the special prosecutor summed it up on day one. ladies and gentlemen, obsession. it was an obsession furthered by manipulation and deception. to show jurors just how obsessed they believed gil had become, prosecutors read emails he wrote to linda. i am not leaving you. not today, not tomorrow, not ever. i am not going to let you just walk away from me. never. linda took the stand and testified about how the affair began and lasted until right before tom s death. tom s parents couldn t believe the details they were hearing. we just assumed that it was a one-time episode between them. we didn t realize that it was on going for 11 months. we heard that in the courtroom. wow. that s amazing that you didn t know that. when you look back, you know, that first kiss, if she would ve slapped him in the face or kicked him in the nuts, it it wouldn t happen.
and i said, this is what s been goin on. i i cleared the table. you know, i have been having an affair. it was with him. was there any part of it that felt, i don t wanna use the word good, but you got it off your chest, you weren t carrying yeah. around this secret anymore? it did. because then, because then at least i could talk to tom about it. at one point he said to me, linda, i can see he has some kind of hold on you. he s like, i see it. and he did. and linda told us what detectives had found so hard to believe. how did it affect tom, the fact that it was gilberto, and
you believe that this affair is the reason that your son is no longer with us well, yes, if he didn t come into their lives tom would be alive. in court, prosecutors portrayed gil, not just as a man desperately in love, but also as someone capable of outrageous lies. along with those anonymous text messages gil sent to tom about the affair, jurors also learned he sent texts to linda, posing as a woman named samantha. linda received some disturbing anonymous text messages from a person samantha telling her that tom and she, samantha, were having sex wild sex. and that wasn t the only fiction gil created. linda testified gil even told her he was in the c-i-a. he had an i.d. card and he said that he sometimes would put trackers in people s mouths? mouths. did you believe him
as well? we offered. did he take it? no. the next day after that interview, we were contacted by a lawyer stating that there d be no further contact with his client. meanwhile, linda was reeling from all that police had told her. from the images of the white suv in the video, to the drug in her husband s system that a dentist like gil would have access to. like investigators, she now believed her lover had killed her husband. i didn t ever want to speak to him again. but saugerties is a small place, and within days linda says she found gil waiting for her outside a chinese restaurant. he s sittin in the parkin lot and gets out of his car and starts screamin at me and we d get in a huge fight. and he s, like, they re tryin to pin this on me and they say you were involved. and i m, like, i wasn t. you did this. get away from me. he was saying that the
it was an obsession furthered by manipulation and deception. to show jurors just how obsessed they believed gil had become, prosecutors read emails he wrote to linda. i am not leaving you. not today, not tomorrow, not ever. i am not going to let you just walk away from me. never. linda took the stand and testified about how the affair began and lasted until right before tom s death. tom s parents couldn t believe the details they were hearing. we just assumed that it was a one-time episode between them. we didn t realize that it was on going for 11 months. we heard that in the courtroom. wow. that s amazing that you didn t know that. when you look back, you know, that first kiss, if she would ve slapped him in the face or kicked him in the nuts, it it wouldn t happen. you believe that this affair is the reason that your son is no longer with us well, yes, if he didn t come