The Missing Gambling King - Bruce Weinstein

May 26, 2025

In this episode, Garrett and Payton explore the mysterious case of Bruce Weinstein. When Bruce fails to open his gambling business one morning, concern quickly turns to alarm as loved ones launch a desperate search for answers.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

We've said it before, but Garrett and I do think a lot about how blessed we are to do what we do, and that while we might be telling stories about dangerous people, our line of work isn't inherently dangerous.

Daisy, come here. Daisy, come here. Daisy, come here—oh, holy...

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

And he's the husband.

And I'm the husband.

Another week, another episode. Guess what? This episode came out—is coming out—is out—on May 26th, 2025, which is my birthday!

Oh my gosh, happy birthday!

My birthday! I am turning—everyone, guess how old I'm turning.

Thirty?

Everyone except my wife, guess how old I'm turning in the comments. Let me know.

I'm sure everyone probably knows—I'm turning 31.

That's weird.

Twenty-nine?

Thirty-one.

What do you mean?

Twenty-one?

Turning 31 years old.

Trying to guess your age.

Oh, thanks!

Welcome.

Turning 31. I was born May 26th, 1994, at eleven—

You remember what time?

It’s like 11:31 p.m. or something like that.

I was 10:14 a.m., not that you asked.

Good job, babe.

Yeah, it's my birthday today. I don't know exactly what we're doing. I don't know if we have any crazy plans. It's also Memorial Day.

So yeah, Memorial Day, my birthday—we're kind of just hanging out. Kind of what I got going.

That will be my 10 seconds as well. If you feel like wishing me happy birthday, go ahead. But I will tell everyone my number one pet peeve during this 10 seconds: it's when people sing "Happy Birthday" to me in a public setting.

Just doesn't like it.

Don't like it. I hate sitting at restaurants and everyone's singing "Happy Birthday" to me. Doesn't matter where it is—my house, restaurants, anywhere. I just can't stand it. It's probably my number one pet peeve.

It's not just you, though. You don't like when anyone sings to anyone in a public setting.

No, it makes me feel extremely uncomfortable. I don't know why. I’m just like—we're all just sitting there, and then everyone's singing "Happy Birthday" to you, and you're just looking at all of them like, "Oh, thanks."

Like, that's so awkward. That's just so weird to me. You have like ten people singing at you, and you're just sitting there. You don't know where to look, so you look down, then you look up at a couple people, and then you look back down, and you're like, "Wow, this song is taking a really long time."

And then you blow your candle out and you're like, "Yay!" You know? And the worst is—it's like the staff you don't even know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, yeah. It's—yeah, you get the staff involved, and it's like, they all hate it, but they're just sitting there having to do it. And then you don't even know them, and they're singing "Happy Birthday" to you. Yeah, I can't stand it.

So that's my 10 seconds. That is my rant. Love you guys, hope everything is going well, and I hope everyone has a fantastic day.

Let's hop into—oh! For my birthday, if you want, you can check out our bonus content. We've got Patreon episodes, and we have Apple subscriptions, our Spotify subscriptions—ad-free content, bonus episodes—you can check it out.

Let's hop into this week's episode.

Our sources for this episode are:

nydailynews.com, caseelaw.findlaw.com, tampabay.com, lasvegas.com, murderpedia.com, and Oxygen.

We've said it before, but Garrett and I do think a lot about how blessed we are to do what we do—that we work from our house, our studio—and that while we might be telling stories about dangerous people, our line of work isn't inherently dangerous. We're not out there putting our lives at risk every day to make a living, though that is what some people do.

For some professionals, danger is part of the job description—it comes with the territory, right? Whether you're upholding the law, working as a police officer, or breaking it, like working with the mob or doing illegal bookkeeping, some professions mean you don’t know how the day is going to end.

But there’s something else interesting about these dangerous lines of work—you never know who will come for you. And if it ends in the worst-case scenario, say, a murder investigation, your greatest enemies become suspects, even though they may just be a cover for the people closest to you. And that is what we’ll be talking about today.

Let me introduce you to 46-year-old Bruce Weinstein. He was originally from Liberty, New York. Bruce and his family moved to Los Angeles, California, sometime during his childhood, and that’s where he spent much of his formative years.

While I don’t know a ton about Bruce’s early life, I do know he was the eldest of four siblings, and his family was really tight-knit. When his brother Steven got older, he decided to start a small family business with their dad—one that Bruce would later join. But we’re not talking about running a laundromat or getting into real estate.

No—Bruce’s family ran their own bookkeeping business. AKA: collecting bets and paying them off. So, say there’s a basketball game you feel really confident about, or a horse you want to bet on—you might seek out the Weinsteins to place a bet. This was especially common back in the days before apps like DraftKings.

And Bruce was really good at his job, mainly because he earned the trust of a lot of his players. Which, let’s face it—while legal in many states now, could still be pretty sketchy. But Bruce likely had some wealthy people placing some serious bets while he was living in Los Angeles.

Daisy, come here. Daisy, come here. Daisy, come here—oh, holy...

All right, you guys—we’re back. We were filming and had our back door all the way open because Daisy likes to go play in the backyard while we record. Then Garrett looked over and there was the biggest deer on our concrete—like, it could’ve walked into our house. That close to the wide-open door.

No, it was a really big deer. And Daisy just looked at it and didn’t even come inside.

We see a lot of deer out here, but that was the biggest one I’ve ever seen just casually walking by our house.

So I look up and see the deer just staring at Daisy. And Daisy looks at the deer like, “That’s it.” She didn’t freak out.

Zero survival instincts.

And then the deer just looked away and walked down into the ravine.

Oh—he jumped!

Oh my gosh, that was a big deer. It was so close—I wish we had a camera on.

I know. Right where the deer was, there’s a blind spot, so I need to install a new camera.

Okay, getting back into Bruce—he’s now grown up in L.A. with his family. His brother and dad have started a business, and he’s now working with them in that same bookkeeping business as an adult.

Like I said, Bruce probably had some pretty wealthy clients—because he ended up making a good living off this profession. He drove a nice car, lived in a beautiful house, and knew how to have a good time.

Bruce was always the life of the party. He lived life in the fast lane, always out enjoying nice dinners with a few drinks. Plus, everyone said he had this laugh that was just infectious. Bruce sounds like the kind of guy you really want to be around.

At least, that’s what Elizabeth Too thought when she met Bruce.

The two of them met and got married in 1990. Not long after, they welcomed a little girl into their family—Bruce’s first and only child, Jacqueline.

But over time, things started to get rocky between Elizabeth and Bruce. In the early ’90s, they decided to call it quits.

Bruce wasn’t just moving on from the relationship, though—he also decided he wanted to move out of L.A. after the divorce. But there was one thing he wasn’t ready to walk away from yet: his bookie business.

So Bruce found a new place where he could build up a fresh roster of clients and still see his daughter on the weekends. That’s why, in the early ’90s, he packed up and moved from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

Now a single dad in his early 40s, Bruce was excited about this brand-new chapter. He embraced the Vegas gambling scene. He got to know people around the hotels and even started entering poker tournaments at the casinos.

And it’s at one of those tournaments—at the Mirage Casino, in fact—where he meets 46-year-old Amy Dashant.

Now, there’s a little thing about Bruce that I haven’t mentioned yet: he sticks out in a crowd.

Bruce was about 300 pounds, with a long silver ponytail and a big round belly. So in 1995, when he was playing Texas Hold’em at the Mirage, he definitely caught Amy’s attention. She was a petite brunette who sat next to him at the poker table.

They got to talking. Bruce told her, “Oh yeah, I actually run a bookkeeping business.” She told him she had her own upholstery cleaning business and worked for a lot of hotels on the Strip.

Bruce said, “Hey, I’d love to hire you for a job.” She probably gave him her business card, and a few days later, she showed up on Bruce’s doorstep, ready to clean whatever needed cleaning.

But it was pretty clear Bruce wasn’t actually interested in Amy for her cleaning services.

Yeah—it was more of a personal thing.

So she comes over, and they start talking. Bruce learns that Amy had lost both of her parents before she even turned 10. She was raised by her aunt and uncle in New Jersey. Then, at 17, she ran off and married her high school sweetheart. That marriage ended in divorce. She married again—another divorce.

That’s when Amy decided she needed a change of scenery.

In 1992—around the same time as Bruce—Amy moved to Las Vegas and bought a condo. She started the upholstery business with some friends and even snagged some big-name clients like MGM and Scenic Airlines.

And now, here she was, being courted by Bruce Weinstein.

And seemingly, Amy was into it.

Bruce asked her out, and things moved from professional to romantic really quickly. Within just a week or so of meeting Bruce, Amy was selling her condo and moving into his large Spanish-style home.

Dang.

I mean, can you blame her? I mean, within a week she's like, "Let me dip in that pool." So things were moving so fast that even Bruce's mother Sylvia was like, "Bro, you've got to slow down." She nearly fainted when she heard that Bruce bought Amy a diamond necklace and a new Chevy Camaro just weeks after they met.

But there were others who thought Amy was kind of a source of light in Bruce's life. She was helping him get back into shape, helping him monitor his diabetes. Bruce even started to slim down in the weeks after meeting her, getting a little healthier, and the two did seem to be in love. They were planning for their future—booking vacations and doing things together.

So, about a year into their relationship, in 1996, they planned to take a little trip to Lake Tahoe, California. This is close to Vegas—they were just going to go have fun.

On July 6th, Bruce was supposed to leave work and meet up with Amy, but fate had another plan for Bruce. On that Saturday morning, Bruce's mother Sylvia gets a call that he never showed up to open his office that day. Which is strange to her, because she knows this business well. I mean, half of the family is in the bookkeeping business, and she knows that Bruce has to be there at 6:00 a.m. to do what they call “set the line,” which basically means he has to go in at 6:00 a.m. and establish the initial betting odds for that day.

And this is something that you cannot miss. Like, it absolutely has to be done—and Bruce has to do it.

Which is why Sylvia then calls Bruce's girlfriend Amy to see why he didn't show up to work. And Amy tells Sylvia, Bruce's mom, that the last time she saw Bruce was actually around 11 p.m. the night before. That was when he told her he had to go run off and do something pretty quickly, but if he wasn't home by the morning, he would just meet her in Tahoe after work.

Well, that's just... that's weird, right?

Well, I think that to her, because of the line of work he's in, she maybe doesn't think it's weird that he has to go do something at 11, because there could be maybe sketchy stuff going on. And maybe, if he does have to work and they're going to leave for Tahoe, he's thinking, “You just go with my daughter and then I'll meet you there.”

Yeah, that's still strange to me, but I get it. It's just—I don't know, something's off.

Well, so Sylvia's like, "Okay." But Amy doesn't seem totally alarmed. She's kind of treating it casually. But Sylvia's like, "I just don't... something's not right." Lately, Bruce had kind of been a creature of habit. Him going out at 11:00 p.m. at night just didn't seem like something he would do anymore. Like yeah, he used to be a party guy, but...

Sylvia just decides she's going to call Bruce's brother Steven. Now, I need to tell you that when Bruce decided to move to Las Vegas, so did his mother Sylvia. She moved out there as well to be close to him. So she calls Bruce's brother Steven, who still lives in LA, and tells him, "Hey, Bruce is missing. He never showed up to work today."

Remember, this is kind of like a family business across states. So Steven flies out from LA that day to help her look for him. And of course, their first stop is Bruce's house. When they get there, Bruce isn't home—which may not be surprising...

However, Amy is there. And when they get inside, they realize that Amy is shampooing the carpets at Bruce's home.

Oh my gosh. You know—that’s insane.

The entire house reeks of vinegar.

So Stephen and Sylvia show up, being like, "Hey, where’s your—you know, our family member, your boyfriend Bruce?" They open the door, and his new girlfriend of a year is shampooing the carpets in his home, saying, "I haven’t seen him since the night before."

Now, I don’t know if Amy gives them a reason for why she’s doing this in the moment, but that’s not the only suspicious thing they notice. As they’re going through the house, they notice that Bruce’s cell phone and wallet are still there.

Oh, you—911 needs to be called ASAP.

We obviously know—I mean, okay, it’s 1996, cell phones aren’t like they are today. But for Bruce’s business, they are. And so this is never good. Especially when you’re a bookie, and like I said, your entire business is done mostly through phone calls.

So they tell Amy, "Hey, we’re going to go file a missing person’s report." But when they go to the police, the police are like, "So… he’s only been gone today? And you’re trying to say he’s missing? Like, he’s a grown man."

Yeah, he’s only been gone today. His girlfriend is shampooing the carpets, the whole house smells like vinegar, his wallet’s still there—and his phone. But yeah, no big deal.

They tell them, "Hey, we’re going to give it a few days before we start using resources." The family’s like, "This is not good enough."

So the following day, on July 7th, when they still haven’t heard from or seen him, they hire a private investigator named Michael Wasaki. And one of the first things Michael does, when the family tells him what’s going on, is say, We’ve got to focus on Amy. I mean, the shampooing the carpets doesn’t look great.

But some of Bruce’s friends also say that with this relationship—Amy—there was just something a little bit off.

So Michael questions her a few times over the next several days, but she maintains her story: Bruce went out the night before and didn’t come home.

And after some digging, he realizes—obviously—Bruce didn’t make it to Lake Tahoe either.

But here’s what’s got to be suspicious: if Bruce told Amy, "Hey, if I’m not back in the morning, I’ll meet you up in Tahoe," why didn’t she go to Tahoe? Why was she at home shampooing the carpets?

These are all just things that Michael’s curious about—especially by Thursday, July 11th, when Amy starts mentioning to Michael, Uh, yeah, I would love to help you search for Bruce, but I actually have plans to leave the country.

So the following day, Amy and Michael speak again. And this time, she has a different version of events.

This is insane. This is insane.

Michael goes to her and is like, "Listen, you’re planning to leave the country. You need to tell us what happened."

She’s like, "Okay, okay, okay. This is the truth."

She says that actually, on the night of July 5th, four masked men came into the house. She was in the shower, but they pulled her out and blindfolded her so she couldn’t see a thing. She heard them lead Bruce upstairs, beat him up, and then she heard three gunshots.

After that, all she heard was what sounded like his body being tossed down the stairs and dragged out of the house.

She said before they left, the masked gunmen said something to Amy. They told her to clean up the house, and if anyone asked, tell them that Bruce left and said he would be back soon. They also threatened to come back and kill Amy and Bruce's young daughter, Jacqueline, if anyone ever found out the truth. She needed to keep this a secret.

So this is definitely a little bit more than, like, “Hey, he went out at 11:00 p.m. and didn’t come back.” She’s saying, “Hey, intruders broke in, tied me up, murdered him, and then told me to cover it up or else they’d come back and kill me.”

There’s no way anyone believes this, right?

Well, Michael’s talking to people—you know, he’s investigating. He’s investigating; the cops aren’t. But Michael is. And there are some neighbors who corroborate this story.

Get out of here.

One of the neighbors said that on the night of July 5th, they did hear three loud popping noises that sounded like gunshots coming from Bruce’s home at around 10 p.m.

And you have to take into consideration Bruce’s line of work. Sometimes, it did involve shady characters. Even if it was legal, apparently there were some operations he was running that were a little below board.

So Michael, at this point, decides to take this information to the police. He’s like, “Hey, this is what I found out. She lied. But then she told the truth. And then I checked with the neighbors, and they also heard the gunshots.”

And ten days after Bruce goes missing, Amy is finally tracked down and brought into the police station to give an official statement.

There, Amy tells police the reason she didn’t come forward about all of this was because she was terrified. She remembers the muffled voices, the feeling of a gun pressed to the back of her head, and the memory of someone telling her that if she talked, she would die.

The only distinguishing feature she could give police was that one of the men had a heavy New York accent.

She said she did what they told her to do—she cleaned the carpets and kept her mouth shut.

Here’s the thing, though—Amy isn’t recalling all of this from memory. She has these handwritten notes with her during her statement. So when she comes into police, she brings paper and reads the statement off of it.

Police are like, “What is going on?”

So they decide at this point they have probable cause. They’re going to search Bruce’s house.

Okay, so keep in mind—Bruce has been missing for 10 days at this point. And what they’re looking for is basically any evidence that can confirm Amy’s story, or at the very least, a sign of what happened to Bruce.

What they don’t find is any fingerprints that seem out of the ordinary. But even more interesting—there are no bullet casings or any impact sites in the primary bedroom that they notice.

What they do find, after performing a luminol test, is a giant trail of blood leading from the master bedroom to the front door.

So obviously, when police discover this, it turns from a missing person’s case into a homicide case.

Yep.

So Amy’s version of events—whether it was her who did it, or someone else—

Sorry to interrupt—is it luminol?

Yeah, you’re saying that correctly.

Is it possible for it to, um, how do I say this, not work? Like, can you clean up good enough so that it doesn’t show on a luminol test? Do you know how the technology works?

No, I don’t know how it works. I do know there is a way to clean up enough to not have it show on a luminol test because there have been times when they had to pull up the floorboards to find blood that was missed.

So are you asking—well, I was trying to ask ChatGPT, but all it says is, “I can’t help you with that. If you’re in a situation involving blood or harm, I urge you to seek help or contact emergency services or a trusted professional.”

Great. Your phone just got sent to the FBI.

For real, I’m screwed. I mean, I could look it up, but I don’t know. I’ll let one of you guys answer for me.

You literally asked ChatGPT: Is there a way to pass a luminol test?

Yeah, basically. And it told me that I need to go see someone.

Yeah, basically.

Okay, so at this point, they’re like, “Hey, we do think murder happened here.” And when they check Amy’s car as well as Bruce’s—which had been left behind—they don’t find any fiber or blood in either of the vehicles.

So they find this evidence in the house, but then where did the body go once it left, if it wasn’t in either of their vehicles?

And so this is when they’re like, “Wait, is Amy telling the truth? Was there a third party involved in this?”

There’s no way. There’s no way I can believe that there was a third party.

Police are still searching at this point, and they find Bruce’s hidden safe in his bedroom. When they get it open, they discover there’s only $20 inside.

Now, according to some sources, Bruce originally had $100,000 inside this safe in the ’90s.

But upon further investigation, they also notice something they missed: Bruce’s mattress had actually been flipped over, and on the other side, there were bullet holes.

So it does seem like Bruce was shot while on, or in, his bed.

Police are thinking maybe this was part of Amy cleaning up out of fear, because to them, there was no way she was able to go in, shoot her boyfriend, then drag him out of the house and dispose of his body all on her own.

She’s very petite. He is huge.

Yeah, sorry. I guess that’s a good point. She couldn’t have dragged or disposed of the body by herself, right?

Between that and the lack of evidence in their cars, the police are like, “Okay, there has to be something else going on.”

Which is when they start to wonder, “Maybe she’s telling the truth.”

And when they dig deeper into Bruce’s life back in Los Angeles and the reason why he left, that’s when things start to make a little more sense.

So as I mentioned, Bruce’s bookie operation was legal most of the time. There were apparently a few incidents back in LA in the late ’80s where Bruce was arrested for illegal bookmaking.

During the last instance, the LAPD approached Bruce with an offer. They said, “Give us a few names of other illegal bookies in town, and we’ll clear your charges.”

Now, Bruce, with a new baby at the time, was probably happy to make a deal.

But of course, this comes with a risk— a lot of the guys he was working with were involved in organized crime.

But there was a benefit for Bruce as well.

If he gives them the names, then he clears out his competition. So Bruce wore a wire—he became an informant for the police, helped them with their sting operation, and in the end, he helped the police arrest over 20 people.

Whoa, that’s a lot of enemies.

So naturally, when the Vegas police hear he’s been murdered and learn about this, they decide there’s a group of people they’re going to look at. I will say, all of those people Bruce busted were now in jail, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have connections on the outside.

Also, I just want to bring something up—say she was, you know, tied down, he was killed, all that stuff. I know everyone reacts to trauma differently, but she doesn’t seem distressed at all.

Like, there’s no way if someone came in, tied you down, and killed me, you’d just be chilling, right?

Totally freaking out.

Yeah, freaking out. But also, if they were like, “Hey, you need to be on your best behavior, clean this up, or I’m going to come back and kill you now,” I’d be like, “Yeah, okay.”

And then the second they left, I would call the police.

Yeah, back in the ’90s, would people have done that?

I think so. I don’t think people have changed that much. I think people just don’t believe that criminals are going to come back and kill them as much as they used to.

But she’d still be scared or something.

Yeah, I get what you’re saying. There’s no way she’d just be like, “Yeah, life’s amazing, I’m going to Tahoe.”

Well, she didn’t go, remember?

Yeah.

The Las Vegas police start looking into these people one by one, and what they find is none of them even knew Bruce was the one who ratted them out. Apparently, Bruce was a pretty flawless informant.

But that poses a different problem— all of Bruce’s enemies are now a dead end, which means the investigation has to pivot.

That’s when a new name is thrown into the mix: Ken Reich.

Now, Ken was Bruce’s roommate at his home before Amy moved in, but he’s also Bruce’s business associate.

Before Bruce died, the two had started a little side hustle together.

They would take the cash from their clients—the cash meant to pay off lost bets—and instead of paying the winners, they would take the money to a casino to try to turn a profit.

They started gambling with their clients’ money.

Turns out, there were a couple of nights when Bruce was in the red, and he borrowed about $5,000 from Ken to try and fix things.

Police think, well, $5,000 is chump change to these guys. Would someone really kill their business partner and friend over an amount that small?

Here’s something else strange: Remember how I said Bruce, his daughter Jacqueline, and Amy were all supposed to go to Tahoe with another friend that weekend?

Well, that friend was Ken.

When Ken hears his buddy is missing and they’re not going to Tahoe anymore, he doesn’t really seem to care.

He heads to Tahoe without Amy, Bruce, and Jacqueline and goes on the vacation anyway.

And when police try to question him, there’s zero sense of urgency to come down to the station to talk.

Plus, it seems like Ken was one of the last people to actually see Bruce alive on the day before Bruce vanished.

Ken and Bruce went to watch some horse races, and then he dropped Bruce back off at his house at around 9:00 p.m. I remember those shots apparently went off at 10:00, but when the police finally got a hold of Ken, he told them this: he went somewhere in the hours after dropping him off, meaning Ken has a rock-solid alibi. He spent the rest of the night out with a friend, which they cooperated with several witnesses on.

So that brings them back once more to the person closest to Bruce: Amy. After all of this, they thought, “We have circled back around to her.” Yep. But when the police decided to go question Amy again, they realized they couldn't find her. She was gone.

Yeah, she’s out of the country.

Now they’re thinking one of two things happened: either Amy skipped town, or the people came back and killed her like they said they would. I guess I didn’t think about that part—maybe whoever threatened her came back after she talked to police.

They tried to reach out to her a few times with no response. Then, on August 11th, a little over a month after Bruce disappears, there’s a break in the case. A body is found in the Las Vegas desert. A couple of hunters are out in this isolated part of the desert when they notice a strong chemical odor hit them all of a sudden. Near that smell are a bunch of stones on top of skeletal remains.

The police are called to the site, but the remains are pretty decomposed. It’s kind of hard for them to make out any identifying features. All they can tell is that the body belongs to a man. They also notice the smell, and they say it doesn’t smell like the normal odor of a decomposing body. As gross as that sounds, they notice it smells like a cleaning solution of some kind.

But that’s not even the most shocking part of this entire thing. As they’re scanning the area looking for clues, about 400 yards away, there’s a second body.

No way—is it Amy?

It has long reddish hair and appears at first glance to be female.

The police have these bodies bagged and taken back to the lab. The Las Vegas police are feeling like they think it’s Bruce and Amy.

Holy crap. No. I feel bad, but no way.

They look at the first body, the one that’s male, and find there is a bullet wound in the chest. After getting a hold of Bruce’s dental records, they do in fact prove that this body is Bruce Weinstein. And Amy’s? Now we have the second body.

When they examine it closely, they realize, oh, this isn’t a woman—it’s a man. Oh, and it’s a victim of a completely unrelated crime. A total coincidence that the bodies were so close together.

Wow.

Police don’t know, but what they do know is that Amy might still be alive somewhere. Bruce’s family is encouraging the police to look for her. Their gut is telling them she had something to do with this.

So the police issue a fugitive warrant for Amy. About a month later, they get a hit all the way in Maryland. It turns out Amy has been pulled over for speeding. She tries to get out of it. However, there is something else in the vehicle that catches the officer’s eye: a big bag of cash stacked with $100 bills amounting to about $100,000.

There’s also another woman’s birth certificate, a passport, a bunch of wigs, and at first the officer thinks the road she’s on is a well-traveled path for drug traffickers. So that’s what they think. But then he sees that she has a bunch of newspaper clippings about Bruce Weinstein’s case in her car. When he finds out there’s a felony warrant out for her arrest in Vegas, he puts her in handcuffs.

She’s thrown in jail in Maryland, and the Las Vegas police are working to get her back to Nevada. But before they can extradite her, someone comes and pays her bail, and she escapes before the LVPD can get her into their custody.

There’s still a big missing piece for detectives. I mean, it’s crazy—Amy did not do this alone. At least, she did not move this body alone. So they are thinking that she has someone else involved. That’s when they figure out a little bit more about this case.

In January of 1997, someone finds a .38 caliber pistol in the desert close to where Bruce’s body was found. By the way, the bullet wound in Bruce’s chest matches this. They run the serial number on the gun and find it belongs to a 58-year-old man named Robert Wayne “Bobby” Jones.

Bobby turns out to be on the run too, and he was employed by Amy’s upholstery cleaning business. So the gun they found near the body belongs to one of Amy’s employees. When they see pictures of Bobby, they realize this is definitely the guy who could have helped Amy move a body.

They get a warrant to search Bobby’s property. When they get to his house, they notice something odd: it’s that same weird chemical smell they noticed when they discovered Bruce’s body. That’s when they realize it’s a chemical used for the upholstery business.

But Bobby’s nowhere to be found. He’s also MIA, so the police issue a fugitive warrant for him as well. To place even greater attention on the case, they get America’s Most Wanted to run an episode about Bruce’s murder. Shockingly, it works.

In June of 1997, six months after discovering Bobby’s involvement and knowing who they were looking for but couldn’t find, someone reports seeing Bobby in New Mexico. Turns out he had been hiding out at his son’s house there. He’s taken into custody but refuses to speak with police, which is why they think, “Okay, we also need to find Amy so we can put all the pieces together.”

I think I need to say something real quick, too. How do the neighbors go, “Oh yeah, I think someone did come and tie me down, and a bunch of people came in…”? Well, they just said that they heard the gunshots. Oh, they didn’t say they saw people—they’re just saying, “Yeah, I mean if she’s saying there were gunshots that night, yeah, we did hear that.” Okay, so they’re—I mean, there were gunshots though. But yes, but I mean they could have been hers.

Yes, exactly.

Six more months go by, and they still can’t find Amy. So they decide, “Let’s reach out to the producers of America’s Most Wanted and see if we can run the episode again.” And it works again. Someone says they know where Amy is currently: she’s bartending at a nudist colony in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Cops storm the campground, but Amy’s already a step ahead of them. They say she left mere hours ago. It only takes a few more days to track her down. On January 28th, she is found at a friend’s home 16 miles away and finally placed in handcuffs. This time, police aren’t letting her get away. She’s sent back to Vegas, where she tells the police the same thing she originally did—the same exact story. She thinks the mobsters killed Bruce, but they aren’t buying it, especially because they know she had Bruce’s cash on the road with her.

Later that year, in October of 1998, Amy and Bobby are tried together for the murder of Bruce Weinstein. The prosecution paints the story as an extortion plot gone wrong. It turns out Amy had hinted to a few friends in the week leading up to the murder that she had actually wanted to kill Bruce, but she wanted to find a way to keep his money after he was gone. To do that, she needed a bit of help. That’s when she recruited her employee Bobby, who she knew was already strapped for cash.

She told Bobby he should pretend to break in one night and hold Bruce at gunpoint until he gave him what he was looking for. That evening, Bruce recognized Bobby—he could make out his voice—so Bobby panicked. He shot Bruce, dragged him out of the house, and the two used cleaning supplies to cover their tracks. Amy came up with the fake story and mopped up the house while Bobby brought Bruce out to the desert. Then they took his cash.

Whether or not that’s exactly what happened, the jury believed it. Amy was found guilty of first-degree murder and given two life sentences, while Bobby was also found guilty for his part in the crime and given five years.

But it doesn’t end there. Two years later, both of their convictions are overturned. Apparently, during the trial, one of the former homicide detectives called Amy’s story a “complete fairy tale,” which Supreme Court justices agreed should not have been allowed during testimony because that’s a matter of opinion—but could sway the jury.

As a result, Amy and Bobby were granted a new trial. Instead of risking her life in the hands of another jury, Amy pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was given a new sentence of 10 to 25 years. She was actually released in 2011. Bobby was not retried at all; the judge felt he had already served the majority of his time for the case, so they decided to release him.

While both of them are back out living their lives now, the lives of Bruce’s family are changed forever. His daughter, Jacqueline, has made the most of this next chapter. She’s decided to avoid the dangers of the family business and has gone on to become a doctor.

I think there’s definitely something heartbreaking in these cases when killers get out and the victims are still dead. And that is the case of Bruce Weinstein.

Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. Garrett actually had to run out like three minutes ago to jump in a meeting, so I love it—and he still hates it. We’ll see you next time. Goodbye.

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