Life of Comfort and Pain Ends in an Airport Cell

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT, page one: Life of Comfort and Pain Ends in an Airport Cell
By ERIC KONIGSBERG
Published: October 6, 2007


Carol Gotbaum with Nathaniel, left, Ella and Tobias.

Last Nov. 1, Noah Gotbaum phoned his father and stepmother to say that he had just discovered his wife, Carol, drunk and passed out in their town house on West 95th Street. An ambulance, he told them, was rushing her to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center.

He asked them to come watch his three young children, Ella, 7, Nathaniel, 5, and Tobias, 3. His stepmother, Betsy Gotbaum, who is the New York City public advocate, has been married to Victor Gotbaum, the former labor leader, for 30 years and has close relations with his children and grandchildren — particularly Noah’s children, who for the past few years have lived near her.

Carol Gotbaum spent one night at the hospital. Betsy Gotbaum saw her in the emergency room after she awoke. “I’m ashamed of myself,” Carol Gotbaum told her. The night marked the first knowledge Betsy Gotbaum had of her stepdaughter-in-law’s struggles with alcoholism and depression, she said in an extensive interview on Wednesday.

On Sept. 27, Carol Gotbaum agreed to fly to Arizona and spend a month at Cottonwood de Tucson, an expensive but spare addiction-treatment clinic. Other, briefer stints in rehabilitation facilities had apparently failed. The decision set in motion a chain of events that left Carol Ann Gotbaum dead at 45 and gave rise to a number of questions about her treatment at the hands of the police in Arizona....

***

Behind the disagreement on what happened in that airport holding cell, and whether there was police negligence, is the quieter and no less devastating story of a wife and mother fighting her demons. Even those who knew her well claim not to fully understand what may have set off the depression or the drinking her husband described to them....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/nyregion/06gotbaum.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all

[cspanlovr]

1. This is such a sad story.

[Joanne98]

2. They murdered her!

[Eric J in MN]

3. "whether there was police negligence"

Euphemism for "whether a cop choked her to death."

[Fridays Child]

4. I heard, yesterday, that there was a video of her detainment. Was it released to the public?

I wonder what it may have revealed.

[Bobbieo]

5. Noah Gobaum shoukd have taken his wife to the Cottonwood clinic himself instead of

putting her on a plane by herself. The fault lies with him!!!

I have no use for the cops but I can tell you, from experience, there is nothing more devastatig then trying to deal with an abusive alcohoilc daughter. AND - I never would have put her on a plane without an escort!!! She was not to be trusted!!!