00:00:00
My phone rang. Mom and Larry were in some kind of accident on the boat. I was trying to grab him. I couldn't find him.
00:00:11
We got the best people out there looking for him. They can't find Larry. What do you mean you can't find him?
00:00:19
How was she taking it? She was a mess. I just held her. She has bruises all over her legs.
00:00:27
Her thighs are just black and blue. Something's not right. It was very, very odd.
00:00:33
What the heck are they doing? Going out on the lake in 20-degree weather in February.
00:00:38
Is he even in the lake? Where is he? A lot of unusual stuff happens when you investigate death.
00:00:46
The FBI described this scheme. How much money do you think was taken? Around $900 to $1 million.
00:00:53
The level of betrayal was unbelievable. When are the lies going to stop? I just said, Mom, I will fight for you.
00:01:03
I believe that truth will win. I can still remember just feeling a chill. I think there's a special place in hell for a number of things.
00:01:17
That's definitely one of them. I'm a one with the address of your emergency. I'm on the lake, but I don't know where.
00:01:44
Lucky is he, or she, who finds love happy and lasting and true. The love that deepens as it ages.
00:01:53
My husband has it like he had a stroke in his mouth. Love that survives the unknown currents of a long life on the cold, deep void.
00:02:07
I can't find you so overboard. But nothing is forever. This is about the luck that ran out
00:02:28
on the morning of February 13, 2018 in the frigid water of Lake Coeur d'Alene. He's in the water?
00:02:38
Bye. The desperate woman on the phone was Lori Eisenberg. the man in the water, her husband, and the love of her life, Larry.
00:02:49
She tried to explain that they launched before dawn, all bundled up and romantic,
00:02:53
to watch the sunrise on the water, and intended to cruise 16 miles up the lake for a Valentine's breakfast
00:03:00
at the big local resort, the Coeur d'Alene. How far had they gone? Where was she? She didn't know, she said.
00:03:08
Hang on one second, let me get people going. Quickly the cell towers triangulated and help went racing toward the spot she was stranded.
00:03:20
A place called Powderhorn Bay, four or five miles from where they started. Let's talk to her real quick.
00:03:28
A few minutes later, Laurie Eisenberg was ashore, warming up in a rescue boat's cabin,
00:03:34
when a deputy approached wearing a body cam. He said he didn't feel good and he was doing things weird and then he went up to the motor
00:03:41
and the motor wasn't broken, it was the other motor. and then I said, why are you doing that?
00:03:46
And he turned to look at me and his face just looked awful and then he just started to fall
00:03:55
and I tried to get the door open and get to him and I grabbed him and I fell And just like that
00:04:03
Lori's long love affair with Larry was over Hey! Who do we appreciate? Grandma! Larry and Lori Eisenberg were in 2018 the elders of a big extended clan that included eight children, 15 grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.
00:04:29
They were well off. They created their own little mountain paradise called Cougar Gulch.
00:04:35
And they were respected, too, in North Idaho. Larry, a retired timber executive.
00:04:42
and Lori, the head of a local non-profit that connected the poor with homes of their own.
00:04:50
Yet after 14 years of marriage and nearly 30 years after first laying eyes on each other,
00:04:55
Lori and Larry were, by all accounts, in love to a degree that was almost nauseating.
00:05:02
I'm just going to try to ask you some questions so we can kind of figure out where to go from here, okay?
00:05:07
Now, Larry was gone and deputies found Lori looking like she'd been on the wrong end of a prize fight.
00:05:15
Can you tell me, how'd you get the bloody nose? I fell down. You fell down. So she fell against the door.
00:05:22
I was trying to grab him. Okay, all right. Well, we got the best people out there looking for him right now, okay?
00:05:29
So we're going to do what we can. Not that there was much the divers could do. When water was so cold, the body would sink like a stone.
00:05:37
The lake was 130 feet deep in Powderhorn Bay. Before long, Lori was taken from the boat to a waiting pickup,
00:05:45
and then an ambulance, and the local hospital. And soon word raced around among all six of Lori's daughters.
00:05:54
This is Amber surprised to get a call from her big sister She says I just got a call from an ambulance Mom and Larry were in some kind of accident on the boat and they can find Larry
00:06:09
What do you mean you can't find him? She's like, I don't know. Will you please call the other sisters and tell them what's going on?
00:06:17
And so, Amber did. This is Chrislyn. It was my sister Amber telling me that there had been a boating accident and Larry had fallen overboard and they can't find him.
00:06:35
It was all so confusing, said Larry's son, Dean. My sister called me and said that there's been an accident and she was in tears.
00:06:45
I couldn't really figure out what had happened. hadn't his father texted him this stunning photo of the sunrise just a few hours earlier
00:06:53
and he thought those crazy kids i was just like i can't believe they're going out on the water as
00:07:00
cold as it is and i went back to sleep did you respond at all nope i don't think i did i mean
00:07:04
it was a gorgeous sunrise don't get me wrong but it's just like they weren't they'd never be out
00:07:10
out there doing that. It was very, very odd. Oh, he had no idea. Lori, overcome with grief. She was a mess. I just held her and promised her that we would help her
00:07:30
get through this. And Larry, would he ever be found? Would you expect his body to
00:07:38
sink right down to the bottom? Yes. I can't even think of a case where we had a body go into that
00:07:44
depth and resurface. In February 2018, the waters of Lake Coeur d'Alene were holding fast
00:08:06
on the Larry Eisenberg. Larry and Laurie had launched their romantic sunrise cruise here at Sunup Bay
00:08:15
and headed for the big resort up the top of the lake, 16 miles away. But four or five miles in, around Powderhorn Bay, right about here, said Laurie.
00:08:24
Larry went to fix something in the bow and then looked around at her and turned a deathly shade of gray and...
00:08:34
Anything so fuller. The initial responders, they felt fairly confident that it was another tragedy out on the lake.
00:08:43
A semi-retired detective named Brad Maskell heard about it, of course, like everybody in town.
00:08:51
He was just an observer, but he knew a thing or two about the lake. He'd lived here most of his life.
00:08:57
Water that cold and that deep around that middle of the lake, would you expect his body to sink right down to the bottom?
00:09:07
Yes. I can't even think of a case where we had a body go in the lake here to that depth and resurface.
00:09:15
It just doesn't happen in cold, deep water. At Lori and Larry's homestead in Cougar Gulch,
00:09:22
just a couple of miles from the lake, daughter Chrislyn and her sisters gather their mother in a collective hug.
00:09:29
How was she taking it? She was a mess. I just held her and promised her that we would help her get through this.
00:09:40
Get through the end of a love story that all along had refused to be denied. They'd both been married to others.
00:09:50
Years and years ago, Lori had six daughters with Steve, her high school sweetheart.
00:09:56
Amber, born third, and Crystalyn, the fourth, were the middle children. We had the perfect little family.
00:10:03
You know, we went to church every Sunday. We were taught to live right, make good choices, get good grades, do your chores, you know, the whole nine yards.
00:10:12
Dad ran a janitorial service. Mom was Volunteer of the Year at the Coeur d'Alene Chamber of Commerce.
00:10:18
It was exciting things to see our mom becoming this successful woman in their community.
00:10:24
Those years, Larry Eisenberg was making money in the timber business. He was able to pull over a lot of deals.
00:10:30
I'd be like the used car salesman of timber, for lack of a better or more eloquent term of it.
00:10:35
He taught his children, Dean and Jessica, to be straight arrows, just like him. Frugal, honest, tough, with a saying for every situation.
00:10:46
Tired's a state of mind. Don't be lazy. You know, you only think that you're tired. You really haven't done that much today.
00:10:53
But when he was with his kids, when he took Dean hunting... I think that was about the happiest I'd ever seen him, being with me for my first elk.
00:11:03
When Larry met Lori, it was all perfectly innocent. Dad ended up hiring her as his secretary when he worked for the timber company.
00:11:13
Larry was introduced to us as a friend from work. And their work trips, like this one to the Idaho State Capitol.
00:11:22
Well, they were co-workers after all. and Lori's daughters were confused when she soon told them that Steve, their father, simply wasn't good enough
00:11:32
and would have to leave and that they, the kids, would have to tell him. My mom started like having some kind of a breakdown.
00:11:43
She like went into the closet and instead of her going to confront him, us kids had to go down and confront him while she stayed in the closet.
00:11:53
And I remember yelling at him and telling him we want you to leave Oh my We don want you here And he just looked right back at me and he said Amber you don know what you talking about
00:12:05
My dad knew. And not just Larry. She had been having affairs for quite a while. Other men, too.
00:12:12
He wasn't the first. So maybe they weren't so straight, arrow honest after all. Lori got a divorce.
00:12:22
And then a few years later, Larry did, too. and everybody could see how happy they were
00:12:27
when they brought their families together and got married. I just decided I've always, always loved and respected Larry
00:12:35
and I saw my mom happy with him and I was happy for her. And then they turned Cougar Gulch into their own very special place.
00:12:44
It was a mountain paradise. I absolutely loved it. They landscaped the place, put in huge gardens
00:12:50
and a pond they filled with fish to catch. Larry built a working windmill. If I could describe my perfect house, that's what it would be.
00:12:59
That's what they had in Cougar Gulch. They traveled to Hawaii, Europe. They fished the lakes, hunted the forests together.
00:13:10
He always looked at her with eyes of just admiration. And he would always just tell us just how amazing she was.
00:13:19
And we would all kind of just roll our eyes. You two are unbelievable. Get a room.
00:13:25
Get a room. How do you love each other this much? By 2018, Larry was 68 and retired.
00:13:34
Lori was 64, still working. Hi, I'm Lori Eisenberg, Executive Director of the North Idaho Housing Coalition.
00:13:42
Lori ran that non-profit that helped low-income residents buy houses. Larry kept track of their investments and was happy as happy as he'd ever been
00:13:54
in January 2018 just over a month before Larry was lost in the lake they gathered with members of their blended family in Florida
00:14:05
so every day he would say if anyone wants to come come on the walk with me and that day for the first time really ever I said Larry
00:14:13
where did you learn to have such great discipline with your money? And he told us that day that he
00:14:23
remembers from the time he could count money, his parents were teaching him, you have to earn every
00:14:29
dollar and you have to know and track where you spend every dollar. Did that have a big effect on
00:14:36
you to hear that? Yeah, it empowered me to be a parent that teaches those principles. Didn't you
00:14:41
sit down at the computer at one point and kind of go over everything? So yeah, we sat right there
00:14:46
at the table, my mom hanging over Larry, looking at their computer of all their stocks. When you
00:14:52
think about that conversation now, does anything stay with you? It's sad. It's so sad to know that
00:15:00
my mom knew. It's so hard to believe that she could sit there and do that with us,
00:15:08
knowing all that she knew. Something about Larry? About the love of her life? He just had this sort of
00:15:17
blank look on his face and so then I saw him sort of stumbling. What happened out there on the lake?
00:15:25
She has bruises all over her legs and she just said I have no idea what I did on that boat.
00:15:38
There's a process when a boating accident takes a life. Has to be an investigation.
00:15:54
Which is why a few days after the horrible loss of Larry Eisenberg in Lake Coeur d'Alene,
00:16:00
detectives went to Cougar Gulch to dive deeper. That first day, Laurie had been such a mess,
00:16:07
and sometimes, a day or three later, a person has a clearer sense of what happened.
00:16:13
There was a timeline to consider for context, so could they go through that again, they asked.
00:16:19
Well, yes, said Laurie, they could. 6.40 a.m. They took this picture of the sunrise, said Laurie, and sent it by text to Larry's son, Dean.
00:16:30
This was as they prepared to launch their boat at Sunup Bay. Did you take it or did he take it?
00:16:35
What? The picture. Oh, he did. Actually, right after he took the picture, we stood there for a couple minutes.
00:16:43
Once they were out on the water, she said, Larry took the wheel of the boat as she dozed off in the passenger seat, a cabin warmed by a space heater.
00:16:53
Then, said Lori, at some point, Larry's hand sort of slipped off the dashboard. And not just a little slip, certainly got her attention.
00:17:02
It was so hard that the whole ignition thing sort of popped out. The kill switch had been knocked out.
00:17:11
The ignition key bent like this. When it started, when it started, when it started,
00:17:17
he tried bending the key back and forth. So then, said Lori, Larry went up to the front of the boat
00:17:23
to get the electric trolling motor going. And then something happened to him. Looked like he was having a stroke or something.
00:17:31
He just had this sort of blank look on his face, and so then I saw him sort of stumbling,
00:17:38
and I jumped up, and I couldn't get it, and I banged my head. Where did you hit your head at on your face?
00:17:45
I don't remember, but... Where do you recall the blood coming from? My nose. And that certainly made sense of what they found in the bow.
00:17:53
Drops and smears of blood right where Lori said she hit her head as she tried to reach him I saw his face and then he just So arms outstressed just kind of fell
00:18:06
Okay. I couldn't get to him, I tried. She panicked then. Tried to get to him, she said.
00:18:14
All but went into the water herself. And then I finally calmed down to the point where I said,
00:18:18
what am I doing? This isn't helping any. Couldn't call 911, she said. Didn't have her phone.
00:18:25
I'd left it in the truck because I always forget it. And I thought his was in his pocket.
00:18:32
In the lake, in other words. And by the time she found Larry's phone under a blanket,
00:18:38
more than two hours had gone by since he'd fallen in. So it was 10.23 a.m. before she could place that 911 call.
00:18:47
He's in the water. Bye. Where was Larry? Somewhere, she said, in the four or five miles of water between Sunup Bay,
00:18:58
where Larry and Lori put in the boat, and here in Powderhorn Bay, where Lori was rescued.
00:19:05
The detectives thanked her, expressed their sympathy, and left. The day after the incident, meanwhile, Lori's six daughters gathered around her in grief at Cougar Gulch.
00:19:18
We were all just standing around making breakfast. She came into the kitchen and all of a sudden she just said, I was just in the bathroom and I saw my legs.
00:19:27
And she just pulls down and shows us that she has bruises all over her legs. Her thighs are just black and blue.
00:19:35
And she just said, I have no idea what I did on that boat. I must have just been hitting my legs when I was looking for Larry in the water.
00:19:44
And none of them imagined, as they sympathized with their mother and mourned their loss, Larry,
00:19:51
that certain preparations would soon be underway downtown. Some unwelcome visitors would be coming to call.
00:20:04
Lori arrested, but not from what you might think. In that moment, I was, I had no idea. I was just in shock.
00:20:14
The End to hear policemen with warrants and loud demands at their door. Lori had been in bed, resting,
00:20:51
when they charged in and scooped up her computers and electronics and boxes of records,
00:20:58
and then took them all away. But why? Why those things? Lori was left to settle whatever astonishment she may have felt
00:21:08
and straighten the place up. Then, a few days later, daughter Christlin was visiting,
00:21:13
and many of the same law officers suddenly appeared on the porch as seen here on police body cam.
00:21:20
Hi, Lori here. Grislin didn't quite get it at first. She said she's not up to it.
00:21:27
Not up to it? Yeah, she's just really struggling. Okay. She said, can we reschedule or?
00:21:34
Um, no. Okay. So then Lori finally appeared. I'm just really drained right now. Are you arresting me?
00:21:44
I think I'm going to put you under arrest. These guys are going to take you into custody right now.
00:21:48
It was crazy, said Chryslen. Like Kafka or something. In that moment, I was, I had no idea.
00:21:57
I was just in shock. Put your hand coaster. Chryslen's sweet mother going to jail.
00:22:09
What was that like to discover that this had happened? It was very overwhelming and it was very disappointing and confusing.
00:22:19
Confusing? Oh yes. Because Lori's arrest had nothing whatever to do with what happened out on the lake.
00:22:28
They didn't charge her with that. Not with dangerous boating or anything like that.
00:22:33
Not at all. As the jailer who booked her made perfectly clear. I'm being told to write your booking sheet out for one count of grand theft and 40 counts of forgery.
00:22:47
Grand theft? Forgery? Sometimes bad news comes in batches. And this, just as she was trying to deal with the loss of Larry, was another story altogether.
00:23:01
Why do things happen this way? Anyway, here's the story. A few weeks before that fatal boating trip, just after Larry and Lori had returned,
00:23:11
glowing from their Florida family vacation, Larry got busy preparing for their next trip,
00:23:17
which they intended to start pretty much right away. And as they did every year, they organized meticulously.
00:23:25
They'd load up the camper trailer with their canned vegetables and what they raised and grew and caught and hunted,
00:23:32
and then they'd spend like two months in Utah, Zion National Park, Arizona out in the desert
00:23:39
hiking around the California coast. While Larry was busy with the camper, Lori drove into downtown Coeur d'Alene to get things
00:23:47
sorted out of the office, a last pre-trib board meeting at the North Idaho Housing Coalition.
00:23:53
Lori ran the place, but Carrie Thorison back then as coalition president was officially
00:23:58
her boss. He did an excellent job for years. When Amy Evans joined the board, Lori had long since proved how much she cared about the mission.
00:24:12
She was passionate about helping young families obtain their first home. Which made Lori's visit to the office that January day in 2018 more than a little awkward.
00:24:26
The board had found some financial irregularities, some budgets that didn't quite add up.
00:24:34
Checks that should have been signed by the board, but were signed by Lori instead, without prior approval.
00:24:41
She apologized and said, I just know that all of you are so busy, I didn't want to bother you to come and sign checks.
00:24:52
So I just signed them. Well, really? Well, it's just being so thoughtful to us. At that point, we thought we'll put her on administrative, paid administrative leave, which won't alarm her too much and give us the opportunity to recover our records.
00:25:13
Did you? That is what we did. Amy Evans, then coalition board vice president, was also in that meeting with Lori.
00:25:20
she pled with us two times to just fire her really i mean she she basically copped to it she said yes
00:25:31
i i made some mistakes so really if she had you figured she'd be coming back once you figured
00:25:37
this out right yeah we were hopeful that this was just sloppy bookkeeping though kerry thorison
00:25:45
kept thinking of a strange little moment as their meeting turned to sensitive things.
00:25:51
She turned her head to me and looked at me. I can still remember just feeling a chill.
00:26:04
We can't know what Lori was thinking or feeling on her drive home to Cougar Gulch,
00:26:10
where Larry was getting ready for their excellent adventure road trip. Was she distraught?
00:26:16
Did she lean on her man, pour out her troubles? All we can say with certainty is what happened next.
00:26:24
Larry and Lori did indeed hit the road. But it was not the trip Larry was planning for.
00:26:34
A surprise was coming, and it was a doozy. How much money in total do you think was taken from the organization?
00:26:42
Around $900 to $1 million. The level of betrayal was unbelievable. There's often a pivot point in family drama, isn't there? Somebody makes a decision and
00:27:10
Things suddenly change. That was about to happen in Cougar Gulch. Three weeks before the boating accident, Larry was going about his happy-go-lucky retirement as usual.
00:27:21
Dad's idea of retirement was to do what you want, when you want, whenever you want, for as long as you want.
00:27:28
Not a bad definition. Yeah, if I want to go do something, I'm going to go do something.
00:27:33
I'll do it until I get sick of it, and then I'll come back or I'll go do something else.
00:27:36
The something else this time was going to be a trip across the American Southwest with Lori.
00:27:43
Completely unaware that Lori had been suspended, then fired from her job at the North Idaho Housing Coalition.
00:27:50
Didn't have any idea what Lori's board members were digging up in the coalition's books.
00:27:56
Every day it just kept getting worse and worse. And so it quickly made sense why she was asking us to fire her.
00:28:04
The evidence, once they knew where to look, was clear. Lori had been using her position to steal money for at least three years.
00:28:14
This was big. How much money in total do you think was taken from the organization?
00:28:20
I think we're probably around $900 to $1 million. This is not small change. No, not at all.
00:28:27
What was your state of mind those days? Just complete disbelief that the level of betrayal that Lori executed was unbelievable.
00:28:39
Granted, only a few people were aware of any of that, or that Lori had been fired.
00:28:46
We really wanted to protect the integrity of the organization, protect Lori's integrity, until we knew without a doubt what had happened.
00:28:59
And while that investigation went on, no one knew. Not her six daughters, not her two stepchildren, and not Larry, so busy planning for their annual trailer trip.
00:29:10
He was literally loading and stocking the camper, and he was in mid-stride with another armful of goods.
00:29:18
And Lori stopped and said, honey, I want to go back to Florida. Hadn't they just been there?
00:29:24
Yeah, yeah, they'd just gotten back. Larry seemed puzzled, but all for it if that's what Laurie wanted.
00:29:32
Larry was kind of like, yeah, I guess we're going back to Florida. So back to Florida they went.
00:29:41
This photo taken by Larry texted to the kids of Laurie lazing away at their rental home in Melbourne.
00:29:48
They watched the launch of Elon Musk's Falcon Heavy rocket, sent the kids this photo from the Kennedy Space Center And after that they went sailing That was a bucket list vacation I mean he always wanted to sail he wanted to see that rocket and he wanted to ride in a fan boat
00:30:06
Those were like the last three goals that he set out for him in his life before he was going to start a new list.
00:30:12
It could not have been on his bucket list, however, to feel so punk by the end of that trip.
00:30:18
It felt weird, just awful, as he told his doctor in an email when they got home.
00:30:25
I had the shakes, terrible equilibrium, and even my brain was foggy. I'm better today by quite a bit.
00:30:33
I have every intention of living long enough so that you have to make a house call on Mars.
00:30:39
End quote. I was worried that maybe they had gotten the flu while they were traveling.
00:30:45
And so I texted with my mom. I was like, hey, I heard you guys are back. You know, how you doing?
00:30:49
I heard Larry's sick. And she's like, yeah, you know, he's doing a little bit better.
00:30:55
By Monday, February 12th, back home in Cougar Gulch, Larry seemed fine again, was back to planning the trailer trip south.
00:31:04
But somehow around town, the secret, the one that not even Larry knew, had leaked and was about to be revealed.
00:31:13
Got a call from a Coeur d'Alene Press reporter. They said, we're hearing that Laurie Eisenberg has been fired from your organization and that there's an investigation.
00:31:25
into embezzlement. We knew that a story would appear in the Coeur d'Alene Press morning edition. And I said, I feel so bad for Larry. His life's just never going to be the same.
00:31:41
Well, now that was as true as a thing could be. One of my younger sisters, she pulled me into a room and said, we have a really big problem.
00:31:55
New trouble for Lori's daughters and new questions about Larry. There were a lot of people thinking that he could have been in collusion with her.
00:32:16
As the sun rose over the lake on Tuesday, February 13, 2018, the Coeur d'Alene press hit shops and restaurants and computers around town.
00:32:34
This was the front page headline. Housing Nonprofit, Leader, Part Ways. The cause, of course, was that alleged embezzling.
00:32:45
Put you in handcuffs here. Complex stuff. And before long, the Coeur d'Alene police turned the case over to the FBI.
00:32:54
And it was four months later when Lori, still in shock after the boating accident,
00:33:00
was indicted on federal charges of theft and fraud. The FBI described this scheme of hers as very sophisticated.
00:33:12
a very sophisticated financial con. It turned out the money was not simply stolen from the North Idaho Housing Coalition.
00:33:23
Oh, no. Her scheme, as alleged, was much more inspired. She didn't take money out of our account.
00:33:33
the money she stole was by creating fake companies and then fake invoices. Lori sent those fake bills to the state and federal governments, which they paid, of course.
00:33:52
And then she pocketed the money. She was clever in some ways doing this. I prefer cunning. I think she was very cunning.
00:34:03
But what had Lori done with all that money? She certainly hadn't used it on those vacations with Larry.
00:34:09
He kept track of every penny of that. But as was soon revealed, much of the money hadn't gone far at all.
00:34:18
I remember she said, I earned every bit of that money. The coalition was nothing before me.
00:34:26
She absolutely felt entitled to every penny that she took. And her partners in crime?
00:34:33
Well, if there ever was a surprise, there's one. I'll never forget the day one of my younger sisters,
00:34:40
she pulled me into a room and said, we have a really big problem. Those illegal shell companies Lori invented
00:34:48
were set up in the names of three of her own daughters, Tracy, April, and Jessica.
00:34:58
She came to me because she was very, very frightened. that she was about to be arrested herself.
00:35:06
She was asking if I could help take care of her child. And all of a sudden, I became the sister who had no involvement with it,
00:35:16
but that needed to be there for everybody. And there was one more sister involved, who was also receiving money from Lori.
00:35:25
Boy, I bet you wish you could have that decision back. Absolutely. As Amber explained it, the genesis of Lori's scheme
00:35:34
can be traced to the differing attitudes she and Larry held about money. Larry's two kids knew never to ask for a penny without earning it.
00:35:46
But Lori? Pretty early on in their relationship, she shared with us that, you know,
00:35:52
Larry doesn really like me spending all the money you know on all the kids and stuff you know But it didn last very long It was followed with the caveat of just don tell Larry Oh okay
00:36:05
It'll just be between us. In 2017, less than a year before Larry's death, Amber told Lori that the farm she shared with
00:36:15
her husband was in trouble. I was like, I'm going to need to go get a job. And she was like, no, no, no, no.
00:36:21
Don't do that. Don't give up on your dream. She said, I can help you. Larry and I are doing so good in the stock market.
00:36:28
We're making so much money. So I said, yes, okay. And that is one of the moments
00:36:36
that will always be one of my biggest regrets because that's not where the money was going to come from.
00:36:42
At the time you were cashing the checks, did you have any clue that it was coming from a place
00:36:47
where it wasn't supposed to come, that it was stolen money? Not at first. How much was she paying you this way?
00:36:53
I think the set amount was like $800 a month. And then one day she sent me a text message.
00:37:00
And it said they want me to hire an assistant for work that doesn't need to be done.
00:37:07
They think that I work too much. So I want to hire you as this assistant, but there really isn't any work for you to do.
00:37:18
You'll just get the paycheck for it. Don't even have to come into the office. Right.
00:37:23
You get the picture. A no-show job. And now four of Lori's daughters were part of the FBI's investigation.
00:37:33
How much did Lori steal? The housing coalition figured it was close to a million dollars.
00:37:38
The FBI was able to trace $579,495.75. since. But investigators traced only about $50,000 of that stolen money to Lori's daughters.
00:37:55
What she did with the rest and how she spent it? No idea. What did it say to you about this woman
00:38:03
that she would involve her daughters in an organized crime ring and, you know, make them
00:38:09
liable to go to prison. That one's close to my heart. I cannot even fathom being a criminal,
00:38:18
but I can't fathom being a criminal that thinks it's a good idea to make my children criminals.
00:38:27
I think there's a special place in hell for Lori for a number of things. That's definitely one of
00:38:34
them. We can only guess what Larry might have thought of all that. But the town gossips? Within
00:38:42
hours of Larry's disappearance, a story was making its way around town. There were a lot of people
00:38:49
in the community thinking that he could have been in collusion with her in this embezzlement,
00:38:59
and that he had just gone off and he was in Venezuela or whatever, just waiting for her, you know, to come and bring the bag of money.
00:39:08
It went around town that he might have been in it. People reading the paper saying, oh, his wife stole a bunch of money.
00:39:15
He's probably in on it with her. A little convenient to say he'd fallen into the deepest part of the lake
00:39:21
where a body might never be found? That is, if Larry was in the lake at all. so cold and deep like betrayal.
00:39:35
I went to grab my phone and answer it, and my mom just said, do not answer that.
00:39:41
They probably found his body. A secret surfaces from the lake, and Lori has a secret of her own.
00:39:47
She said, I have this plan that I'm going to disappear. I just said, Mom, don't do this.
00:39:55
They took Lori Eisenberg to the Kootenai County Jail after her arrest for theft and fraud.
00:40:14
But she wasn't there long. Since Lori's alleged crimes were financial, her assets were frozen, thus she asked Chris Lynn to co-sign bail.
00:40:25
so she could be released from jail. Her bond was for $75,000, and then we had to have a 10% deposit at the time to be paid.
00:40:35
And it was a very stressful time. Given your whole background, your ethos, your family, your time of life,
00:40:42
to find yourself sitting in a bail bondsman's office signing papers for a $75,000 bond for your mother.
00:40:49
Crazy. Yeah, it was unreal. Chrislyn paid, and Lori went home to Cougar Gulch, her next court appearance, weeks away.
00:40:59
Meanwhile, the police were still searching for Larry, out in the lake. They weren't giving up.
00:41:04
They'd even brought in some high-tech sonar gear, lowered it down to the depths of Powderhorn Bay, well over a hundred feet down.
00:41:12
Again and again, they scoured the bottom. No Larry. But as they searched, said Chrislyn,
00:41:20
Her mother, Lori, began to worry that somebody would try to make it look like she was somehow responsible for Larry's accident.
00:41:28
Her anxiety and fear of being framed and being arrested again was so heightened.
00:41:35
Something was very wrong with all of this, Lori told her daughters. Somebody, for some reason, was obviously trying to frame her.
00:41:44
It got to the point where she said, I cannot be here anymore. I cannot be in this house anymore.
00:41:51
They are going to come and get me. I worried every moment they going to come and arrest me So she wanted to get out What did you do So yeah that day we started packing the house She said she never wanted to come back again And we booked a hotel you know in Spokane
00:42:09
But just as Lori and Chrislyn drove away from the house, the phone rang. It was a detective.
00:42:17
By that time, they'd stopped looking for Larry, had packed away the sonar machine.
00:42:22
So what could it be? And I was really excited. And I went to grab my phone and answer it.
00:42:31
And my mom just said, do not answer that. They've probably found his body and I don't want to.
00:42:35
I don't want to. They're going to get me. They're going to get me. Hello, Chris.
00:42:38
I'm the detective of Cootinie County that's handling your father's case. And I'm trying to get in touch with Lori.
00:42:44
It's kind of important. Thank you. Early that same afternoon, March 1st, two and a half weeks after Larry's disappearance,
00:42:54
What was that in the water? A local resident called it in, something just below the lakefront houses,
00:43:01
on the shoreline. A team was dispatched, a team that could see right away. It was a body, a human body,
00:43:10
and upon inspection that it was, quite unmistakably, 68-year-old Larry Eisenberg.
00:43:17
Deepwater sonar had failed to find him, but the lake had given him up anyway. That was the important news the detective was calling about.
00:43:28
Her reaction when she learned that his body had been found, how did she handle it?
00:43:34
She became pretty shut down. By the time we got to the hotel, she was not talking.
00:43:41
It was very confusing. Did Lori ask to turn around and head back to the lake or the sheriff's office to learn more?
00:43:51
No, she did not. It was all about her worries and her comfort and her problems. Within a day, an autopsy had been done.
00:44:00
And sure enough, the medical examiner found no water in Larry's lungs. So something, a heart attack, stroke, as Lori suggested,
00:44:08
something else must have killed him before he hit the water. Classification of death undetermined.
00:44:15
More tests were ordered. It's safe to say that Lori's reputation, sullied by the federal charges of fraud and theft,
00:44:22
taken a hit around town. And so, slivers of doubt about Larry's supposed accident grew
00:44:29
into giant sequoias of suspicion. Every day that Larry was missing, I would say, come on, Larry,
00:44:36
come on, because if his body was never found, she could get away with murder. And then, so I would,
00:44:42
come on, Larry, come on, come on, come on. Get away with murder. But nothing, not a bit of evidence
00:44:49
had surfaced to contradict Lori's explanations of what happened. Suspicion does have a funny way of feeding on itself,
00:44:58
but facts are what matter. And as days and weeks and months passed, there were no more charges against Lori of any kind.
00:45:08
Beyond the allegations of embezzlement, that is. And while they waited, the extended, blended family
00:45:14
tried to make sense of one particular puzzle. Why in the world would Lori want or need to steal money?
00:45:22
Larry had never been shy about showing them how well he was doing. I was blown away.
00:45:29
Just dumbfounded. Dad had all of us convinced of how well they were doing and just absolutely owning the stock market
00:45:35
and how hard he'd worked and the fruits of his labors. There was absolutely no reason for her to be stealing the money.
00:45:42
There was none. Is that something you would ever have ascribed to Lori in the first place?
00:45:46
I wouldn't have put it past her. Wouldn't put it past her? What did he mean by that?
00:45:53
Well, Lori's curious quirk. The kids knew all about it. So did Larry. And he found it more amusing than anything.
00:46:03
Like the time he told his kids what Lori did when she lost a job once and wasn't allowed to take away the materials she had been working on.
00:46:10
So she devised a plan to sneak into the building in the middle of the night, break into the building in the middle of the night.
00:46:18
I mean, the way he told it, it sounded like a Mission Impossible story. You know, she dressed all in black and she was crawling through the hallways
00:46:25
and she got what was hers. She made it back out undetected. I mean, my jaw was just like on the floor.
00:46:33
And Larry was just glowing and he was just laughing and he was, yep, that's my Lori.
00:46:40
If the rules were stupid, she could get around those rules and he admired that. Yes, absolutely.
00:46:45
and everybody would laugh, and, you know, that's just mom. You know, stupid rules.
00:46:52
Yeah, he found it charming. A month after Larry's body washed up on shore, Lori's hatred of stupid rules again became clear.
00:47:05
She, like, looped her arm in mine, and she said, the police are going to say terrible things about me.
00:47:12
they believe that I killed Larry and they're going to say anything they want to make it look that way
00:47:20
like she feels like her only two options are to go to prison forever or to kill herself
00:47:26
and she said but then I got to thinking about it and I realized I don't really have to die I can
00:47:33
just make everybody believe that I died so I have this plan that I'm gonna disappear and I'm gonna
00:47:42
stage a suicide and nobody will ever find a body. She told me that that's probably the last time I'm
00:47:49
ever going to see her. So she was saying goodbye? It was at that moment. You're faced with that moment of, you know, this is the last time I'm
00:48:00
I'm going to see my mom. I'm never going to know if she's alive or if she's dead.
00:48:05
But Lori didn't leave right away, still planning apparently, when a month later,
00:48:11
Kristalyn got a call from an unidentified number. It happened to be my mom, and she told me that she needed to leave and that we may never see her again.
00:48:23
I just said, Mom, I will fight for you. I believe that truth will win and I will fight for you.
00:48:34
Don't do this. Don't quit. And she said, I'm so sorry. I have to do this. And I said, OK, but you're on a bail and I'm responsible for you.
00:48:47
And she said, it's OK. We have it all taken care of. She said, we've changed the bail over to your aunt.
00:48:57
Everything will be fine. You're not responsible for anything. But maybe that whole bail thing was just another stupid rule.
00:49:05
Because on May 25th, surrounded by the stately oaks and the grounds of the nearly 100-year-old Kootenai County Courthouse,
00:49:13
when the judge called Lori's name, she was not there. She'd skipped her bail. Lori on the lamb.
00:49:26
And guess who wants in on the case? Dog the bounty hunter. Dog actually contacted our office.
00:49:33
The story had already started getting national attention. Okay. Lori Eisenberg's daughter Chris Lynn was occupied that last week of May 2018
00:49:56
two kids to care for and just weeks from giving birth to a third and so in that busy swirl of beginnings she missed the call that went straight to voicemail
00:50:09
hi Chris this is Chris I'm a quick to reach bail bonds she was puzzled when she played it back, then called the bail bondsman.
00:50:18
And he said, where's your mother? And I said, what are you talking about? And he said, she didn't show up to court today.
00:50:26
And I said, well, she also told me I'm not responsible for her anymore. So I've been taken care of.
00:50:33
And he said, so sorry. You are responsible for your mom. Responsible for what exactly?
00:50:42
Altogether, a bundle, $75,000 cash. And just to start, another $17,000 in fees and costs to find Lori and bring her in.
00:50:55
Around that time, I think, Crystal began to realize just what her mom had done. This is Chris Skinner, the bail bondsman.
00:51:03
As Agatha Christie would put it, the scales fell from her eyes, and she saw her mother in a different light.
00:51:11
Yeah. I realized I had just completely, completely been manipulated by my mother.
00:51:19
Again. And she didn't care. Didn't care? That's why, with Lori on the lam, her former boss Carrie Thorison felt this scary little itch in her back.
00:51:33
I felt very exposed if somebody wanted to blame the fact that Lori was in trouble on someone, they could blame it on me.
00:51:45
Sure. It was a frightening time. Yeah, you never know who's coming for you. Yeah, because I didn't know who helped her.
00:51:53
And I didn't know where she was. So finding where Lori was was now up to Chris Skinner.
00:51:59
You're the bail bondsman. And you don't do the actual looking if somebody doesn't survive.
00:52:04
Typically not. We hire people to do that. I had a local recovery agent. They like to be called recovery agents, so they're bounty hunters.
00:52:10
It does sound more sophisticated, doesn't it? Kind of, we're civilized. I'm a recovery agent.
00:52:14
Exactly. That's the goal is to make it so it's not so Wild West. Where to start?
00:52:20
Well, as a condition of bail, Lori had provided a contact phone number. But... We would call the number, and it wasn't Lori's number.
00:52:29
It was another person entirely, and that person claimed not to know Lori. Skinner said his people traced the number to Seattle, five hours away from Coeur d'Alene.
00:52:41
Lori was as clever on the lam as she'd been with the company books. It turned out that Lori had been moving around Seattle area, and this was a number for a taxi cab.
00:52:52
and she had been using the taxi cab driver's phone to call in and do various business,
00:52:59
including calling us and checking in. So I'm going to let you know I am video recording and audio recording.
00:53:04
It's part of the law. So agents pinged the location of that phone to this home in Seattle,
00:53:10
assumed this is where Lori was. You're seeing the location of ping as of right here?
00:53:15
Yes. As of right now? As of right now, within 15 minutes before I knocked on the door.
00:53:20
After a thorough search of the house, the agents found no sign of Lori. But then, they found another number linked to Lori,
00:53:31
and that one led them way down to Southern California, here to Temecula, home, as it turned out, to Lori's closest sister, Jamie.
00:53:42
But though they kept a careful watch, they didn't see any sign of Lori. Nothing.
00:53:47
Then, about six weeks after Lori vanished, Chris Skinner got a call that would, as they
00:53:54
say up the ante Dog actually contacted our office looking to get involved in finding Lori That dog as in dog the bounty hunter
00:54:07
No need for niceties like recovery agent in the case of the reality TV star. His fee starts at $10,000.
00:54:17
Billed to, you'll remember, Lori's daughter, Chryslain, who was days away from giving birth,
00:54:23
betrayed by her own mother. All the fees for him were going to be on me and my husband on top of the bail.
00:54:31
What was that like? It was awful. You know, when you put yourself out there for somebody else
00:54:37
just to find out that they don't care if they hurt you or turn on you, it's very painful.
00:54:44
So I had Dog's Contract in hand. The story had already started getting national attention,
00:54:48
and so there was a chance that we'd get a little more notoriety about it and maybe get her picked up that way.
00:54:57
But just as Chris Skinner prepared to hire Dog, he got a call from a Coeur d'Alene attorney with a surprise.
00:55:06
He called me directly and said, Lori is in my office and she's going to turn in.
00:55:11
And, you know, I didn't ask her any questions. I just said, okay. And I called one of my guys and had them go down to the office.
00:55:19
Because you didn't believe it necessarily. Until she was in custody, I didn't necessarily believe it because she'd been, you know, slippery and calculated.
00:55:27
Skinner's agent shot the video you're seeing now, and there they are. Sister Jamie, the lawyer, and the elusive Lori Eisenberg.
00:55:38
After a short drive to the Kootenai County Jail, Lori, tanned, rested, and apparently ready to face the music, turned herself in.
00:55:48
Why? I think she was hoping that she would just do her time for the financial end of things and be done with it.
00:55:56
And why not? For all the talk and suspicion, for all the locals who looked to that former paragon of civic duty with a new, more jaundiced eye,
00:56:07
the investigation into Larry's death had gone pretty much nowhere. Though Larry himself might have something to say about that.
00:56:18
Eureka. Yeah, it was just one of those Eureka moments. A message in a bottle. Just blind rage.
00:56:28
It's official. There's no hiding it. He was 100% poisoned. Hi, Lori. Hi, Lori. How are you doing?
00:56:48
I don't know if you remember me, Ken. Here was Laurie Eisenberg, back behind bars.
00:56:54
I'm just trying to go over the version that I have to ensure that it's correct, so...
00:56:58
But as the probe into Larry's death hadn't entirely gone away, local detectives looked at this as an opportunity to ask Laurie a few more questions.
00:57:07
Not about stealing money, about Larry. Or, as it turned out, not. I think if you're going to start asking me a question like that,
00:57:16
That went nowhere, as apparently did any sustained investigation of what happened to Larry.
00:57:28
And then, remember this guy, Brad Maskell? He mostly retired from the force, but was available if needed.
00:57:39
He was. They put him in charge. So what was his first thought when he heard about the misadventure on the lake?
00:57:48
I think like everybody else in the area, you know, everybody's reaction would be,
00:57:52
what the heck are they doing going out on the lake in 20 degree weather in February?
00:57:59
And why at 6.40 that morning? That was when, as Lori told the police, her husband Larry took this sunrise photo and sent it to the kids.
00:58:11
Did you take it or did he take it? What? The picture. Oh, he did. Okay. Quite definitive about that.
00:58:19
Larry took the picture. But there are ways of checking, of course. And the metadata on the image connects it to Lori's phone.
00:58:31
That image was airdropped or transferred onto Larry's phone to look like Larry was sending that image.
00:58:39
And if she was lying about that, which clearly she was, then Detective Maskell needed to know.
00:58:45
What else was she lying about? And to whom? Revelations. Lori, it turned out, lied quite a lot.
00:58:55
Like the day her boss wanted to meet about awkward financial matters. She had said that she was sorry for being so frazzled,
00:59:08
but she had to go to Utah and be with her grandchild, who was terminally ill. And so it's like, oh my gosh, yes, go.
00:59:19
Who do we appreciate? Grandma! In fact, Lori even lied to her own family during that first family trip to Florida,
00:59:30
the one in which Chrislyn had learned so much about Larry's financial planning skills.
00:59:35
By this time, she knew the walls were closing in on her. She knew of all of her lies.
00:59:42
She also knew that she was being caught. You have to wonder what was going on inside of her.
00:59:49
Oh, yes. It keeps me up at night. It was soon after that trip that Lori was fired but still she kept the secret from Larry And that when remember Lori suddenly decided they were going back to Florida
01:00:05
to watch that rocket launch. It was for Larry, she lied, because it was on his bucket list.
01:00:15
But Detective Maskell suspected that a deep dive into Lori's pre-trip Google searches
01:00:21
might offer a more honest motivation. And my, my. Lori begins to search for information specific to drownings in the Florida area
01:00:35
and the water currents and the depths in the area and also for information as to where the deepest water was just offshore from where they were at.
01:00:51
This is very, very specific information. The sort of thing some tourist is not going to ask for.
01:00:57
Right. You know, she wasn't Googling what a ticket's cost at Disney World in Orlando.
01:01:04
All of which brought to mind that curious email Larry sent his doctor during that very trip.
01:01:10
The one in which he described feeling awful, quite fluish. The shakes, terrible equilibrium, foggy brain.
01:01:19
There's a possibility that that lightheadedness may have been something other than the flu.
01:01:25
Now, why would he say that? Well, as he dug through photos taken the day Larry went overboard,
01:01:32
Maskell found this, a bottle in Larry's truck console. And we were able to identify that bottle clearly as Kirkland brand Benadryl.
01:01:44
And it was only because I'm familiar with that particular brand, because I see it in my own medicine cabinet from time to time, that I immediately recognized that as a Benadryl bottle.
01:01:56
And clearly that's what it was, was Benadryl. Eureka. Yeah, it was just one of those Eureka moments.
01:02:04
Yes, but what did that Eureka mean? Had Larry taken one too many Benadryl? Which, if you don't know, is an antihistamine known to make you drowsy.
01:02:13
Did it make him so dizzy he toppled over, fell out of the boat? And then, as those questions were banging around in Maskell's brain,
01:02:22
he saw the toxicology report. And? Oh, there was diphenhydramine, or Benadryl, in Larry's system, all right.
01:02:32
But Larry didn't take one too many Benadryl. The lab found a level of the drug that was,
01:02:38
according to a forensic toxicologist we asked, consistent with a large overdose.
01:02:45
So a person with that kind of drug and that much of it in his system, what sort of state would he be in?
01:02:54
Stumbling, dizzy, foggy-headed. Basically, it's a delirium that you go into. When Larry's son Dean found out?
01:03:06
Oh, boy. I know I was yelling and just blind rage inside my pickup, just screaming for all I was worth.
01:03:16
Just, you know, it's official. There's no hiding it. He was 100% poisoned. She killed him. Why haven't the police brought charges yet?
01:03:25
It's like, why don't they charge her? Why don't they charge her? Why don't they charge her?
01:03:29
Good questions. The detective thought he just might have some answers. A motive for murder.
01:03:40
If Larry had found out that your mother had been embezzling, he would have tossed her out on her ass.
01:04:01
The medical examiner was unequivocal. when Larry Eisenberg's body sank to the bottom of Lake Coeur d'Alene
01:04:08
on a frigid morning in February. It was chock-a-block with diphenhydramine, commonly known as Benadryl.
01:04:16
But an expert in forensic toxicology we consulted said it wasn't the Benadryl that killed Larry.
01:04:22
Rather, the drug at that level would have induced a kind of delirium, which would have rendered Larry dizzy, foggy-headed, utterly compliant,
01:04:32
and unable to function properly at all. In a defenseless state like that, would Lori have had a reason to do something to Larry?
01:04:41
Detective Brad Maskell certainly thought so. Because on that very same cold February morning,
01:04:48
the headline in the Coeur d'Alene press was going to give the game away. Lori was fired, a disgraced embezzler.
01:04:57
I mean, is it just a coincidence that suddenly the secret that she was keeping from Larry
01:05:03
was going to be revealed on the very day that she convinces him to take her out on the lake
01:05:10
in February in 17-degree weather. Probably not, because the detective found that on that one issue,
01:05:20
there was no disagreement. If Larry had found out that your mother had been embezzling from this organization,
01:05:29
What would he have done? It's hard to believe that he would have stayed with her.
01:05:34
He would have left her. He would have tossed her out on her ass. You think he would have tossed her out on her butt?
01:05:40
I 100% believe it. She cheated like that. Yeah. It's like, get out and get out of my life.
01:05:45
You're an embarrassment. She knew that there was no way he would be able to stomach what she had been doing.
01:05:53
And she was left with no choice but to eliminate him So the question is then How did Larry ingest so much of that drug and when
01:06:05
The detective wondered, had she somehow poisoned Larry before they arrived at the lake?
01:06:10
Was Larry dead on arrival? No. He found proof that Larry was alive when the boat was launched,
01:06:18
because when Laurie took that photo at Sunup Bay, the iPhone's live feature, which animates stills for three seconds,
01:06:26
captured this in the background. All the way at the back end of the silver boat.
01:06:31
That's Larry's voice, his friends and family confirmed. So then the question was,
01:06:37
how did Laurie get Larry to ingest so much Benadryl well out on the boat? Truly a puzzle.
01:06:45
Until Detective Maskell looked again at a photo responding cops took of the inside of Lori's purse.
01:06:53
See that bottle buried down there? Naked juice. So after they launched the boat,
01:07:01
I believe they were probably cruising along the shoreline. Larry consumed some of the drink from the bottle that Lori had,
01:07:10
the bottle that was loaded with the Benadryl. And I know from my experience that that takes effect very quickly.
01:07:17
Some detectives read the research. Maskell experimented with the drug on himself.
01:07:25
Now, why the hell would you do that? I know a lot of people would think I'm nuts,
01:07:30
but what I found was within about 10 minutes, I was able to completely dissolve those pills into that solution.
01:07:39
So what I wanted to know at that point is, well, what did it taste like? There was kind of this sweetness, and then you would begin to detect the medicine flavor.
01:07:50
And so what I kind of surmised from that, a lot of guys, when they're handed a drink,
01:07:56
they'll glug down a few glugs of that stuff, you bet. And if Larry did that, the detective theorized.
01:08:03
He may have stumbled and possibly fallen against that ignition key, knocking that kill switch out of there in his delirium,
01:08:12
or possibly the two of them may have had some sort of a struggle. Something caused her to bang her face, get the bloody nose.
01:08:22
The bloodstains are in the boat and then ultimately he goes overboard. But murder, if that's what it was, rarely runs smooth.
01:08:33
I believe it's possible that the intent Laurie may have had was to get Larry further out into the lake where there's deeper water.
01:08:43
However, I believe he came under the effect of that medication possibly a little earlier than what she might have expected,
01:08:50
ultimately leading him to fall into the lake or be pushed into the lake and submerge in water that's not nearly as deep as where the main channel is.
01:09:04
The boat's dead in the water. is dead in the water because the key had been damaged,
01:09:09
the kill switch had been pulled from the console. The only option Lori had was to utilize the trolling motor on the front of the boat.
01:09:16
She did that. She utilized that trolling motor, used it to drive the boat out into the main lake channel,
01:09:21
turned the boat towards the north, and got as far away as she could get. Three hours later, the theory went, the boat was dead in the water again
01:09:30
when the trolling motor ran out of juice. Here we are at the mouth of Powderhorn Bay.
01:09:37
This is where Lori placed her 911 call from. The problem is, it's over four miles from where we believe Larry entered the water.
01:09:45
And that's why the detective thought they couldn't find Larry. Lori had led searchers miles in the wrong direction and against the lake's current.
01:09:55
The divers had no shot of finding his body. But if that was her plan? It was undone when Larry fell into shallower water and thus washed up on shore.
01:10:09
This is then Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney, now Judge Barry McHugh. The investigators did some great work to disprove her version of where she was when Larry Eisenberg went into the lake versus where he was actually found.
01:10:27
Even though she tried pretty hard to lead them astray. Correct. And as for Larry's cause of death?
01:10:35
Well, in the opinions of both the coroner and ME, diphenhydramine toxicity was the cause.
01:10:41
The medical examiner's report didn't exclude the possibility that he did drown. And so we were working under the presumption that he may have been alive when he went into the lake
01:10:53
and then was unable to help himself and drowned. But what about the lack of water in Larry's lungs?
01:11:04
I've been involved in death investigation a lot of years. And, you know, I've kind of grown to understand that a lot of times things don't happen exactly the way you would expect them to happen.
01:11:16
So sometimes there'll be a lot of water ingestion and sometimes there's almost none.
01:11:24
Sometimes people in this business would call it a dry drowning. A lot of unusual stuff happens when you investigate death.
01:11:33
In February 2020, two years after Larry's death, the prosecuting attorney's office charged Laurie with second-degree murder.
01:11:43
And then Coeur d'Alene waited for a trial and the story it might tell. But that isn't what happened at all, though there certainly was a story.
01:11:55
courtesy of the woman who liked to laugh in the face of but rules. Anything you want to say to anybody?
01:12:07
Lori's day in court and her family's. I wanted her to know and the world to know we loved Larry too.
01:12:30
Here it was, Lori Eisenberg's day in court, at 67 years old, facing the music, for murder.
01:12:40
Anything you want to say, Lori? Anything you want to say to anybody? But she did not arrive for a trial. No.
01:12:52
Because? Prosecutor Barry McHugh had offered, and she had accepted, a deal. Lori was taking an Alfred plea
01:13:01
meaning she would plead guilty but retain the right to say she didn't do it well I mean
01:13:08
why an Alfred plea? I almost prefer an Alfred plea from the perspective that it shows a lack of accountability
01:13:17
not taking responsibility for their own conduct and it can really come back to bite them at sentencing
01:13:26
So that's what this was, a sentencing hearing. Inside, all socially distanced and waiting,
01:13:35
Lori's former bosses at the non-profit, her two stepchildren, Larry's daughter and son,
01:13:41
and just two of her six daughters, present for the final act in this family tragedy.
01:13:50
I went to her sentencing because I didn't want to live with any more regret. I regret not saying more in the beginning.
01:14:03
I regret not talking to the investigators. I regret not standing up for Larry. And I wanted her to know and the world to know,
01:14:13
no, we loved Larry too. And she took him from us too. and we do not support her.
01:14:22
We do not stand by her. How extraordinary the scene. Family once so close, now sitting just feet away to take their turns at her.
01:14:34
This is never something I wanted to do. What was it like doing that? I mean, you were how many feet away from her?
01:14:40
Two feet. There was plexiglass between us. she turned into the mother that you know she put her shoulders back and put and looked at me as I was speaking like she was a proud mom
01:14:55
And there were moments where I would make eye contact with her and she would be sad and remorseful.
01:15:02
It was very weird, though. It was very hard. Today we hope, and we hope for justice for Larry.
01:15:10
The woman I loved, admired, and respected has shown me and everyone affected that she doesn't have an ounce of care for any of us.
01:15:22
Larry dedicated his life to Lori. He loved her, he trusted her, and she killed him.
01:15:30
See if we can get through this. There certainly was no ambivalence when Larry's son, Dean, faced her down.
01:15:38
It felt like my head was going to pop. I cannot begin to fathom the reasoning Lori had for doing what she did to my dad,
01:15:45
nor do I want to understand the workings of her mind. I was glad that she was sitting like two feet away from me, to say it.
01:15:53
I know I speak like Dad. I know I articulate like him. So it would be like she was getting chewed out by dad, the person she supposedly loved more than anything in the world, to have him standing up there and saying those things about her.
01:16:13
There's also no amount of justice that can be done to make up for the years I will continue to suffer in the future without my best friend and my dad.
01:16:20
I was glad I got to do it. And it took a huge weight off of my chest for things that I've been wanting to say for three years.
01:16:26
But remember, Laurie took an Alfred plea. Is there anything that you would like to say on your own behalf?
01:16:33
So, what would she finally claim happened that cold winter's day on the lake? Oh, she had a story to tell, all right.
01:16:44
Couldn't help but wonder what Larry might have thought about the punchline. If I wouldn't have had that bottle in there.
01:16:56
He would not have accidentally drunk it. Accidentally? What was Lori's story now?
01:17:16
First off, I'm very happy to finally be able to tell the families. What happened?
01:17:30
When the moment finally arrived for Lori Eisenberg to deliver on her promise Well let just say it certainly didn go as anyone in the gallery had hoped it would or expected I want to state emphatically that I am responsible for Larry death
01:17:47
Absolutely. I'm so sorry for everything I did. Starting with the embezzlement that resulted in the lies, deceit, and ultimate betrayal
01:17:59
of the love and the trust of the people I love, especially Larry, So was a full confession coming?
01:18:07
Nope, not at all. 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.
01:18:34
If I wouldn't have had that bottle in there, he would not have accidentally drank it.
01:18:41
There you have it. Lori fixed the drink to kill herself. But Larry drank it before she could.
01:18:50
It was really just an accident. Well, you know, that's when I'm like, okay, that's a lie.
01:18:59
You know, because, again, you're looking at all the Google searches that she had been doing, all the things that clearly shows what she was up to.
01:19:14
I've had to wear some high water pants around certain individuals because the bull crap floating around at that sentencing.
01:19:21
I wish I would have had chest waders and water wings and a snorkel so we didn't all drown in it.
01:19:26
After Larry's death. 50 minutes. She went on and on and on, all prepared in advance, page after page, as if to drown all murmurs of disbelief in a flood of words.
01:19:42
I don't know what more I can say. I'm guilty. I'm sorry. The judge was quicker. Here will be the court sentence.
01:19:52
Got right to the point. I will impose a life sentence. 30 years fixed. of life in prison.
01:20:01
30 years without parole, a sentence Lori is currently serving after completing her five-year
01:20:07
federal sentence for financial crimes. She is not eligible for parole until 2050,
01:20:14
so it's unlikely she'll live to see another day out of prison. And by the way, she did not respond to our interview requests.
01:20:22
Yeah she gets to sit and think about it I think it a fine use of my tax dollars to help pay for her to sit and think about it It not justice Justice would be I get to have dad back but it as close to a second as I
01:20:43
can come up with. As for Lori's daughters, Amber and three of her sisters pleaded guilty to
01:20:50
conspiracy to commit federal program theft, received three years probation, and were ordered
01:20:56
to pay the money back, in Amber's case about $16,000. But the cost is much higher than that.
01:21:04
You have a record. I have a felony for life. How does that affect your life? It's really hard to be labeled something that
01:21:13
isn't a true reflection of who you are. It's been really hard to get jobs. Nobody even wants to talk to you when you're a felon.
01:21:28
So why did Lori do it? Was theft simply a compulsion? Honesty only for rubes? Was it her straight-arrow husband's stupid rules she felt compelled to break?
01:21:40
or could she simply not permit him to know who she really was? In the end, of course, everyone knew.
01:21:51
Larry's money, an estate his family estimated at $2 to $3 million, has gone to repay the non-profit,
01:21:58
plus the damages imposed by the court, Cougar Gulch has been sold. Children are learning to live without their grandparents.
01:22:07
A shattered family is feeling its way. You know, they, unfortunately, it's become a little bit more divided.
01:22:18
I can't have relationships that aren't honest and truthful. And there are some of our family members who want to stay in that place with our mom.
01:22:30
Live in denial. Yeah. To deny the things that they know happened and that we need to deal with.
01:22:37
I've extended love to them, but they know where I stand. And Larry, his image lives on among his children, his stepchildren, his grandchildren.
01:22:52
I just remember him as the immortal Larry Eisenberg that he always was. I don't have to have the memory of him getting sick and frail and slowly slipping away helpless in a hospital bed.
01:23:02
I get to have nothing but the good memories of him. Larry Eisenberg. That honest man whose fatal flaw was to love the woman who couldn't be.