The Murder of Stan Cohen Part III

Imagine receiving a call that shatters your world in an instant. This episode of Murder Book plunges you into the heart-wrenching events of March 7, 1986, when the tight-knit community of Coconut Grove awoke to the shocking news of Stan Cohen's murder. We'll guide you through the frantic moments experienced by Anne Sheldon and the Levensteins as they converge on the crime scene, discovering a neighborhood gripped by fear and confusion. Experience the raw, emotional turmoil as friends and family grapple with the unthinkable tragedy that has befallen them.

As the investigation unfolds, we explore the tangled web of emotions and clues surrounding Joyce Cohen's frantic account of an intruder and her husband's brutal injury. Detective Spear faces the daunting task of unraveling inconsistencies while confronting Joyce's emotional collapse. Hear how Officer Edward Golden's discovery of a .34 caliber Smith Wesson revolver becomes the pivotal piece of evidence, meticulously documented by forensic technician Sylvia Romans amid a flurry of disruptions. Tune in as we piece together this intricate puzzle, revealing the painstaking efforts of law enforcement to bring clarity to that haunting night.

Chapters

• 1:23 Murder of Stan Cohen Investigation
• 20:35 Chaotic Investigation at Murder Scene
• 29:56 Murder Weapon Discovery and Witness Interview

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:24

Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host, kiara, and this is part three of the Murder of Stan Cohen. Stan Cohen was a success story from Miami. He made his millions in the rough-and-tumble South Florida construction trade. At age 40, he met and married a beautiful 24-year-old divorcee with a son named Joyce MacDillon. Together they spent lavishly. They were always surrounded by jewelry and furs, cars, beautiful homes, not only in Coconut Grove but also at Condon Biscayne Bay, a 650-acre retreat in Colorado. They always were throwing parties, they had yachts, they have yets. And after 11 years of marriage something happened and on March 7, 1986, stan was shot to death in his own home in Coconut Grove. So who kills Stan Cohen? Let's begin.

Speaker 1: 2:39

The bedroom telephone rang in Marvin and Ann Sheldon's suburban Miami home and the phone was on Anne's side of the bed, so she was the one who picked it up automatically. And this is Friday, march 7, 1986, around 5.30 in the morning Dr Bob Salzman, stan's fraternity buddy from their college days in Gainesville, was on the line. He was the family physician for the Sheldons, the Coems and most of their friends and he said I think you better go to Stanley's house. He's been shot. And Anne woke up from her sleep. And she was like what you know? What hospital are they taking him to? And Bob Salzman said no, no, I don't think they are taking him to a hospital, ann, I think he's dead. And so Ann repeated to Marvin as soon as she hung up the phone and said it's Stanley. And Marvin had no idea what had happened or even which Stanley his wife was talking about. So Ann and Marvin knew lots of Stanleys. Anne even had a brother named Stanley. So when he had to say Stanley who, anne tried to collect her thoughts because she couldn't seem to remember exactly what both Salzman had said and finally she decided that he must have meant Stanley Cohen and maybe he said so. So she couldn't think so and call the Cohen's number in a stranger answer the phone and she asked what happened is Stanley dead? And someone replied and said I don't know. And hang up. The line went dead. So thoroughly alarm and and Marvin threw on their clothes, jumped in the car, raced to the Coimbs house on South Bayshore Drive and as they hurried through the cool pre-dawn darkness, the children have no idea what to expect. Anne tried again to recall what Bob's husband had told her. Maybe he said something about a robbery, but she wasn't sure and they rushed on.

Speaker 1: 4:50

So just across the street from the Coimbs house, the phone rang in the Levenstein's penthouse condominium and CJ Levenstein was already in the kitchen making coffee and Len was still in bed half asleep. So both pick up extension phones and it was a friend Miami attorney, pj Carroll, whose wife, jerry, was out in Steamboat Springs at the vacation condo with her daughter, kimberly. Jerry and Kimberly had phoned PJ frantically from Steamboat after that last terrifying call to Joyce Cohen. And now Len Levenstein struggled to understand what PJ Carroll was trying to tell him. And PJ shouted Stanley is dead, stanley's been murdered, or it was maybe Stanley's been shot. He doesn't remember all the exact words because for him the words didn't make any sense. Exact words, because for him the words didn't make any sense. And so CJ, listening from the kitchen, dropped the phone and rushed into the bedroom and then said what? But how could this happen? How did this happen? So he was in shock. Pj said something about a breaking in a robbery that somebody should stand, but Len couldn't be sure. And then PJ hung up.

Speaker 1: 6:10

When Len understood that Stan Cohen was dead, he grew hysterical. Stan was such a dear friend and just down the street from him at the very moment, and this just can't be true. So Len slammed down the phone, ran to the bathroom window that overlooked South Bayshore Drive and he could see down through the darkness. It was already like a gray dawn, you know. The sky was already starting to get some light. He did see emergency vehicles, vans, police cars were clustered along the roadside and there were uniformed officers everywhere, yellow crime scene tape wound around the road. So as cj raced behind her husband to the bathroom window, she rounded the corner of a mirror wall too closely and she even sliced her her. Her slice her toe open, but she didn't even feel the pain. She never noticed the blood until later and CJ and Len hastily threw on clothes dashed across the street.

Speaker 1: 7:16

The Cohen house and grounds were completely cordoned off. Len raced up to a uniformed officer. What had happened to his friend? But Len couldn't get much information. All he knew for certain was the unthinkable that his buddy Stan Cohen was dead. And just then Jerry called him and her fiancé, steve Helfman, drove up in Helfman's porch. And when the Sheldons pulled up a moment later, uniformed officers and lines of yellow tape barred their way. The police wouldn't let anyone in the house.

Speaker 1: 7:53

Joyce Cohen was nowhere in sight and Marvin Sheldon told Sergeant Sting Benson, a homicide detective that was on the scene. He said look, I'm Stanley's business partner, please tell me what happened. And Sergeant Vincent just said well, there's been an accident. And he said but is he dead? And the sergeant refused to tell Marvin anything. He said I don't know. He said well, can we wait here? And he said yes, sure.

Speaker 1: 8:20

And by then both friends and strangers had filled the roadway in front of the house. There was like a sinister aura that pervaded the very air, the eternal fascination with violent death. Small clumps and crowds began to form. Ann and Marvin Sheldon recognized Joyce's friend, myra Wenny. And suddenly Marvin recalled that Stan had had the entire SAC construction payroll with him, checks totally like $9,000, ready to be delivered on Friday as usual. Where was the payroll? Had it been stolen? What would Marvin do about getting the payroll checks to the waiting employees? But the police were unsympathetic. Marvin couldn't go into the house to search. No one knew anything about payroll Inside the house.

Speaker 1: 9:13

Miami homicide detective John Spear completed his tour of the scene and reached his first decision he had to get Joyce Cohen to the homicide office downtown for a private interview. He had some questions about what Joyce had already told homicide sergeant Tom Watterson, and he wanted a more detailed statement from her as soon as possible. Like all homicide investigators, speer adhered to the golden rule that most leads in an investigation developed during the first 24 hours after the murder. After that, as Miami detectives put it, you're waiting for the magic phone call from an informant. And as each day passes, that prospect dims glimpse.

Speaker 1: 10:10

Joy seemed dazed but calm, and she agreed to let sergeant watterson drive her to miami police headquarters. And watterson let her out of the front door of the house and as joy stumbled down the stone steps toward his department car, she saw jerry call him, anguish, distraught, weeping. The two women threw themselves blindly into each other's arms, moaning, sobbing, shaking, clinging. All tension swept away aside by their shared grief. Cj Levenstein hurried up. She too threw her arms around Joyce. She said Joyce, my God, what happened? And Sergeant Watterson interrupted and said no, no, no, sorry, you can't talk to her right now. And CJ asked where are you taking her? He said to the homicide office downtown. And why? But there was no response. And CJ persisted. She said well, hold on, she can't go alone. She's been through enough, can I go with her? And the detective said yeah, all right. So CJ clasped Joyce in a strong hug, walked her down to the car and CJ asked Watterson as they sat onto the back seat and he said she said, please do me a favor, please take me back to my apartment for a minute. I need some shoes and my purse. For the first time is when CJ had noticed that she was barefoot and that her toe was bleeding badly, and later a homicide detective asked her suspiciously how did you get that blood on your foot?

Speaker 1: 11:39

So as he drove his unmarked car back downtown to the police station, detective Spear pounded the task before him. He knew he had to isolate Mrs Coram and interview her immediately. Like all seasoned homicide detectives, spear approaches investigation with a single premise If you find two people in a house, one murdered and one alive, the survivor is a suspect, automatically. It's just that simple. Spear thought Mrs Coram is the first suspect. Spear knew he would be able to establish some rapport with Joyce Coram in an interview. He was a person with a soft-spoken manner. He had friendly eyes and in a two-man homicide investigation team he was the classic good cop because he was half-approachable, reasonable, considerate, despite his slightly brooding, melancholy air, but he looked like a cop who was saddened by all the misery he saw on the streets. He looked like a cop you could trust. In fact Speer was looking forward to the challenge of interviewing Joyce Cohen.

Speaker 1: 13:03

Interrogation, especially when it led to confession, was his favorite part of the job. After more than a decade as a homicide investigator, he considered himself a human lie detector. He believed he could literally feel when someone was lying. Six months earlier, speer had demonstrated his interrogation skills for a reporter from the Wall Street Journal who followed the real-life Miami Vice cops around the city for several days. Miami was hot murder capital of the nation, with 23.7 homicides per 100,000 residents in 1984, triple the national average. The reporter's adventures in Miami led to a front page Wall Street Journal story on October 16, 1985, complete with portraits of Spear and his partner at the time, antonio Rodriguez. The journal article details Spear's interrogation of a murder suspect as seen by the reporter through a two-way mirror. Spear held the suspect's hand and both his own, softly, gently, patiently coaxing him to tell the story, and he said the truth wants to come out. I can feel it running from your hand to mine. Let it out. The suspect confessed.

Speaker 1: 14:27

So shortly after 8 o'clock that Friday morning Detective Spear parked in the secure lot next to the looming Orange Brick Miami Police Department headquarters downtown and he crossed to the back door, then took the elevator up to the fifth floor homicide office. It was one large room bisected by rows of small metal government-issued desks with carrot-type dividers, one desk for each detective. The dividers and desktops reflected the detectives' special affections Photographs of wives, sweethearts, babies growing into teenagers, jokes, drawings, mementos of their lives in the war against crime. Pictures of a pretty dark-haired daughter were pinned to Detective Spears' divider. A nameplate that read Inspector Clouseau sat on his desk. It was a long-running joke with a former partner. Large clay-glass windows faced north, overlooking shabby rooftops and the perpetual crawl of traffic on Interstate 95. There was a big clock on the wall with hours from 1 through 24, military style. Time stood still at 2330, the clock having long since broken, on a bulletin board littered with cop, judge and lawyer cartoons with elaborate calligraphy Thou Shall Not Kill.

Speaker 1: 15:55

When Spear arrived at his office, joyce Cohen was already there waiting for him with CJ Levenstein and Sergeant Watterson. Gil Martin, a day shift identification technician, arrived to take swaps of Joy Cohen's hands. She asked what's this for? And Martin said it's routine. And she said but I washed my hands twice and he said that's okay. Martin carefully swapped Joyce's hands with cotton. He used a separate swap for each palm, another for the web between the thumb and the forefinger of each hand and the back of each hand. Each individual swab was placed in a separate plastic sieve which was labeled with the date, the time, the technician's initials, the location, the area swapped, the subject and the case number. It was official. Stanley Cohen's murder had a number and a suspect.

Speaker 1: 16:58

Detective Speer took Joyce Cohen into interview room two. Cj Levenstein waited outside and a detective asked her do you think? Joyce called him and saw drugs or stone and CJ got upset. She said no, the woman's husband has just been murdered, for god's sakes. Someone asked CJ if Joyce had an attorney and she wondered why would Joyce have or need an attorney? So she decided to call her husband, len. After all, he had a law degree Even though he was no longer practicing. He would know what to do. And Len said CJ, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe you should call PJ Carroll and see if he can get someone for her. So she called PJ.

Speaker 1: 17:49

Interview room two was like a small cubicle with a worn brown sofa, two armchairs, some cheap prints hanging crookedly too far up the wall, and Spear tend to use that room, room two, when he interviewed females because he thought they were less intimidated than in room one, because room one was bare it was just a bare table, three chairs and the two-way surveillance mirror, and he wanted his suspect to be comfortable. So Spear motioned Joyce to the sofa and positioned himself directly across from her in a saggy chair and he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He smiled slightly and he began. He said I need to talk to you now so that I can find out exactly what happened. You have to help us find the person who did this terrible thing to your husband. Please tell me everything you remember. Please tell me what happened. And Joyce asked where do I begin? And he said at the beginning. And he waited patiently and she started.

Speaker 1: 19:08

You know she was Joyce Cohen, age 35, born July 18, 1950. She and her husband, stan Cohen, live in 1665 South Bayshore Drive in the Grove, and Spears started to point at her gently. He said did anything unusual happen there last night? And Joyce continued. She said she and her husband had been upstairs in their bedroom together. Around 11.30 pm she went downstairs to get a glass of warm milk to help her sleep. She always had trouble sleeping. As she walked down the stairs she heard a distinctive noise, the sound of the latch on the gate next to the house. She was frightened. She ran back upstairs and told Stan. Joyce said Stan pulled on a pair of shorts and got his gun, a revolver he kept in a beige holster Together. They went out the kitchen door to the backyard to investigate the noise. They found the gate standing open but saw no one. After latching the gate, joyce and Stan went back upstairs. Detective Spear waited and after that Joyce resumed. She said Stan went to sleep. But she couldn't sleep so she read for a while. Then she went downstairs to her son Sean's bedroom to sort clothes for a garage sale. Her Doberman pincher, miss Schiff, was with her.

Speaker 1: 20:36

Joyce had deactivated the home's alarm system so that she wouldn't accidentally set it off and awaken her husband. Joyce said she left her son's bedroom and walked toward the living room. The phone in the family room rang and she picked it up and it was her friend, kimberly Carroll, calling from Steamboat Springs, colorado. When she was talking to Kimberly. Joyce heard a noise. She hung up the phone. The dog ran into the kitchen to investigate the noise and Joyce followed. That's when she saw that the kitchen door was standing open, the glass pane broken out. She called 911 or activated the burglar alarm, she couldn't remember which. Then she hurried toward the dining room. Suddenly she saw a shadowy figure running down the stairs, through the foyer and out the front door. The figure had yelled let's get the fuck out of here and she thought that it was a Latin accent. Then Joyce said she ran upstairs and found her husband lying in bed. The back of his head was bleeding. She raced to get a towel and tried to stop the blood and she had been hysterical.

Speaker 1: 21:48

When Joyce finished her account, detective Spear asked a few questions to clarify the sequence of events. Then he was ready to find out about Joyce's marriage, the quality of her relationship with her husband, possible motive, and he carefully began. He said when was the last time you had sex with your husband? Spear considered sex a good barometer of a relationship and Joyce said well, like in a three-week period. Spear thought that she seemed reasonably calm about the subject and he let it pass. So Spear moved on because something else was bothering him. Move on. Because something else was bothering him. And he said I think, mrs Cohan, that there's some inconsistencies in your story.

Speaker 1: 22:40

But Joyce was suddenly hysterical again. She leaped off the sofa, shoved open the door, ran out of the room, sobbing loudly. She ran to CJ Livingston who was waiting in the hall. Cj threw her arms around Joyce's heaving shoulders and she said hasn't she had enough? And she told that to Spear, who ran behind Joyce out of the interview room and she said you need to leave her alone a minute. And Joyce was sobbing hysterically, saying I just want to go home, I just want to be with my husband. Get everyone out of my house, don't touch his things. And with those few words Joyce Cohen threw the entire murder investigation into chaos.

Speaker 1: 23:29

Try as they might, neither Speer nor his supervisor, ed Carberry, could persuade Mrs Collum to continue the interview. And now she had in effect ordered the police out of her house. Belatedly, the detective asked Joyce to sign a consent to search form for the house, but she refused. That meant they would have to get a search warrant before they could investigate the crime scene or remove Stan Cohan's body. Did technicians already on the scene would have to be pulled out and the entire homicide scene held onto. A warrant was prepared, signed by the judge served at the house. Speer and Carberry knew this would take hours. Speer gritted his teeth. If only Joyce Cohen had not had her friend there to run to. He thought he could have handled her. Now it was a disaster Just more than more friends arrived, arthur and Carol Sheldon.

Speaker 1: 24:35

Spear tried to persuade Arthur Sheldon to reason with Joyce, but it was obvious that his interview with her was over. Sheldon asked Spear to release Joyce Cohen to him. He would take her back to CJ Levenstein's home so she could rest and calm down. They would be in touch. Spear had no choice. As Joyce's friends escorted her out of the homicide office, spear fumed. He picked up the phone and he called the Cohens home number and he ordered the cop to answer. Get everyone out of the house, sit up a perimeter and just hold the scene. No one is allowed in the house, not even Mrs Cohan, especially not Mrs Cohan. We're going to have to get a warrant At the Cohan's house.

Speaker 1: 25:22

Sergeant Vincent herded all the officers and technicians out the door. Mrs Cohan, he told them had decided she didn't want them in her house after all he repeated the story Detective Spear had told him. Spear had asked Mrs Colham a question she didn't appreciate when was the last time you had sex with your husband? And there were like loud sounds from the cops. When he said that None of the cops could remember being thrown out of a homicide scene in the middle of their investigation by a grieving widow, they made the obvious assumption there must be some reason. Joyce Coram didn't want them there. She must have something to hide. Mrs Coram's status as a suspect rose as she packed up her equipment and hauled it outside. Identification technician Sylvia Romans felt frustrated by the interruption in her routine. Romans was an FBI trained technician who had been with the Miami Police Department about two and a half years. This was her first big case as lead technician, her chance to prove herself, and now her work had been interrupted barely an hour after she got started.

Speaker 1: 26:40

Romance's first task at the Cohen house had been a tour of the crime scene inside and out with Sergeant Vincent, had been a tour of the crime scene inside and out with Sergeant Vincent. Then she had begun photographing the exterior of the scene in sequence. Her photographs, assembled in order, would reflect each aspect of the outside of the Coen's house and surrounding grounds. Then Romans had moved to the point of entry at the rear of the house, the kitchen door with the smashed pane of glass. She took close-ups of the door, the door jam, the smashed glass, the hunk of coral rock lying outside. She photographed the entire kitchen, right down to a rubber glove lying in the sink and a cup of milk sitting forgotten in the microwave. On the island in the kitchen was a paperback copy of Love is Letting Go of Fear. The book was like me. I photographed the dining room when Sergeant Vincent stopped her. She had not yet reached the crime. The master's body lay still gently seeping blood into puddles and small rivers. There would be no photographs documenting the corpse's appearance.

Speaker 1: 27:51

At that hour of the morning, with officers guarding the doors to the now empty house, sergeant Vincent, sylvia, romans and others gathered in the backyard to wait for the search warrant. In the meantime, the crime scene was secured. No one was going in, nothing inside the house would be removed or altered. It would all be there just as they left it. When the cops were allowed back in to finish their work, there was one crucial exception, something that would be changed irrevocably by the mere passage of time and the operation of natural laws. The body of Stanley Cohen, the cooling of the body after death, the chemical changes that cause rigidity of the muscles, the seepage of blood out of vessels and into surrounding tissues, the gravitational pull settling and staining tissues read at their lowest point argomortis, rigomortis, livomortis. All would continue, the inexorable progress forever altering the condition of the corpse. No one would be there to mark the changes. There would be no photographs or measurements from which to reconstruct the body's condition early that morning. With each hour that passed, evidence faded forever on what would prove to be a central issue in the crime the precise time of Stan Cohen's death.

Speaker 1: 29:25

That morning Romans, vincent and others sprawled comfortably in the shade of the red gazebo in the Cohen's backyard passing the time sharing speculation about the case. It looked like a home invasion robbery got wrong. They thought Hours passed. It seemed the search warrant was taking forever. At lunchtime someone brought submarine sandwiches and cokes back to the troops. They waited patiently for the signal to resume their work inside the house.

Speaker 1: 29:56

Joyce Cohen's friend, lynn Barkley, had gone to the beach on Key Biscayne early that Friday morning for a photo shoot. On his way back home he drove past the Coen's house and saw the yellow crime scene tape. He pulled over, hopped out of his car and spoke to a Miami police officer. He said I'm Lynn Barkley, a friend of the Coen's. What happened? Is there anything I can do to help? The officer took Barkley's address and phone number and homicide detectives invited him down to the station for an interview.

Speaker 1: 30:33

Officer Edward Golden, a uniformed cop, stood guard on the stones next near the front door of the courthouse, waiting, like everyone else, for the search warrant. As his gaze wandered down the front yard, he saw something gleaming in the dense undergrowth. He stepped over and took a closer look. It was a blue steel revolver. Golden called out to Sergeant Vincent at the rear of the house. Vincent and Sylvia Romans raced around the corner, then cautiously approached the revolver, which was lying in a little need of foliage. It must be a murder weapon. It's a .34 caliber Smith Wesson, apparently tossed aside by the killer. No one must touch it, and they knew that Romans wouldn't even take a photograph of the weapon until the search warrant was served. There must be no mistakes, no slip-ups in handling this crucial piece of evidence. Officer Golden then stood guard over the weapon as well as the front door to the house, vincent and Romans took up the vigil in the gazebo, again still waiting for the

Speaker 1: 31:53

warrant. Meanwhile, uniformed officers were dispatched on a door-to-door search of the Coimbs' immediate neighborhood, looking for anyone who had heard or seen anything unusual that night or early mornings. Or seen anything unusual that night or early mornings, they got a few reports of a suspicious man ringing doorbells, apparently panhandling for money. Then something more promising turned up. A neighbor, neighbor, jerry Mandina, who lived directly across the street from the Coems, told the officers he had been sitting near an open window from 3.30 am until 5.30 am that morning because he was working on some accounts. Shortly after 5 am Mandina had heard a strange noise. He said it sounded like a gunshot. We'll be right back.