The Ninja Murder Case

A Ninja Killer

Later that day, the detectives set up a meeting with the entire family who had attended the Yom Kippur fast-breaking supper. This included Vera's sisters and all of the Woodmans' children except Stewart and Neil. It seemed that those two were estranged from their parents.

Stewart Woodman

Holder and Crostley got an earful about how the two brothers stole the family business from their parents and then fired their father and brother. About how they refused to let Gerald and Vera see their grandchildren and even hired guards to keep them away from the bar mitzvah of Neil's son.

Neil Woodman

The detectives knew it would take months to sort all this out, but first they had to investigate the ninja angle. They knew that actress and director Penny Marshall lived nearby and that her home had been burglarized a year earlier by two men dressed in ninja costumes. Marshall had been home at the time, and the men had threatened to kill her if she didn't cooperate.

Nearby phone booths

Both men had been apprehended, pleaded guilty and had been recently paroled. Holder checked their whereabouts the night of the murders and found they had alibis. One man was even at a pay phone less than two miles away, but his mother's phone records showed that he had been speaking with her around the time of the murders, clearing him. Now that this angle was played out, the detectives would concentrate on the estranged Woodman sons: Stewart, 41, and Neil, 42.