Murder Retrial On The Horizon? Bob Bashara, Joe Gentz Due In Court
DETROIT (WWJ) - The latest chapter in the Bashara murder saga will play out in the courtroom on Tuesday.
Bob Bashara and Joe Gentz, both serving time in the 2012 death of Jane Bashara, are expected to appear in Wayne County Circuit Court for a hearing regarding a shocking claim made by Gentz that Bob Bashara had nothing to do with his wife's murder and he alone is the killer.
Gentz, Bashara's former handyman, originally said that he killed Jane at the behest of money from Bashara. He chose not to testify during trial, but purportedly told police that Bashara forced him to strangle Jane in the couple's garage and then ordered him to leave her body in her Mercedes-Benz in a Detroit alley.
In a signed affidavit filed in January, Gentz now claims that he broke into the Basharas' garage looking for items to steal because Bob Bashara had refused to pay him for two jobs. When Jane caught him in the act, Gentz claims he "lost control" and strangled her, according to the document.
"I held her with one hand, picked an object and hit her on the head," Gentz said in the affidavit, which was obtained by WDIV. "She lost consciousness. I thought she was faking so I placed both of my hands around her neck and squeezed her neck until she no longer moved."
He then put her body in the back of her Mercedes-Benz SUV and drove it to an alley in Detroit where he parked it and walked away.
In his statement, Gentz claims he admitted all this to police but they weren't apparently interested in his version of events.
"The officers stated their bosses promised to help me get a lesser sentence if I cooperated with them by agreeing to their version of what happened, which was not the truth," Gentz says in the affidavit. "I asked them both what sentence and Chief Hiller stated: 'I have spoken to the prosecutor and I can promise you a five year sentence.' Both assured me the prosecutor was aware and had agreed with them. It was then that I agreed to perjure myself."
Gentz claims police drilled and coached him for three days on what to say in court -- that he was hired by Bashara to kill his wife.
"Once I agreed to implicate Mr. Robert Bashara … I again asked Sgt. Reducio why they wanted Robert Bashara and he stated: 'We have been after that mother f—– for a long time. You don't need to know more beyond that.'"
As for why he waited so long to speak up, Gentz says he "could no longer live knowing that Mr. Robert Bashara was completely innocent."
Meantime, Bashara is trying to get another trial, claiming he had a shoddy defense. A jury convicted him in December 2014 of first-degree murder in his wife's 2012 death.
Nearly 500 pieces of evidence were presented, more than 70 witnesses took the stand, and sometimes salacious testimony about dungeons, whippings and sex parties peppered the 10-week trial.
Prosecutors argued that Bashara wanted his wife out of the way so he could pursue a new life with other women, who referred to him as "Master Bob" as part of an alternative sexual lifestyle known as BDSM. The defense countered that Bashara's affair was just a fling — and that he wouldn't want to kill Jane because she was the breadwinner in the household.
During the trial, Bashara was already in prison for trying to have Gentz killed in jail in 2012. Gentz is presently serving 17-to-28 years in prison after pleading guilty to second degree murder in the case.