The Dr. & Mrs. Kauffman

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April Kaufman didn't have an easy life growing up. And when she was just 17, she gave birth to her daughter, Kim. And then she set out to make a better life for them both. April raised her daughter in a loving home despite an early split from Kim's father. She earned her cosmetology license and worked as a hairdresser and then as a model. April was fun, energetic, and independent. But you know, life as a single mom could be lonely.

Join us at the quiet end for The Doctor and Mrs. Kaufman. In 2002, April believed she had finally found her happily ever after when she married Dr. Jim Kaufman, a successful physician and a former Green Beret. As the wife of a Vietnam veteran, April became an outspoken radio personality and a fierce veterans advocate. But Dr. Kaufman had a dark side, which April then began to uncover. The doctor was running a pill mill out of his medical office, and he was associating with a criminal motorcycle gang, the Pagans.

When April had had enough and threatened a divorce, she began to realize that maybe her life was in danger and she might never make it out of this marriage alive. So this case was recommended by Laura G. And I'm going to give a trigger warning here for suicide and domestic violence. And of course, we have a beer. We do. We have a nice New Jersey beer called SS Between, brewed by Carton Brewing Company in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. So this is a nice American IPA. Hazy gold color, thick white head, lots of lace, very pretty beer. It's got a fruity aroma. I get some tropical fruit as well as some citrus fruit and some pine, your favorite, Jill.

Has a nice taste. Grapefruit and a little grapefruit rind, orange, pineapple, and aforementioned pine. So it's got some nice bitterness. Bitterness lingers for a while in your palate. Great beer. Yeah, not to be critical. I just never thought of pine as something you'd want to taste. It's more of something you want to smell around Christmas time. It could be that too. Yeah, but I do like the fruitiness. So let's open it up and I'll give it a try.

Okay, Dickie, let's go down to the quiet end. This is kind of a complex, twisty, curvy kind of case, would you say? Yeah, there's a bunch of things going on. This guy, Kaufman, was quite a person. Yes, and did you see he was an endocrinologist? I did. Now, he's an adult endocrine guy, and I'm a pediatric guy. There's not that much, well, there's enough overlap. Okay, but, you know, not a lot of overlap in the pill mill motorcycle gang territory. Well, I personally was never involved with either of those. Right, right. As far as I know, most of the pediatricians and pediatric endocrine people aren't involved in those activities.

Well, I would bet that most adult endocrinologists aren't involved either. I think that this Dr. Kaufman was a bit of an exception and not in a very good way. Dr. Kaufman's goal was to make as much money as possible. Seems like it, yeah. But let's start out first talking about April, our victim. Okay. So April Favazo was born October 27, 1964 in New Jersey, and she had lived most of her life on the Jersey Shore, but she had a very difficult upbringing. Both of her parents had serious addiction issues, and her father was not involved in April's life at all. April's mother had some significant others who abused April when she was a teen, so April's grandmother helped raise her.

April's mother was sometimes called April the chosen one, but this wasn't as positive as it may sound. No, no, not at all. So what her mother was referring to is when she had kept April and put his siblings into foster care. Yeah, wow. So she broke up the family. Yeah, and maybe she felt like she had to, but just imagine being the one who's left behind. Yeah, who filled April with guilt, even though her childhood may not have been much better than a life in foster care. Well, it kind of depends who you end up with, doesn't it? Yeah, right. But at age 17, April's life was forever changed. That's when she became a mother.

She named her daughter Kimberly Connor, and through all the hardships to come, raising Kim became April's real purpose in life. She did marry Kim's father, but he was a teen too, and they split up. They did remain friends, though, and Kim did have some visitation with her dad. But April, for the most part, had custody and was Kim's primary caretaker. April went to cosmetology school and got a job as a makeup artist and a hairstylist for a modeling agency in Atlantic City. And there, she worked with Miss America contestants. So let's go back in the time machine. This was the 80s, so we've got a lot of big hairstyles and stage makeup.

April was a beautiful young woman, and she used her skills on herself as well. Her makeup and her nails were always perfect, and she had this big full mane of blonde hair, and she probably went through a lot of hairspray in those days. But April wasn't just a pretty little wallflower. She was strong, not at all afraid to speak her mind. She was well-liked. She was forthright, but not cold or judgmental. As her daughter Kim got older, the two remained close. April was in charge, yes, but she was also someone who Kim saw as her best friend, and someone she could confide in about what was going on in her life.

Well, yeah, because April had been so young when Kim was born, there was this close kind of sister-like side to their relationship. Right. And also because April didn't have any more children, that made Kim even more special. Yeah, she's a mother of 17. She's still got a lot of growing to do herself. Exactly, yeah. But April was a hard worker, and she was able to open her own salon. In addition to teaching Kim a strong work ethic, she taught her to give to others. Even though money was tight and they were living week to week, April would still volunteer to help people who were less fortunate. And one thing April did for quite a while was she gave free manicures and pedicures to residents of a local nursing home.

And that kind of brightened their day. They loved having her come in. April got married a second time, this time to a local doctor. But this marriage ended in divorce also when Kim was in high school. That was while her divorce with her second husband was being finalized in the early 2000s. April met the person she believed was the one man for her. That was Dr. Jim Kaufman. Jim was 15 years older than April. He had been visiting April's salon often. They seemed to have a lot in common. Like April, Jim said that he had gone through a rough childhood. But Jim did not have April's charisma. He was quiet. And his upbringing was really very different from hers. Growing up in Margate, which is also South Jersey, Jim's nickname was the Mad Bomber.

As a little boy, he taught himself how to make explosives and then showed them to his friends. Jim bought saltpeter in a chemistry set at the local drugstore. He already had charcoal and sulfur at home, and he learned to combine them in the correct ratios. So he made a bomb. Basically, yeah. He bought a Jet X fuse at the local toy store. These are normally used to ignite model airplane engines. Like I said, he made a real bomb. Now, he didn't blow up a car or hurt anyone, but the kids who gave him that nickname thought there was something off about him. He didn't have a lot of friends, and he could be difficult to get to know. Yeah, he was pretty smart. Not a genius, but did well in school. And I guess his knowledge of chemistry helped him pursue his dream to become a physician.

But Jim's work ethic was lacking. He struggled at Franklin and Marshall College after he graduated with Atlantic City High School's class of 1967. He entered college in the fall of 1967, but then left in the spring of 1969. He had either failed or barely passed his classes in his freshman and sophomore years. And in the end, the Committee on Academic Standing told him he had to withdraw. Jim was readmitted to Franklin and Marshall in January of 1971. And this time he worked harder. He earned A's and B's and maybe a few C's. He majored in biology. In his senior year at Franklin and Marshall, he made the dean's list. And the following year, Jim improved his GPA and did really well on his MCATs. So in the fall of 1972, he began applying to medical school. The Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine accepted him.

By 1990, Jim was the director of the metabolic care unit at Shore Memorial. He treated his patients for diabetes, hormone issues, thyroid disease, glandular issues, and Cushing's disease. Yeah, those are your basic duties as an endocrinologist. So it looks like by 1990 when he was director of the metabolic care unit that he had done pretty well. And here's this guy who was basically a screw-up in college early on. He persevered, got through college, went to med school, and now he's the director of the endocrine unit. Yeah, he did okay. And when Jim and April got together, he showed all the trappings of success, and she was at one of her most vulnerable points in her life. So from the outside looking in, April and Jim Kaufman's lifestyle would seem more than comfortable. To her friends, it seemed that April had finally gotten all that she deserved. Yeah, when the two first began seeing each other, Jim told April that he was separated from his first wife and that he had filed for divorce. But then, after a few months, she would learn that he had still been married and was still living with his first wife.

But after learning the truth, April broke things off. But Jim did end up leaving his wife and filing for divorce, so he and April went through divorces really around the same time. Kim had first met Jim in the winter of her sophomore year in high school. This was when she was waiting for her mom to finish up at her salon one day. She came by after school that day, planning on going over to her mom's house. Because at this point, Kim had been living with her father in Linwood so that she could attend the high school there, and April wasn't in the same school district. April was still living with her second husband at that point, but that marriage was falling apart. So Kim's first impression of Dr. Kaufman was that he was kind of a cold fish.

April had asked him if he could give them a ride home in his four-wheel drive SUV. Now, he agreed, but Kim said she didn't feel especially welcome. It had snowed that day, and April only had her Corvette, which you can imagine was not good in the snow and ice. It was very low to the ground. Oh, yeah. It was rear-wheel drive, too. Yeah, so she did need a ride. Yes, she did. And he did give the ride, so he wasn't horrible, but Kim just didn't feel that he was very warm. So at this time, he had his own endocrinology practice in nearby Egg Harbor Township.

April was a beautiful blonde who got a lot of attention whenever she walked into a room. April and Jim had already been moving in the same social circles for years by the time they got together as a couple. In fact, April had even been at the bar mitzvah of one of Jim's daughters at his spacious home on 2 Woodstock Drive. Now their courtship started out quietly, but progressed quickly. On one of their first dates, they took a motorcycle ride to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Jim told April that he had served in Vietnam as a Green Beret, and this was something that really impressed April. The couple loved long motorcycle rides and traveling to beautiful destinations. More importantly to April.

Yeah, so the future did look bright, and at least for a while it was. They were married on Valentine's Day of 2002 while on a cruise ship, so there were no family or friends there. So this was an elopement, and it's normal for no family or friends to be present at an elopement. But it does seem that April did lose some friends after going off and marrying Dr. Kaufman. It wasn't popular with many people in their social circle when April and Jim got together. After all, he still had been married when their relationship started.

but April moved into the house at 2 Woodstock Drive. She just wanted that to be temporary. She wanted a fresh start for their marriage, but Jim would resist the move. When Kim had to do a college project with an interview of someone who had served in the military, she talked to Jim. She listened to his stories, and in fact, she felt a new sense of compassion and appreciation for him. In her paper, she wrote, the Viet Cong ambushed his camp, stabbed him, and left all his comrades for dead. His sole mission was to grab the dog tags and bring them to their families so they could know what happened to their boys.

But as part of his agreement to be interviewed, Jim had insisted that Kim must destroy the tape that she had used to record their interview and never speak about his time in the military with Ruth, his mother. So that seemed a little weird. But you know, it does. But she respected his wishes because many people who have served don't like to talk about their experiences. I think that's especially true with Vietnam. Yeah, I think so. Now, after they got married, April and Jim had big parties and fundraisers at Two Woodstock. These sometimes resulted in excessive noise complaints from neighbors down the block, even though April wanted to create a life of Jim in a new home of their own.

She did her best to add her own style at this house and enjoyed hosting gatherings there. So April's childhood had really been so unstable that she really tried to create a safe place for herself in her new home. When guests came over, they first entered a spacious foyer, and there there was a caricature from Jim's 60th birthday on the wall. It showed April as this busty blonde holding hairdressing scissors, and Jim with an eye patch and a tattoo with the letters USMC for United States Marine Corps. Jim and April held their parties in a 1,200-square-foot sunroom where skylights covered the ceiling, and this room had a bar, a pool table, and big soft couches.

Outside, there was an in-ground pool. Jim was a gun collector and a shooter. And he even had his own gun room with an area for making his own bullets. So that I've never heard of. He was really into it. He was very into it. I understand from one of the sources we've looked at that he had over 100 guns. That's just disturbing to me. But he was also a motorcycle enthusiast. And in addition to his home in Linwood, he kept a vacation home in Arizona for getaways. They also had many exotic birds with an atrium just for them.

Upstairs, the master bedroom had walls that were painted red with white piping on the door frames and big floral curtains. The master bathroom had marble countertops, a marble shower, wooden fixtures, built-in wood cabinets, and a jacuzzi with a stained glass chandelier hanging overhead. So it was not a modest place. It was a little bit aggressive. That sounds pretty over the top. A little over the top, sure. Picturing this 1,200-foot room. Yeah. That's half our house. More than half our house. Yeah. So that's a big room. Very big room. And the master bedroom has red painted walls. Sounds like a bordello. Well, I don't know about that, but...

They like to be a little bit showy. I think even April was kind of into being showy. Yeah, I think so. But tell us what the big secret is here. Well, the big secret turns out to be, as you might have guessed, Jim was lying about being a Green Beret and serving in Vietnam. But we don't know when April figured this out. But we do know that she was aware of this before she died. It's difficult for her because she's well known as a veterans advocate. And she'd spoken about her husband's service. If people found out that Jim was lying, could bring April's motives into question. Oh, absolutely. If you've got this woman raising money for veterans, and then you find out her husband's faking being a veteran, that doesn't look good for her. I mean, it looks terrible for him, of course, but for her, it wouldn't be good either.

Yeah, because you're figuring she's collaborating somehow in this lie. Yeah, and you try and think, why would he lie about this? Stolen valor is the term for these military imposters, and it's not only illegal, of course it's seen as unpatriotic and just basically a shitty thing to do. And actually, Jim could not have served in the military. On his application for medical school, in a section asking the applicant's selective service classification, Jim had written 4F. This military classification was for men who were incapable of serving due to medical or psychological unfitness.

Yeah, so while on the med school campus, when he was in medical school, Jim ran into Arthur Nahas, a high school classmate who was in his graduating class, but was now two years ahead of him in med school. Jim explained to Nahas that he had left Franklin and Marshall College for two years because he had experienced mental health issues and had gone to see a psychiatrist. Dr. Nahas would always remember that, even 30 years later when he was at a party at 2 Woodstock. During that party, Jim was wearing a green beret and showing off his large collection of guns and handmade bullets. And at the party that night, Nahas heard Jim telling a story about Vietnam.

Jim was saying he had served in the Special Forces, and he shared a story about being ambushed. He had been the only one who got away, he said, and had crawled to safety. Nahas knew that Jim couldn't have served in Vietnam and couldn't understand why he felt the need to lie. But he didn't bother to challenge Jim's story. They were only professional acquaintances, after all, so it's not like this was a good friend of his. Right. Plus, they're at the guy's house. I mean, he's throwing the party. You're not going to challenge him right there. Probably not. But, you know, Jim told the same stories to close friends. One of Jim's best friends, Ron Welcher, was a police officer for Pleasantville and Linwood.

And one of the first times that Ron spent with Jim, they'd gone to a shooting range. Jim had even worn his green beret, which seems pretty tacky. But he struggled to open a GI ammo can. Ron had laughed and joked with him about it. If you're going to wear a beret, you should at least be able to open an ammo can, he said. Another one of Jim's best friends, a doctor, had been a medic in Vietnam. And Jim told this friend that he'd been bayoneted in the abdomen and left for dead. Another thing Jim did, which was very distasteful, is he wore medals. He once told Kim that he had misplaced his purple heart. So he'd ordered a replacement and it arrived in the mail. So this seemed a little weird, but...

Kim's in high school. She doesn't know any better. No, that's something, again, you're going to challenge, am I? So the problems in April's relationship with Jim began early on after they were married. Neighbors and friends noticed that Jim had a dark side. When April had a cancer scare, he actually told her that if she had the disease, she probably deserved it.

He would say really cruel things to her. And one thing he liked to do was harass her about money and about work. One day when he saw her planting flowers in the yard as he drove by, he screamed, what's wrong with this picture? You're planting flowers and I'm working. But you know, April had always been a hard worker. Yeah, but what's the deal? I don't know. He just felt the need to be berating her. April's friends saw that in order to keep April in line financially, Jim only allowed her to use one credit card, which he monitored closely. Jim asked her not to work anymore after they were married, but April couldn't imagine giving up her work. She and Jim bought a hair salon called Artistic Signature in Northfield and asked the previous owner,

a man named Bob Avellino, to stay on as manager. A little over five years later, just a few months before April's murder, McLaughlin's closed the salon and tried to sell it. Yeah, in 2008, the Kaufmans opened a restaurant in Northfield, the Cherry Cafe and Catering Company. The restaurant ended up closing, but April did continue running the catering portion of the business out of their home. Jim, though, blamed April for the failure of both businesses and told her that they had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on them, which really didn't seem accurate. April turned her attention away from both businesses as her involvement in radio and her philanthropic interest grew. Of course, neither of these interests made any money. April was on the radio with King Arthur Gropper for three years. He first heard her when she co-hosted another show and was impressed with her.

She wanted to do veterans advocate work. So for one hour, once a week, King Arthur had her do what she wanted to do. She could bring in guests to interview and discuss whatever she wanted for that hour. So over the years, Jim and April's fighting intensified and became more frequent. April told friends that Jim fired a gun in their house one night, and she broke one of his ribs defending herself. Years later, a bullet hole was still in the couple's hardwood floor. But April had never called the police. One neighbor couple regretted not calling 911 when they had seen Jim through a window wrapping his hands around April's neck. The neighbors knew that this was a domestic fight, but it ended as soon as it had begun. They didn't know what to do. So they would always regret not calling the police that night. They thought, well, maybe if we called the police, we could have prevented this murder that eventually happened.

Because the marriage was not great, you know, there were affairs on both sides of the marriage. When Jim learned that April had fooled around with a close family friend, he threatened to put a bullet in both the man's head and April's. Now that time, police reports were filed. Another alleged lover later told police that April had said to him that if she was killed, Jim did it. After her death, police would identify several of April's lovers and interview each of them.

One relationship had actually become pretty serious, but she'd ended that relationship in the spring of 2012. But we've got a marriage that had been in trouble from the start. Pretty much, yeah. Both parties were having affairs. Not a good situation. It wasn't, and April realized this, but now she's in there, right? It's like the law of sunken costs. You put this much in, you don't want to give it up. Right, but there's going to come a point where you have to do something. Yeah, and she would realize that, but maybe a bit too late. And back in October of 2011...

while the Kaufmans were in Arizona with their friends, Ron and Mary Welser, to celebrate April's birthday. And on this visit, the Kaufmans had a terrible fight. That weekend, Kim had received a frantic call from her mom. April had found a stockpile of prescriptions for antipsychotic medications written in her name. Jim would later say it was simply a mistake on his part, a bad habit he had when calling in prescriptions for other people.

Sometimes he would mistakenly give April's name. Now, does that make any sense to you? It's just utter bullshit. That is very bullshitty. I sit down, maybe it's the end of the day, I'm calling in scripts for my patients, and just suddenly I put my wife's name on one of them. Yeah, it happens all the time, I guess. Yeah. Over the Christmas holiday, Jim threatened to go nuclear on Kim and the kids. Yeah, Kim had a couple kids. She married a guy named Randy. Nice guy. April said Jim was waving a gun around. And by this time, Kim and her husband, Randy, had already told April, Jim was not welcome for the holidays. He had too many outbursts, and he made people feel uncomfortable.

Well, I wouldn't want him around my kids. Seems pretty dangerous and not a great guy. So apparently the Christmastime fight happened after April had learned that Jim was not a veteran and she was really upset. She demanded a divorce then and he refused. So April threatened Jim with the one thing she knew was most important to him and that was his money. She was going to bankrupt him, she said. April's best friend, Lee Darby, witnessed Jim deny April a divorce that December after he had promised to give her their financial documents. And in February, April had gone to a divorce lawyer. She told friends she was also looking into a forensic accountant.

She had questions about how Jim was making his money because things looked very suspicious. And she had a decent head for business, so she knew things weren't normal. She knew how to look at books. Yeah, she'd run her own businesses, sure. So in the last months of April's life, Jim had extreme mood swings. He started agreeing to buy things. He planned to remodel the kitchen and furnish their Arizona home.

In March, he agreed to pay for April to have her breasts redone, her nose fixed, and a mini facelift. So she planned either to stay overnight at the hospital in the city or have a nurse stay with her. So I have to wonder, him agreeing to pay for this, was this some kind of plan to kill her? Like Martin McNeil when he killed his wife after her facelift. He was a doctor. But when April had her surgery, Kim waited to hear how the surgery went and she expected she'd get a call from the nurse, the doctor, or Jim. But instead, April called her herself. April sounded drowsy and really delirious and she was very difficult to understand. Kim heard her mom say, I'm coming home.

And Kim told April to put Jim on the phone. So he got on the phone and he just sounded angry and impatient. What do you want? He said. We're coming home. So Kim waited the hour it should have taken them to drive home from Philadelphia. Then she headed over to the house at Two Woodstock. When she went inside, her mother was in her bed and Jim was putting several fentanyl patches on her skin. So Kim was horrified and convinced he was trying to kill her. Not long before this had happened, April had mentioned to Kim that her eyebrows were falling out and she had wondered aloud if Jim was trying to poison her. So as far as I know, fentanyl patches are not something you put on a post-surgical patient.

Those are more for palliative or chronic pain. And he was putting more than one on her. I really think he was trying to kill her. I don't understand any other reason why he would do that. There's no reason to use not only the type of drug, but that many. Well, right. And that's for chronic pain. That's the kind of thing that comes out a little bit at a time. You put it on the skin and it lasts for like three days. I've put it on ill patients before. So it doesn't make any sense for an acute surgical patient in recovery. Nope, it doesn't. So just a few weeks later, the couple hosted a close friend and his daughter in Arizona and everything seemed fine on the visit. But actually behind the scenes, things were just getting worse.

Toward the end of her life, April began speaking more openly to others and details about the issues in their marriage began to get out. In her final weeks, April was honored at different functions for her volunteer work with veterans. But this had become uncomfortable for her to go to these public events because she knew that Jim had been posing as a veteran. So she didn't invite him to come along, but he often still showed up. A flyer was later found on April's desk accusing Jim of lying about his service. Other people were starting to realize Jim's lie just as April's profile was rising. April told one of her best friends that besides the issue of his posing as a veteran,

She had just learned about something with Jim's finances that she thought she could hold over his head. But she didn't tell any of her friends or family what that was. But it just sounds dangerous with this guy. Well, that information will come out eventually. Unfortunately, April will be dead by then. Yeah. So the weekend before her death, April appeared to have come to terms with the end of her marriage to Jim. He was acting so strangely and was more nervous than she had ever seen him. That final weekend, when April went to her daughter's house, she was despondent. She didn't know how to start over, she said. She was nearing 50. April wasn't just worried about how she could support herself. She felt sad.

thinking that by this time in her life, she would have been with the person she would roll with. But she couldn't any longer keep trying to overlook Jim's problems. Kim couldn't think of anything to say that would comfort her mother. But they both knew that April needed to get away from Jim. So April's murder was planned and cold-blooded. She was asleep in the bedroom she no longer shared with Jim. A little after 5 a.m. on May 10, 2012, Jim was downstairs getting ready to leave for work. As he did most every morning, he would stop at Wawa, a local convenience store, on his way to work. The store was just a few blocks from their house. The CCTV at the Wawa recorded him entering and leaving the store that morning.

Several hours later, a handyman who worked for the Kauffmans found April's body lying on the floor next to her bed. She had been shot twice. One bullet had shattered her elbow, the other had torn through her side, through a lung, her heart, and then the other lung. A medical examiner would later speculate that she had struggled out of the bed after being shot and then collapsed to the floor. She had bled to death after at least two liters of blood had poured from her wounds. The hitman was later identified as Francis Frank Mulholland. He was a drug addict who'd been offered $10,000 to commit this murder. That was enough money to support his drug habit for several months.

So he was driven to the home that morning by Joseph Irish Mulholland. So they shared the last name, but they weren't related. So Irish Mulholland said he dropped Frank off near the house in the dark that morning and told him he would be waiting for him a few blocks away. He was driving a white Silverado pickup. Irish would later describe himself as a reluctant getaway driver. Not only reluctant, but guilt-ridden. It would take nearly five years before investigators put the case together. But there were rumors and whispers from the day of her death. Dr. Kaufman had wanted his wife dead, and he had talked to more than a few people about it. It was well known in the underworld of Elwha biker gangs that there was a doctor willing to pay to have his wife killed.

So from the moment she learned that her mother had been killed, Kim was convinced that Jim Kaufman had something to do with her mother's death. Well, yeah, she's told more than one person that if any harm comes to her, her husband's responsible. I know, but that seems like that happens all the time, surprisingly. It's like they know it's coming, but there's nothing they can do. Yeah, but I'm still wondering why it took so long to get this guy indicted. Yes, I know. So April had kept a diary, but after she was murdered, it had disappeared. Its content might have had answers about what had happened to her and why, and it might have shown how much she knew about Jim's involvement in a pill mill ring that was linked to the motorcycle gang. Do you think this was the information that she had, that she hadn't divulged?

Yeah, I think it had to do with that. Yeah. Because she already knew about the veteran stuff. And I don't think she was going to report that. But I think she knew the pill mill and she thought maybe if she told him she knew about it, he'd let her divorce and leave. Right. But that's not how he thought. She didn't understand how his mind really worked. Apparently not. Medical records from Dr. Kaufman's office would show that he was writing prescriptions for oxycodone for members and associates of the Pagans. That's a motorcycle gang that really dominated the biker underworld in the Philadelphia, South Jersey area. Many people would describe the Pagans as one of the most violent gangs on the East Coast.

Years earlier, the pagans had gone to war against the Hell's Angels after they had attempted but failed to move into pagan territory in Philadelphia and New Jersey. Jim Kaufman liked to identify with these bikers, even though he really had very little in common with most of them. People like us, he would say while discussing the biker world with a member of the club. And the club member might nod and smile, but members would later laugh at him behind his back. Because Dr. Kaufman really saw himself as a tough guy. He would refer to his experiences in the Green Beret Army Unit and to his two tours of duty in Vietnam.

He would even show up in army fatigues and a beret while supporting April's veterans advocacy programs. He even co-hosted her radio show from time to time. His military background was one of the things that had drawn April to him, but none of it was true. And I must say it was pretty ballsy of him to go on the radio. Didn't he think he'd be found out? Almost like he's asking that he found out. Yeah. Although maybe he just got away with it so long. Maybe. He kind of convinced himself that it was real. Who knows? Why? But we do know that before she was killed, April had discovered his lies, at least some of them. And many who knew her said it was one of the reasons she wanted a divorce. And it was one of the reasons that she was murdered.

A law enforcement affidavit written five years after April's homicide included the claim that about a year before she was killed, April had become aware that Dr. Kaufman had never served in the armed forces at all. It was known that April was devastated by this, and she threatened to use this information to help with her divorce settlement. Authorities would also claim that she was threatening to expose his involvement in the pill mill operation, but there was really no evidence to support that she even knew about the illegal prescriptions. It's just a hunch. It seems like she did.

But the prescriptions were only part of Dr. Kaufman's illegal activities. Federal authorities linked him and another local doctor and a representative of a pharmaceutical company to a massive insurance fraud scheme that involved prescribing compound cream prescriptions for pain management. I've heard of these scams before. Compound cream scams have been described as the snake oil of the 21st century by an insurance watchdog group. Kaufman was also part of a separate insurance fraud scheme that involved unnecessary blood tests. So he would order a test and then receive a kickback from the lab that billed the patient's insurance company.

Both the compound cream and the blood test scams actually earned Kaufman tens of thousands of dollars in illegal income. This was in addition to his legitimate income from a pretty much thriving medical practice. He could have been happy with just that. He was also earning money from speaking engagements that he would do at pharmaceutical conventions. And then, of course, he was bringing in a lot of cash from the pill mill operation. So Kaufman seemed to view his practice of medicine just as a way to make money. He didn't seem to have any kind of morality or ethics. Nope, it's all about the money. Really seemed that way. So when Jim refused to agree to a divorce...

April had launched her own counterattack. She ran up his credit cards, in fact, maxed out of some of them. She spent thousands furnishing their home in Tucson, and she was planning a $60,000 kitchen renovation for their home in Linwood. The credit card bills that came in each month were April's way of pressuring Jim into letting her go. She hoped he would conclude that it would be cheaper to divorce her, but Jim decided it would be even cheaper to have her killed. Wow. It's just a financial decision. I'm sorry, you had to die. That's what everything was based on in his mind. He thought if his net worth was about $4.5 million, he thought April would get half of that in a divorce. So he put out word in the biker underworld that he was willing to pay to have her killed.

Price depended on who it was talking to, but the range was between $10,000 and $50,000. And even at that high end, Dr. Kaufman likely considered that a bargain. Scary bargain, but I know of a nice bargain, Dick. Yeah? What's a nice bargain? Magic Mind. These little green shots that give me energy, increased productivity, and improved concentration for very little money. And there's another bonus. They're delicious. So I've started drinking Magic Mind every morning, and I do love them. Have you seen the extra kind of pep in my step? All the time. So they help me stay focused and productive, and now I can confidently accomplish whatever I need to. And I don't have to drink coffee all day, so I'm not bouncing off the walls.

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dot com slash b-r-e-w-e-r-y magic mind it's kind of like the nectar of the energy gods but seems to be doing a good job on you thank you i'm impressed too So back to the story. A security camera on the wall of Mainland Regional High School, which is just one block from the Kaufman home, recorded traffic passing by in the early morning hours of May 10, 2012. Shortly after 5 a.m., a Silverado pickup truck, just like the one Irish Mulholland said he was driving that morning, passed by. And a few minutes later, a Ford Explorer, driven by Dr. Kaufman, took the same route. And that same SUV would be filmed in the parking lot of the Wawa convenience store a few minutes later.

Several minutes after the SUV had been recorded by the high school surveillance camera, a man was seen walking by. He was wearing white sneakers, dark sweatpants, and a dark hoodie. Although it couldn't be seen on camera, he was carrying a gun. This was Frank Mulholland, just minutes after shooting April Kaufman, and he was recorded leaving the scene. Yeah, that was when the crime really began to unravel. The drug-addled hitman got lost in the suburbs, and as it became light outside, the residents began to come out of their homes, while Frank Mulholland wandered around the neighborhood. Dressed all in black. Yeah, not suspicious at all. He finally did meet up with Joe Irish Mulholland, who had parked at a diner which was about a mile from the murder scene.

So once inside the cab of the pickup truck, Frank told Irish the job is done. Irish started the engine of his truck and pulled out of the diner parking lot. Then he took Route 9 toward the Villas, a community in lower Cape May County, where Frank lived. In the cab of the pickup, Frank talked about the murder. He said that the woman had screamed when he walked into the bedroom, and that he had put two bullets in her head. And this is the first of many conflicting accounts of how the murder of April Hoffman had happened. Oh yeah, we do know that she wasn't murdered with shots to the head. No, and that could just be explained because the sky was always high. But Irish used his cell phone to make a call as he drove Frank home.

And the call was to Freddy Algello, a leader of the Pagans, and the man Jim Kaufman had paid to have April killed. Their conversation that morning was shortened to the point. It's done, he told Algello. Okay, Algello replied, and that was it. So on the half-hour drive to the villas, Frank showed Irish the gun and also removed a wad of money from his pocket. It was $10,000 in cash, the money that he had been paid to kill April Kaufman, and he paid $1,000 to Irish. A few days later, Irish met Frank and they talked about what had happened. The hitman was angry at himself and really disgusted by what he had done. He was feeling a lot of guilt, and Frank actually never recovered.

It was said that he was on a bender for a year and a half after committing this murder. Guess he's not such a tough guy anyway. I don't think that Frank was a tough guy. I think he was just desperate for money. And Augello was kind of the tough guy who wanted money and would do anything. But we'll talk more about him. Yes, we will. Carol Weintraub heard about April Kaufman's death from a friend who had read about it in the newspaper the morning after it happened. A few days later, Carol sent a letter of condolence to Jim Kaufman, a man she had known years earlier. They had actually been high school sweethearts growing up in Atlantic City, but had drifted apart after they both went off to college. Like Jim, Carol had been married and divorced. She was a successful corporate recruiter.

The condolence letter and her reconnection with Jim 40 years after they had dated brought her into his world of drugs, sex, and murder. Jim and Carol were married less than one year after April's murder. Yeah, so Carol, I think, was pretty innocent and just kind of fell into a really bad situation here. I mean, why would you expect a kind of respected doctor to be involved in any of this? You really wouldn't unless you knew more about him. Right. Plus, she's also going on what you knew of as a high school kid. Well, yeah, right. That was a long time ago. Right.

Pagan gang member and chef, Andrew Glick, heard about the murder of April Kaufman when he got home from work on the afternoon of May 10, 2012. As he walked in the door of his home that he shared with his wife, she said to him, you won't believe it, I just saw on TV, your doctor's wife was murdered. Glick, who worked as a chef at a senior citizen home, was the president of the Cape May County chapter of the Pagan's Motorcycle Club at this time. He had succeeded Freddie Augello in that position. Glick was also part of that pill mill operation and was well aware that the doctor wanted to have his wife killed. Glick had turned down the murder-for-hire offer from Augello.

And he knew other members of the gang who had also turned down the job. It just wasn't something we would do, Glick would say later. Killing a woman? For what? She wasn't even part of our world, and we don't do that. But Glick knew there would be severe consequences once the police started to investigate April Kaufman's murder. So for him, he knew this was the beginning of some real trouble in his life. So he was quite a character. Drug user, pagan, but then also loved the old people where he worked. Yeah, and had a job, the chef. Yep. Well, with that kind of underground stuff, I think you're supposed to have a job. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you gotta have something for the taxman to know that you're paying taxes.

That's right. So April Kaufman's murder was an aberration in the wealthy community of Linwood. The speculation that started that day would continue for the next six years. In just days, investigators are picking up information that linked the pagans to the murder. Then there are also stories about the relationship between the doctor and his wife, and reports that April Kaufman had told several people that her husband had threatened to kill her. But it's going to be years before anyone gets charged with April's murder. Yeah, and like you, I really don't understand why it took so long. Reports filed by Detective Michael Mattioli paint a picture of what authorities saw, heard, and did in the early stages of the investigation.

Mattioli, assigned to the major crime squad of the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office, was one of the first on the scene and had spent the day gathering evidence and taking statements. He spoke on at least three occasions with Jim Kaufman, who told a story that conflicted with some things he would later say. So these discussions took place on the lawn outside the Kaufman home as neighbors and the media gathered there. And the sense from those who knew Jim Kaufman was that he always felt he was the smartest person in the room and was able to control or manipulate any situation to his own advantage. So with his wife dead on the floor of their bedroom, it was important for him to come across as the loving, grieving, and shocked spouse.

Detective Mattioli wrote that Kaufman described the last night he spent with his wife as a typical evening at home. He said he arrived home around 5.30. April had done a radio show that afternoon, he told Mattioli, then stopped at a local pub with some friends from work. She got home around 6. Jim said he opened a bottle of wine and then cooked steaks on the grill. He and April spent some time in their hot tub, then went to bed where they made love. While he would later claim that he had spent the night in bed with his wife, Mattioli said Kaufman told him that he moved to a separate bedroom because he snored and would sometimes keep his wife awake.

So this is the first of several conflicting details as the doctor told the story of his wife's last evening alive. He said he watched part of the Phillies game on TV before returning to the master bedroom to give his wife a kiss goodnight. April, he said, was sitting up in her bed working on her laptop. He said he returned to the separate bedroom down the hall where he watched some news on TV before he fell asleep. Yeah, not only is he conflicting himself there, but he's conflicting the relationship that April described to the people close to her. They wouldn't be making love and giving kisses goodnight from what April was saying about the relationship.

So after waking on the morning of the murder, Jim Kaufman said that he had showered and got dressed. He'd left for work around 5.30. April was sleeping at that time, he said, and he knew she was alive because she had stirred. He said he left through the garage and the front door was locked. He then recalled how he had stopped at the Wawa on his way to the hospital to pick up a newspaper, but the papers hadn't been delivered yet. At the hospital, he checked to see if any of his patients had been admitted, then spent some time doing paperwork before going to his office. He was at his office before 7 a.m. Most of his office staff arrived around 7.30. After seeing several patients, Kaufman told Mattioli, he tried to call April, but he got no answer.

At 9.30, he said he called Billy Gonzalez. That's a handyman who did odd jobs around the house and was supposed to show up that morning to care for the parrots in the aviary on the first floor of the house. Gonzalez would later tell investigators that he arrived at the Kaufman house a little before 9, and he entered through the front door, which was unlocked. April frequently left the front door unlocked so that Gonzalez and others, who were hired to do work around the house, would have access. Gonzalez confirmed that Dr. Kaufman called him twice that morning.

And he said in the five years he had worked for the Kaufmans, he had never before received a call from the doctor. In fact, he said the only times he had ever spoken to the doctor on the phone were times when April would hand him the phone in the middle of a conversation she was having with her husband because the doctor wanted to tell him something about a job or chore that he wanted Billy to do. So the handyman was hesitant to go to the master bedroom, but Dr. Kaufman had insisted. After the doctor's second call, Billy Gonzalez went in the bedroom and found April's body sprawled out on the floor. He called the doctor back, and that's when Kaufman told him to call 911.

Now, during the course of his interview, Gonzalez also told the detective about a strange message that he had received early that morning. He said that when he woke up, he had a text message from Miss April. The text had arrived at 3.27 a.m. and read, See you in the a.m. Detective Marioli wrote that Billy Gonzalez found the message strange for several reasons. First, he was just with April on the previous day, Wednesday, May 9th, working at the house and going food shopping with her. That afternoon, April dropped him off at home at 2 p.m. on her way to a radio show. And when she dropped him off, she told him that she would see him in the morning. Also, every Thursday, he worked for the Kaufmans at their house.

If they wanted him to work other days, April would call him to see if he was available. So Gonzales said it was not normal for April to text him at night. In fact, she had never texted him past 10 p.m., and it was always about something specific that she needed him to do. It was never a see-in-the-morning kind of text. For the most part, Billy Gonzales' story matched the story Jim Kaufman had told investigators that day. Kaufman said he rushed home from the office after telling Gonzales to call 911. He said when he entered the house and ran up the stairs, he saw his wife lying on the floor of the bedroom and knew she was dead.

Kaufman said he never entered the bedroom or touched his wife because as a doctor, he'd seen enough dead bodies to know in someone who's dead. But Kaufman would later change his story, claiming he had felt for his wife's pulse. That, he said, was how he had known she was dead. Okay, so what do you think of that? Well... You think that he's going to look at her and say, oh yeah, I know she's dead. It's his wife. Even though they were getting a divorce, wouldn't you check? Wouldn't you try and do something? Oh, you'd have to check. And if you cared at all, you would try CPR. But I also would take issue that from a distance he could tell she was dead. Oh, absolutely. I don't think that's true at all. No.

So after the medical examiner arrived at the scene and determined that April had died of gunshot wounds, he went outside and spoke to the doctor, telling him that his wife had been shot. Kaufman would claim that he only heard rumors that his wife had been shot, and that it would be weeks before he knew that that was the cause of death. So he's contradicting the medical examiner as well, who has no reason to lie. Right. Why worry about changing the story? I just don't understand why he would lie. I don't know. Well, I think it's just because when you're lying, it's hard to keep your lies straight, is what I think the issue was. Well, sure, that is. Yeah. But he's not thinking that. He's making the lies. He's not thinking about, geez, if I keep telling the story, I'm going to get caught. Well, no, but he changes the story.

Yeah, that's what trips you up. Detective Mattioli also said he was waiting for a search warrant and asked what a value was in the house. Kaufman said his wife had jewelry valued at about half a million dollars and that he had an extensive gun collection. The detective said Kaufman went to a neighbor's house and left a cell phone number where he could be reached. Kaufman was told he would not be able to enter his house until a search had been completed and the crime scene was processed. Several hours later, Mattioli said, he was told that the doctor was back outside and wanted to talk to him. Mattioli said that he went outside and that the doctor asked if the detective could get him something from inside the house. Mattioli said that would depend on what it was. Kaufman asked if he could get him a bottle of Canadian Club whiskey and a bottle of sweet vermouth, which were in the first floor bar area. So I think that's weird. Get me something from my house. Sure, what is it? A bottle of whiskey and a bottle of vermouth. Yeah, couldn't he just go to the store? Anyway, the detective turned that down.

But later the doctor asked for and was given his wallet and his heart medications, which makes more sense. That's what I would have asked for first, right? Right. Kaufman also joked with the detective at that point and told him if he had to handcuff him to be careful because he had a bad shoulder. So that to me is kind of a sign of guilt. Yeah, careful with those cuffs. Yeah, now the detective did get some crucial pieces of evidence in the early stages of the investigation that weren't acted on until later. But it did help to build the case against Jim Kaufman and Freddie Augiello in the long run.

So one important piece of information came after they checked phone records to determine the origins of the phone calls from Kaufman to the handyman Billy Gonzalez that morning. Dr. Kaufman claimed he was calling from his office at 11.25 when he asked Gonzalez to check on his wife. Gonzalez called back at 11.26 and told Dr. Kaufman that his wife was on the floor unconscious. And that was when Kaufman told the handyman to call 911. But by checking cell pings, the detective was able to determine that Jim Kaufman was within a block or two of his home when those two calls were made. So Kaufman was actually around the corner from his home when the 911 call went out.

So Jim Coffman was already on his way, too, and really practically had arrived at the murder scene when he told Gonzalez to check on his wife and when he told him to call 911. Sounds like he knew what was going on. Certainly does. And this was consistent with the report of a neighbor, Millie Tate. Millie Tate said she was pulling out of her driveway on her way to work when Jim Coffman drove by at high speed. She said the doctor never drove like that. She said she had pulled out of her driveway and was driving up the street when she saw flashing lights and heard sirens from a police car and an ambulance in the distance heading her way. She told Detective Mattioli that she decided to turn around.

Yeah, so why is he sitting there? At first, she said he looked like he was talking on his phone. Then he got out and stood behind the vehicle and looked down the street. So as the police car and ambulance approached, she said, he suddenly ran into the house. She said she saw him rush through the front door of his house, and a few minutes later, she saw the doctor come out of the house and collapse onto the lawn. So she went over to him and asked what was wrong, and without looking at her, he said, April's dead. Millie Tate told Detective Mattioli,

that she and April had grown close over the years that they were neighbors, and that April had often discussed her marital problems with her. She said April once told her she wanted to leave her husband. About five years earlier, she said, April had showed her bullet holes in the dining room floor, claiming that Jim had shot up the floor when they were having an argument. Millie Tate also told the detective that April was afraid of her husband, and had told her, if I get killed, he did it. The incident described by Tate could have been related to any one of dozens of domestic incidents that April's daughter, Kim, described in the tumultuous relationship between her mother and stepfather. Millie Tate said April believed her husband was having an affair. Jim Kaufman repeatedly denied this after his wife's death. Kim admitted that her mother had had at least four affairs during her 10-year marriage to Jim Kaufman. Her lovers included a contractor working on their home in Arizona, a gardener who did work on the Linwood home, an Atlantic County Hospital executive, and the 22-year-old son of a doctor who was a close friend of Jim Kaufman's. I bet that didn't make Jim very happy. I bet it didn't.

These affairs were part of the stories known in the Kauffman social circles as the investigation continued. By July of 2012, after Millie Tate had told Detective Marioli about April's fears, the major crime squad detective and others working on the case had heard about a murder contract that had been put out on April's life by her husband. In a report, Marioli described an interview with a confidential informant who told him about a conversation he had had a few weeks before the homicide with a Pagans Motorcycle Club member known as Slasher. Yeah, the informant said that Slasher told him about a doctor from Linwood who was writing dirty scripts for him. He said the doctor was willing to pay a lot of money to have his wife killed. The informant said he was told it would be easy because the front door would be open and the victim would be asleep. The informant said Slasher asked him if he would be willing to commit the murder or if he knew anyone who would do it. The informant said he wasn't interested, and based on that tip, Mattioli contacted gang unit investigators who linked the nickname Slasher to a man named Glenn Seeler.

So authorities determined that Seeler lived with a woman named Cheryl Pisa. Mattioli checked the medical records in Jim Kaufman's practice and determined that Seeler, Andrew Glick, and Paul Bogano, re-members of the Pagan Motorcycle Club, were regularly receiving scripts for oxycodone. Less than two months after the murder of April Kaufman, investigators were making connections to them and other members of this pill mill. So in her conversations with investigators, Kim spelled out the case against her stepfather, telling Detective Mattioli that her mother wanted to end the marriage, but that Kaufman had threatened to go nuclear on our family if she divorced him. She said her mother told her that Kaufman said if she left him, he would kill her.

In a statement recorded May 30, 2012, Kim restated all the things she had been telling investigators over the last three weeks. Some of the events she had witnessed herself. Others she had heard about from her mother, who talked to her several times a day. She said her mother had misread her husband's intent and told her not to worry about his threats. The marriage, she said, had been coming apart for years. In February, she said her mother was upset when Jim failed to buy her an anniversary gift, but instead had spent $2,000 on a new gun for himself. She also said her mother was livid after learning that her husband had used her name to write scripts for a 90-day supply of antipsychotic medication that he was taking.

Kim said her mother thought her husband was going to a psychiatrist, but learned that he had stopped the sessions. Instead, he had decided to self-medicate and used her name on the scripts. I gotta leave him, April Kaufman told her daughter. I can't stand this anymore. Yeah, in the morning when Kim learned her mother was dead, she said her first thought was that Jim's threats had come to fruition. And when Kaufman called her in a panic and told her, Mom's dead, Mom's dead, her reply to him was, What have you done? She immediately knew that he was involved.

Also, according to Kim, as funeral arrangements were being made, Kaufman told her on the Saturday morning after the murder, I can't be arrested. If they arrest me, I'm just going to kill myself. And there were other very disturbing comments she overheard as family members and friends were sitting Shiva, the Jewish custom of mourning after a death. She said Jim told some friends, yeah, they don't have anything on me. So remember the pagan biker gang member Andrew Glick? His nickname was Chef because he cooked at a nursing home. Well, he was really worked up about what his wife had told him and what he had seen in the television news report about the murder for hire of the doctor's wife. April Kaufman had been murdered.

Fellow pagan member Freddy Augello had finally found someone to do it, but Glick didn't know who. He thought it would only be a matter of time, though, before the police were at their doors. He told Freddy it was a bad idea, but Freddy had wanted the money. Freddy took $50,000 from the doctor and paid Frankie $10,000. Freddy had taken the contract to have April Kaufman killed, but Glick and anyone else who knew him knew that Freddy wasn't going to do the job himself.

He was too smart for that and had found somebody else to do it. And for this, Dr. Kaufman had promised Freddie the $50,000 and agreed to write scripts for oxycodone. Glick had gotten involved in the pill mill in late 2011, and he was still enjoying the proceeds from that deal. It had made him a lot of money. Glick had a history of diabetes, which really legitimized his visit to the endocrinologist. He got a prescription for medication to treat his diabetes and would also get a script for 120 30 milligram oxycodone tablets. He would continue to receive scripts and sell these pills for five years. Even after the murder, he continued to do it.

It wasn't until years later, May 2017, that there was any real movement in solving April's murder. This is five years that have gone by. Yeah, a lot of time. Atlantic County Prosecutor Damon G. Tyner reexamined all open Atlantic County murder cases dating back to 1975. Prosecutor's office then filed a motion in court to get a sample of Jim Coffman's DNA. On June 13, 2017, Jim Coffman was arrested at his Egg Harbor Township medical office. This was after a standoff in which Coffman took out a 9mm handgun and threatened to kill himself. Police said that the doctor did not pull a gun on the police, but on himself.

FBI agents had showed up at Kaufman's medical office to execute a search warrant, but when he was presented with a search warrant, Kaufman held up the handgun and threatened to commit suicide. He clearly thought he was going to be arrested for April's murder. Oh yeah, he was freaking out. I think he really thought they were coming to get him for the murder. So he was eventually taken into custody after talking to a hostage negotiator.

He was taken to the hospital where he was medically evaluated and then released. Kaufman was then taken to the police station where he was charged with possession of an unlawful weapon, possession of a weapon for unlawful purposes, obstructing a law enforcement investigation, and possession of hollow point bullets. A Superior Court judge ordered Kaufman held in jail until his trial. He also had to have a professional evaluation and his medical license was suspended. So being tossed in jail was a way for the police to keep him under watch while they got more evidence. Absolutely. But, you know, the murder was, of course, the worst thing. But this pill mill is pretty serious. You know, these drugs kill a lot of people. We know about this. So the police had several search warrants for properties that were affiliated with Dr. Kaufman.

And they searched for information related to the medical fraud and the homicide of his wife. He pleaded not guilty to weapons and obstruction charges. On November 1st, 2017, Andrew Glick worked a 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. shift at the retirement home. Then he swung by an apartment he had leased to collect his drugs and guns. He also swung by his girlfriend's apartment, where he had hidden drugs and cash in four lamps. Okay. This guy's a trip. He brought everything back to his house to inventory. He had rifles, including an AR-15 assault weapon, handguns, and several hundred rounds of ammunition. He also had more than one pound of meth, several ounces of cocaine.

and $62,000 in cash. That afternoon, a regular customer came by his house and bought two ounces of meth. Now, this guy had originally called and said he wanted five ounces, but then when he got there, he said he only had enough money for two ounces. In hindsight, Glick realized that the guy must have been working with the police. If he asked for five and only took two, then they would be sure to find drugs in the house when they raided it. They found a lot more. Glick was out in the shed behind his house when he heard a vehicle pull up the long driveway. Yeah, outside, Glick was met with several police vehicles and more than a dozen police officers who were heading for his front door.

After he was handcuffed, he was let inside and sat on a couch as his house and property were searched. They found all the drugs and guns and ammunition and cash. Glick was taken outside, put in an SUV, and driven to the FBI office in Northfield. Glick's lawyer was called, and they almost immediately talked about making a deal. Glick was told he was facing drug and weapons charges that could keep him in jail for 40 years. So Glick spent about a week in jail while the details of a cooperation agreement were worked out.

He was charged with two counts of possession and two counts of intent to distribute narcotics. On November 9th, he was out on bail. He had agreed to wear a wire and to try and get Freddy Augello to talk about April Kaufman's murder. Now, Augello and Glick were close, so this was a big thing to do. It wasn't easy. Glick met with Augello in the parking lot of a Wendy's in Northfield. Augello wanted to know what had happened, and Glick told him he'd been busted for drugs, but then he downplayed the case. He told Augello that his lawyer thought he had a chance to beat the rap. That was a lie, of course, but it was just the first of many that he would be telling Freddy Augello over the next two months.

So that meeting in the Wendy's parking lot would be followed by many others for the next 60 days or so. At each meeting with Valgello, Glick recorded conversations for the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office and the FBI. Glick said he knew when he had agreed to cooperate that his life as a pagan member was over. Being a snitch was the worst thing a member could do. But he did it, and it was a matter of his own survival. He didn't want to spend the rest of his life in prison. So he agreed to cooperate and tell the police what he knew about the murder. And they, in turn, agreed to lower the charges to drug possession and distribution, and to tell his judge about the cooperation at the time of his sentencing.

And so Glick ended up having all of the charges against him dropped. He had worn a wire to get Ogelo, and several months later he took the witness stand in the case against Ogelo. Glick's testimony and the recordings he made were the foundation on which the case against Freddie Ogelo was built. There's not one tape where Ogelo overtly incriminated himself. There were rambling conversations in which he and Glick talked around the specifics of April's murder, but some of the tapes had clear references to Ogelo's desire to have Jim Kaufman killed in prison. Ogelo, the tape showed, was worried about Kaufman cooperating.

and about what he might have been telling authorities. It's kind of funny because he's worried about Kaufman doing that when Glick, his so-called buddy, is doing exactly that. Yeah, right. Yeah. And on one tape, Ogelo confronted Glick, asking him straight out if he was wearing a wire. Glick denied it, and Ogelo later apologized. Yeah, so that was kind of, uh, had to be tough. Glick wore two recording devices each time he met with Ogelo. One looked like a credit card, and the other looked like a pen. He wore both in the front pocket of his shirt.

Sometimes he also had a small camera that looked like a button. The easiest time to get a video recording was when they met at a restaurant and Augello was sitting across the table from Glick. But if Freddy ever patted him down, the whole operation would be blown. But Augello never did that. All of the meetings happened with surveillance teams of FBI agents or detectives from the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office nearby. Anytime Glick got a call from Augello, detectives were listening. So after Augello said he attempted to recruit mobsters to kill Jim Kaufman without success, Glick claimed that his Mexican drug cartel suppliers were willing to have Kaufman killed. And Augello was happy with that plan and encouraged Glick to follow through with it.

All of that, of course, was fake, but the conversations reinforced the murder conspiracy charge that would eventually be filed against Augello for plotting to have the doctor murdered. Augello said that some members of the club were involved in a pill mill with Kaufman, but said that that had nothing to do with him. But he did say he was worried about the pressure that seemed to be building up in April Kaufman's murder case. Augello said repeatedly that prescribing oxycodone, as Kaufman had done, was unethical, even though it might not have been illegal. Augello pointed out on several of the tapes that he was never a patient and said, I'm not going to jail for murdering some woman I didn't murder.

To add more pressure, Glick told Algello that after he was released on bail in the drug case, investigators sarcastically told him to have a good Thanksgiving, implying that it might be his last as a free man. They also said they intended to solve the April Kaufman murder by the end of the year. Right. So I'm just going to talk for a second about the series we watched on Discovery Plus called Doctor's Orders, which focused a lot on Glick. Yes, it did. It did. And it was really just kind of funny because after the Thanksgiving thing, they showed Glick going to Algello's for Christmas with his family or whatever and how close they were, you know.

He's there with the family. It's all, like, very close, enjoying the holiday. And all along, Blick is recording his conversations with Ogello and feeling pretty guilty about it. Yeah, but it's going to save his own skin, so he'll do it. Yes, absolutely. That's all it was about. On January 9th of 2018, the Atlantic County prosecutor announced that arrests had been made in connection with April's murder. The people charged included Freddie Ogello, Irish Mulholland, and Dr. Jim Kaufman, who was already in custody.

The shooter, Frank Mulholland, had died of a heroin overdose in 2013. Irish was one of the two men who found Frank's dead body in 2013. And in court, Augello suggested that Irish gave Frank the heroin that caused his death. Investigators found packets of heroin in a syringe at the scene, as well as an empty prescription bottle with Irish's name on it. And the prescription for the painkillers had been written by none other than Dr. Kaufman. So Irish would end up testifying against Freddie Augello.

And in a press conference, the prosecutor said that Dr. Kaufman wanted his wife dead because she was threatening to expose the pill mill ring and because she wanted a divorce. Ten days after the arrest, Jim Kaufman was scheduled to appear in Atlantic County Superior Court to enter a plea to charges of murder, conspiracy, and drug dealing. In the courtroom, his new wife Carol was shocked by her husband's appearance. He was dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, and he looked old and haggard. His hair, which he used to dye, was white. She watched as the prosecutor outlined an illegal drug ring run by the pagans. And at the top of the pyramid was Jim Kaufman, the doctor who had written the prescriptions. Yeah, I really believe she was surprised by that.

So she hasn't seen him for a while, huh? No, I don't think she visited him. Kaufman pleaded not guilty and was denied bail. On January 26, 2018, Carol got a call from a jail chaplain notifying her that her husband had committed suicide in prison. So Jim Kaufman's suicide was carefully planned and he was found face down in his cell with a torn piece of bed sheet twisted into a rope that was looped around his neck and around the bunk. A long suicide note also was found near his bed. The newspaper reported that Kaufman was not on suicide watch but was being held in maximum security because of the murder charge against him. So Carol wasn't really believing this. She thought that...

The jail was negligent in not keeping a better eye on him. And there were even rumors that he had been murdered. There seemed to be some active attempts at doing that, or at least some plans. Well, sure, there were, yeah. The other thing, Kaufman had told people at the time of his wife's murder that if he was ever arrested for it or fingered for it, he would kill himself. He said a lot of that. He said it at the standoff, too, remember? Yeah. Yeah. So why wasn't he on suicide watch? That's a good question, yeah. I don't think they decided he wasn't a risk, if that's what you're asking. Okay. I'm not sure why. Maybe they just didn't believe him.

Or maybe his psychological evaluation didn't show that as a possibility. Could be. But Carroll definitely believed they were negligent. So that summer, in preparation for the trial, the prosecutor's office prepared their star witness, Andrew Glick. He continued to be debriefed going over the meetings he had had with Augello and listening to and explaining the taped conversations that he had made while he was wearing a wire. The defendants in the case firmed up their deals, entering guilty pleas to related charges and agreeing to testify for the prosecution. So Glenn Slasher-Sealer, Cheryl Pisa, Beverly Augello, Tabitha Chapman, and Irish Mulholland all agreed to testify.

They're all testifying against Augello, so Irish admitted that he had driven Frank Mulholland to and from the murder scene on the morning April Kaufman was shot. He claimed he did it because Fred Algello told him if he didn't do it, he would be next. After the murder, he said Fred would occasionally ask him, how's the junkie doing? And at one point discussed taking out Frank Mulholland. Irish said he warned Frank to stay away from Algello, but by then it was too late. Distraught over his role in April's murder, Frank was out on a bender for a year and a half before dying of a drug overdose. He also described Fred Algello's growing paranoia as the murder investigation began to close in on them. He said Algello had told him that he had people who could take care of Jim Kaufman in jail.

and also expressed concern that maybe Andrew Glick was cooperating with the police. So he was on to something there. Yes, he was. So opening statements in the trial of the state of New Jersey versus Ferdinand Freddy Orgelo began on Monday, September 17, 2018. Even though Jim Kaufman was dead and would not be on trial, the state believed he had sought out a hit man to kill his wife. So the prosecutors would prove that Orgelo was equally culpable for arranging April's murder. The prosecutor explained to jurors that April had found out about the crimes of her husband and that she threatened to divorce him and to use what she had learned as leverage. Which, you know.

No victim shaming, of course, but that wasn't a smart thing to do. I think she underestimated him, if nothing else. Obviously. Yeah. Now, the state told the jury that April had been killed around 5.30 a.m. on May 10, 2012, by Frank Mulholland, who was hired by Fred Augello at the direction of Jim Kaufman, and that Irish was his driver. Andrew Glick, the star witness, was on the stand for three full days, reviewing the hours of recordings from The Wire he had worn between November 2017 and January 2018. At some points, as the recorded conversations played in the courtroom, revealing personal moments between the two men, Glick seemed to cringe.

but he didn't hold back describing Augello as manipulative and someone who could get dirty work done without getting his own hands dirty. He explained how, in plotting to kill April, Fred was motivated by greed, desperate to keep that stream of cash coming in from the pills. Because Andrew and Augello had both done really well with that money from selling the pills. It's a lucrative business. It really was. They bought motorcycles and a van and just all kinds of stuff. So Glickseeler and Mulholland all testified that they were approached about killing April. They described the varying amounts that they were offered, and the original sum Kaufman had offered to Augello was $50,000 for the job. Depending on who Augello asked, he would offer $20,000 or $30,000 to that potential hitman. And we know with Frank, he only gave him $10,000.

The men described how the prescription arrangement between Kaufman and Augello worked. All four said that they were afraid for their lives, and that's why they cooperated. Seeler testified that Augello had told him about the hit before it happened. He said he was in contact with the doctor, and the doctor would leave his house around 5 or 6 a.m. every morning. So when Irish, the driver, took the stand, he was the only person still alive who'd been directly involved with the murder. April Kaufman, the murder target, was dead. Dr. Kaufman was dead. And so was Frank Mulholland, the man authorities said was the hitman. But according to Irish, all of it had been done at the direction of Fred Augello.

and Augello was alive and sitting in the courtroom on trial for arranging April's murder, for the attempted murder of James Kaufman, and from charges stemming from the pill mill. So April's daughter Kim ended the testimony for the prosecution, describing her mother's tumultuous and dangerous marriage. During cross-examination, Kim was asked whether Kaufman was abusive and controlling, and whether she thought Kaufman could have been capable of killing April himself. She said that she believed he was. Yes, I guess that was just a shot at trying to get Augello for hiring the hitman, saying, you know, maybe the doctor did it himself. Right. The defense called just one witness. That was Jessica Bonner, an investigator with the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender.

So Bonner testified that hundreds of phone calls between Kaufman and a burner phone could have been made by Glenn Seeler, not Augello. As both sides rested, the state asked for a change to the charges on which the jury would deliberate. And the judge ruled that the prosecution no longer had to prove that Frank Mulholland was the actual killer. The judge made changes to the charges that included expanding who might have killed April Kaufman for Augello to still be found guilty of murder. So specifically, rather than allege that Augello had hired Frank Mulholland, the prosecutor asked that Frank Mulholland's name be replaced with by another. So it could have been anyone.

And this was a real big blow to the defense's case. Certainly would be. It took only two hours for jurors to reach a verdict in the case of Fred O'Gello. Inside the jury room, two jurors had some reservations at first, but they came around to agree with the others rather quickly. Letters from Fred O'Gello in Atlantic County Jail and the tapes from his conversations with Andrew Glick had a big impact on their decision. Jurors said the contents of the letters and the wire conversations that played for three days in court were what led to their unanimous decision to find O'Gello guilty on all counts. Yeah, the verdict came in so quickly that some members of the media missed it.

They'd left the courthouse assuming, well, the jury's going to be deliberating for at least a day. But that's not what happened. Kim and her husband were on their way out of the courthouse when someone ran up to them to tell them that a verdict was in. So when the judge read the verdict, Kim cried. Aguillo was really angry and he yelled, This is for the media. I did not kill Mrs. Kaufman, nor did I pay anyone to kill Mrs. Kaufman. And even though it was Aguillo's trial, for many it was also a judgment against Dr. Jim Kaufman. The prosecutor said this to the public after the verdict.

Ultimately, Dr. Kaufman was tried by a higher jury. It cost him his life. He couldn't live with the weight of the evidence that would have been presented against him on this date. I don't think much of Jim Kaufman. I think of the victim, April Kaufman, all the family members that were affected by his actions. I think of his role in flooding the market with oxycodone. His legacy is all of the tragedy he left behind, all of the lives that were lost, and the people who were affected by his male practice of medicine.

So Fred Algallo never took the stand during the trial, but prior to his sentencing, he was allowed to address the court after Kim gave her victim impact statement. And Kim left the room when Algallo began to speak. I'm no John Gotti, Algallo said. I didn't murder Mrs. Kaufman. I didn't send anyone to murder Mrs. Kaufman. This whole thing is a farce. There's no justice for April until you can dig Francis Mulholland out of his grave. When Algallo was done, Kim re-entered the courtroom to hear Algallo's sentencing. He was sentenced to life in prison for his role in leading the pill mill, plus 30 years for murder, so he won't be eligible for parole until he's 117 years old. Which he will never be.

So prison for life. So after the trial, Kim changed her mother's headstone. She removed beloved wife and the name Kaufman and replaced it with April Christine, loving mother and best friend, beloved grandmother and friend to all. So before we wrap this up and get to feedback, a few things about doctors who run pill mills and the punishments they face. If Jim Kaufman had just divorced his wife, and if he went on trial for just these drug charges, you know he may have received a pretty light sentence. So why don't you share with us what you read? In an article from the William & Mary Law School in 2020, Adam Grishowitz wrote about two pill mill doctors who flooded the streets with dangerous opioids and got vastly different sentences. The evidence against both doctors was overwhelming. They had each sold millions of opioid pills.

Both doctors charged addicted patients hundreds of dollars in cash for office visits that involved no physical exams or diagnostic tests. Instead, the doctors just handed the patients opioids in exchange for cash. To maximize their income, both doctors conspired with street dealers to bring in fake patients so that the doctors could write even more prescriptions. So these guys are just scumbags. They certainly are. Both doctors made millions of dollars profiting off of people addicted to opioids. Both doctors were convicted by juries. The first doctor got a five-year sentence, and the second doctor got a 35-year sentence. So that's a vast difference. 30 years.

This article reviewed 25 of the worst opioid pill mill doctors from the last five years. In more than half the cases, judges had sentences well below the federal sentencing guidelines, decades less, in fact, than would be expected. The sentencing variations in pill mill cases was not driven by traditional things like the trial penalty or the defendant's criminal history. Instead, the sentencing variations were based primarily by the age of the doctors. That sounds incredible, doesn't it? It really does. So it turns out that many of the pill mill doctors are in their 60s and 70s, and judges seem to be tailoring their sentences so older doctors will not spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Also, prosecutors have a difficult time proving the drug quantities against white-collar doctors rather than street dealers because the doctors can claim that some of their prescriptions were legitimate. So this results in difficulty punishing pill mill doctors fairly in comparison to street drug dealers. White-collar doctors, especially those of an advanced age, are given shorter sentences. Yeah, so it's not really only the age. It's just that white-collar criminals are treated better. Oh, sure. They really are. It's almost like they're giving them a professional respect, which they do not deserve. No, not in the least. Not in the least. I mean, they're actually worse than the street dealers in many ways. And don't even get me started on the big corporations. They're the worst.

I won't get you started. Okay. So we're going to do feedback, but just one quick piece of housekeeping. If you're a TCB member, a subscriber to the premium show with automatic payments made with PayPal, we need you to go onto our website, tiegrabber.com to update your payment information. And that way you'll avoid missing out on your ad free and bonus shows. Now you can still use PayPal or you can switch to a credit card, but we had a website update and unfortunately it purged some payment info. There's a post with instructions on the website and there's a link in our show notes to help you with this. And if you aren't a member.

What are you waiting for? We have bonus shows and ad-free versions of our regular episodes and some really interesting cases in our archives and coming up. So you can subscribe at tiegrabber.com or you can subscribe on our Patreon page. Okay, let's do feedback. It's time for listener feedback.

So let's start out with a voicemail from friend of the show, Bex. Hey Dick and Jill, it's Bex. Haven't called in a while, but I have a new episode suggestion about the Blackstone sisters. I'm not sure if you've heard the story. I don't want to give too much away, but it's out of California. And TV producer Jill Blackstone and her sister Wendy live together. And an emergency services call found, can't get to the house and found one of them dead. The other almost unconscious, I think. And it's just a very fascinating story. There's actually a whole podcast about it. I think there's like five or six episodes.

if you Google the Blackstone Sisters. So check it out. Maybe you'll be interested and keep up the great work. I'm really enjoying your Patreon, by the way, and I highly recommend to anyone to sign up for your Patreon because you get an extra episode every month and it's fantastic. Thanks so much, Bex. So she even gave us a little plug for our Patreon, which is really nice. And I know you were very nice on trying not to give away too much, and I probably will give away a little bit more. So according to CBS News, Jill Blackstone, who was 59, was sentenced to eight years in state prison following her plea to one felony count of voluntary manslaughter involving the March 2015 death of 49-year-old Wendy Blackstone, along with three felony counts of animal cruelty involving three dogs, two who died.

So in an April 2018 statement announcing Jill Blackstone's arrest, Los Angeles police said homicide detectives believed the motive was Jill's frustration of being forced to provide Wendy with long-term care as well as the associated financial hardship. So Jill Blackstone told Los Angeles police detectives in an interview that her sister had profound vision and hearing loss. She told police that she had devoted her life to saving animals and saving people and helping Wendy and would never want to bring her harm. In this interview from a hospital bed, she said she had used a charcoal barbecue to make burgers, then went to get something and remembered falling in the driveway. She said she awoke in broad daylight to the sun beating down on her neck, called a friend and told her she thought she was having a stroke because she couldn't walk. But police contended that Jill Blackstone, who worked on such programs as the Jerry Springer Show, set the garage on fire, killing her sister and two of their dogs, and staged it as an accident. The coroner's office concluded that Wendy died from inhalation of combustion and alprazolome. So that's Xanax, right? Yes. So during a five-year hearing in 2019 in which Blackstone was ordered to stand trial on a murder charge, an L.A. police detective testified that a note allegedly written by Blackstone was found near her dead sister's hand.

Police also found notes taped with black duct tape to a black trash can, including one that warned to enter carefully and advise that both parties do not have resuscitation orders. So Superior Court judge noted that a reasonable inference could be drawn from the evidence that Jill Blackstone had planned what was to be a murder-suicide, with the suicide going awry, and added that the nature of the notes and signs left at the scene clearly supports such an inference. So that's just very sad. Isn't it? It really is. So that does sound fascinating, and we'll look into it. We will. Thanks, Bex. And next we have an email from Christy with a case suggestion. I'm going to let you read that one, Dick.

Okay, the letter says, Hi, my name is Christy from Melbourne, Australia. I love True Crime Brewery. I think it is the best true crime podcast for a range of reasons. I love the easygoing, fun chemistry between Jill and Dick, and I like the history they give to each person of interest beforehand. It's a cut above the rest. I recommend the case of Sherry, yes, Dally. It may be of interest. Keep up the fantastic work. So, and I'll just very, very quickly give you the bare bones of this story. Sherry Dally disappeared on May 6, 1996, while she was off shopping for a Mother's Day gift. A month later, her skeletal remains were found, and has determined that she had died from blunt force trauma.

Her husband, Michael, and his girlfriend, Diana Hahn, were convicted of murder. Yeah, I did look online at that, and there's a lot about it. So thanks, Christy. We'll look into that as well. And an email from John with three case suggestions. Three case suggestions. John writes, I'm a huge fan of your podcast. Thanks, John. I was so happy to find you guys' insane library of past episodes, and it kept me entertained for numerous days in my work truck. I have three case suggestions for you, and I was wondering if you would find them interesting, as they aren't your usual stab-shoot-bludgeon-style murders. So the first is the story of David Box, a worker who went missing at a nuclear processing plant and was found in a 1,300-degree oven used to process something.

of the uranium ingots. Many felt he was going to whistleblow about the company's unsafe practices, and he was killed and disposed of in the oven to silence him. Well, that'll do it. His case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, but other than that, no one has really discussed this case. And that's definitely different, isn't it? It sure is. I take it the oven wasn't in use at the time. Another murder that was also featured on Unsolved Mysteries is the case of the 1988 arson and explosion that killed six Kansas City firefighters, and it went unsolved for years. Eventually, six people were convicted of the crime, although many feel they're innocent. And I've only really seen one major outlet cover this as well.

And that's always tragic when firefighters or anybody who's like trying to be helpful, trying to do something good, is killed during their job. That's really heartbreaking. Yeah, this sounds horrible. It really does. Oh, that's like the worst. And finally, an open and shut case in 1970, Kentucky, where a striking truck driver shot at another truck that was hauling dynamite, which caused a massive explosion that killed the driver. Collectively, three people were charged and all did under five years for this vicious act. This is another interesting case no one really talks about.

And I've never heard of it. I've never either. No. So great suggestions, John. Thank you. Yes. Thank you very much. Suggestions coming. Yeah. So I think that's it for today. Ready to say goodbye? I'm ready. I know it's hard to say goodbye, isn't it? But I'll stay here with you. That's all I need. Okay. All right, everybody. Thank you for listening, for your feedback. We really appreciate it and have a great day. And we'll see you next time at the quiet end. Plenty of seats. Come on in. All right. Bye-bye. Bye, guys.