Original subtitles

In the criminal justice system,

detectives and prosecutors face daunting challenges

when money is the motive for murder.

[dramatic sting]

A suspicious disappearance captures media attention.

There are still two missing people,

and we have not heard anything from them.

Detectives uncover ties

to a multimillion-dollar criminal network.

It seemed like he took glee in taking

the life of these people.

Prosecutors are thwarted by an arrogant,

well-resourced adversary.

He was flamboyant.

He spent money like it was going out of style.

But they craft their own sting

to take down the kingpin.

I'm hearing it, and I can't believe what I'm hearing.

These men and women dedicate their lives to law and order.

I worked homicide for 17 years.

But this case-- once in a lifetime.

These are their true stories.

[dramatic sting]

[subway rattling]

[train whistles]

[dramatic music]

We were out in Woodside, Queens,

for the purposes of doing a pretty low-level

confidential informant street buy

from a known drug dealer.

The guy who was doing the video in the van

called on the radio and said, "Hey, grab the informant.

Something's going on on this block."

In a bizarre coincidence,

agents then intercepted a kidnapping.

Later, while interviewing the victim,

they learned he was entangled in a vast web

of violent financial schemes.

The victim in the case was very afraid.

It wasn't long before we realized that, you know,

we had kind of stumbled our way

to a much bigger and complex case.

In order to gain protection, the victim confessed

involvement in a fatal conspiracy

in Southern California.

He said, "You guys need to find

"this guy, Peter Kovach.

I think he might be dead."

OK. Wait a minute.

Let's go back a little bit.

[dramatic sting]

[phone ringing]

Peter Kovach and his coworker Ted Gould

had first been reported as missing

when police got a 911 call

from their place of employment,

Galleria Telecom in Torrance, California.

The business was left unlocked,

just simply open and unattended.

I arrived, contacted the two individuals

who were at the location.

Paul Poduska seemed very concerned.

He was there to visit his friend, Ted Gould.

I was supposed to meet my best friend Ted at 8:00.

He told me that he had got a new job

working at the Galleria Telecom

beeper and cell phone sales company.

Got off work and drove directly to the store.

The lights were on in the shop.

I looked around. There was nobody there.

The next person that showed up told me that he was

one of the owners of the company.

I happened to drive by at about 11:00 p.m. at night,

and I saw all the doors and the lights were on.

And when I drove in, I noticed Ted's friend

was still waiting for him.

It was then when I called the police,

because it was pretty unusual,

since both their cars were here.

He indicated that two employees were missing.

They were Peter Kovach and Ted Gould.

The business, it was undisturbed,

and none of the phones were missing.

No indications of any violent crime, robbery.

RJ Panah indicated that when he went inside,

he noticed that the camera was turned

and projected upward to the ceiling,

which was unusual.

Security camera for the business

was nonfunctioning, according to RJ Panah.

And so you start analyzing all that,

and you become very suspicious.

♪ ♪

RJ Panah was interviewed while at the scene.

Ted, I just hired about four weeks ago.

Known Peter for about a year.

You know, I love him like a brother.

Peter Kovach was like a half-owner

of the business.

Ted Gould was just an employee for the location.

Peter was from the East Coast and had quite a bit of cash.

RJ Panah and Peter hit it off as friends.

As time went on, Peter provided cash

and became part owner.

He was a guy in his 20s, very friendly, very charming.

But other than that, this guy doesn't have

much background information.

Investigators learned that Peter had come

from a modest upbringing

by loving parents in New Jersey,

gone to college in Miami, and had almost

no record of prior employment.

Peter was making a lot of money.

I mean, he's pulling a lot of cash,

and it didn't come from the business.

I was suspicious of what Peter might have been up to.

Paul Poduska had been

the first person onto the scene

and was still there when police arrived.

He was able to give them background on his friend Ted,

the other missing man.

Ted was funny.

He just had a great sense of humor, genuinely.

Just the--the smile in all of these pictures.

He was one of my best friends from college.

We met at Cal State Northridge University marching band.

Ted grew up in Southern California.

After college, he was living in Redondo Beach, California.

He was 29 years old.

Ted was excited about his new job.

He wanted to move forward with newer technology.

It was definitely out of character for him

to not be there.

I felt that something was extremely wrong.

As the hunt for Ted Gould and Peter Kovach

went into high gear,

news broke across Southern California.

This case was fascinating, all the twists and turns.

It's as if the two men had literally vanished

into the night.

The following morning, I was contacted

by Detective James Cook.

I've known him for quite a while.

Me and Jeff worked together in the patrol division.

We actually lived together for a while

when we were younger police officers.

Detective Cook related that individuals were arrested

near the Galleria Telecom

a couple weeks before these people were missing.

It could have been coincidence, but I don't think so.

[dramatic sting]

On October 10, 1994, at approximately 9:00

in the evening in the city of Torrance,

some patrol officers observed a gray and blue Buick

exiting between some businesses--

I think it was Galleria cell phone business.

When the occupants observed the police car,

they immediately fled the area.

Alerted by the suspicious Buick

attempting to flee the quiet commercial district,

officers pulled the vehicle over.

When the cops stop this suspicious vehicle,

they find three men inside.

The driver, Ruben Hernandez,

could not produce a driver's license.

The front passenger, Kenneth Friedman,

had surgical gloves in both his front pants pockets.

The rear passenger, Juan Galindo,

his address was from New York.

When police are questioning these three men,

what they discover is duct tape and two loaded handguns.

They were placed under arrest

for probable cause robbery

and the gun violations that were in the vehicle.

We had the area canvassed

to see if any crimes were committed that night.

Nothing.

I thought that they had prevented a robbery

from occurring that night.

So I left that afternoon

thinking that these guys are from New York,

they have no money,

they're still gonna be in custody.

To my surprise, when I came in the next morning,

I found out that they had bonded out.

And I was curious why somebody would post bail

for these three people from New York.

The three men were able to walk

because they had a fast-talking attorney from New York.

We had some taped phone calls from the jail.

The night that they got arrested,

Kenneth Friedman was talking to his attorney,

Gary Friedman, about bail.

Very incriminating type of conversations.

But there was nothing I could do

because there was no robbery committed that night.

When I learned what happened at the cell phone business,

we immediately put two and two together and said,

"I think our suspects are

Kenneth Friedman and Gary Friedman."

I ran a record check with New York

and found out that Kenneth Friedman had done time

for a robbery conviction in 1985.

Then we found out that Gary Friedman,

the attorney representing Kenneth Friedman,

was Kenneth Friedman's brother.

Two brothers, you know.

One was a defense attorney,

and the other one was a criminal.

Gary Friedman was a criminal defense attorney

who lived a lavish lifestyle--

big homes, boats.

But his work as an attorney was dwindling.

So he needed to find another source of income.

Based on information developed from phone calls

and background investigations,

I was able to determine that the IRS was

in the middle of an investigation

that was going to file charges against Gary Friedman

for money laundering with some other activities.

The detectives began to formulate a theory

on the Friedmans and their crew.

This was the street they came out onto from the business.

We're west of the Galleria Telecom.

During the traffic stop on that vehicle,

the items found appeared to be, or could have been,

a toolkit for a kidnapping.

You can't be that dumb to come back,

commit the kidnapping of the two

from the same business that you were arrested for

two weeks prior.

You guys are really stupid.

[chuckles] And arrogant too.

Investigators wondered if the desperate need for money

led the Friedmans to kidnapping,

extortion, or worse.

We both decided that these were

our possible suspects in this disappearance.

We didn't know how they related

to Peter Kovach and Ted Gould.

I was able to review Ted and Peter Kovach,

if they were connected in any way,

and found no connection other than just

the simple employment at the Galleria Telecom.

There are still two missing people,

and we have not heard anything from them

or from anyone that knows them.

[dramatic sting]

♪ ♪

I get the phone call--

two bodies have been found.

We immediately drove down to San Diego,

to the location where the bodies have been recovered.

I mean, it was not a pretty sight.

There's this guy a lot of people were

attracted to, including Peter Kovach.

He wanted to be Tony Montana, the drug lord.

And when you're making millions of dollars,

Torrance investigators rush to San Diego

after receiving notice that two bodies were

discovered in an alleyway.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

The identification had been made,

and they were Peter Kovach and Ted Gould.

The bodies were dumped and left there

for a couple days before they were found.

They were badly decomposed, bloated.

Cause of death for Peter Kovach

and Ted Gould was strangulation.

Just an unfortunate situation.

[somber music]

Detective Lancaster called me and let me know.

I remember feeling shocked and horrified

and sorrow.

It was definitely a tragic situation,

and I don't-- I don't like to revisit.

I need to take a break.

Peter Kovach's mother and sister

came by the station,

and they were very upset.

It was a really tough time.

There was a warrant out for Kenneth Friedman,

Juan Galindo, and Ruben Hernandez.

We had no information as to where they were.

Investigators continued pursuit.

But the lead suspect, Kenny, was off the grid,

and his brother and attorney Gary was uncooperative.

Although Peter could have been a financial target,

there was no clear connection.

Months passed.

But then an ATF operation on the other side of the country

and a second kidnapping expanded the case

to an interstate conspiracy.

It was probably about 10:00 in the morning.

I get a phone call, long distance, from the ATF

that he was investigating a kidnapping

and had some information that might relate

to a Torrance homicide.

It was a large break.

Within a day or two, we were in New York, meeting with ATF.

[dramatic sting]

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

I was a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol,

Tobacco, and Firearms, primarily responsible

for organized crime cases, narcotics trafficking,

enforcing federal firearms laws.

In 1995,

a small-time drug case that we were trying to do

became a much bigger case.

We were there, actually, to look at that guy,

the guy with the little white hat.

- Yeah. - We were gonna make a drug buy

from him with an informant.

We had a van

set up on the block to do a videotape.

And right about now, I think, the guy inside the van

with the camera is telling us on the radio,

like, "Hey, something's going on.

There's a weird--like, this guy doesn't belong here."

- Oh-- - There's Gary Friedman.

There's Gary Friedman.

Gary's brother is Kenneth Friedman,

and he was a suspect in the disappearance

of Peter Kovach and Ted Gould.

Ultimately, these guys walked away to Gary's car,

and they take an individual out.

Gary Friedman's car leaves.

They seized the individual who was in Gary's car,

walked him back, and is putting him in the back seat.

And for a brief moment, just as he's

putting him in the back seat,

you can see a gun in his left hand.

We then filmed what turned out to be the kidnapping

of Bruce Wolofsky, who ultimately would become

a confidential informant for us.

NYPD rolled in one of their units

and stopped the car from leaving the area.

What a lucky coincidence. I mean, it was just luck.

Detectives noted that Gary Friedman and his crew,

suspected for the deadly kidnapping in Torrance,

had attempted to kidnap another victim in New York.

We were going to conduct an interview

with Bruce Wolofsky, the kidnapping victim.

He was kidnapped that day by Gary Friedman

because he had borrowed $10,000

and was not paying him back the money.

Previously, he had tried to get himself out of debt.

Bruce, being in the car business,

had access to credit bureau checks on people

to try to ascertain their whereabouts.

Gary had asked him to run

some credit bureau checks on Peter Kovach.

Bruce did provide his place of employment, also.

Galleria Telecom.

He said, "You guys need to find

"this guy, Peter Kovach.

I think he might be dead."

That was the connection that they had.

We were trying to piece together

what would have caused anybody to send people

out to California to kidnap and ultimately murder

Peter Kovach and Ted Gould.

As investigators pressed Bruce for the connection

between Gary Friedman and Peter Kovach,

Bruce revealed the involvement of a new player--

Gary Friedman's partner in a number of nightclubs

in New York and Miami.

Gary Friedman starts opening these clubs

with a guy back east named Howard Bloomgarden.

I'd never heard of Howard Bloomgarden.

But Howard became a major person of interest

in this case.

Bruce was able to relate that Howard Bloomgarden was

a businessman in Florida,

was simply 24 or 25 years old at that time.

Owned the Coco Bongo Lounge and had owned

some previous locations in the state of New York.

And maybe his business wasn't exactly on the up and up.

Howard Bloomgarden was sent down

to Florida for an education.

He showed up down there in a red Corvette convertible.

He was flamboyant.

He spent money like it was going out of style.

He went to the University of Miami.

Hold on a second.

Peter actually went to college down in Miami.

Howard was given everything he needed.

And he just didn't subscribe to that.

He wanted to be Tony Montana, the drug lord.

If Howard could make the same amount of money

legitimately,

he would still choose to make it illegitimately

'cause it was more exciting.

In fact, Bruce told us that Howard Bloomgarden

and Peter Kovach had a long criminal history

dealing drugs together.

I call it a break. [laughs]

The confidential informant provided

a lot of background information

and then some specific information

about criminal activity that

Pete and Howard Bloomgarden had participated in.

[dramatic music]

Howard Bloomgarden and Peter Kovach met

when they were both in college down in Miami.

Howard Bloomgarden, Peter Kovach,

and some other individuals became organized,

and they started doing

hundreds of pounds of marijuana.

The Mexican connection would get the drugs

to somewhere in California,

and then back east to Florida,

to New York.

Howard was quite successful.

And when you're making millions of dollars,

you need to find a way to hide it.

Gary Friedman was actually investing

in Howard Bloomgarden's empire.

His nightclubs and strip clubs were the front

for the money laundering operation.

Kenneth Friedman was kind of the strong-arm muscle

for his brother, who was Gary Friedman.

Kenneth Friedman had a long criminal history.

He was a lot older than these college guys Peter's age.

And, you know, he had a reputation

of being a bad guy, somebody to be avoided.

Howard Bloomgarden's drug trafficking was netting

millions in cash and moving tons of marijuana,

pushing Bloomgarden to relocate Peter Kovach

to California to oversee it,

until one operation spelled disaster.

This crew of guys that were working with Howard

bought an RV, made spaces in it

for 800 pounds of marijuana

to be transported from California.

When they are in Illinois, though, they get stopped.

And the Illinois State Police find the drugs,

and, you know, they seize the whole thing.

The Mexican connection, he didn't get paid.

The street value of that was

up to several hundred thousand dollars.

That's what led to the rift between Peter and Howard.

You know, we come to learn later,

Howard believed that Pete had something to do

with setting him up.

At some point after he came out to California,

Peter was trying to go straight and trying to get

out of that type of work.

Peter was actually really trying to redeem himself.

He knew that he was in too far,

and he really started a new life.

But Howie blamed Peter

for the loss of millions of dollars.

Bloomgarden had become increasingly paranoid

about Peter Kovach,

believing that he'd engineered the police sting

to take over his operation.

The Friedmans were enlisted to make Peter pay his debt,

no matter what the consequences,

with Ted Gould caught in the crossfire.

For Ted Gould, it could have been,

"You can't leave a witness.

"You know, you got a guy here, he knows what we've done,

where we've done it."

Wrong place, wrong time.

[dramatic sting]

In March of 1995, we decided we would coordinate

the arrests of those guys for the kidnapping-based

crimes that occurred in New York.

We were slowly scooping or contacting everyone.

And they were all surrendering

or being arrested at that time.

We were starting to focus on Howard Bloomgarden.

But we didn't want to arrest him

and then just have him get cut loose,

'cause we knew he'd come with expensive attorneys

who would get him out if the case wasn't good,

or maybe even if the case was good.

So the two agencies are working together

to build a case, but their goals

are actually quite different.

The state is looking for charges for a double homicide,

and the feds are looking for charges

of extortion, racketeering, and trafficking.

I was trying to build a homicide case

involving Ruben Hernandez, Juan Galindo,

Kenneth Friedman, also Gary Friedman,

and Howie Bloomgarden.

I felt that they were all involved

in the California homicide.

♪ ♪

I was slowly developing an idea as to their technique

of getting cash out to the West Coast.

It was just a simple, easy code.

They would use Western Union.

They would take names.

They would switch them around a little bit,

but it was all familiar to them

because they were friends.

A gentleman named Gus Malave down in San Diego,

he was receiving cash from them.

And Western Union would forward me

all of that paperwork.

The Torrance Police Department made arrangements

to bring Gus Malave in

and have him take a polygraph.

He was deceptive,

but he did tell us a lot of things.

Gus Malave was receiving cash

from them from the East Coast, from Gary Friedman,

for car purchases, for gun purchases.

Gus started describing what happened

the night of the disappearance.

Kenneth, Juan, and Ruben take Peter and Ted,

drive up to the motel,

which is right up Hawthorne Boulevard.

This is where the three guys from New York stayed.

Right there, room 116.

[dramatic music]

According to Gus Malave,

they take the two guys,

Peter and Ted, into the motel room.

Kenneth is just a wild card, and he ended up

strangling both those guys.

The Friedman brothers want Gus to take care of the car,

take care of the bodies.

And so he's-- for a certain amount of cash,

takes the car, drives it back to San Diego,

and dumped them behind some businesses.

With the statement from Malave in hand,

investigators could take their case

that implicated the Friedmans

to Los Angeles district attorneys.

And if Malave cooperated further,

charges would fly against Howard Bloomgarden.

As a DA, you know, I'll read everything.

But I also--I'd rather talk to the people

that did the investigation.

Geoff Lewin was very, very exceptional.

I had long conversations with Bob Schmitt,

long conversations with Jeff Lancaster.

In this case, we know Howard's pulling the strings.

First, I have to prove his connections.

How are we gonna prove

that Howard was on the East Coast,

ordering Kenny Friedman to kill these guys on the West Coast?

We've never seen this picture before.

Among incompetent, uh-- incompetent crooks--

This is Gus Malave, who was instrumental to helping

the kidnapping and murder happen, but--

Flipped on his--

I believe on his first interrogation.

According to Gus Malave,

Howard Bloomgarden had gotten on the phone

and said, "Kill them."

At this point, Howard will face his own charges.

♪ ♪

When Howard Bloomgarden first approached

the United States Attorney's Office

through his attorneys,

he, you know, seemingly wanted to cooperate.

And he came in and gave us a lot of information.

Howard had a lot of money.

That meant a lot of people were attracted to Howard,

including Peter Kovach.

Peter did not grow up with a lot of money.

Peter grew up in New Jersey with a very close family,

but Howard was just this bigger-than-life guy

who had, you know, everything.

And that helped with getting other people

to, you know, party with him.

And a lot of those guys ended up being

his coconspirators in the drug trade.

Howard admitted that at the height

of this organization's moneymaking,

they were probably making

several million dollars a month.

When the marijuana got confiscated

from the motor home, Howard was on the line for it.

He was losing money

at a faster rate than he was making it.

He confessed he'd had people kidnapped.

But Howard has said that he told these people,

"Hey, get Peter Kovach on the phone with me,"

never said to kill, and then Kenny Friedman,

this horrible guy, took it on his own

to kill Peter Kovach and Ted Gould.

It was clear to us that he was

holding back and certainly minimizing

his own involvement.

Federal prosecutors in New York

brought interstate charges for racketeering,

kidnapping, and extortion against Howard and his crew.

Now LADA had to wait in line for the feds

to finish their prosecution before we could

prosecute Howard

for the murders of Peter and Ted.

[dramatic sting]

So the first time they asked me to come testify,

it was for a federal case.

It's been a long time since I have been in that seat.

It was obviously a traumatic experience.

I learned that they had taken

my friend and Pete to a hotel room

somewhere close by

and had tortured and killed both of them.

[somber music]

My friend Ted Gould was strangled

with a telephone cord.

♪ ♪

Having Ted be an innocent bystander in the--

the whole situation is--

just makes it more terrible.

♪ ♪

Howard had enlisted Gerald Shargel,

who is a really big-time

defense attorney out of New York.

So I was very surprised when they came in

and offered to plead out.

Bloomgarden would plead to six counts,

which included responsibility for Ted and Peter's deaths

while in the commission of other federal crimes

of racketeering and extortion.

Howard Bloomgarden admitted in open court,

standing right next to his lawyer,

that he approved of

and financed

the murders of Peter Kovach and Ted Gould.

The attorney's gotten this great deal,

got 34 years in New York.

Kenny ultimately was tried and convicted in New York,

got life upon life in New York along with his brother, Gary.

Juan Galindo,

Ruben Hernandez, and Gus Malave

pled guilty, and they received

lesser sentences than all of the others involved.

So Howard Bloomgarden pled in '96 in New York.

He was finally brought out to California in 2005.

LA prosecutors feel that Howie got off easy,

so now they can't wait to build their own case against him.

Howard Bloomgarden had a lot of money.

He had John Gotti's ex-attorney, Gerald Shargel,

with a whole team of attorneys.

But we have him on the record saying he financed

and he approved of the murders.

"Judge, we want to use that statement."

Uh, judge said no.

[dramatic music]

Essentially, the judge in LA ruled

that no attorney in their right mind

would allow him to plead in New York,

say the things he said,

when there was a current pending death penalty

in California.

I strongly disagreed with that.

I thought they-- he had incredible attorneys

in New York.

It was rumored he spent probably $400,000

on his defense in New York,

which was a fortune in '94, '95.

It was devastating to the case.

Howard Bloomgarden's legal team

successfully excluded his confession,

taken during the federal trial in New York City,

from prosecutorial evidence

in his pending murder trial in Los Angeles.

That was very scary in a case like this,

where the puppet master putting it all together

could walk on the case.

I have a confession that is golden,

but because of Howard's big money,

we had our backs up against the wall.

And John Kovach tells this story also.

He's like, "Howard Bloomgarden sat at our table.

He sat at our table, and he ate with us."

Yeah.

And to know that he was involved in killing Peter,

he--he just couldn't deal with that.

I couldn't get through this.

I think my kids were

9 and 12 or so when this happened.

[somber music]

Peter Kovach's mom, Mary Anne,

had written a letter.

I remember reading her letter.

"My son is in his grave.

"All I have is this picture of the tombstone.

"I remember my son on his graduation day.

"I told him I loved him more than God.

"I watched him sleep, and I was so proud

"that I gave birth to such a huge boy.

I was amazed even then."

♪ ♪

It's hard to read now. Um...

I can't read the rest of it.

Hard--very hard to read. Can't--I can't read it.

♪ ♪

There are certain cases that stand out

for different reasons.

In this case, I am helping families, helping people

that have gone through horrible things,

and helping them to get some peace and justice.

While Los Angeles prosecutors strategized

how to overcome the exclusion of Howard's testimony,

they also prepared for the state murder trials

of Kenneth and Gary Friedman.

The two Friedman brothers came out to California

and pled guilty.

Gary Friedman, he was a defense attorney,

but he was as dirty as they get.

Where Gary was kind of the brains,

Kenny was definitely the muscle.

And Kenny had a long history of violent conduct.

Kenny had no problem

beating people up, extorting people.

Kenny Friedman is crazy.

He is violent.

He is one of the scariest guys you've ever seen.

Kenny Friedman was sentenced to death,

and Gary Friedman was sentenced to life

without the possibility of parole.

When I found out I was happy, because I think it's justice.

Kenny the Animal.

Kenny, also known as the Animal, he's the killer.

It seemed like he took glee in taking the life of--

of these people.

Killed himself ultimately.

- Ended up killing himself. - On death row.

- Yeah. - Hung himself.

Years passed as Gary Friedman weathered

his brother's suicide behind bars

and Howard's prestigious lawyers

mounted attacks to delay his trial.

His confession in federal court was

at the heart of the battle.

Ruling had already been made.

I was not allowed to use that confession.

I have probably never briefed or argued

a single issue harder.

I spent over a year trying to get the court

to reconsider that ruling.

That did not prove to be successful.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

So I have a room full of federal boxes

for Howard Bloomgarden.

I start going through these 46 boxes.

And one of the things I find is letters of mitigation

to the federal judge saying, you know,

"Please spare Howard,

give him a better deal, and here is why."

And I started reading through these letters,

and they're letters from his mom, his dad,

his sisters, from 1996.

They're a gold mine.

I found five different relatives all over the place.

I want to send out five teams of investigators

to have a simultaneous door knock,

where we get these people before they can communicate

with each other, to say, "Hey, Mrs. Bloomgarden,

"you wrote back in 1996,

"'Howard feels horrible about what he did.'

What did you mean by that?"

And see if hopefully someone says,

"Oh, Howard felt horrible.

He ordered the murders of these two guys."

[dramatic sting]

♪ ♪

So on January 13, 2014,

a task force coordinates all of these interviews

happening across the country at the exact same time.

I remember driving up the 110 freeway

at, like, 5:30 in the morning, heading to work,

waiting to hear from the different people

in the different areas.

And one by one, they're all falling.

Chicago, I think someone had dementia.

Someone wouldn't open the door.

These people, you know, didn't want to talk.

And everything's kind of falling apart.

And I hear from all of them, and I get to work.

And, you know, nothing worked out.

Afterwards, we're debriefing with the investigators.

And one of the investigators, Shawn Robinson,

tells me, "Hey, this is interesting.

"When I'm talking to Susan Bloomgarden, the sister,

"there's this guy George, her boyfriend,

"that won't stop talking in the background.

"He won't shut up. He keeps wanting to talk.

"And so finally, I talked to him.

You want to hear the tape?"

I'm like, yeah.

And at this point, I'm defeated.

I'm figuring this is all not gonna work.

I remember being at Ralph's by my house,

a grocery store, buying something.

And I had a--I remember a very cheap pair of headphones,

and I have the George Kuney tape on.

And I'm hearing it,

and I can't believe what I'm hearing.

I was sort of in shock, because all of a sudden,

After collecting a recording that incriminated

Howard Bloomgarden for murder,

Los Angeles prosecutors were ready to take him to trial.

[dramatic sting]

[dramatic music]

Defendant is not here

because his life cast him here.

He had everything as a child.

Nobody stands in the way of what the defendant wants.

He wants his money, and he doesn't care

what he has to do.

If he can get Peter Kovach alone, that's great.

If someone else has to go, can't help it.

Collateral damage.

Even a completely innocent person--

Ted Gould, in this case.

The star witness in the trial is Ruben Hernandez.

He walks into the courtroom surrounded by U.S. Marshals,

and he gives the most details of this crime.

According to Ruben, the night of the murders,

you had Ted Gould and Peter Kovach

working at the cell phone store in Torrance.

As Ted is waiting for Paul Poduska to get there,

the lights from a car come off Hawthorne Boulevard

into the parking lot, and they shine right into the store.

Three guys rushed in. They've got guns.

One guy tilts the camera down,

and they pull Ted and Peter

into a 1974 two-door LTD

in the parking lot.

And they drove about two miles through Hawthorne

to the Travelers Inn.

Kenny Friedman starts beating Peter up pretty badly,

demanding Howard's money.

According to Ruben's testimony,

there's a final phone call between Kenny and Howard.

And in the end, according to Ruben,

it's Howard that says, "Kill them."

Ruben Hernandez gets on Peter's back,

and Kenny Friedman pulls out the corded telephone cord

and begins to strangle Peter Kovach.

And if you are familiar with strangulation,

it's a very long and difficult process.

Ted Gould, who had nothing to do with any of this,

is actually sitting on the floor

with a pillow case covering his head,

listening to his friend being killed and tortured.

Once Peter is dead, Kenny looks over to Ted Gould.

And Kenny says, "Bring him over."

So when I called George Kuney to the stand,

the joke always was, "Boy, it's gonna be

a hostile Thanksgiving at the Bloomgarden house."

Because George basically laid out Howard

unknowingly at the time.

When George Kuney testifies,

he denies he ever made these comments.

That's when Geoff Lewin pushes a button

and Kuney's voice fills the courtroom.

The jury could hear it coming straight

from the horse's mouth.

Kuney's testimony is crucial because it corroborates

what Ruben Hernandez said about Howard ordering the killings.

This was a plan.

This was not something the defendant was thrown into.

This is something the defendant organized.

After several weeks, the jury returns a verdict

in a matter of hours.

Howard Bloomgarden is found guilty on all counts in murder

in the course of kidnapping.

In our law, we have a separate proceeding

where the jury gets to actually hear victim impact.

[somber music]

The impact statement testimony was--

was really hard.

I pretty much broke down in tears on the stand

about how much I missed my friend.

There wasn't a dry eye in the room,

including the prosecutor.

It was just quiet for a long time.

It's difficult to think of somebody that was so vibrant,

so happy-go-lucky, being murdered.

He deserves to be remembered fondly.

I would like to think that Ted would still be

bopping around, listening to his favorite music,

just being Ted.

The 1993 drug bust had cost Howard Bloomgarden millions

and driven him to end the lives of Peter and Ted.

22 years later,

the California courts finally sentenced him

to life without parole.

Howard, you know, he's still alive.

And although he's incarcerated, he's enjoying life

that Peter and Ted are not.

And the appeals are exhausted at this point.

But there are always other challenges,

habeas corpus, other things you can do.

Howard continues to spend his money

to try and escape responsibility

for what he did.

And Howard will continue to do that

until he's either released or he dies

or the money runs out.