Oct 12, 2007 6:53 pm US/Eastern
Cops Kept Wife's Death From Gotbaum For Hours
Audio Shows Phoenix P.D. Debating, Lying To Husband
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Carol Anne Gotbaum (file).
CBS
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Surveillance video shows police officers wrestling Carol Anne Gotbaum to the ground and then dragging her off to a hold room at Sky Harbor Airport. She was later founded dead.
CBS
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Image taken from the funeral ceremony of Carol Anne Gotbaum on Oct. 7, 2007.
CBS
They are the desperate words of a frightened husband.
Phoenix Police release audio tapes of Noah Gotbaum's frantic efforts to warn them by phone that his wife, Carol Anne Gotbaum, was suicidal.
What they didn't tell him was that it was already too late.
Noah Gotbaum's first call came an hour after his wife had died. But he didn't know that.
* Gotbaum: "My wife is at the airport, and she is in a very, very fragile mental state."
* Operator: "Okay, hang on the phone one second, okay?"
The emergency dispatcher at Phoenix Airport called a lieutenant at the Phoenix Police Department.
* Operator: "Hey, I've got Noah Gotbaum, the subject's husband, on the line.
* Lt. Gehlbach: "Okay?"
* Operator: "Okay, you gonna talk to him?"
* Lt. Gehlbach: "You know, I want somebody who's professional to be talking to 'em. Not just blow it to 'em over the phone because I don't know how he'll react."
Then the operator got back on the line with Noah Gotbaum.
* Gotbaum: "Can you tell me what's happened? Do you have any idea?"
* Operator: "We don't have any information."
* Gotbaum: "You don't have any information. You haven't heard a thing?"
* Operator: "No."
But that wasn't true. In three phone conversations spanning 90 minutes, operators and police officials withheld the truth: That Carol Anne Gotbaum had been restrained by cops at an airport gate, put in a holding room and found dead.
Eventually, Noah Gotbaum got a family friend in Arizona and got him to rush to the airport to find out what was going on. It was that friend, sitting in a room with police, who informed him his wife was dead.
CBS 2 HD spoke by phone to the Gotbaum family's attorney, Michael Manning.
"It is difficult for us to understand why somebody didn't have the courage and decency to simply tell him we have some tragic news for you," Manning said,
Some experts question their handling of the matter.
"Sometimes you see police departments that are not prepared to deal with these unusual circumstances and end up making blunders," Professor Eugene O'Donnell said.
Now the question is what took place during those 90 minutes, as police scrambled to understand how a prisoner had died in their custody?
Phoenix Police are defending their handling of the phone calls. They say their procedures require that high level officers disclose news of a person's death and that it took time to brief the officers in this case.
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