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| Carol Gotbaum with her husband, Noah. Carol was found unconscious in a police holding cell last week. |
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Family of woman who died at Airport hires high-power team
USA Today
Wed October 3, 2007
Area: Phoenix (Prescott)
NEW YORK - When Carol Gotbaum landed in Phoenix - next-to-last stop on her quest for sobriety - she called her husband in New York, where they lived with their three young children.
"I want to do this for us," she told him, according to family attorney Michael Manning. "I want to do this for our kids. I'm committed to this. I'm so happy."
Less than two hours later she was dead - possibly asphyxiated, her hands cuffed, her body chained to a bench in an airport police holding cell.
That was Friday. Almost a week later, it's still unclear exactly what happened to Gotbaum, daughter-in-law of one of New York City's most prominent labor leaders and stepdaughter-in-law of one of its most prominent politicians.
In the aftermath of Gotbaum's death, her family has assembled a blue-chip team to demand a thorough investigation. It includes Phoenix criminal lawyer Manning, who defended savings-and-loan scandal figure Charles Keating; Cyril Wecht, a pathologist who has investigated many high-profile deaths, including President Kennedy's; and Howard Rubenstein, a public relations consultant who counts New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner among his many prominent clients.
Gotbaum, 45, was the daughter-in-law of Victor Gotbaum, a municipal workers union leader who helped strike deals that saved the city from bankruptcy in the 1970s. His wife is Betsy Gotbaum, the city's public advocate, first in line to succeed the mayor if he leaves or becomes incapacitated.
Carol Gotbaum was a troubled woman. Manning said that Gotbaum started drinking heavily about three years ago and that her family noticed a serious problem with alcohol about a year ago. Last year, she attempted suicide, Rubenstein said.
He said Gotbaum recently entered a New York psychiatric institution and, before flying to Arizona, spent a week at Cape Cod with her family.
She'd planned to get a non-stop flight to Tucson to enter an alcohol treatment facility, Rubenstein said, but skipped that flight to spend more time with her children. So she booked a flight to Tucson with a 90-minute layover in Phoenix, he said.
A loud confrontation
"She was completely sober when she left New York and when she landed in Phoenix," Manning said. From the airport, she telephoned her husband, Noah, Manning said, and told him she was happy about entering rehabilitation. However, Manning added, "we believe that she probably had some drinks" during the layover.
She reported late to the gate for her connecting flight. When denied permission to board, she became loud and angry and threw her PDA (personal digital assistant), breaking it into pieces, said Sgt. Andy Hill, a Phoenix police spokesman. Witnesses said she was screaming, "I'm not a terrorist! I'm a sick mom!" Rubenstein said.
Phoenix police wrestled Gotbaum to the ground and cuffed her hands behind her back. Hill said officers followed established policy while detaining Gotbaum. They took her to a detention room, where they left her alone after using a chain to lash her by the handcuffs to a bench.
When officers checked her six to eight minutes later, Hill said, she was unconscious and not breathing, the chain from the shackle pulled against the front of her neck. It appeared Gotbaum accidentally got tangled as she tried to manipulate the handcuffs from behind her to the front, according to Hill.
Officers removed her handcuffs and began performing CPR and used an automated external defibrillator, Hill said. During mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Gotbaum vomited into the mouth of one officer, Hill said, but the officer continued resuscitation efforts.
"Officers did everything they could to save the life of a citizen," Hill wrote in an e-mail late Wednesday. "The officers had no knowledge of any of Ms. Gotbaum's personal issues."
Manning said it was appropriate for police to detain Gotbaum based on her behavior. "This family has no quarrel whatsoever with police intervening," he said. "It's the way they intervened."
An autopsy conducted Tuesday was inconclusive, and toxicology results needed to determine a cause of death will not be available for a few weeks, according to David Boyer of the Maricopa County Medical Examiner's office. "She was no threat to anybody," Rubenstein said.
Wecht, the Pittsburgh-based pathologist who has investigated the deaths of Elvis Presley and the son of Anna Nicole Smith, performed a second autopsy on Gotbaum on Tuesday and said his report to the family will be ready next week.
Political prominence
The Gotbaums are pillars of New York's political establishment.
Betsy Gotbaum has been parks commissioner, director of the Police Foundation, president of the New York Historical Society and adviser to three New York mayors.
In 2001, she was elected public advocate, first in line to succeed the mayor if he dies or departs. The post, filled by voters citywide, is largely a pulpit, with almost no inherent power.
Her husband, Victor, was a prominent labor figure for two decades.
From 1965 to 1987, he was executive director of District Council 37, the nation's largest municipal workers union.
His ability to unify his members and influence other union leaders proved crucial to resolving the city's fiscal crisis in 1975.
Investment banker Felix Rohatyn, who became a friend and ally of Victor Gotbaum during the fight to fend off municipal bankruptcy, later said he "probably did as much as anyone to help save the city."
In 1995, Noah, Victor's son and a graduate of Amherst College and Yale, married Carol Stiger, a buyer for a London department store company who'd grown up in South Africa. He has worked as a consultant and investment manager.
In New York, where the Gotbaum family has long been a fixture of public life, Daily News columnist Michael Daly characterized the news from Arizona as mystifying and upsetting.
"The question is not just how Carol Anne Gotbaum died, but why she was left alone in the first place," Daly wrote.
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