Case of Craig Rabinowitz - Domestic Violence
This page is dedicated to the memory of Stefanie Newman Rabinowitz
Norristown, PA
Craig Rabinowitz, 34, pleaded guilty to charges of
murdering his wife, Stefanie, for her $1.8 million in life insurance. He
also pleaded guilty to theft by deception and deceptive business practices.
He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
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Police Arrest Husband In Strangling of
Lawyer
New York Times - May 6, 1997
The husband of a lawyer found strangled in the bathtub of their house in suburban Philadelphia was arrested today and charged with murder in her death.
The man, Craig Rabinowitz, turned himself in to face charges of murder and voluntary manslaughter in the death of the 29-year-old lawyer, Stefanie Newman Rabinowitz, prosecutors said. Mr. Rabinowitz, 33, refused to comment as he entered the police station.
Last Tuesday, he called 911 to say he had found his wife in the bathroom of their home in Merion, a Main Line suburb. The couple's young daughter was home at the time.
June. 3, 1967 -Apri. 29, 1997
by Terry Callen
Stefanie Rabinowitz was a young Philadelphia attorney murdered by her husband. Craig Rabinowitz drugged his wife, strangled her and then placed her in the bathtub in their home to make the death appear to be an accidental drowning. Police became suspicious when it was noted that she was wearing all of her jewelry, even her wristwatch, in the tub. The delay of her burial allowed the marks on her neck to become visible to the Coroner, making it abundantly clear that this was no accident, but a murder. It was established that Rabinowitz killed his wife for $1.8 million in insurance proceeds. It turned out that he was deeply in debt as well as carrying on a very expensive, clandestine affair with a stripper. Rabinowitz pled guilty to first degree murder and is currently serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole. Stefanie left a young daughter, Haley Sarah, now being raised by her maternal grandmother, Ann Newman. In a bit of poetic justice, Haley received the proceeds of her mother's insurance policies. The money is now in trust for her future. The case is the subject of the book, "Everybody's Best Friend" by Ken Englade.
Craig Rabinowitz, Involved
Alumnus
By Benjamin Wallace
Philadelphia Magazine - July, 1997
Husband guilty of murder - obsession with stripper
led to strangulation
Associated Press (The Times Herald-Record) - October 31, 1997
NORRISTOWN, Pa.-- A young widower confessed Thursday that he strangled his wife while pursuing a fascination with an expensive stripper, telling a stunned courtroom he had lost his ability to tell right from wrong.
As his trial began, Craig Rabinowitz, 34, pleaded guilty to charges of murdering his wife, Stefanie, for her $1.8 million in life insurance. He also pleaded guilty to theft by deception and deceptive business practices. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Stopping at times to regain his composure, Rabinowitz said he decided to spare family and friends the anguish of a trial. "I made the decision based on what I believe to be the two most important factors. Number one is my guilt, that I am guilty of these charges and I am ready to accept full responsibility for my wife Stefanie's death," he said.
"I cannot and will not subject my daughter, Haley, my wife's family, my mother-in-law and my brother-in-law, my family and our friends, I will not subject them to what most assuredly would be a very painful trial, one that I am sure would bring much sadness and anguish to all of those involved," he said. "I have brought enough heartache and devastation to all of these people and so many others as well."
Rabinowitz's mother and mother-in-law both shook with silent sobs as he expressed remorse for murdering the mother of his daughter, now 17 months.
Until Thursday, Rabinowitz had alleged that someone who left no signs of entering their house in Lower Merion Township strangled his wife in a bathtub April 29, three days before their baby's first birthday. But police determined Rabinowitz was deep in debt, partially from an obsession with Philadelphia stripper Shannon Reinhart, nicknamed Summer. Rabinowitz spent at least $100,000 on Reinhart after they met a year ago, tipping her heavily during his frequent visits to Delilah's Den.
Police also determined that his career as a latex salesman was a sham and that he cheated friends of $223,000 in a pyramid scheme by selling shares in the bogus company.
Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Bruce L. Castor submitted a synopsis of the case he had planned to present, including a document he called "the smoking gun," a ledger Rabinowitz wrote two weeks before the murder detailing his $671,000 in debts and the $2.1 million he could get from his wife's life insurance, stock and sale of the house.
Police found the piece of paper stashed in Mrs. Rabinowitz's closet. Thursday, Castor displayed a poster-sized enlargement of it, with a photo of Rabinowitz's favorite stripper attached.
Castor said evidence showed Rabinowitz slipped sleeping medicine into his wife's drink so she could not defend herself, then "choked the life out of her." The autopsy showed Mrs. Rabinowitz died at least two hours before her husband called the police, Castor said.
Castor said there was no evidence that Mrs. Rabinowitz, who worked part time as a lawyer, knew of her husband's debts, nor of his obsession with Reinhart.
Rabinowitz Admits Killing Wife - A dream urged
him to `do the right thing'
By Anne Barnard, Steve Ritea and Ralph Vigoda
Philadelphia Inquirer - October 31, 1997
In his dream, Craig Rabinowitz told the world yesterday, he walked into his boyhood home and was confronted by three loved ones, all now dead: his father, his father-in-law, and the wife he'd murdered.
"The three of them are sitting there and they say, 'Craig, sit down. We have to talk to you,' " Rabinowitz said between sighs and sobs. "And I sat down, and they put their hands on my hand and said, 'Craig, it's time to do what's right. It's time for you to do the right thing.' "
Yesterday, Rabinowitz followed that advice.
Stunning a Montgomery County courtroom full of people prepared for the opening day of his murder trial, Rabinowitz took the witness stand and pleaded guilty to strangling his wife, Center City lawyer Stefanie Rabinowitz, in their Merion home on April 29.
He told of a "moral disconnect" that led him to believe killing her would dissolve the knot of deceit and financial problems he'd created for himself.
He stood before Judge Samuel W. Salus 2d and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He agreed that he would not appeal his sentence.
Thus ended one of the most sensational murder cases in this region's recent history.
It came to an end as two women -- Rabinowitz's mother and mother-in-law -- cried in the second row of the Norristown courtroom. It was an ending that amazed the families, the judge, even the lead prosecutor.
"I was shocked," said First Assistant District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr., who had all but announced his eagerness to go to trial. "A total surprise." He called Rabinowitz a coward.
Rabinowitz's decision to admit guilt, defense lawyers Frank DeSimone and Jeffrey Miller said later, evolved over a few weeks and became final late Wednesday night in a meeting with them at Montgomery County Prison. They said it was prompted by Rabinowitz's desire to stop hurting his loved ones. Rabinowitz also told his lawyers of the dream. "It was eerie," DeSimone said.
Anne Newman, Stefanie's mother, said afterward that she had no idea that Rabinowitz had decided to plead guilty. She sat between relatives yesterday, quietly crying through most of the 75-minute proceeding. Across the aisle from her in Courtroom B was Joyce Rabinowitz -- Craig's mother -- who kept her head bent much of the time.
Rabinowitz, who wore a gray pinstripe suit, striped tie and blue shirt with white collar, also pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and deceptive business practices and received sentences for those crimes that will run concurrently with his life term. By last night he was back in Montgomery County Prison; he is to stay there a week before being sent to a prison at Camp Hill, where officials will determine where to put him for the rest of his life.
The only way he will be set free, court officials said, is if some future governor commutes his sentence.
In court, Rabinowitz struggled to answer the question that everyone had asked about this case, a question Castor posed to him directly:
"Mr. Rabinowitz, why did you do it?"
"Mr. Castor," Rabinowitz said, "that's something that I think about and wonder about every moment of every day. Why did I do this? There's no simple or easy or direct answer to that.
"My life has become such a sham and a fake and a fraud. And the hole that I have been digging myself became so, so deep . . ."
He said DeSimone had used a phrase that he felt accurately described what happened to him. "I had a moral disconnect," Rabinowitz said. "I lost my ability to know right from wrong. Right became wrong and wrong became right."
He said he was not mentally ill and did not deserve sympathy.
"I would not sit here and try to fool anybody by making an excuse to try and legitimize what I've done," he said.
Crucial to his decision to give up his right to appeal, he added, was his hope to spare his 18-month-old daughter.
"Right now my daughter, Haley, is thankfully unaware what has happened," he said. "But every day she grows up, and there will come a time when she knows what happened . . . An appeal down the road would bring all this out in the open. . . .
"I have already done the worst thing I could do to her."
Castor, speaking later before a crush of reporters outside the courthouse, would not give Rabinowitz credit for sincerity or remorsefulness.
"From what I know of Craig Rabinowitz, his only attribute that he was ever given by God was that he was a con man and a swindler and a faker and a liar," he said. "I didn't buy a word that he said . . . I think he was playing to the family, to Mrs. Newman [ Stefanie Rabinowitz's mother, Anne ] , to his mother and to other people in the courtroom to try and give them some feeling that maybe he isn't the monster that the commonwealth intended to portray that he is."
Just before Rabinowitz was led out of the courtroom, he caught his mother's eye and mouthed, "I love you."
She blew him a kiss.
To complete the legal record in court, Castor summarized his key evidence -- including what he later called one of his "two smoking guns": Rabinowitz's scribbled note detailing $671,000 in debts, and the $1,480,000 he could get by selling his car, cashing his wife's stock -- and collecting her life insurance policy.
The other smoking gun, Castor said, was evidence that Stefanie Rabinowitz had twice a normal dose of Ambien, a sleeping pill, in her system -- and that Rabinowitz had filled the prescription the day before she died. The prosecutor said he believed Rabinowitz had crushed the pills into his wife's beer.
Discussing the case he had planned to present, Castor said one piece of information that had been anticipated was not going to be part of it: a cell phone message left for Rabinowitz on the night of his wife's murder from Shannon Reinert, the exotic dancer at Delilah's Den in Philadelphia who used the name Summer.
Much of Rabinowitz's debt, prosecutors said, was a result of his wild spending on Reinert between October 1996 and April 1997. At times, they said, he spent between $2,000 and $3,000 a week on cash gifts, furniture, even a Valentine's Day necklace from Tiffany & Co.
Castor said Reinert had stopped cooperating with prosecutors and that her lawyer, Michael Wolf, had asked for immunity in exchange for her testimony.
"That set off alarm bells in our head," Castor said. "She may not have been entirely forthright concerning her relationship with Craig, and if it turned out she had lied, we didn't want to inject that into our case."
He did, though, call her phone message "innocuous . . . something like, 'I'm listening to the radio, I'm hearing our song. I miss you.' "
Castor said he interpreted that as an attempt by Reinert to keep Rabinowitz's cash coming.
The prosecutor emphasized that Reinert had no involvement in Stefanie Rabinowitz's death. However, he said he would discuss with District Attorney Michael D. Marino whether to investigate her actions further.
Wolf said yesterday of Reinert, "My client has fully cooperated with the District Attorney's Office, and everything she's done has been within the law."
He said the case has affected her livelihood. She has been unable to perform in public since shortly after her name surfaced, he said. "She's trying to get on with her life and raise her son."
In a statement, Reinert yesterday said she purposely maintained a low profile during the last six months.
"I have kept quiet out of respect for Stefanie's family," she said. "My sympathies go out to them. I consider myself very lucky because I still have my son and my family, unlike Stefanie's family, who lost a daughter and a father."
The Rabinowitzes' daughter, Haley, is being raised by Anne Newman in her Elkins Park home. She is being helped by Joyce Rabinowitz, who visits Newman at least once a week. Both women are widows now: Newman's husband, Louis, died Sept. 28 -- a death that Craig Rabinowitz said yesterday helped him realize he had to plead guilty.
"The decision became clearer to me when my father-in-law passed away," he said on the witness stand. "It became more focused to me what I had to do . . . The devastation and the pain is just too much."
His defense lawyers agreed yesterday that Louis Newman's death -- on the same day Rabinowitz turned 34 -- was a turning point.
For the last two weeks, DeSimone said, he and co-counsel Miller have discussed the possibility of a guilty plea. Rabinowitz spoke about it with his mother, his sister, Cindy, and Cindy's husband, calling them on the telephone from prison, DeSimone said.
Last week, DeSimone said, he checked with Marino to make sure Rabinowitz would be able to serve the sentences for murder and fraud concurrently rather then consecutively -- leaving open a tiny window that he could be granted clemency some day by a governor.
The final decision was made at 9 Wednesday night, DeSimone said, in a small meeting room in Montgomery County Prison in Eagleville.
"Last night he came in, he started to cry," DeSimone said. Rabinowitz talked about his dream. He said Rabinowitz told him, "It's the six-month anniversary of my wife's death today [ Oct. 29 ] . . . and the right thing is to go in there tomorrow and end the suffering for everybody, for my mother, for Mrs. Newman. They have a relationship together."
DeSimone said: "I think a trial would have driven a spike right through that relationship and it would have destroyed whatever hope this child has to lead a normal life."
Up to the last minute, Miller said, the two lawyers reassured Rabinowitz that the decision was up to him.
"We told him, we're with you either way. We're suited up and ready to go," he said.
"The inevitable [ a jail term ] is probably going to happen anyway in this case," DeSimone said. "The evidence was there for the commonwealth."
"As much evidence as in any homicide case I've ever seen," Miller said.
The lawyers refused to discuss the details of what happened on the night of the murder.
"This," DeSimone said, "is the day of reconciliation."
Man Admits Killing Wife To Get Insurance Money
Associated Press (New York Times) - October 31, 1997, Friday
Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 25, Column 1, 244 words
Craig Rabinowitz pleads guilty to murdering his wife, Stefanie, in their Lower Merion Township, Pa, home so he could use her insurance money to pay off large debts
by Ken Englade
St. Martin's True Crime Classics (January 1999)
ISBN: 0312969171
Everybody's
Best
Friend
Although there were virtually no visible signs of foul play on the body and hospital doctors later categorized the death as accidental, a wily and astute county coroner and forensic pathologist ordered a post-mortem on the body. That resulted in a finding of death by homicide. From the very beginning, the only real murder suspect was the husband, Craig Rabinowitz, whom the police discovered had a very dark side, much to the surprise and dismay of family and friends. The Craig Rabinowitz whom the police investigation uncovered was nothing like the Craig Rabinowitz family and friends had described.
The book reveals some of the tawdry details of the secret life that Craig Rabinowitz had led for some time. There is, however, no reconciliation of the Craig that friends and family knew with the secret Craig . The reader also comes away knowing very little about the murder victim. The treatment of those involved in this criminal scenario is quite superficial and repetitive. . Moreover, while there are photographs included in the book, none are of the crime scene. Most of the eight pages of photographs are of those affiliated with the investigation and prosecution of the case.
This tepid book is a quick and easy read, but only moderately interesting, at best, and will probably appeal only to avid fans of the true crime genre.
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Last Updated: 09/03/2006
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Stefanie Newman
Rabinowitz