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The Man Behind the Picture-Perfect Family Was a Stranger to Everyone | True Crime · Crime Uncovered

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  Speaker 1: It is a cold January morning in 2012, and the
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  Speaker 1: streets of Detroit's East Side are almost empty. A tow
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: truck driver is working his usual route, hunting for abandoned vehicles.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Down an alley lined with burned out houses and heaps
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  Speaker 1: of dumped garbage, he spots something that doesn't belong. A
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  Speaker 1: black Mercedes-Benz SUV. Clean. Expensive. the kind of car you'd
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  Speaker 1: see in a driveway with a manicured lawn, not in
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  Speaker 1: a place where even the weeds look tired. He walks
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  Speaker 1: up to it, he looks inside, and what he finds
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  Speaker 1: in the backseat is about to split open one of
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  Speaker 1: the wealthiest communities in the entire state of Michigan. Within days,
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  Speaker 1: a husband will stand in front of television cameras and
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  Speaker 1: speak tenderly about his wife of nearly 30 years. Within
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  Speaker 1: a week, a man with the mind of a child
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  Speaker 1: will walk into a police station and say he wants
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  Speaker 1: to talk. And underneath a neighborhood bar, investigators will uncover
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  Speaker 1: a room that no one in that polished, quiet suburb
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  Speaker 1: could ever have imagined. This is a story about a
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  Speaker 1: respected family, about an image protected at any cost, and
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  Speaker 1: about what was buried underneath it. Some of the questions
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  Speaker 1: in this case took years to answer. Some were never
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  Speaker 1: answered at all. Welcome. This is the case of Jane
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  Speaker 1: and Bob Beshara. Let's start with Jane, because the story
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  Speaker 1: is hers. She grew up in Mount Clemens, Michigan, a
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  Speaker 1: modest little city northeast of Detroit, one of four kids.
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  Speaker 1: A close family, the kind where the siblings are still
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  Speaker 1: vacationing together as adults, where Jane makes regular trips down
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  Speaker 1: to Chattanooga, Tennessee, just to see her sister Julie. Even
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  Speaker 1: as a child, people noticed it. Jane was a leader, organized, practical, driven.
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  Speaker 1: She earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from Central
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  Speaker 1: Michigan University, then an MBA from the University of Detroit Mercy.
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  Speaker 1: This was not a woman who waited around for life
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: to happen. She built it. Now meet Robert Michael Beshara.
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  Speaker 1: Everyone would come to call him Bob. Bob was raised
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  Speaker 1: in the Gross Points, a string of five lakefront communities
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  Speaker 1: on Lake St. Clair, just east of Detroit. Old money.
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  Speaker 1: Grand houses. Almost no violent crime. And Bob's family wasn't
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  Speaker 1: just comfortable. They were prominent. His father, George Beshara, sat
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  Speaker 1: as a judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals and
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  Speaker 1: served on the Board of Governors at Wayne State University.
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  Speaker 1: Bob went into real estate. Rental properties around Grosse Pointe
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  Speaker 1: Park and on Detroit's East Side. He had a favorite line, apparently,
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  Speaker 1: that real estate was just monopoly and whoever owns the
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  Speaker 1: most property wins. Mutual friends introduced Jane and Bob. By
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  Speaker 1: his own account, they clicked right away. He said he
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  Speaker 1: was drawn to her energy, to what he called her
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  Speaker 1: good heart. Sometime in the mid-1980s, they married, settled into
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  Speaker 1: a house on Middlesex Road in Grosse Pointe Park, and
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  Speaker 1: had two children, a son, Bobby, and a daughter, Jessica,
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  Speaker 1: who everyone called Jessie. From the outside, it was the picture,
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  Speaker 1: the brochure version of suburban success. Jane rose to senior
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  Speaker 1: marketing manager at an energy consulting company with offices in
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  Speaker 1: downtown Detroit. And here's a detail that tells you something.
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  Speaker 1: Her steady paycheck was a pillar of that household. Because
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  Speaker 1: despite the appearances, despite the membership at the exclusive Lockmore Club,
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  Speaker 1: the family went through stretches of real money trouble. Outside
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  Speaker 1: of work, Jane poured herself into her community. She was
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  Speaker 1: president of the Mothers Club at Grosse Pointe South High School,
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  Speaker 1: active at Grosse Pointe Memorial Church. Always volunteering, always encouraging
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  Speaker 1: younger mothers to stay involved, even with little kids pulling
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  Speaker 1: at their sleeves. Bob, meanwhile, became president of the Grosse
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  Speaker 1: Pointe Park Rotary Club and served as an usher at church. Together,
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  Speaker 1: they were fixtures on the local charity circuit. To the community,
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  Speaker 1: he was Big Bob, sociable, connected, the guy who always
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  Speaker 1: showed up to help. But inside the marriage, there was strain.
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  Speaker 1: Bob saw Jane as critical. He privately complained that at
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  Speaker 1: home he felt emasculated. And Bob was living a life
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  Speaker 1: that Jane did not see. Remember I said Bob owned
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  Speaker 1: a lot of property? One of his buildings sat on
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  Speaker 1: the corner of Mack Avenue and Nottingham Road in Grosse
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  Speaker 1: Pointe Park. On the ground floor, a bar. the hard
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  Speaker 1: luck lounge. And in the basement, Bob had built something else.
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  Speaker 1: He had partitioned off a private space down there, a bed,
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  Speaker 1: a leather chair, a cross, hooks, chains, restraints. It was
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  Speaker 1: a dungeon. And in the world of bondage and domination,
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  Speaker 1: Bob Beshara had another name. Online and at private parties,
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  Speaker 1: he was known as Master Bob. Women he met on
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  Speaker 1: BDSM websites became his submissives. One of them, a woman
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  Speaker 1: named Lydia Porter, lived for about three years in a
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  Speaker 1: small room inside that basement. Bob told her that his
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  Speaker 1: marriage was falling apart, that Jane had agreed to a
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  Speaker 1: divorce as soon as the kids finished school. Now, hold
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  Speaker 1: on to this detail because it's one of the strangest
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  Speaker 1: in the whole case. At the same time, Lydia Porter
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  Speaker 1: was sitting in church with Bob and Jane every Sunday.
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  Speaker 1: Let that settle for a second. The wife, the girlfriend
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  Speaker 1: living in the basement, and the pew. In 2008, on
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  Speaker 1: a website called alt.com, Bob met someone new, Rachel Gillette,
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  Speaker 1: a divorced single mother who worked as a secretary in
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  Speaker 1: the Alumni Affairs office at Wayne State University. She was
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  Speaker 1: looking for a single dominant man. So Bob told her
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  Speaker 1: he was a widower. It was a lie. And when
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  Speaker 1: Rachel did a simple internet search and discovered he was married,
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  Speaker 1: Bob simply rewrote the story. Okay, he was separated. Then, later,
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  Speaker 1: the divorce was final. Rachel gave him a deadline and
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  Speaker 1: eventually came to believe the divorce had been completed in
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  Speaker 1: May of 2011. The relationship became intense, almost obsessive. He
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  Speaker 1: called her Bella, his little princess. In 2011, he traveled
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  Speaker 1: with her to her daughter's wedding in South Carolina. The
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  Speaker 1: relationship included breath play, a practice involving choking, and Bob's
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  Speaker 1: time with Lydia Porter? It ended only when she walked
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  Speaker 1: in on him with Rachel in the dungeon. There was more.
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  Speaker 1: A longtime friend would later testify that he and Bob
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  Speaker 1: used cocaine on the golf course at the Lockmore Club. Jessie,
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  Speaker 1: Bob's daughter, once caught her father on pornographic and BDSM
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  Speaker 1: websites and and told her mother, who was upset. Bob
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  Speaker 1: gave his daughter an explanation tied to a medical problem.
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  Speaker 1: He even gave Rachel a family heirloom ring that was
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  Speaker 1: reportedly meant for Jane. By late 2011, Bob and Rachel
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  Speaker 1: were planning a future. They agreed to buy a house
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  Speaker 1: together in Grosse Pointe Park. They even began courting a
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  Speaker 1: third woman, Janet Lehman from Oregon, to join them in
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  Speaker 1: what would be a BDSM household. The closing on the
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  Speaker 1: house was set for January 27, 2012. In the months
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  Speaker 1: leading up to that date, Bob called Rachel more than
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  Speaker 1: a thousand times. But there was one obstacle. Bob was
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  Speaker 1: still married to Jane, and a divorce, he told acquaintances,
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  Speaker 1: would cost too much. How much Jane knew is still unclear.
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  Speaker 1: Some reports suggested she only discovered the relationship with Rachel
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  Speaker 1: in a few weeks before January 2012. By then, the
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  Speaker 1: couple was in marriage counseling. And all through this period,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Bob leaned on a handyman, Joseph Gent. Everyone called him Joe,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: 48 years old, living in St. Clair Shores, developmentally disabled.
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  Speaker 1: with a reported IQ of around 67. Bob hired him
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  Speaker 1: for odd jobs at his rentals, plumbing, painting, cleanup. At
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  Speaker 1: some point before January 2012, Joe Gent told an acquaintance
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  Speaker 1: something strange. A man named Bob wanted someone to kill
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  Speaker 1: his wife in a hit and run. According to prosecutors,
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  Speaker 1: Bob had spent months looking for someone willing to do it.
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  Speaker 1: Bob had the double life, the house closing, and the handyman.
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  Speaker 1: All he needed now was a date. And on Tuesday,
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  Speaker 1: January 24th, 2012, he got one. Stay with me for
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  Speaker 1: part two.