Leslie Neulander | Pushed to Death | FilmRise True Crime | Forensic Files

[theme music] NARRATOR: A fatal fall in the shower. NARRATOR: A woman's life cut short in an instant.
MARY JUMBELIC: Sitting there talking to me two days earlier, and now she's dead.
It was so sad and shocking. NARRATOR: Was it truly a tragic accident-- WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: He claims that he goes into the bathroom.
And there she is, lying on the floor, bleeding with a massive head wound. NARRATOR: --or murder?
MARY JUMBELIC: Looking at it as a forensic pathologist, she had head trauma, and it was not
consistent with an accident. HONOR DORO TOWNSHEND: This starts to raise some serious questions.
[theme music] NARRATOR: Leslie Neulander was born in the early 1950s and grew up on Long Island, New York, before later
moving north to Syracuse. Former local chief medical examiner Mary Jumbelic met Leslie shortly after she moved to the same neighborhood.
MARY JUMBELIC: Leslie Neulander was a prominent woman in the community here in Syracuse.
And our social circles and business circles over overlapped. She belonged to the same synagogue
that my family belonged to. And we would see each other at holiday events and other community fundraising events in town.
AMBER HAQUE: Leslie was a devoted philanthropist. And she donated her time to causes
like the Jewish Community Foundation, Syracuse University, and loads of other charities.
MARY JUMBELIC: It was always a joy to see her because she had such a bubbly and kind personality.
She just had a way about her of making you laugh and feel at ease. And I always admired that about her.
NARRATOR: In 1983, Leslie had married prominent local obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Robert Neulander.
MARY JUMBELIC: People looked up to him greatly in the medical world. And she had been a critical care nurse,
but had given up her career to raise her children. Bob had been married previously and had two
children from that marriage. And so she helped to raise those children as well, and had a very full life.
NARRATOR: But on the morning of September 17, 2012, a distressing call was made from the Neulander family home
to emergency services. [phone ringing] AMBER HAQUE: On the other line was Leslie's 23-year-old daughter.
[siren wailing] AMBER HAQUE: Responders arrived at just minutes later at 8:27. But unusually, they found Leslie not in the bathroom
but in the bedroom. And Robert was kneeling down near her body, covered in blood, with his daughter
just screaming in distress. NARRATOR: Robert told paramedics that his wife had slipped and fallen in the shower.
[stirring music] AMBER HAQUE: The first police officer arrived five minutes later.
They secured the scene and followed the trail of blood from the bathroom to the bedroom, where
the first responders were working on Leslie's body, giving her CPR. Despite their best efforts, she was pronounced
dead at the scene at 8:42 AM. [stirring music] Shortly after Leslie was pronounced dead,
the police went into the bathroom. They found the shower still running. And in the bedroom, there was blood everywhere.
And a trail running in the corridor between the bedroom and the bathroom. Robert explained that he had moved Leslie
from the bathroom, where she had fallen into the bedroom, because he said, it was easier and more comfortable
for me to perform CPR on her there. The movements that Robert said he made checked out with the patterns of blood
that the police found at the scene. This theory was actually backed up on the 911 call, where we can hear
his daughter pleading with Robert not to move her mom's body. NARRATOR: One of the next to arrive at the scene
was the medical examiner, Dr. Robert Stoppacher. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: Dr. Stoppacher spoke very briefly
to some of the officers, but he was advised that she had slipped and fallen in the shower.
She had a massive wound to the right side of her scalp. It was probably about 6 inches long, maybe an inch wide.
And based on that preliminary examination, he looked at it and said, yeah, this head wound is consistent with a slip
and fall in the shower. In the shower itself, there was a stone bench. If one were to hit their head with sufficient force,
it could cause a serious injury. [stirring music] AMBER HAQUE: On the same afternoon,
Dr. Robert Stoppacher conducted an autopsy on Leslie's body. He found that she'd had bleeding to the brain.
Her skull had been shattered in so many places. And she also had bruising to her internal organs.
Taking into account Robert's version of events, Dr. Stoppacher ruled that Leslie
had died from an accident, blunt force trauma due to a fall, and that she'd slipped in the shower
and banged her head on the stone counter. [stirring music] NARRATOR: News of Leslie's tragic death
began to spread through the Neulander's close knit community. MARY JUMBELIC: I had just arrived home
from Europe, where I had been hospitalized and near death myself from a small fall and
subsequent infection. And so, two days later, when I'm sitting in my recliner, still recovering.
My son with me, he saw a post on Facebook that was suggestive that Leslie had died.
And so then there were a lot of phone calls that went around. And so, finally, I got hold of my husband,
and he said, yes, it's true. You know, She fell in the shower and she's dead. I felt shocked because she had just been in the home
two days earlier and now she's dead. It was so sad and shocking, but I just accepted
that that is what happened. [stirring music] NARRATOR: Although Leslie Neulander's sudden death
at her home had been ruled an accident following a fall in the shower, police followed standard protocol
in cases of sudden death by opening an investigation, which would come to the attention of Onondaga County District
Attorney William Fitzpatrick. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: I was advised that Leslie Neulander
had slipped and fell in the shower, struck her head, and died. And that's unusual for a healthy 60-year-old,
but not unheard of. There's probably 2,500 people a year in the United States, on average,
die due to bathroom accidents. Most of them are elderly people caused by heart attacks.
But there wasn't anything reported to me that indicated this was suspicious. And, you know, the case just kind of sat in limbo.
NARRATOR: While the police carried out their investigation, friends rallied around the Neulander family.
MARY JUMBELIC: After Leslie died, and the next night, my husband went to the home to visit.
Bob stayed in his room. He didn't really come out, so my husband just talked with the kids, and the rabbi was there
and they just had a conversation. When he returned, he said it was a little awkward
that the kids seemed uncomfortable when he would bring up how close their parents were
and how sad this was. And I just attributed that to grief. NARRATOR: On September 20, 2012,
three days after Leslie's death, friends and family gathered for her funeral. MARY JUMBELIC: Through the days that followed Leslie's death,
including at a funeral, at other social gatherings where her name would come up, that the details were
not clear. The only consistent story was Leslie fell in the shower. And that is pretty much what everyone knew.
[stirring music] NARRATOR: While friends and family tried to move on from Leslie's tragic passing,
police continued to look into the circumstances surrounding her death. AMBER HAQUE: Although the medical examiner
had ruled Leslie's death as an accident, the police still carried on their investigation.
And they now wanted to talk to their daughter about what she had seen that day. NARRATOR: Meanwhile, following her illness,
Mary tried to return to normal life. MARY JUMBELIC: Mark and I decided we would have a Thanksgiving party
to thank my friends for being helpful during my recuperation. A friend of mine approached me at the party
and said she had information that a close friend of Leslie had concerns about her death.
She said, please, will you talk with her? And so I agreed to do it. [stirring music]
The friend had a lot to say about Bob's infidelity, about Bob's financial problems, his behavior
on the day of Leslie's death. The friend talked about how she was sure that Bob killed Leslie.
And I was a bit stunned. From my perspective as a medical examiner, it didn't carry the weight of actual evidence or
forensic data. After she finishes her story, I say, well, why don't you go to the police and give them your statement?
[stirring music] So she called me afterward and said, thank you for telling me to go.
They're going to bring Bob back in for questioning. I heard he already has a lawyer.
And while she's telling me this, I'm thinking, how odd is that? If this was just a cold piece of information,
there's no way they would be saying to her, we're going to bring Bob back in for questioning and
telling her about the lawyer. And so I thought, wow, there's something already going on.
And a few hours later, Bob called the house. Mark took the call. They chat for a moment or two.
And he gets off the phone with Bob and says, well, good for him. He's going to Israel.
And now I'm sitting there thinking, oh, gosh, I think he will just go to Israel and not come back.
[stirring music] It set off a red flag for me because I was looking at those two pieces of information
and they were highly concerning. He's supposed to give another statement to police.
He's leaving the country. And why do the police want another statement? The fact that the police were grateful the friend came in and
provided her own observations meant that the police are still concerned about this case.
So I became concerned at that point. NARRATOR: Unbeknownst to Mary, the district attorney's office
was about to reopen the investigation into Leslie's death. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: Initial reports
were that this was a slip-and-fall accident, and there wasn't anything that was brought to my attention
initially that indicated that this was a homicide worth looking into. And then came an anonymous letter to my office
that piqued my interest. It focused on the financial aspects of the Neulanders, the fact that they were
living in separate bedrooms. Not only pointed that out, but pointed out that Leslie was going to sign a lease arrangement
that day, which is something that I certainly was not aware of. Whoever he or she was, was concerned
that Neulander had a serious financial motive to kill Leslie. Now, he or she might not have said that in such overt terms,
but that was the clear import of the letter that this was not an accident, that this was a homicide.
That kind of spurred a renewed interest, certainly by me, in considering bringing in Mr. Neulander
for a further interview. NARRATOR: Just as the district attorney resumed the investigation into Leslie's death,
Leslie's friend and former medical examiner, Mary Jumbelic, got in touch. MARY JUMBELIC: I had worked for years with William Fitzpatrick.
And even though I hadn't spoken to him, probably at that point in, you know, for years, I called him
because I just wanted to alert him that someone the police is looking at is going to leave the country.
I telephone Fitz, and I said I was calling about a friend of mine. Before I could say anything further,
he said, Leslie London Neulander. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: It was a good guess on my part.
I did not know why Mary was calling me. I did not know that she was very close to Bob and Leslie.
I hadn't really seen everything at that point, because we were still in the embryonic stages of recharging
this homicide investigation. But the crucial thing that I said to Mary was, would you look at the file?
[stirring music] - I realized that something about the cause and the manner of death were not settled.
The only thing I knew was that Leslie had fallen in the shower. I didn't know what her injuries were.
I didn't know if she had a heart attack. I didn't know anything. But I had a drive to try to help and answer the questions.
That is what I spent my life doing, looking at the dead and speaking for them and trying to understand
what happened to them. And so then I said, yes, I'll look at the file. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: That's when things really took off.
And it became a full-throttled homicide investigation. [stirring music] NARRATOR: Following an anonymous tip off,
District Attorney William Fitzpatrick had reopened the investigation into Leslie's death.
Had she slipped and fallen in the shower, as her husband, Bob claimed, or had she been murdered?
Hoping for a second opinion, William sent the case file to former medical examiner Mary Jumbelic.
- I focused really quickly on Leslie herself. Because that is my area of expertise, the examination
of the deceased. And so I focused on her body position, the wounds I could see, what I could see at the scene,
and all the details that I could learn from the autopsy. The photographs were very graphic.
It was shocking to see my friend in the photographs, but even more shocking to see the trauma to her body.
Leslie's right side of her head was bleeding extensively with a massive open wound there,
and the skull was caved in partly. Looking like two blows to the head, at least.
And in addition to that, she had injuries on her face and on her neck. She had bruising on her arms.
She had injuries on her fingers with bruising. The type of wound that she had, the amount
of fracturing of the skull, and the other injuries that are present on the body all point to inflicted injury,
as opposed to just tripping and falling. NARRATOR: But other details documented at the scene of Leslie's death also raised
questions about Bob's story. MARY JUMBELIC: She was laying on the floor of her bedroom,
face up, and had been scooched into an area between the end table and the bed. So not a really ideal position for CPR.
But why a physician would choose to carry an injured person, who potentially could have a neck injury, 60 feet to perform CPR?
Certainly, it's suggestive of a concern. But in addition to that, there were blood trails going all the way from the bed to the shower.
And not much per se in the shower itself, even though that was the purported area of the fall.
The manner of death being called an accident didn't capture what really happened to Leslie.
That she had head trauma, certainly, but was not consistent with a fall. She had been struck in the head, and it was a homicide.
NARRATOR: Mary took her findings to William, and he requested a search warrant for the Neulander's home.
Around six months after Leslie's death, Mary, William, and forensic pathologist Dr. Baden visited the house, which they were
now viewing as a crime scene. AMBER HAQUE: The house had been sold, but the new owners hadn't moved in yet.
And the second floor was still untouched. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: And we wanted to focus on the area in the bedroom
where Dr. Neulander claims he took Leslie after he removed her body from the shower.
Most of the blood on the wall had been cleaned away, but several things of incredible importance remained.
So we ripped up the carpet, and there's a little rubber undercarriage to the carpet.
That was completely soaked with blood. And then when we lifted that up, the floorboard, completely soaked with blood.
It should have been a minimal amount of blood because she had no pulse. In fact, there was a massive amount of blood completely
inconsistent with his story. What that indicates to me is that while she's alive and
has a pulse and is bleeding, her head is somewhere in that vicinity. The other amazing thing that we were
able to get from that examination was the headboard. Now, it is very, very difficult to see any physical evidence
on the board because it's a cloth-like material and it's very, very dark. And then when we examined that, there were several dozen
blood spatters from Leslie. [stirring music] NARRATOR: The new evidence discovered
at the Neulanders home was sent away for forensic analysis. MARY JUMBELIC: I knew Leslie's death
wasn't an accident when I looked at the pictures of her body. The scene was corroborative with the findings there.
This is a homicide. This is not a fall from standing height accident. NARRATOR: Six months after Leslie's death,
her case was now a full-blown murder investigation, but her death certificate remained an issue.
WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: It would be very difficult to ask a jury to convict someone beyond a reasonable doubt of a homicide
when your medical examiner says, hold on, she died as a result of an accident. NARRATOR: William and Mary presented their findings
to the medical examiner, Dr. Stoppacher, to ask if he would reconsider the manner of Leslie's death.
MARY JUMBELIC: We discussed our difference of opinion and discussed the science behind it,
and talked about wounding patterns and what happens to the brain in a fall versus blows to the head.
And at the end of that, I think the medical examiner felt they needed more. They needed more information.
They needed more opinion in order to budge from the concept of the fall. So we decided that the expertise
of a neuropathologist, and particularly a forensic neuropathologist, would be useful to elucidate
this difference of opinion. [stirring music] NARRATOR: In December 2013, while William awaited
the forensic neuropathologist report, he approached Bob's lawyer with a request for a formal interview.
AMBER HAQUE: Robert said that he had nothing to hide, so he voluntarily sat down for an interview
with officers and the district attorney. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: During the questioning,
he admitted that there was difficulty in their marriage. NARRATOR: William soon turned his questioning to the day
that Leslie died. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: He says that he got up that morning, that he went jogging.
He came back, prepared a cup of coffee for his wife. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: He cleaned up from jogging,
then began to make a small breakfast, then goes back upstairs. The shower is still running.
Now she's been in there, according to him, at least 35 minutes at that point. He claims that he goes into the bathroom to see if she's OK.
WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: This is a doctor of 30 years. What's the first thing you would do if you had never
even seen a medical school? There's a phone 5 feet away from them on the counter of the bathroom sink.
Pick up the phone. Call 911. Instead, he leaves her there. He does a cursory check to see if she's alive.
Claims that she's breathing. Goes about 90 feet further into the house to get his daughter to call 911.
[phone ringing] NARRATOR: Bob claimed he then carried Leslie from the bathroom into the bedroom to continue CPR.
WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: I then simply slid over to him a number of photographs. And said, Dr. Neulander, can you explain this?
Can you explain the blood? And he looked at me, and he said, no, I can't. NARRATOR: Despite Bob's calm, matter-of-fact account
of the events surrounding Leslie's death, William wasn't convinced by his story.
WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: My theory that he attacked her in the bedroom and left her, probably to die on the floor
while he's trying to figure out what to do. This is not a premeditated crime. He did not plot this out.
This was a rage homicide. Something snapped. They argued about something. Whatever it was, it set him off.
And then he's faced with an opportunity. Now, what do I do? The only thing I can say to describe that wound
is that she fell in the shower. [stirring music] NARRATOR: But if Bob had murdered Leslie in the bedroom,
the one thing that didn't add up was why the bed sheets weren't covered in blood.
Before questioning Bob, police had interviewed the Neulander's housekeeper. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: The housekeeper says,
I changed the sheets on Friday, and Leslie was killed on a Monday. She looks at the photos and says,
those are not the sheets that I put on the bed on Friday. And she says, by the way, there's a pillow missing.
There's only three pillows there. So when he was asked about the pillows, oh, we didn't have a pillow in a guest room,
and we needed a pillow for that. Well, who is that for? Well, people were coming over.
Oh, yeah, people were coming over after she was dead. The pillow was missing before she was dead, Doc,
what are you talking about? There's no question in my mind that the original sheets
that she left on that bed Friday were on that bed Monday morning when Leslie was assaulted.
And then soaked with blood, he removed the sheets, removed the pillow that probably had blood on it
as well, removed the murder weapon. And then while he went for his supposed jog,
he was actually going out to dispose of those items. [stirring music] NARRATOR: With missing bed sheets and no murder weapon,
investigators couldn't determine what had been used to kill Leslie. And with her death still ruled accidental,
police remained unable to charge Bob with her murder. Then, 18 months after Leslie's death,
came the news they've been waiting for. MARY JUMBELIC: The neuropathology report,
an evaluation of the brain, indicated it was inflicted injury, allowed the medical examiner to be able to change the death
certificate to homicide. NARRATOR: The size the wound, combined with the discovery of distinctive bruising
on the opposite side of Leslie's brain, was consistent with being hit by an object,
not with a fall from standing height. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: Based on the accumulation of evidence,
Dr. Stoppacher changed, not the cause of death, but the manner of death. Cause of death was still a massive blow to the head,
but the manner of death was now listed as homicide. That was it. There were no more avenues of escape for Dr. Neulander.
AMBER HAQUE: Three days later, on June 23, Dr. Robert Neulander is charged with second degree murder
and tampering with physical evidence. [stirring music] NARRATOR: On March 16, 2015, 2 and 1/2 years after Leslie
Neulander was found dead at her home in Syracuse, New York, her husband, Dr. Robert Neulander,
went on trial for her murder. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: Big trials are part theater, and no one knew that better than Bob Neulander.
Every day we would watch this litany of him walking down the courthouse hallway.
And he'd have his daughter, his son, or, in some instances, Leslie's sister, consoling him as he walked.
HONOR DORO TOWNSHEND: It might look unusual that the family of the victim are seemingly siding with the accused perpetrator.
But you've got to remember, at this time, the family do not have all the evidence that Mary has
or that the DA office have. They have not been subject to all of that information yet.
And so at the moment, naturally, a family going through a traumatic period are rallying together.
You've also got to remember from the perspective of the children, they've just lost their mother in really
traumatic circumstances. And if they believe that their father did this, they're also, in a way, losing their father.
So you can understand why people group together in this moment, because they're just
trying to protect the little sort of normality of their family unit. NARRATOR: The prosecution argued that Leslie's death
was no bathroom accident. Instead, that she was murdered in the bedroom by her husband,
as proven by forensic evidence. MARY JUMBELIC: There's blood spatter on the wall
and on the ceiling from an object being struck on Leslie's head. And then when it comes back for another strike,
it gets cast off on the wall, in the ceiling. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: There are blood droplets
on the lampshade, on the clock radio, on family photos, on the headboard, on the blinds to, say,
nothing of the blood in the bathroom. [stirring music] Here's the explanation they come up with.
So he went out for a jog, came home, showered up, put his pajamas on, and then put another pajama top on,
for some reason. And when he was carrying Leslie, that top became saturated with blood.
He took the shirt off because it was uncomfortable for him. And this blood cast off and spattered at various points
throughout the bedroom. Secondarily, when the EMTs got there, as they removed their gloves, they removed
them slingshot fashion. And that spattered a lot of blood throughout as well. Now there's two significant difficulties with both
of those explanations. Number one, no one saw him with a second shirt. The second thing is that the EMTs were all
very professional, and they are trained on how to remove a glove to avoid exactly this type of issue.
In addition to that, they also indicated, we hardly had any blood on our gloves that we noticed
because she wasn't bleeding. NARRATOR: The prosecution also argued that Leslie's head
injuries were not caused by an impact in the shower as Bob had claimed. - On the right side of the head,
the skull injury is caved in partly in a pattern that is not consistent with hitting
the edge of a marble bench. In addition, it appears there's two blows on that side of the head.
So both of those things don't line up with the stone bench theory. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: If you leave aside
the medical evidence, the blood spatter, I thought the most significant part was calling
the daughter to the stand. MARY JUMBELIC: The daughter was called as a witness. And the 911 call was played in the courtroom.
MARY JUMBELIC: What was chilling in the courtroom was that the family is there listening
to the daughter's 911 call. And it's just heartbreaking because you can feel the pain that the daughter feels when she first
sees her mother being carried by her father, and the terror in her voice, the sadness, the angst.
AMBER HAQUE: The problem was that perception of events just didn't stack up to the facts.
NARRATOR: One of the most crucial pieces of evidence for the prosecution was the moment Leslie's daughter placed
the 911 call on hold, leaving her mother's office to head toward the bathroom, where
she claimed Leslie was lying. NARRATOR: When quizzed about the 12-second gap between switching phones, her story fell apart.
WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: Her story had changed significantly at trial in this very, very important regard.
Yes, I went into the room with a bidet and the toilet, and I picked up the phone.
But it wasn't working, so I dropped that phone. I then assisted my father in removing
my mother from the shower. We then took her a couple of feet. We laid her down outside of the bathroom.
My dad began to perform CPR. It didn't seem to be successful, so we moved her again further into the bedroom
and dropped her just short of the bed. I then went, remembering that the 911 operator was still on hold.
I picked up the phone, and I don't remember what I said, but I can hear the tape and I understand that.
None of that is remotely possible. You cannot do everything that she claims that she did in 12
seconds, which was the amount of time between the 911 operator being put on hold.
WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: And the, oh, my god, there's blood everywhere, resumption of that call.
It would have taken conservatively a minute to do everything that she claims that she
did do in that 12 seconds. HONOR DORO TOWNSHEND: Her statement has some really contradictory points the evidence
can prove a false. But you also have to remember that she has witnessed something really traumatic, you know,
her mother dying in heinous circumstances. And so trauma can do really strange things to a person's memory.
So it might not be that she intentionally misleading or proposing false information.
It might just be that, actually, she can't remember exact details. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: After she testified, the case was done.
[stirring music] NARRATOR: After two weeks of hearing evidence, the jury retired to deliberate.
WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: The worst part of a trial is waiting for a verdict. And you always feel the same way.
You put your heart and soul into the case. In some cases, you feel more confident than others.
- I was nervous because juries are very earnest, and they try very hard to do the right thing.
But it doesn't always come out as a forensic professional might think it would. AMBER HAQUE: After three days of deliberation,
the jury returned their verdicts. They found Robert Neulander guilty of second degree murder
and tampering with evidence. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: Everybody in this case was resolute.
They knew that he did it, and they felt comfortable with their verdict. And I felt great.
I was just professionally satisfied that justice was done. AMBER HAQUE: Four months later, he appeared in court.
And Robert Neulander was sentenced to 20 years to life. [stirring music] NARRATOR: Bob was facing incarceration
for the rest of his life. But his defense team appealed and argued for a retrial,
citing serious juror misconduct. - An alternate juror pointed out that they believed 1 of the 12 actual jurors
had been involved in something. So the judge ordered examination of this juror's phone.
This investigation found that this juror had sent over 7,000 messages during this three-week period
to family and friends talking about the criminal trial. And this was in direct violation
of the judge's instructions for jurors not to discuss the case with outside sources
or to get information from anywhere else. And these messages included one from her father,
saying, make sure he is found guilty. And she failed to disclose this to the court.
The outcome of all of this was that in June 2018, the conviction was vacated. It was annulled as if the trial and conviction never happened.
NARRATOR: Robert was released on $1 million bail until the retrial could take place.
WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: They hired a very good guy, very good lawyer out of New York City.
And we began to prepare for trial number two. NARRATOR: On February 28, 2022, almost
10 years after Leslie's death, the retrial began. MARY JUMBELIC: I thought another group of jurors
presented with these same information would see it the same way. But, again, you never know until it's
all the way through the trial. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK: The jury, to our amazement, five hours after they retired, they came back
in with a verdict of guilty. And I feel great about that. MARY JUMBELIC: When I heard the verdict of guilty
for the second trial, it was just, oh, thank goodness. I hope the family can try to move on in some way now.
Because they really are carrying a huge burden with them. NARRATOR: On May 2, 2022, Bob was sentenced to 20 years
to life for the second time. Thanks, not only to the prosecution team, but also Leslie's friend, former medical examiner
Mary Jumbelic. MARY JUMBELIC: I took Leslie's message-- look what happened to me.
And I gave it to people who needed to hear that. And, yes, I do feel proud of it,
but I also feel like it was a fulfilling of, you know, what has always been my calling,
which was to do that for the dead. I remember Leslie for her lightheartedness and her kindness and her humor.
But I remember her in death, too, because it has helped other women who maybe are trapped
in situations with spouses or have experienced domestic violence. She was important in the community,
but she was just important on a personal level of how she made others feel. And I think those that knew her should think of that
and remember her. [somber music] [theme music]

The gruesome case of Leslie Neulander, who dies at home in the arms of her husband, Dr. Robert Neulander, following a 911 call by their daughter, Jenna.

Pushed to Death tells the stories of people who tragically passed away after appearing to suffer a fatal fall in suspicious circumstances.

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Brief Summary

Leslie Neulander's suspicious death led to a murder investigation, revealing her husband Robert as the perpetrator after initial claims of an accident.

Key points

Leslie Neulander's Tragic Death. Leslie Neulander's life was cut short in a shocking incident that raises questions of foul play.
Investigation Reopened. An anonymous letter prompts a renewed investigation into Leslie's death, shifting the narrative from accident to homicide.
Neuropathology Report Changes Everything. The neuropathology report reveals Leslie's death was a homicide, changing the investigation's direction.
Trial Verdict: Guilty. After a lengthy trial, Robert Neulander is found guilty of second-degree murder.
Retrial and Conviction. In a retrial nearly 10 years later, Neulander is again found guilty.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It was so sad and shocking.

Mary Jumbelic reflects on Leslie's sudden death.

0:26WatchJan 24, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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