Lethal Lake Trip: Lori Isenberg | Murder in Mind | Forensic Files

[line ringing] [dramatic music] - Anytime we've had a person submerge into the lake
and go deep, they have never resurfaced. POLICE OFFICER 1: Police! Search warrant!
GINNY TATE: I've never seen anything like it. It was such a piece of psychology.
ART VERHEREN: To do what they did to the person they loved most, it doesn't get much worse than that.
- For some people, even love isn't quite enough. [theme music] [ominous music] BRAD MASKELL: On the morning of February 13,
our 911 center got a call from a very distraught woman who identified herself as Lori Isenberg.
She talked about her husband having a medical event falling overboard. BRAD MASKELL: Our dispatch center immediately.
Then triangulated the location of her call. And what we found was she was positioned here in the lake,
just outside of what's known as Powderhorn Bay, about midway up Lake Coeur d'Alene.
[disconnect tone] BRAD MASKELL: We found her alone. The boat was dead in the water.
She was distraught. She was panicky. She said she'd been cruising around out here for two hours trying to find her husband, Larry.
Right away, the deputies, some of whom were on our dive team, recognized the water is very deep, very large search area.
So the opportunity for a dive at that moment was simply impossible. It was very, very cold that morning, about 26 degrees,
in fact. And the deputies realized that. So they tried to take care of her and get her off of the boat.
They brought her over to the shore where there's a fireboat, to talk to her some more.
JEFFREY BAUM: Hey, Lori. My name is Jeffrey Baum, and I'm with the Sheriff's Office.
I'm just going to try to ask some questions so we can figure out where to go from here.
OK? Can you tell me about how far you were when, uh-- when he fell in? - Um, closer to this side, I think.
- OK. Closer to this-- this side? OK. Did you see any houses or big trees or landmarks?
- --in the water. - OK. Can you tell me how did you get the bloody nose? - I fell down.
- You fell down. OK. - So she fell against the door. - I just tried to grab him. - OK.
All right, well, we're going to-- - We got to find him! [intriguing music] BRAD MASKELL: She had a bloody nose.
Uh, there was blood droplets and blood smears about the boat. Lori's story was that she slipped and hit her nose
in her attempts to save Larry. The other thing that was noticeable was the ignition
key in the boat had been turned, and it had been bent downward, almost in a fashion
as if somebody stumbling may have put their hand on the dashboard there. And also the kill switch was knocked free from the boat.
So this is sun at bay. And this would be the area where the boat launch that Larry and Lori came to that morning.
When we talked to Lori, when she was recovered, she said that, uh, they had left
the dock with the intent of going out and seeing the sunrise and-- and then ultimately cruising up the lake.
It's kind of unusual for people to be out on the lake in February. It gets extremely cold out here and
especially out on the water. However, Larry had taken a picture of the boat behind it,
backed into the water, and sent it to his kids just to kind of show that he and Lori were going
out on a romantic cruise. [soft music] - Coeur d'Alene is a resort destination town.
We have lakes, mountains, hiking, skiing, multiple golf courses. We have warm, dry summers.
We have snowy winters. Lori and Larry Isenberg, I think they were certainly well
known and well liked in town. - You want to taste it? [dog barks] - Larry Isenberg was very well liked
in the Coeur d'Alene community and the circles he ran in. He was a retired forester and he had done very well at that.
He was very financially successful and was very well respected. GINNY TATE: Larry was a larger-than-life kind of guy.
You know, if you met Larry once, you knew who he was. BRAD MASKELL: Larry, he was a healthy guy.
Being a forester, he had been in the out-of-doors probably most of his life, and after retirement, he
continued to do the things that he loved to do, fishing, hunting, enjoying the out of doors.
Everybody that we talked to about Larry and Lori said they had a great marriage, that they
loved each other and looking forward to a long and happy retirement. IAN SMAY: Lori and Larry were married for 15 years,
and they lived a little ways outside of Coeur d'Alene, in a small cabin surrounded by land and a garden they referred
to as their paradise, and by all accounts, they were looking forward to the rest of their
lives together. [intriguing music] - I vividly remember meeting Lori Isenberg the first time.
She entered the room dressed to the nines in a lovely outfit, and her hair was coifed and she was perfectly put together.
She appeared very gracious and very engaging to all parties that were present. BRAD MASKELL: Everybody liked Lori.
Uh, she had a lot of energy and she was clearly a very smart woman. She worked for an organization that
was the North Idaho Housing Coalition, and what they did was they assisted low-income families
in getting into homes and she was good at her job, according to the people that worked with her
and rose within the organization to a position where she had control. - Lori Isenberg is a woman who likes to take care of herself.
Like me, she's big hair. Don't care. But for her, there's something more to this.
I think that she likes to wear her wealth. I think that it's important for her that people realize that she is of a certain social status
and standing. [ominous music] POLICE OFFICER 2: Do you remember what time you got to the boat launch?
LORI ISENBERG: I do that because we were there for the sunrise. POLICE OFFICER 2: OK, so you were at the boat?
LORI ISENBERG: --sunrise at 6:30 and I didn't but he had sent a text to my daughter.
He took a picture and he took the picture at 6:41 and sent a text saying, we're going out to see the sunrise
and have breakfast. - Our deputy was trying to make some assessments about whether or not there was anything more to the story.
She seemed to be not quite as emotional as she was out on the boat, but ultimately he felt
convinced that Lori was legitimate and it was indeed an accident. REPORTER 1: An update now, the Kootenai County dive rescue
team continues to search Lake Coeur d'Alene for a man who reportedly fell into the water Tuesday morning.
68-year-old Larry Isenberg fell into the water near Powderhorn Bay on the southeast part of the lake.
His wife says that he was trying to repair a motor on their boat when it happened.
As of today, searchers have covered about 250 acres of the lake bed. The Sheriff's Office estimates the search area
is about three square miles. We'll keep you updated as that search continues. [intriguing music]
MIKI MARHOEFER: Coeur d'Alene Lake is a cold water lake, and most people cannot survive more than probably five
or six minutes in the water. BRAD MASKELL: Coeur d'Alene Lake rarely allows a body to resurface because
of the cold temperatures and depths. It's pretty obvious that the situation we have at hand
transitions from a rescue to a recovery. MIKI MARHOEFER: When a body goes down, it goes within a cone.
So if the water is 60-feet deep, the cone is 60-feet wide from where the body went in.
[ominous music] BRAD MASKELL: The Kootenai County sheriff's sonar boat did grid searches out there for about 10 days,
searching all along the coastline there, where Lori had described Larry going in the water.
They found absolutely nothing. You know, on most death investigations that I've experienced, oftentimes family members
have a very difficult time accepting the death of their loved ones. And it takes sometimes a great deal of time for them
to even accept the fact that their loved one has passed on. IAN SMAY: Pretty quickly, it seemed
like Lori started to move on after Larry's disappearance. She even started posting on social media about what
a great guy he was, talking about him in the past tense and organizing a memorial for him.
But that wasn't all. Neighbors around the Isenberg residence started noticing and hearing some strange things
going on there. Lori was moving things out of the house and even went as far as selling the boat.
- The neighbors, they thought it was kind of odd that so soon after Larry's death, that Lori
would be liquidating so many different things, and so they let us know about it.
[intriguing music] IAN SMAY: Life for Lori wasn't always as comfortable as it now was.
She was born Laurecene Laval in 1953, in Grass Valley, California, to Jimmy and Marcene Laval,
and she was the middle child of seven daughters. Her and her family grew up very poor, in fact,
to the point where they went through stretches of homelessness, where they were forced
to squat in abandoned homes or on farmland, or camp out in the wilderness to get by.
Because they were so poor growing up, Lori said she was the target for bullying,
and because of that, she learned how to fend for herself and defend herself at an early age.
And all of these factors came together to where she learned pretty early on to be self-sufficient.
DR. JULIA SHAW: What we know about Lori is that there were financial struggles throughout her early years.
So money is an issue for Lori and has been for a long time. KERRY DAYNES: There's some research
that says that our attitudes to money are formed very early in life, before the age of 10.
I think it's very significant that Lori was stigmatized and she was bullied for being poor.
And I think that the way that she made sense of this was that poverty is something to be desperately ashamed of.
And she wanted to prove herself to the world, and she didn't want to be poor ever, ever again.
[somber music] MIKI MARHOEFER: Lori graduated in high school in 1972 and then in 1973 married her high school
sweetheart, Steve Barnes. They were married a long time, but it doesn't seem like it was a very happy marriage.
IAN SMAY: Her and Steve had six daughters together, but by 1996 the marriage had run its course.
The couple got divorced and Lori moved to Idaho. Steve later described Lori as an extremely smart woman,
but said that she was prone to go to extremes at times. She could also be highly manipulative.
One of the biggest problems in their marriage was her infidelities. She had had three affairs by the time the relationship
had run its course. [intriguing music] GINNY TATE: After her marriage ended, you know, she was attempting to raise her six daughters
in a smaller tract home. Funds were very tight, but by the time I first met her,
she had worked very hard to reimagine herself and to become this person that she--
she really strove to be so that she could run in political and social circles that she had never had access to before.
IAN SMAY: There was another side to Lori. Female colleagues noticed that she tended to gravitate towards the men in the room, and to them,
it seemed like she was using these connections to climb the social ladder. KERRY DAYNES: What's important to her
is being socially upwardly mobile, and she's not shy about using her feminine wiles.
And she can be really quite manipulative, because I think that that financial status
represented to her something really fundamental and important. It represented safety, stability,
and also being assured of the respect of the people around her. [disquieting music]
- Lori and Larry met in 2003 when Lori was hired to work for him, but they soon were in a passionate relationship, despite the fact
that Larry was married with two children. That marriage ended soon after, and him and Lori
began their life together. Larry was besotted by Lori, to the point where people
described their relationship as almost being too perfect, and Lori even had a rule that they weren't allowed
to be negative to each other. It seemed to work, though, because after 15 years of marriage, he was still smitten with her.
She was his everything, his whole world. But you never really know what's going on behind closed doors.
KERRY DAYNES: I think that Lori has found exactly what she's been looking for. Here is somebody that can offer her the financial stability
that she's been looking for, the social status that she's been looking for, and also, he
has absolutely taken by her. [tense music] - By the time Lori began to work for the Housing Coalition,
it seemed like some of Larry's business acumen and business skills had rubbed off on her,
and she quickly proved herself to be a highly effective operator and very persuasive.
GINNY TATE: Lori solicited start up funds from local businesses, and we're talking about most of these
being $10,000 or more. And she did a phenomenal job finding projects, working through and attempting to help people.
During this time, at least 189 families were helped, so she appeared to be the perfect fit for this position.
[intriguing music] MIKI MARHOEFER: When the case was first brought to us, my thoughts were that the statements didn't add up.
I was suspicious and thought that maybe there was more to it than we knew. BRAD MASKELL: The fact that these two people had decided
to go on a recreational boating trip in February in 26 degree weather, and the fact
that she said that she had been out there approximately two hours, circling about looking
for Larry before calling 911, that seemed very unusual when their loved one had submerged in the water.
- The report of Larry having a medical event was feasible. But I believe after listening to the 911 call
that she was putting on an act. Sometimes in that call where she was crying and unconsolable.
And then sometimes she seemed, uh, comfortable. BRAD MASKELL: Lori claimed that she
had left her phone in the truck when they launched the boat, and that one of the things that delayed her call
was that she believed that Larry's phone had gone in the water with him. - She talks about having to dig around
and then accidentally finding Larry's phone. And then, of course-- [disconnect tone]
--the phone falls in the water. BRAD MASKELL: It adds another level of suspicion.
And then we find out that she is the subject of a large embezzlement case. [intriguing music]
GINNY TATE: In or around 2013, there starts to be a change in how Lori is behaving
and towards the Housing Coalition. She begins to believe that her company, rather than a not-for-profit entity
governed by multiple people. She begins to handpick the board, people who didn't necessarily have the financial background.
And so she was running financial information on millions of dollars of grants past people who had never dealt with those kind of
finances before. So by the end of 2017, things are not getting filed on time. The tax returns are late and Lori's
not providing information. So that's a huge red flag in the world of-- of white collar crime.
Eventually, come January 25 of 2018, the treasurer has gone over to the bank and realized that there's forged signatures,
and it's clear Lori has been stealing from the company. [tense music] IAN SMAY: Lori was suspended from
her role in the Housing Coalition on the 26th of January. The very next day her and Larry had set
out for a vacation in Florida. MAN: Three, two, one! Liftoff! [cheering, screaming]
BRAD MASKELL: One of the things that Larry always wanted to do, and it was kind of one of his bucket list items,
he wanted to go and see a rocket launch in Florida. IAN SMAY: By all accounts, he was
seemingly having a pretty great time until he unexpectedly fell ill. Suddenly, he was having real trouble.
He described his symptoms as wooziness, dizziness, a lack of balance or equilibrium,
and pretty much flu like symptoms. In the days after they had returned home from Florida,
Larry had seemingly recovered enough that on February 13, he decided to take Lori on that fateful sunrise cruise
as a way of saying thank you for taking care of him. [ominous music] POLICE OFFICER 1: Police!
Search warrant! Come to the front door empty-handed. Hands up! IAN SMAY: By late February, there were two investigations
running side by side. The Sheriff's Office was still investigating Larry's disappearance, while at the same time,
the local police were raiding the Isenberg home for evidence of financial crimes.
POLICE OFFICER 1: Come on out! POLICE OFFICER 3: Is anybody else inside? LORI ISENBERG: Nope.
POLICE OFFICER 3: All right. - As far as we could determine, she was basically giving
the money to her daughters. - My kids had a lot of medical expenses and things, and I--
I just wanted to help them, and I thought I could pay it back. I didn't take any of it.
I mean, I know I'm taking it when I take it and help my kids. POLICE OFFICER 4: Are we talking a lot of money?
I don't know how much money. Just a guess. - $200,000 over a couple of years. And I told them I can't pay it back.
[tense music] GINNY TATE: We come in and start digging through records. We trace the initial fraud back to 2014.
Just a little tiny piece. And this is so normal in a fraud scheme. I just need, for example, $5,000
to get over this rough spot, and I'm going to pay it back. But that's not what happens.
You have to steal more to pay back the original five. So this just starts to roll forward
and gets bigger and bigger, and she's unable to cover her tracks. ART VERHEREN: She would forge documents, forge checks.
She created ghost companies and used her daughters to essentially be responsible for them.
GINNY TATE: Lori was taking cash payments from renters and turning around and paying her daughter's rent.
It was just-- it was endless the number of things that were going on. - The thing about embezzlement is that most of the time,
the people who perpetrate this kind of crime are really normal, average-looking people who are respected
by their community, which is why they are able to commit these crimes. And financial crimes are incredibly easy for people
to justify in their own minds. They feel like victimless crimes. And in Lori's case, it looked like her saying,
I'm doing this for my kids. KERRY DAYNES: We're starting to see a much darker side to Lori,
because not only is she embezzling from her company, but essentially she's taking money
from people who are the poorest and most vulnerable. I think that takes a certain personality type,
and there is some research to say that fraudsters are people who have dark triad personality characteristics,
Machiavellian manipulative characteristics. Narcissistic, therefore self-centered,
greedy characteristics, and also some aggressive characteristics. POLICE OFFICER 5: Hi.
Lori here? Hi, I'm Steve. I don't know if you remember me from the other night, so I'm going to put you under arrest.
I'm charging you right now for forgery and grand theft. POLICE OFFICER 6: That's right.
We're going to put you in handcuffs here. We have one in custody. IAN SMAY: The full extent of Lori's embezzlement
had come to light. With Larry still missing, Lori had been charged with various financial crimes.
POLICE OFFICER 6: I'm being told to write your booking sheet out for one count of grand theft
and 40 counts of forgery. From now until tomorrow, around this time, you'll have no bail.
[tense music] BRAD MASKELL: On March 1, our 911 center receives a call from a very distraught woman.
BRAD MASKELL: She reports seeing what she believes is a deceased human being laying along the tracks.
We responded out here and discovered that, in fact, we did have a male adult lying face down.
The body was wearing the same clothing as Larry Isenberg was wearing when he went in the lake.
You know, when I saw that. Larry's body was deposited here on the shoreline, I knew right away that Lori was lying.
There was no way in my mind, knowing the lake currents the way that I do, that a body would have flowed to the south
and over to the west and back onto this north shoreline. It's simply impossible in Lake Coeur d'Alene.
So right away, we knew that something was going on. - The initial autopsy indicated no real trauma to the body.
There wasn't a stroke that may have caused him to fall into the water, like Lori had said.
And then the question is, well, did he drown? He had very little water in his lungs.
And it doesn't necessarily mean he didn't drown, but it certainly would make you wonder, why wouldn't he have
got much water in his lungs? And could there be something else going on there? [intriguing music]
IAN SMAY: The Coeur d'Alene community was devastated when it was finally confirmed
that Larry had passed away. But even as the community is working through their grief,
questions were starting to be asked about just what he knew about the investigation
into Lori's financial crimes. GINNY TATE: Lori is such a manipulator. You know, we'll never know what--
what she told Larry. Was he suspicious? We'll certainly never know. - Family members described Larry as a smart man.
But when he was around Lori, he was dumb. He was blinded by his love for her and would often miss red flags.
- Lori and Larry certainly didn't lack money. They had multiple houses, some of which
they rented out and took a rental income from that to the point where they were worth more than $2 million,
which raises the question of why did Lori feel the need to steal? DR. JULIA SHAW: Why can't Lori Isenberg just tell Larry
that she's in this financial difficulty, that she has committed these crimes and that she needs his help?
I think maybe this relationship that everyone else thought was so perfect wasn't quite as good as everybody else thought.
IAN SMAY: Larry was what some might call an old-school thinker, meaning that he wanted people to be responsible for their actions.
He wanted people to make their own way and be responsible for any bad choices or situations
they got themselves into. He didn't really believe in charity or giving people handouts.
- Larry didn't give anything to his children, but Lori wanted to support her daughters.
But she didn't have access to Larry's money to do so. So she started to take it from the North
Idaho Housing Coalition. POLICE OFFICER 4: Are we talking a lot of money? I don't know how much money.
Just a guess. - $200,000. ART VERHEREN: She really stole, I think it was over $500,000
from the Coalition over about five years' time, and Larry didn't have a clue because she
was so good at manipulating and deceiving people. KERRY DAYNES: So Lori is hiding half a million dollars
worth of secret, not only from the organization that she's working with, but also from the man that she professes to love.
So that would be indicative of a real risk taking attitude. And that is part of the whole dark triad personality
type, really. They believe in big risks and hope for big rewards, but if things don't go right for them,
that's when we see the psychopathic aggressive characteristics come to the fore.
[tense music] - A newspaper reporter from the local newspaper who was doing a story on the embezzlement case--
I had gone up to the Eisenberg residence and wanted to do an interview with Lori.
Lori did not go along with the interview, but certainly she became aware of the fact
that that particular story was going to break the next morning, and she knew that Larry made a habit of reading
that newspaper every day. GINNY TATE: Well, obviously, Lori does not want Larry to know that that she
has gone this far. She can't cover it up. It's not just a, whoops, or, I mishandled
an accounting transaction. It's clearly, I have stolen government funds. And I do know that the Larry that I was familiar with
would not want to be associated with someone that was a thief or a fraudster. He just wouldn't.
KERRY DAYNES: There's now a sense of urgency. What is she going to do about the predicament that she's in?
So it's high stakes and she's now in a high stress position. The more stress that's put on you, the more unpleasant or
problematic personality characteristics tend to rise to the surface. So now we see her at her darkest.
[dramatic music] - The report identifies the cause of death as poisoning by diphenhydramine and a contributing
factor of drowning. Diphenhydramine is often known as Benadryl. It's a common drug that's used for allergies.
He had probably 10 times the lethal level of diphenhydramine in his system. ART VERHEREN: When a person takes
a large amount of Benadryl, it doesn't kill them, but it puts them into a delirium, where they're
basically very foggy, unsteady on their feet, easily manipulated into doing whatever you want them to do.
BRAD MASKELL: One of the questions I had immediately was, how in the world could Larry have consumed that much Benadryl?
IAN SMAY: Lori failed to appear at her arraignment for the embezzlement charges.
It really seemed like after Larry's body had been discovered, she had skipped town.
And by the time Lori had turned herself in in July, the evidence in the embezzlement case
was really overwhelming. REPORTER 2 (ON TV): A courtroom appearance months in the making.
Lori Isenberg turned herself in Wednesday night at 10:43 PM. About 15 hours later, she faced a judge
for her arraignment, something she failed to do back in May when she was a no-show for court
on embezzlement charges. REPORTER 3 (ON TV): As Lori Isenberg heads to prison, her victims know it won't undo the harm she's caused.
Isenberg managed to steal nearly $600,000 while overseeing a nonprofit organization
dedicated to housing the underprivileged. In victim impact statements, we learned
the money could have been used to house 20 families and help with down payments for even more.
IAN SMAY: The fact that Lori was in prison for her financial crimes took pressure
off of the separate homicide investigation. ART VERHEREN: The case took a long time to investigate.
There were a lot of witnesses and a lot of evidence. - During that part of the investigation,
I can recall spending some time going back through the photographs taken the morning
that the boat and truck was impounded, and immediately in the console, I recognized right away that that was a bottle of Benadryl.
Clearly, there is the source of Benadryl. And one of the other photographs from the boat
was a photograph that depicted the contents in Lori's purse. And in that photograph, there was
an empty bottle of a beverage called Green Machine. [ominous music] I set about an experiment to try and identify whether or not
you could dissolve that much Benadryl in the solution of Green Machine. And based on my experiment, indeed,
she could actually dissolve those caplets in that solution. When you think about how he experienced dizziness and
a delirium on their trip to Florida, it makes you wonder if she didn't make an attempt
in Florida to do that. KERRY DAYNES: Clearly, this is an act of premeditated murder.
A concerted effort has gone into this. To poison somebody, you've got to have knowledge
that you've probably researched, and then you've got to create the perfect circumstances
for somebody to take it. And that's exactly what Lori did. BRAD MASKELL: We then got hold of Lori's phone,
and right away we discovered some things that were pretty interesting. Prior to their trip to Florida, we
found that Lori was researching the areas of the Space Coast that experienced the most drownings.
IAN SMAY: Lori hadn't only been researching currents and waterways while they were in Florida.
When police searched her phone, they found that between the ninth, which is when they returned from Florida and
the 13th, which was the morning that Larry disappeared, she had been researching the nearby lake,
Pend Oreille, which is the deepest lake in Idaho. And she wasn't only researching currents and waterways,
but also whether or not boat launches were open at night. ART VERHEREN: That day, she had sent texts
to a couple of people with a photograph, explaining what they were doing. LORI ISENBERG: I didn't know, but he had
sent a text to my daughter. He took a picture and he took the picture at 6:41. BRAD MASKELL: In looking at the metadata on that image,
we discovered that photo was actually what's known as a live photo. So it actually contained a very small segment of video.
LARRY ISENBERG (ON VIDEO): All the way at the back end of the silver-- - You could hear the voice of a male talking in the background.
LARRY ISENBERG (ON VIDEO): All the way at the back end of the silver-- - You know, it sounded very much like Larry's voice.
ART VERHEREN: It wasn't Larry that sent the text. It was-- it was Lori. [suspenseful music]
DR. JULIA SHAW: Why would you think that murdering somebody is somehow a solution to something,
or is a better option than just confessing and just telling Larry, but also the authorities what you did?
And I think one of the options might be that she thought that she could get away with it.
- So the morning that you guys went down to the boat ramp, can you kind of recall?
Just walk me through your trip down there? - Now in prison in Washington State, Lori was interviewed by detectives
from the investigative team. - My understanding is that you left around 5:00-ish.
- I think I'm not going to change anything from this statement. - She was sticking to her original story,
which was that Larry had died due to a tragic accident. - There's a lot of things within your phone records.
There's a lot of things within your Facebook records. - But the weight of the evidence
really only pointed to one conclusion at this point, and that was that Lori had drugged Larry in order
to push him overboard. - You've got searches about death charts, whether you can--
the boat on debut at night. There's a lot of stuff there. Can you explain that? - I think if you're going to start asking me questions
like that, I should-- BRAD MASKELL: It took approximately two years to put that case together in a strong case,
as we could possibly make, before we formally charged Lori with Larry's death. [ominous music]
IAN SMAY: At trial, she entered what's known as an Alford plea, which means that she's admitting
the prosecution has enough evidence to convict her, but she doesn't formally admit that she murdered Larry.
- There's something very happy to finally be able to tell the families. - Lori very much played the victim
when she was in court, especially at her sentencing hearing. - It's not easy, but I want you to see the good,
the bad, and the ugly. - Lori turns around to Larry's children and tells them how proud their dad was of them.
- I know he was a tough dad, and he probably didn't tell you nearly as much as he told me how much he loves you
and how proud he was of you. - I have never seen such a cruel piece in my life. - I know how much you love him.
I know that. He can never be replaced. And there's nothing I can do [sobs] to bring him back to you.
- It was such a piece of psychology. KERRY DAYNES: Lori is clearly still not done with these emotional chess moves.
- I want to state emphatically that I am responsible for Larry's death. Absolutely.
I am so sorry for everything I did, starting with the embezzlement that resulted
in the lies, deceit, and ultimate betrayal of the love and the trust of the people I love, especially Larry.
KERRY DAYNES: Her whole speech to her and Larry's children in court is really quite manipulative.
They just want clear answers and some form of closure. But the time was taken up, really,
with Lori laying the groundwork for engendering some sympathy for herself and what was to come next.
- I'd say maybe a week or two after the embezzlement was discovered, I knew that my life was over
and I had two options, death or life in prison. - She said that she is responsible for Larry's death.
However, that was not her intention. Her intention was to take her own life. We did not expect that.
- I hadn't thought about suicide until I fell into that despair and realized life
as I knew it was over. - She's thinking about how she might be able to mine any form of doubt in her children
or stepchildren's minds. - I wanted to make it look like an accident. [somber music]
Sleeping pills are the easiest. But I knew that an autopsy would show that I had taken sleeping pills.
- The explanation, it had no sense whatsoever. - So then I looked at drowning. Yes, I did a lot of research.
Where can I drown where they cannot find my body? ART VERHEREN: She was going to kill herself,
and she was going to do so by drinking some juice that she had laced with Benadryl.
- I know that Larry would still be alive if it was not for me fixing a drink with Benadryl in it
so that I would be able to selfishly and cowardly take my life. If I wouldn't have had that bottle in there,
he would not have accidentally drank it. - She fell asleep on the boat, that Larry somehow
found the juice, drank it, and that was the reason he went over. - Right there I knew she was lying,
but I also knew I was correct about how the drug was administered to Larry. KERRY DAYNES: It's just a ridiculous story,
and I think that she's looked at the evidence and she's thought, how can I account for why, you know,
I've got a glass full of Benadryl on my boat? And the story that she's come up with is just--
well, it's utterly implausible, but it's the one that she thinks puts her in the best possible light.
- I don't know what more I can say. I'm guilty. I'm sorry. [intriguing music] JUDGE WAYMAN: Ms. Isenberg, I'm going to sentence you today.
As everyone has acknowledged here this morning, nothing that we do here in this courtroom
is going to bring back Mr. Isenberg. I will impose a life sentence. That life sentence will be divided into two parts.
30 years fixed up to life in prison. - Lori deserves prison for the rest of her life.
Judge Wayman called her a liar. I completely agree. This was all about Lori. This was not about anybody else.
JUDGE WAYMAN: That sentence is intended to deter you and others will not be a risk to society.
- Lori brought that on herself by, well, doing what she did. And then this ridiculous story at sentencing.
BRAD MASKELL: I was actually satisfied with that sentence. It's basically a life sentence for Lori at the age
that she was. And so in my mind, she got life for killing Larry. JUDGE WAYMAN: Court is now adjourned.
- One of the things that struck me was that it starts off as a relatively predictable fraud offense.
But from that foundation, we very quickly move to things that are not so standard, which
was on this downward spiral where you get yourself into a situation that you feel like you can't get out of.
And in her case, she catastrophized to such an extreme degree that she felt that murder
was the only option. KERRY DAYNES: I don't think that this could have been predicted.
It's one of those cases where somebody commits a crime that you would never expect from them.
That crime was embezzlement. That was shocking enough. But then for it to be revealed that she was also
capable of a premeditated murder, really does prove that you're never quite sure what dark personality characteristics lie
dormant in people just waiting for the right circumstances to come along and trigger them.
[theme music]

A charity leader poisons her spouse mid‑boating trip, hiding fraud behind tears and excuses.

Murder in Mind explores the psychological forces that drive people to murder.

Brief Summary

Lori Isenberg murdered her husband Larry to cover up her embezzlement, leading to her life sentence after a complex investigation.

Key points

A Disturbing Discovery. A 911 call reveals a distraught woman searching for her husband who fell overboard.
Suspicion Arises. Lori's behavior after Larry's disappearance raises eyebrows among neighbors and investigators.
Financial Crimes Uncovered. Lori Isenberg is arrested for embezzlement amidst the investigation of her husband's disappearance.
The Discovery of Larry's Body. Larry's body is found, raising suspicions about Lori's involvement.
Lori's Manipulation Unveiled. Witnesses describe Lori as a manipulator, raising questions about her relationship with Larry.
Lori's Alford Plea. Lori enters an Alford plea, acknowledging the evidence against her without admitting guilt.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She had a bloody nose.

BRAD MASKELL describes Lori's condition after the incident.

3:49WatchOct 19, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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