Chapter 1: What happened to Toni Hartzong in September 2000?
I am a peaceful person.
Meditation is a gift.
It's about being right there in the now. Stopping everything else around you and come into yourself. Meditation helped me deal with Tony's death.
Tony was a beautiful woman, smiled a lot, laughed, just full of life.
Tony was smart, strong, physically and emotionally. She was personality plus.
I remember my wife from meeting her the very first day with her eyes. I'd seen her eyes for all of my life. I think I've always been in love with her. I came home 5 o'clock. I went around to the front door. The front door was locked. Then I walked around to the side. Hello? Come over here! Help me! What's going on? My wife has been killed by somebody here in my house.
My whole world just completely ended.
The crime scene in my 30 years of law enforcement was one of the bloodiest I had ever reviewed. There was excessive violence to the victim. I must say, this case consumed me. It was your typical housewife that was so viciously and brutally murdered right in her home.
This case needed to be solved. My fear is a guy like this could be doing it again. Somebody did it. She didn't kill herself. He'd have to be the most horrible monster in the whole universe to do that.
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Chapter 2: How did Bob Hartzong react when he found Toni?
Bob's accurate. A monster did commit this crime. I had a handful of suspects in this case. They were eliminated one by one. The person left at the end came about being Bob Hartzong. I know I'm innocent. Most people that know me know that I'm innocent. Peace, love, and murder. Tonight's 48 Hours Mystery.
and an incredibly beautiful little girl knocked on my door. Her name was Toni, and we talked for, must have been six or seven hours.
Bob Eckhart and Toni Soren began their whirlwind courtship when she was just 23. He was 28.
We could connect completely without any, no walls, no shields, no nothing went up.
Everything was just magic. It was the uninhibited early 70s. Within 48 hours of meeting, the two young lovers eloped.
That's me and her. That was the wedding day.
Obviously, hippies.
And they had a hippie wedding. This was my rabbi. I was always amazed that I was married to her. She was my lover, my wife, my sister, my mother, everything rolled into one. Bob and Tony were so entwined, they even created their own lyrical last name, Heart Song, by fusing their two given names. We took the heart out of Eckhart and the song out of Sauron and we made Heart Song.
We had blended together and become one person. Tony had lost both her parents as a teenager and was raised as a young adult by her older brother, Barry Soren. I did everything I could for her. And our relationship was tight enough that she wasn't spun out about the terrible events, the terrible way her life started.
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Chapter 3: What were the initial findings at the crime scene?
But Tony seemed to have found, with Bob, a path to her own happy family. Her cousin, Mel Sorkowitz, admired Bob's ambition. Bob impressed me as being a very hardworking guy. Another cousin, Deb Shep, liked Bob's calm personality.
He was a very peaceful person, very spiritual. I know he and Tony practiced meditation. It seemed like the ideal life for her.
Bob and Tony eventually settled in Jupiter, Florida, where they did everything together. They were strict vegetarians and wrote a tofu cookbook. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun. They also were both artistic. This was a drawing I did of Tony's eye, and this was her drawing. We kind of merged these things together.
We beaded necklaces for stores, and we produced thousands and thousands and thousands of beaded necklaces.
They used their artistic talents to start a company building stone waterfalls for homes and businesses. And they became dedicated parents to two sons, Jake and Eli.
Tony was a happy mother. She loved those boys.
I think she was my best friend. She'd help me out in whatever troubles I have. I loved my mom. My parents loved each other. Through 27 years of a generally happy marriage, Bob and Tony did have some rocky periods. Were there ever any times where you or Tony were unfaithful to your marriage? I've never had sex with another woman during my marriage, but there were times where I was sorely tempted.
There's no question about that. I think she had sex with another man once or twice.
Bob says Tony's affair happened in the early 80s. They got through that period, but the tough times occasionally returned.
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Chapter 4: What led to Bob becoming a suspect in Toni's murder?
Tony kept a journal that chronicled her frustrations. Her cousin Deb Shep reads excerpts written in the early 90s.
He doesn't seem to really show me any love, not in ways that are important to me, like calling. I'm constantly angry and frustrated. I hate it.
He hates it. I feel so trapped. Not enough money to leave. Not enough care to work it out by both of us. Did you have your share of tough patches? Yes, absolutely. How did you deal with them? Kept working. Kept working on it, you know, tried to find out what I was not doing that made sense, what I was not communicating, what I was not connecting with. That's what I meant. She was very upfront.
She'd tell me that this is, I don't like this. I said, okay, what can I do about it? Even her cousins acknowledged Tony was not the easiest person to live with.
Tony had a tough side. She inherited that from her mother.
She could come across as being aggressive sometimes. But by all accounts, there were never any physical confrontations. Tony's brother, Barry Sorin, says Tony would have said something if she ever felt threatened by Bob. You think your sister would have called you and told you about it? Yep. No doubt? No doubt. No, she would have used me to come in and protect her.
The Hart songs worked through the rough patches of their marriage.
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Chapter 5: How did DNA evidence change the investigation in 2006?
And by the late 90s, Bob says, things got better. The business was thriving and they were happy again.
We're all diamonds that need to be shaped. And that's what I am, is a diamond that's being shaped in my life. You know, and so I listened.
Tony wrote about their reconciliation in her journal. Quote, things were better and Bob is back to his sweet self.
It was the most incredible relationship. I used to describe it as living in nirvana.
You loved her a lot. Do you miss her?
Yes. I'm sorry.
The Hartzongs' life together ended on September 26, 2000. Bob says he came home at 5 p.m. and found Tony lying in a pool of blood. I lifted her up with my arm like this, and I held her up.
And when I saw her face, I freaked out. And when I saw that and her eyes were beaten closed, I was just destroyed by it. I gently laid her back down.
And I said to myself, I don't want to remember this. Tony's cousin, Sandra Sorkowicz, was shocked by the carnage.
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Chapter 6: What was Bob's defense during the trial?
And others began to wonder about the person Tony knew best, Bob Hartsong.
I never would have believed he personally did this to Tony. But I began to wonder if maybe there wasn't something we as a family didn't know.
Just days after he found his wife Toni murdered in their home, Bob Hartsong led local media on a tour of the crime scene. I just want to know who and why. You invited the media into your home. Why'd you do that? They kept asking me and I finally said, okay, let's talk about it. I was, you know, I could not believe that somebody in the world had done this.
Literally every part of Tony's body had a bruise to it. Tim Valentine investigated the case for the state attorney's office. Tony initially was beaten in this area. We determined that by the amount of blood on the wall here and the amount of blood on the cement.
We theorized that somebody was holding her by the back of the head and just literally smashing her head against the cement.
But Tony, described by everyone who knew her as one tough lady, did not stay down.
Tony had time to stand up. Tony had time to reach across the door. There was a little table there, and grab a beach towel. That was clutched in her hand when she was found dead.
It was after collapsing again, investigators believe from the blood evidence, that Tony was stabbed seven times in the neck.
making sure she wouldn't wake up. Definite overkill.
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Chapter 7: What was the jury's verdict in Bob Hartzong's trial?
I got on the 95 and I went to Delray, to my job in Delray.
Bob says he spent most of the day at a job site in Delray Beach, 43 miles south of Jupiter. Investigators say the murder happened around 1 p.m.
I was there until about 2.30.
I mean, I've got five witnesses that are verifying that I was there. Bob was later seen at this Mazda dealership in Delray at 2.45, and he says he didn't get home until 5 p.m. when he discovered Tony's body. Police apparently bought Bob's alibi. Barry Soren, Tony Hartzong's brother, met with the lead homicide detective to ask about progress in solving his sister's murder.
He said to me, we don't think Bob Hartzong did this. He's just a hippie. He's harmless. And in answer to your question, no, I don't believe your brother-in-law had anything to do with this. Police now looked harder at other suspects. A homeless man had been seen in the neighborhood for several weeks. There had also been a spate of burglaries in the area.
And police found an unidentified fingerprint on the door lock of the Hartsong home. None of these leads went anywhere.
There was no prime suspect. There was not enough evidence to charge anybody in this case.
The case went cold, but members of Tony's family were still troubled by some of Bob's behavior.
Elijah and Sherry Hartsong.
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of the verdict for Toni's family?
Never violent? Nope. Others say Bob had a mean streak. He gets out of the car, he walks up to me, and he says, I hate the bitch. Steve Kachakian says Bob once referred to Tony that way while Kachakian was working for Bob. He says he saw Bob's temper another time, directed at him over a minor business matter. I've never seen anybody get so angry at anybody. I've been a bouncer.
I mean, I've seen people angry, but never like this. But with the case at a standstill, Bob was moving forward with his life. Two months after the murder, he bought a motorcycle, he sold his business a year later, and he started dating.
It's not that often you go out with somebody and find out that their wife's been murdered, the case is still open, and, you know, he did tell me they suspected him and whatever.
Susie Goldstein, who owns a marketing business, met Bob through an online dating service in 2002. Tell us about Bob. What kind of man is he?
He's gentle, kind, totally unconditional, which I have never met a man like that in my life.
Bob and Susie got married a year later and settled into their new life together. Yet even living with his new wife, Bob kept a shrine to Tony's memory in his den.
The rock that's painted was painted by an artist that we worked with.
And he has a trunk full of memories in the living room.
This is a coloring book that my wife put together. This is a wedding necklace that I wore. This is the garter. you know, tiny mementos of the time we were together.
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