Robert Reza Murdered His Wife Marilyn Reza

2008-08-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

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Dr. Robert Reza, the prominent Bayport physician and Sunday school teacher who went on trial yesterday charged with murdering his wife, had two affairs before his spouse was killed, a Suffolk prosecutor said yesterday. Law enforcement officials previously had said that Reza, 48, had an affair with Kathy J. Senese, an organist at his Sayville church. They said the affair lasted from June, 1990, until December, 1990, the month Reza allegedly shot his wife. But yesterday, Assistant District Attorney Michael Ahearn divulged that he has a statement from another woman who said she had an affair with Reza from December, 1988, until June, 1990. 'This is information we would use to impeach the defendant's credibility if and when he took the stand,' Ahearn told Acting Supreme Court Justice Michael F. Mullen in Riverhead, before jury selection began. Mullen will hold a hearing today on whether Reza can be cross-examined about the women or whether they can testify or their statements be used. Ahearn and Paul Gianelli, Reza's attorney, refused to comment about the second woman. Police have said they believed Reza's affair with Senese to be a 'contributing factor' to his wife's murder. Senese, who left her job as an organist at the New Life Community Church shortly after Reza's arrest, told Newsday in 1990 that she left her husband and three children because Reza told her he wanted to divorce his wife and marry her. Reza, a nationally known pulmonary specialist, did not mention Senese in the initial confessions he made. Instead, he said he killed his wife of 22 years, Marilyn Reza, because he could not cope with his success and saw the murder as a way to hasten his own death. "I could never kill myself," he wrote in a 12-page confession. "I knew by killing Marilyn, I would be caught and I would go to jail and wither away and die." A woman who answered the phone at Senese's house declined to comment. The second woman could not be reached yesterday. Reza, who is being held in lieu of $ 5-million bail, is charged with second-degree murder for allegedly killing his 47-year-old wife while she slept in the couple's bedroom on Dec. 12, 1990. Reza confessed in his written statement to shooting her in the head with a .22-cal. rifle that he had asked her to buy him for Christmas, and then wrapping a tie around her throat to make it appear a burglar strangled her. He said he had flown to Washington, D.C., for a medical conference but sneaked back, killed her and returned to the conference to establish an alibi. Reza also said in his confessions, made shortly after his arrest, that he intended to plead guilty to murder. But he later decided to plead not guilty. Gianelli has filed notice that he intends to use psychiatric evidence during the trial, which often indicates a defense that a suspect was not responsible for a crime because of insanity or emotional disturbance. Gianelli refused to comment yesterday on his defense. However, he asked potential jurors whether they had known someone who had suffered an "emotional breakdown" and whether they considered the insanity defense of John Hinckley, the man who shot President Ronald Reagan, to be "believable" or "laughable." Police have Reza's written confession, a videotape confession and an audio tape of a telephone conversation with his two college-age daughters, in which he said he killed their mother. In addition, police have photos of the murder scene signed by Reza, and maps Reza drew of where he disposed of the weapon.

Dr. Robert Reza buried his head in his hands and sobbed yesterday and jurors fought back tears as they listened to a tape-recorded phone conversation in which the Bayport physician repeatedly told his daughters: "I shot your mother." "Oh, honey, I'm guilty. I did it. I'm not, I'm not hiding it," Reza, who is on trial in Riverhead charged with murdering his wife, said in the Dec. 20, 1990, conversation. "The marriage was great. That wasn't the problem, hon," Reza said at one point on the tape. "I'm just tired of being everybody's, you know, having to be everybody's shoulder." Reza sounded broken and remorseful during much of the tape, saying: "As soon as I pulled the trigger, I knew I'd made a mistake." But he frequently switched to a pragmatic tone as he asked his two daughters whether he might be able to obtain a word processor in prison and told them how to manage the family's property. "Get the Chrysler and get rid of it," Reza told Kristyn, then 17, and Elizabeth Joy, then 20. "Save, save the DeLorean." Reza also appeared to be hedging about whether he had an affair, telling his daughters that police were "trying to say that I've been having - they told me that last Christmas I went on a date for a Christmas party with some other woman. I don't even know who that would be." Earlier this week, the former organist at Reza's church testified that Reza had an affair with her for six months until his arrest, and a police detective testified that Reza told him in 1990 of a previous affair. The conversation with his daughters is punctuated with expressions of compassion, grief and disbelief from Kristyn and Elizabeth Joy, who had lost their mother only eight days earlier. "You never wanted to kill us, did you, Dad?" Elizabeth Joy asked in a tremulous voice. "I never wanted to kill you guys, ever," Reza replied. The tape was made the day Reza, a nationally renowned pulmonary specialist, confessed to police that he murdered Marilyn Reza, his wife of 22 years, in the couple's bedroom on Dec. 12, 1990. Reza, who is charged with second-degree murder, has confessed to the slaying, but his attorney is arguing he "snapped" from job and church pressures and is not guilty by reason of insanity. Reza, 48, gave police permission to tape the three-way phone call, which he made from police headquarters in Yaphank. About midway through the call, Reza leaned back, cradled the phone on his shoulder and put his feet up on a desk, Suffolk homicide Det. Sgt. Robert Doyle testified yesterday. Frequently, the two daughters told their father: "We love you so much" and said they would stand by him. "Obviously you were disturbed and hurting inside; something is wrong," Elizabeth Joy said. At another point, she said: "I wish we could hold you." "I wish you could have held me, too, but honey, right now you don't want to . . . I'm just a dirty old bag," Reza said. The daughters also told Reza to understand if they later expressed anger toward him. When they asked why he killed their mother, Reza said it was a way to end his own life. Reza, who is being held in lieu of $ 5 million bail and appeared in good health yesterday at State Supreme Court, also said on the tape that he would try to starve himself to death, and that if he couldn't go through with that, he'd die soon in prison because he'd be without his work and his family. He also said he would plead guilty - he never did. Much of the conversation revolved around whether Reza would go to heaven. "You know the only way I'm going to go to heaven is if indeed God forgives me," Reza said. Reza buried his head in his hands and cried while listening to the 26-minute tape. His daughters were not in the courtroom yesterday. Earlier yesterday, a Patchogue gunshop owner held aloft the .22-cal. rifle Reza has confessed to using to kill his wife. John Cisco described showing Reza how to load and fire the rifle when the doctor first came into the store Nov. 26, 1990, and again when he bought it three days later. Excerpts From Reza's Phone Call Following are selected statements from a Dec. 20, 1990, phone call that Dr. Robert Reza placed to his daughters. Dr. Robert Reza: I'm sorry, honies. For you little girls I'm sorry. Elizabeth Joy Reza: But Mom just died really quickly, right? Robert: She died very quickly. She did not feel anything. They, they wanted me to admit that I'd moved her arms and there like that, she didn't move a thing. I, I did do it. Robert: It had nothing to do with Mother, really. It had, you know how I was getting frustrated with things, the way things were going, you know. Elizabeth: I know, but I thought things were getting better. Kristyn Reza: Daddy, always said they were better. Robert: Oh, no, no. The marriage was great. That wasn't the problem, hon, I just, you know, I'm just tired of being everybody's, you know, having to be everybody's shoulder. Elizabeth: You warned everybody, I mean, you were everybody's shoulder - (inaudible) to ride on you. Kristyn: Depend on. Yeah, you were good. Robert: I know, but honey, I got tired of it. I just simply got tired. And you know that Mot-losing Mother would kill me and that's what's going to happen is I will die. Robert: Now look, both of you girls, I want you both to remain true to the Lord. Elizabeth: It'll be hard, but - Robert: No, no, no, no. It will be hard, but you will be able to. Now listen, another couple other things, get me Proust, Remembrance Of Things Past - Elizabeth: I think it's C.S. Lewis, what is that by Dr. Smith about dealing with grief, was it C.S. Lewis, after his wife died. Do you want that Dad? Robert: Yeah, C.S. Lewis, Remembrance of Things Past and get me ah Ulysses. Elizabeth: Ulysses. Robert: By James Joyce. A little bit of a change, okay? I need to read. I am going to, ah, I'm - Elizabeth: - you want your Bible, too, don't you? Robert: Huh? Elizabeth: Bible. Robert: . . . Now honey, both of you girls, you are going to hear weird things about me. Elizabeth: It'll be awful. Robert: They're going to be awful, but you got to realize one thing that ah I, I shot your mother, okay. Now you need to get somebody to live in the house, okay? Elizabeth: Why? Robert: Why? Because you're not going to be able to sell it right away and it's going - Robert: - it's going to be a real drain. Robert: Honey, they're [police detectives] recording this conversation. I gave them permission to record this conversation. I'm not trying to hide anything from them. Elizabeth: Okay, Daddy. Robert: They also know that I'm not going to eat anymore and that I'm just going to drink fluids and that's of my own free will. I have nothing to - Elizabeth: - are you going to be able to do that? Robert: Am I going to be able to do it? Yes, and I've never been able to fast more than eight hours, you know that. I graze when I eat. We'll see what the Lord has in hand for me. Elizabeth: - if you can't, Dad, if you can't do it - Robert: What? Elizabeth: Dad, if you can't do it, I mean I understand why you want to, but if you can't you know we still love you, we still want you, I mean I understand why you would want not to, but I mean, understand that you have our support, or you have my support. Elizabeth: Okay. You never wanted to kill us, did you Dad? Robert: I never wanted to kill you guys, ever. And the policemen asked me that, if I ever wanted to and I said not at all. It was never in my thought. Elizabeth: Okay, dad. I want you to know that no matter what happens, I mean I'm sure I'm going to get very angry at you sometimes - Robert: You're going to be angry at me right now. Elizabeth: I'm not angry at you yet. I love you still and - Elizabeth: - I'm sorry for you but I'm sure I'm going to get angry at you but I want you to know what you meant to me. Robert: As soon as I pulled the trigger, I knew I'd made a mistake. But up to that point, all I kept saying is am I going to be able to do this, am I going to be able to do this, and then when I did it, I knew I shouldn't have done it.
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In a rambling, tearful monologue, Dr. Robert Reza told a Riverhead jury yesterday he killed his wife because he thought God was thwarting his suicide attempts, and said he was such a failure that "I couldn't even do a lousy murder well." Contradicting confessions he gave police eight days after the Dec. 12, 1990, killing, the prominent Bayport doctor said his wife did not die immediately after he shot her in the head as she slept in the couple's bed. Instead, he said, Marilyn Reza stayed alive for about 15 minutes while he stood over her, watching blood come out of her mouth. Then, Reza said, he checked her pulse and found it "still present." "I thought, she may not die, she may end up a vegetable," Reza testified. So, he said, he strangled her with a necktie. In another departure from his previous confessions, Reza also testified that minutes before he killed his wife he had pointed his .22-cal. rifle at his head and pulled the trigger, but that "it went click" without a shot firing. "I said, 'Ah, it's the blessing [from God] again; I can't kill myself,' " Reza, the son of a Nazarene minister, testified at State Supreme Court. Then, he said, "like Judas" killing Jesus Christ, he took the gun and fired it at the head of his wife. "I pulled the trigger, I saw the burst of fire," he said, crying. " . . . I knew she was going to a new servant." Reza, who testified for a full day and is to be cross-examined today, said he killed his wife of 22 years because he considered her part of himself and "if Marilyn would die I would die." He said he was reading "The Brothers Karamazov" in the moments before he tried to kill himself. Reza, 48, said he left several clues in the house for police so they would immediately catch him, including stationery from a hotel he'd stayed at while attending a Washington, D.C., medical conference the week he killed his wife, and a parking ticket showing he'd taken his car from a LaGuardia airport lot a few hours before the murder. Reza confessed he snuck back to New York to kill his wife and then returned to the conference. But, he said, police didn't pick up on all the clues. "I couldn't believe it," he testified. "I couldn't even do a lousy murder well. So, I went on with my life" - until eight days after the killing, when he was arrested. Reza is charged with second-degree murder for killing his wife but is pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. Yesterday, he made several statements to underscore defense attorney Paul Gianelli's argument that he crumbled from job and church pressure and guilt over his affairs. "I went ballistic," "I went nuts," Reza said repeatedly in describing his reactions to events in the months before the slaying. But he said he only realized after being examined last year in jail "there was something seriously wrong in my psyche." He said he wrestled with himself throughout the day of Dec. 11, 1990, over whether to go through with the killing, but decided he should after "a big black rat" ran across his path in Washington, D.C. "It was like the rat told me to do this thing," Reza said, adding that he interpreted the sign as "you're no better than a rat." He hoped to die after he was arrested, Reza said, but stopped fasting after three days because his daughters threatened they, too, would stop eating. Speaking in a tone that alternated between plaintive and scholarly, the dark-haired, bespectacled Reza turned to face jurors directly as he spoke. He occasionally used medical and sociological terms that he would then define for them, sometimes without prompting from Gianelli. At times he appeared to be full of self-pity, such as when he described growing up as a Mexican-American "nerd" and "preacher's kid" in Kansas City. He described his Nazarene minister father as "stern" and some of his childhood experiences as "traumatic." Reza's mother, Ernestina, wept during portions of his testimony. Reza's tears came mostly when he described his wife's death and his feelings of personal failure when he was unable to save terminally ill friends and patients. "I never should have taken care of him. I botched it," he sobbed at one point when describing a close friend who died of pancreatic cancer. "It was just too much for me." He said he had contemplated suicide "a lot," even as far back as his college days at Columbia University in the 1960s, and had tried to kill himself in a car accident and drown himself in the months before he killed his wife. But every attempt failed, he said, because he had been "blessed" against premature death since a near-fatal appendicitis when he was 3. Throughout his testimony, Reza described himself as a man who couldn't cope with stress and failure. He said he considered himself a "fraud" because he sat on local and state medical ethics committees but had tried to hush up sexually related complaints that two female patients made against one of his partners in the mid 1980s, because he didn't want to ruin his own practice. "I had a name in the community . . . I didn't want to have to face the reality that what I was doing was not a good thing." An attorney for the partner said he had been exonerated by a peer group investigation. Reza conceded he'd had two affairs between 1986 and the time of his wife's death and said his marriage was falling apart. But he spent most of his time describing his depression and what he called the "evil within me." GRAPHIC: Newsday Photo by Thomas R. Koeniges-Robert Reza cries yesterday while testifying at his trial in the 1990 murder of his wifegeovisit();

Reza Convicted

A Suffolk County jury yesterday convicted Dr. Robert Reza of second-degree murder for shooting and strangling his wife in 1990, rejecting his argument that he was not responsible by reason of insanity. Reza, 48, showed no emotion as the single word "guilty" rang through the nearly empty Riverhead courtroom. As he stood up to be handcuffed, still wearing his wedding ring, the nationally prominent Bayport lung specialist turned and smiled sadly at two sobbing female friends, his only supporters in the courtroom. "The justice system still works," said Dan Eaby of Pennsylvania, a brother-in-law of Reza's murdered wife, Marilyn, 47. "I would hope that this will heal things but I don't know if it will." Marilyn Reza's mother, Joy Jefferies of Ohio, sat rigid and dry-eyed as the jury forewoman read the verdict. Jefferies declined to comment, but said in a prepared hand-written statement: "Because this is a crime within a family, this case is a no-win situation . . . He stole Marilyn from us and [from] their two daughters." Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Michael Ahearn, who during the trial had depicted Reza as a lying, adultering "narcissist" who preferred murder to divorce, called the verdict "the final act in the tragedy" of Marilyn Reza's death. "You have this man who was a talented doctor but because of his own inner feelings, he destroyed his wife and himself at the same time," Ahearn said. Reza's attorney, Paul Gianelli, said he was "disappointed but not surprised" by the verdict and was considering an appeal. "The case was very, very strong for the prosecution and the defense of insanity is a difficult one to win," Gianelli said. "When you are defending a functioning physician, it's almost an impossibility." Reza's parents and his two daughters, Elizabeth Joy, 22, and Kristyn, 19, were en route to the courthouse and missed the verdict when it was announced shortly after 10:30 a.m. Reza's brother, Mark Reza, a Missouri lawyer who had served as co-counsel at the trial in State Supreme Court, said, "It's another step in the journey." Reza had been jailed in lieu of $ 5 million bail, but Acting State Supreme Court Justice Michael Mullen yesterday ordered him held without bail until his sentencing Nov. 2. He faces a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison. Jurors, who found Reza guilty of intentional murder, deliberated about 6 1/2 hours Friday and yesterday and spent at least half that time reviewing testimony and the charges against Reza. Their verdict ended a five-week trial and 22-month quest by prosecutors to convict Reza for killing Marilyn Reza, his wife of 22 years, as she slept in the couple's bed on Dec. 12, 1990. Reza was arrested eight days after the killing when police discovered he'd sneaked back home from a medical conference in Washington, D.C., a few hours before the murder. He repeatedly confessed to police that he killed Marilyn Reza, using a gun he'd bought as a Christmas present to himself from his wife, but entered a defense of not guilty by reason of insanity. To acquit Reza on that basis, jurors would have had to decide that because of mental disease or defect, he lacked the capacity to understand the consequences of his actions when he killed his wife or to realize he was doing something wrong. Reza would then have been evaluated by experts to determine whether he required detention in a psychiatric facility. Five of the 12 jurors had leaned toward acquittal by insanity when deliberations began, but a review of New York State's narrow definition of legal insanity quickly convinced the holdouts that Reza had to be convicted, jurors told Newsday. "The fact that Dr. Reza had so much going for him and still did it meant he may well not be all there," said juror Brendon Mulroy, 27, of East Northport, a passenger service agent for Delta Airlines. "But the way the law was written, you couldn't find him insane." Jurors said the most important part of the charge on insanity was deciding whether Reza knew what he did was legally or morally wrong. They said their decision was not made solely on the basis of testimony about Reza's state of mind. One important reason jurors cited in deciding Reza knew what he was doing was wrong was that he said so himself on his videotaped confession eight days after the murder. And Ahearn again "drove that point home" during his cross-examination of Reza, said juror Gary Muller, 47, an air traffic control specialist from Wading River. Gianelli had asked Mullen to tell jurors to disregard Reza's statement that he knew the murder was morally and legally wrong, arguing that Reza may not have been sane when he made that statement, but the judge refused. Jurors had made up their minds that Reza was not legally insane by the end of the day Friday, and spent an hour yestrday deciding which murder count to convict him of, jurors said. Jurors had to decide whether Reza was guilty of intentional murder or murder by depraved indifference to human life, which are both second-degree murder charges carrying identical sentences. Mullen had rejected requests by Gianelli to have jurors consider charges of criminally negligent homicide or manslaughter, which carry much lighter sentences. Marilyn Moore of Bayport, who used to work in Reza's medical office who also knew Marilyn Reza,had watched the entire trial. Yesterday she said that she, too, thought Reza had not been legally insane. "I've been coming here trying to put things in perspective myself," Moore said, crying. "He wasn't innocent." Gianelli also had considered calling a psychatrist from California to testify that Reza could have suffered mental defects from an early onset of Alzheimer's disease, but decided at the last minute that he didn't have solid evidence. Magnetic resonance imaging tests conducted on Reza last year indicated he had an abnormality in the cerebral cortex that was consistentwith the onset of Alzheimer's disease. But further tests did not show any evidence of that disease, Gianelli said. Gianelli added that if Reza eventually develops Alzheimer's disease, he probably would seek a new trial, arguing that its first manifestations included the murder of his wife. During the trial, Reza and a forensic psychiatrist hired by the defense testified that Reza had "snapped" from pressures including guilt over two extramarital affairs and hushing up a potential scandal in his medical practice. Gianelli told jurors that Reza's mental breakdown was exacerbated by his inability to cope with patients' deaths, and a strict religious upbringing that made him feel he had to live up to his reputation as an "icon" in his Sayville fundamentalist church. By the time Reza killed Marilyn Reza, he was so "delusional" that he thought he and his wife were one person, Gianelli said. Suicide attempts having failed, Reza decided that murdering his wife would be a way to kill his own guilty conscience and ensure he "withered away" and died in jail, Gianelli said. But Ahearn, who called a psychiatrist to testify that Reza was sane but a narcissist, said Reza killed his wife becuase he didn't want to "tarnish" his reputation with divorce or divide his assets. Ahearn said Reza made up many incidents after his arrest to make him appear insane. For instance, Reza testified in court that a rat "told" him to kill his wife. He also testified that he tried to shoot himself just before shooting Marilyn Reza but that he thought God was stopping him from committing suicide when the gun didn't fire. But he never told those things to police when he was arrested, Ahearn said. Even if Reza had been insane when he shot his wife in the head, Reza himself testified that he realized he'd made a "mistake" - and thus had returned to sanity - the moment he'd pulled the trigger, Ahearn reminded jurors. Yet Reza testified that after shooting his wife, he waited about 15 minutes, fully aware she was still alive and doing nothing to help her, and then finished killing her by strangling her with a necktie.
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Moments after he burst into tears, quoted Yeats and said he was "very, very sorry,' Dr. Robert Reza was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison yesterday for murdering his wife as she slept in the couple's Bayport home. Reza's two daughters begged for leniency and sobbed as Acting State Supreme Court Justice Michael Mullen gave their father the maximum sentence for killing their mother, Marilyn. "What sort of justice is it that will take my last parent away from me? Where is any mercy in this case?" pleaded Elizabeth Joy, 22. But Reza, dressed in a gray suit and polka-dot tie, dried his tears and regained his composure as he was handcuffed and led from the Riverhead courtroom. Defense attorney Paul Gianelli, who had asked for the minimum term of 15 years, called the sentencing "unduly harsh" and added that he is preparing to appeal Reza's conviction. But Mullen, quoting from the Bible, told Reza, a nationally known pulmonary expert, that: "To whom much is given, much is expected." "You, a physician, a healer, one who took an oath to preserve life, you took the life of this special person. Why?" Mullen demanded, his voice breaking. "I don't know why . . . I do know that you knew what you were doing, you were unprovoked . . . You, for whatever selfish reason, turned your back on everything you were taught." Reached at her home in Xenia, Ohio, Marilyn Reza's mother, Josephine Jefferies, said she is praying for Reza and his daughters. But she added: "He really got what he deserved." Reza, 48, has repeatedly confessed to shooting and strangling Marilyn, his wife of 22 years, on Dec. 12, 1990. He said he was not responsible by reason of insanity and had snapped from guilt over extramarital affairs, job pressures and his role as an elder at his fundamentalist church. But jurors rejected that argument at his trial and last month convicted him of second-degree murder. During his speech to Mullen yesterday, Reza repeated that he must have been mentally ill, saying "that tragedy would not have occurred" if he had gotten psychiatric help. "I am very, very sorry," Reza told Mullen. He said he killed his wife because "frankly, I just wanted to stop the world and get off. I was incapable of killing myself." Reza read Mullen two poems by William Butler Yeats to Mullen - "The Consolation," in which Yeats writes: "My darling cannot understand what I have done," and "To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing." Reza also labeled police and prosecutors' work "a Peter Sellers-Inspector Clouseau sort of way" to investigate his wife's death. Assistant District Attorney Michael Ahearn had asked Mullen to give Reza the maximum sentence, noting that Reza made no attempt to save his wife after he shot her in the head. Instead, he said, Reza got a tie from the bedroom closet and strangled her to "finish what he'd started" and then hid the gun and returned to a medical conference he'd attended that week in Washington, D.C., to establish an alibi. Ahearn also read the court a letter from Marilyn Reza's sister, Linda Motter of Xenia, Ohio, which described Reza as "a master of deceit and manipulation." "This is not the picture of someone who suddenly crumbled under pressure. Murdering my sister was just one step further in the moral digression he had been taking for some time," the letter said. Ahearn also revealed that Marilyn Reza's mother and siblings did not attend the sentencing because they did not want to widen the "gap that has developed" with Reza's daughters, Elizabeth Joy and Kristyn, 19, who have barely spoken with their mother's side of the family since the trial began. Reza's parents, who live in Kansas City, Mo., did not attend and could not be reached. Gianelli said they continued to support their son. Mullen said he has received a "steady flow" of letters both for and against Reza. Some letters called Reza "brilliant" and "loving," Mullen said. But he added that other letters branded Reza "a bold-faced liar" who was "totally self-consumed and arrogant."
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Tidbits

Robert Reza is Hispanic.
Robert Reza is eligible for parole in 2015

Guilty Hearts

Guilty Hearts the True Story

Robert Reza Murdered His Wife Marilyn Reza