditioning of Disney movies or kid movies in general, but that's a whole other topic. But Paul was asking Stephanie, why? Why wouldn't Catherine just listen to him? Why did she keep making choices that made him upset? He told Stephanie that that November, they had broken up. But he was hoping they would get back together, that he couldn't stop thinking about Catherine. So she did something kind of as a joke. She bought him a book of erotic short stories, but he wasn't getting the hint to go focus his attention elsewhere. It wasn't enough to stop him from fixating on Catherine the entire time. On November 25th, two days before Catherine's murder, Stephanie had a training session with Paul. And she said that he was struggling. And she was feeling sorry for him. She was the one that suggested they spend part of Sunday afternoon together to get his mind off of things. She enjoyed his company, so they hung out, hoping it would cheer him up a little bit. Now, this was the day Catherine was ultimately murdered. Stephanie said she was home by around 4.10 p.m. But it was what happened at the Food Emporium that stayed with her. They were standing in the middle of the fresh produce section. And Paul gets a phone call. Stephanie is standing right next to him, and she hears him say over the phone, word for word, I'm in the fresh fruit section, and I'm with this beautiful, blonde, 36-year-old professional woman, and we're going to buy strawberries, and I'm going to take them home and put them all over her body and lick them off. Stephanie was the beautiful, blonde, 36-year-old professional woman. And she's standing there. She tells the investigator she was completely appalled. She withdrew her earlier invitation for Paul to come over. She said he was supposed to be at her place that afternoon, and Paul called her later, but she didn't answer. Now, that evening, Stephanie did return Paul's call a little after 7, and he said he was at home. And he said he was reading that book that she bought for him and apologized for what he said. And then there was Spencer Lebowitz. Now, this was the football bar that Paul had gone to. He called Spencer that Sunday evening. It was a little before 8 p.m., and he asked if he wanted to hang out. Spencer told him, come down to Backpage on 82nd Street to watch the Giants game, which Paul told investigators about. He said Paul had mentioned being still in love after a recent breakup, that he didn't know how to get her off of his mind. He did not name Catherine specifically, but the context was clear. And then when the Giants lost, Paul was genuinely bothered by it. And Spencer found that to be strange. Because in all the times he had known Paul, he had never seen him care about football, not once. So was it something else that Paul was broken up about? Emotional about? But investigators want to know, what do Catherine's friends know about Paul? Most of them knew nothing. Her closest friends she'd known since childhood, Emily, since the first grade, never heard Paul's name. Katie and Megan, they heard about Paul in passing when she first met him, but never again. Her dance instructors, who heard Catherine share many things with him about all aspects of her life, never heard Paul's name come up, not once. Had never seen him, in any context, connected to Catherine's life. As a matter of fact, there were no photographs of Catherine and Paul together. Antonio, at Gracie's Corner Diner, the one that she would always go to, that she told about her and David's breakup, he'd never heard anything about a Paul. But there was someone who did know about Paul. Who had actually spoken to him before. Catherine's manager, Chloe, at Privileged Gentleman's Club. She knew about Paul because she received multiple phone calls from Paul, trying to convince Chloe to make Catherine quit dancing. When Chloe asked Catherine directly, who is this man that keeps calling here? Catherine's answer was immediate. She said, oh, don't worry about it. He's crazy, you know? I'm not worried. with him anymore. He's just an ex-boyfriend. There's that word again. crazy. And I know she said boyfriend, but sometimes it's a word that someone throws out there when they don't want to explain too much, but they want to get the point across. We may have one time been something, but we're nothing, so ignore him. She didn't describe him as someone she loved, not as someone she was choosing to be with. It was someone it felt like she managed, that she kept him at a distance from every part of her life that actually mattered. And when someone asked her directly who he was, she didn't reach for his name or his story or anything impressive about them or them ever being together. She called him crazy. And then she moved on to the next subject. By this time, investigators know none of the blood in that apartment matched Paul or David. It was all Catherine's. So let's get into the forensic evidence, because everything I'm going to be talking about today is going to be about the forensic evidence. I've told you about has been circumstantial. But now the boot prints. Forensic specialist William Bodziak had analyzed the prints found at the scene, the one on the living room floor, the one on Catherine's bedsheets, and the one pressed directly into the back of her shirt. And his conclusion was precise. The boot prints had been made by a men's size 10 and a half Skechers Cool Cat Bully 2 boot. Specific make, specific model, specific size. But both David and Paul wore a 10 and a half. What are the chances? However, when police arrived, David was wearing Adidas sneakers. And David told investigators he did not own a pair of Skechers boots ever. When investigators asked Paul, he said the same thing. And no Skechers boots were ever recovered from either of these men or their apartments. But wouldn't the killer get rid of them? Keep that in mind. And then there were the fingerprints. Well, they found a left index finger from the drywall cutout. The one on the guitar, unfortunately, was not usable. NYPD forensic scientist Alex Chalko, he treated the drywall with a substance called amino black, which reacts with protein that's present in blood. And when it reacts, it turns dark purple. And it proved the fingerprint had not been left on the wall before the blood got there. It had been left in the blood. Someone had placed their hand against that wall after Katherine's blood was already on it. They enhanced the print until the ridge details were perfectly clear. And they compared it to all fingerprint samples that they had collected from everyone who had been in that apartment. Katherine, David, the neighbors, Julia, every paramedic and officer who had responded that night. And none of them were a match. They ran it through the police database. Nothing came up. Whoever left that print did not have a prior criminal record. But the investigators made a mistake. They realized there was still one person whose fingerprints had never been collected. Paul's. It was an oversight. A major one now, because at this point, Paul had a lawyer. He was no longer talking to police because he knew he was a potential suspect. Investigators did the next best thing. They got a hold of a poem that Paul had given to the police. And they found it. And they found it. And they found it. And they a friend the same day of the murders, and they tried to pull prints from it. His prints were all over the paper, but not one of them was his left index finger. So investigators kept working. They thought, "Maybe if we saw who was near Katherine's on the night of the crime, we can narrow things down even more." So they pulled the CCTV footage from every business and every building they could in the surrounding area. They found 13 cameras nearby, but when they looked through the footage, and it was from a nearby parking garage which was adjacent to where Katherine lived, they see both her and David walking together with the dogs around 5 p.m. Now, that was consistent with David's account of his day, and the garage front door camera shows David in the proximity of that apartment building, and another camera angle, which was at the garage front door, it shows David in the proximity of their apartment building walking toward 87th Street alone at approximately 6:38 p.m. So wait, there you have it. He wasn't wrong about what time he left. That time was consistent with the timeline he'd given police. But remember the noises? They were before that, according to the neighbors. But when investigators try to lean hard on that timestamp as a definite time, there's a problem. It turns out it's not accurate. The camera's internal clock could not be verified. Which meant the footage that seemed to support David's account, but also seemed to counter at the same time, really is inconclusive. It can't go either way. The only thing it can tell them is that he was right about going from their building over to where his car was supposedly parked. The time could be slightly off, and they don't know how much. Nobody could be certain about it. And in a case where the difference between 6:20 p.m. and 6:40 p.m. could mean everything, an uncertain timestamp was not the answer that anyone was hoping for. But here is what the cameras did give investigators that was unambiguous. Paul did not appear on a single frame of footage from the neighborhood. Not on any of the 13 cameras, but to be clear, none of these cameras showed the wrought iron gate or the front of her building. They just showed the approximate area near her apartment. But Paul was not seen on the garage camera, not on footage from any business on 86th Street or 1st Avenue during the relevant window of time. And that was frustrating. A back and forth, two men intertwined with Catherine's life with evidence shifting for and against their guilt. But there was about to be a break in this case. The phone records came back. And this is where the investigation shifted in a way that would prove to be the backbone of this entire case. They got search warrants for all phones related to this case. And they didn't need to talk to anyone to get them. And wow, did my jaw drop. It was on the floor. It's like a story of its own built out of calls between Paul and Catherine. In the earlier months of their acquaintance, I should say, the calls are going in both directions with some regularity. The rhythm of two people who were at least at that point in some kind of ongoing contact. But as the weeks progressed, things shifted. The pattern changed. Catherine's calls to Paul became less frequent. They were shorter and further apart. And Paul's calls to Catherine went in the opposite direction entirely. By the time summer of 2005 moved into fall, the imbalance was significant. Paul was calling far more than Catherine was returning his calls. And she wouldn't initiate them as much. She would pick up sometimes. She would call back sometimes. And then came October. We know from Paul himself that October, Catherine essentially pulled back. And in his words, it was a breakup. He told other people that she was done, that she needed him to accept it and move on. Paul's response to that, the response that's documented in black and white in those phone records that investigators now had in front of their face, was to call her 292 times that month. In 31 days. To a woman who even had her ex-boyfriend call and defend her and tell this man to stop reaching out months before this. But he only got more intense. On October 19th alone, Paul called Catherine 57 times. 57 in one day. Catherine returned three of those calls. Three. On October 25th, he called 47 times. She returned seven. This was not two people in a mutual relationship staying in touch. This was one person refusing to let another person go. And knowing what investigators knew about Catherine, they thought she was probably trying to appease him. To keep him at bay. Think about what 57 calls look like in a single day and what it feels like on the receiving end. Your phone going off again and again. The same name popping up on the screen. Hour after hour. You answer some of them because you don't know what to do. You maybe keep the conversation calm because you've learned that calm is safer than confrontation. At least with this particular person. And then you put the phone down and it starts again. That's not love.