- Ina was a warm,
loving mother.
- She was my best friend.
She was my soulmate.
[Faith] Ina Gross gave everything to everyone.
- She always had a deep feeling for the underdog,
and in a few cases befriended some of the homeless clients
that she had been working with.
[Faith] But when she's found dead in her garage.
[dramatic music]
- It only takes one knife wound in the jugular
to kill somebody.
[Faith] It's clear someone wanted more
than Ina was willing to give.
- There was multiple stab wounds.
[tense music]
[Faith] An investigation filled with intrigue.
- Where did the vomit come from?
[tense music]
- I'm thinking about all the people who could
potentially be suspects.
- There was another homicide of an elderly woman
in Sarasota.
It's right next door.
[Faith] Only to uncover...
- We had learned that Ms. Gross is quite well off.
[dramatic music]
[Faith] A crushing killer relationship.
- My heart did not want me to believe this.
[dramatic music]
- Once a parent, always a parent,
that's how the saying goes.
Even when the kids grow up and leave the nest.
And it's true for so many.
There's nothing like the love between a parent and a child.
And though sometimes these relationships
can be complicated,
that unbreakable bond continues to grow as the years go by.
[tense music]
So when 78 year old Ina Gross is viciously murdered
on January 9th, 2012,
it leaves her four children reeling
with plenty of unanswered questions.
Who would kill their beloved matriarch?
And will this unspeakable loss
tear this tightly knit family apart?
[dramatic music] [siren wailing]
[Ellen] I lost my mother horrifically.
I was in shock.
I remember lying on the ground on my back
and just putting my hands on my head,
and a victim's advocate comes up to me saying,
"If you need any help?"
And I'm looking at her like,
"Really, how can you help me?
My mother's been murdered.
There's nothing you can do to help me."
I wanted to turn back the clock.
[video reversing]
[gentle music]
My mother was my best friend.
She was my soulmate.
She was funny, she was compassionate,
she was loving, she was kind.
- When Ina walked in a room, there was an energy,
a positive energy.
She lit the room up.
[trumpet music]
[Faith] Born, Ina Friedman in 1933,
she grows up in Boston, Massachusetts.
The youngest of three children.
- My mother loved relaying the story about
how she met my father.
They were on the North Shore beach
outside of Boston, Massachusetts.
And my father was lying on his beach towel reading Spanish.
My mother walked up to him
and she said something in Spanish to him.
He looked up and then she continued to speak Spanish,
and she went home to tell her mother
that she had met the man that she was going to marry.
In 1952 when she was in college
and my father was in medical school,
they were married in Marblehead,
which is right outside of Boston.
Two years later,
they had their first child,
my brother Tom.
- The Gross family had four children.
Tom was the oldest.
He was the only boy.
So he was the king of the hill.
Next was Abby and Sarah,
and then Ellen was the baby.
- I was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio,
which is right outside of Cleveland, Ohio.
I felt that my childhood was perfect.
My parents were really like the dynamic duo
because they were both really interesting people.
Very bright people,
educated, compassionate.
My father was world renowned
in the field of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology.
He was one of the earliest
to launch bone marrow transplants.
My mother got her master's degree in psychology.
She was very involved in a number of different
volunteer organizations.
[Sara] Ina was a warm, loving mother.
She loved all her kids and she admired them.
She was proud of them.
- As the years go by,
Sam and Ina's children grow and go their own way.
And in 1981,
Sam and Ina pull up roots and move to Gainesville, Florida,
where Sam accepts a position as head of Pediatric Oncology
at the University of Florida Shands Hospital.
In 2004, they moved to their dream home in Lakewood Ranch
and Sam semi-retires.
- They were very involved with everything
and Ina always did volunteer work.
So she did a lot of stuff with the homeless.
- She always had a deep feeling for the underdog
and in a few cases, befriended some of the homeless clients
that she had been working with.
Life isn't always easy for everyone.
My parents were very compassionate people.
[Faith] Sadly, after 58 years of marriage,
their fairytale ends in the winter of 2010
when Sam is told he has cancer.
- He died in August of 2010,
eight months or so from the time he was diagnosed.
[gentle music]
My mother was absolutely heartbroken.
But my mom was a very strong person.
So I knew that my mom
would continue to enjoy life
despite the fact that she was heartbroken
about losing my father.
[Faith] But only 17 months later,
while the children are still grieving
the loss of their father,
they suffer the shocking death of another parent.
- That morning January 9th,
I'm at home getting my daughter ready for school
and I receive a phone call.
There's been a murder out in Lakewood Ranch.
- It was like, you know, Lakewood Ranch.
It's like Shangri-La.
It's just nice.
[soft dramatic music]
[Stephen] I arrived at the scene.
Some of the neighbors were standing outside
on the sidewalk
and the person I later met as Thomas Gross
was seen standing outside also.
[dramatic music]
He had told the deputies when they first arrived on scene,
that he had woken up and discovered his mother
dead in a pool of blood in her garage.
So he calls 911
and then he proceeds to do CPR
as instructed by the 911 operator.
It was only he and his mother home at the time.
Thomas lives in Israel and he was here visiting.
- He had blood on him.
So I'm directed to crime scene technician who processed Tom.
That involves overall photographs,
collecting his clothes,
DNA swabs are taken under fingernails.
[dramatic music]
As I walk into the garage,
I see Ina Gross laying supine on the ground
in front of her vehicle
in a large pool of blood.
It only takes one knife wound
in the jugular to kill somebody.
Ina's case there was multiple stab wounds.
Usually overkill is, you know, something of passion.
Someone's vindictive, someone's angry.
[ominous music]
- The murder weapon, as it appeared,
was a kitchen knife laying on a tub just above her head
and it's covered in blood.
And I looked inside the car
and there was vomit on the passenger seat
and the center console had vomit on it also.
- Like, you know, why is there vomit there?
- There doesn't appear to be any place in the house
where there's any kind of struggle.
There doesn't appear to be anything ransacked.
Ina's purse was sitting on the countertop
and it had not been rummaged through.
Her wallet was sitting in the purse.
According to Thomas, he found the front door ajar.
However, there was no pry marks, tool marks,
anything like this
on that door.
[tense music]
As I walk through the kitchen,
I can see that there is a glass of wine
sitting on the countertop
and there's a large knife array.
The murder weapon appeared to be consistent
with the knives that are in this set sitting on the counter.
So I'm thinking that the murder weapon
actually came from inside the residence.
At this point, it doesn't seem likely to me
that an unknown intruder came in the house.
People being murdered by strangers is pretty rare
because you definitely don't let strangers get close to you.
[dramatic music]
[Faith] While CSIs dust for prints
and collect blood samples,
detectives turn their attention to Ina's son, Tom.
He has the grim task of telling his sister Ellen
about their mother's murder.
[somber music]
- Tom said,
"Mom's been killed.
Mom's... mom's dead."
And
I was in disbelief.
I was crying,
I was crying.
I mean, I just learned that my mother was dead.
I kept hoping that this was just a bad dream,
that this hadn't really happened.
That it wasn't my mother, that it was not my mom.
I called my sister Abby,
she's distraught and says I'm going to get a flight
down to, to Florida.
[light tense music]
I get to the house,
and I was there for seeing my mother being removed
from the garage where she had been murdered.
I wish at that time that I had been able to just hug her,
just to have gone up to her,
given her a big hug.
But I didn't.
[indistinct chattering on radio]
- I noticed Tom Gross pacing back and forth.
He totally lacks emotion, which I notice.
And just that, you know,
his mother has just been killed violently
and he's just, just no emotion at all.
And that was very, very odd to me.
[dramatic music]
- He said, "They think I did this,"
and I am thinking,
"That's impossible.
My brother would never kill my mother."
- The vomit is still this big unanswered question.
Does it belong to the perpetrator?
- There was a homeless man who had been in her house.
- He and Ina had a bit of a falling out.
[soft dramatic music]
- It's been seven hours since 57-year-old Tom Gross
told a 911 operator that he found his mother,
Ina Gross, murdered in the family garage.
Tom was supposed to be on a plane back to Israel
after a long weekend with his mother.
Instead, he's being questioned by homicide investigators
from the Manatee County Sheriff's Office.
[Faith] The event was a dedication to Tom's father
at the hospital where he once worked.
Tom says that he and Ina spent the rest of the weekend
relaxing and catching up,
and on Sunday night, they went to see a movie.
- Thomas' demeanor was a little,
a little different than what I normally would expect
from people.
Seeing, you know, your mother killed should give him stress.
But everyone displays emotions differently.
Is this because Tom lives in another country
in a different culture that makes his,
his behavior a little bit different
than what I would expect?
Or is there more to it than that?
[dramatic music]
- He seemed legitimately surprised that there was vomit.
So where did the vomit come from?
[dramatic music]
- He says he grabs the phone, grabs some towels,
and when he gets back to mom,
he's gonna try and stem the bleeding.
And then he calls 911.
[ominous music]
[dramatic music]
- It is possible the intruder could have come into the house
and then was perhaps confronted by Ina,
as she was putting around in the evening time.
There was some odd things with that, with that scenario...
because the intruder would have to come in the house,
not alert the dog,
which would then alert Thomas who was sleeping in the room,
which seems a little unlikely to me.
[Tom] Straight ahead of me...
[Faith] Detectives Kenney and Ives continue
their interview with Tom.
Meanwhile, other members of the homicide squad
have been canvassing Ina Gross' neighborhood
and have talked to a witness
who was out walking her dog that night
that squarely contradicts Tom's self-professed bedtime
of 10:45.
- My observations of Tom is that he's very possibly
involved in this.
We need to really look at him
and delve into his background.
Anything that would give us a motive
for why he would kill his mother.
[dramatic music]
[Faith] After two hours of pointed questions,
the interview ends.
Even though the detectives feel Tom's behavior is off,
in order for the detectives to determine
if Tom is being truthful,
they'll wanna collect more physical evidence
to see if they can provide more answers.
With a warrant in hand,
investigators head back to the crime scene
and they seize Ina and Tom's phones,
their computers,
Ina's financial records,
Tom's passport,
and a sample of the vomit from the car.
- The vomit is still this big unanswered question.
- Stabbing this elderly woman in the neck.
And that type of violence could, would get most people sick.
Could be a home invasion
or it could be something more nefarious.
- So I go ahead and send the vomit in
along with a number of other priority items in
for DNA testing.
- While detectives finish up at the crime scene,
Tom has arrived at his sister Ellen's house.
- My brother is scared at this point
that they believe it's him.
He said, "They think I did this."
And I am thinking,
"That's impossible."
My brother was stuck in a bad situation.
He was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.
My brother would never kill my mother.
[dramatic music]
[ominous music]
- The news of Ina Gross' vicious murder
has spread across central Florida.
But closer to home, Ina's daughter Ellen
is struggling to come to terms
with the grief of losing her mother
and the shock of knowing that her older brother Tom
is considered a suspect.
[dramatic music]
- My mother and my brother had a very close relationship.
I remember we went skiing in upper state New York
and a T Bar coming down the slopes
was swinging laterally,
and it hit my mother in the head.
And my mother was knocked off the T-Bar,
and my brother responded very quickly.
He immediately packed her head with snow and with ice,
and saved my mother's life.
He loved my mother.
My mother loved him.
I was racking my brain,
trying to think who had my mother seen recently,
who could have possibly committed this crime?
Anyone but my brother.
[Faith] That afternoon, the Gross siblings spread out.
Tom goes with his sister Abby
to meet with his new lawyer the family hired.
And Ellen and her husband David meet up with Detectives Ives
and Kenney at a local coffee shop.
- They said they wanted to better understand Tom.
Tom has never been this overly emotional person.
He's just handling my mother's murder
in a very different way,
certainly than I am.
- We asked the question if there's anyone that possibly
had any conflict or ill will towards Ina.
- I remember there was a homeless man
whom she had worked with,
who had been in her house.
- Ina was a volunteer at Resurrection House,
and it was a homeless outreach place,
and she had been for several years.
And apparently she had hired this gentleman
on several occasions to do some computer work.
And he and Ina had a bit of a falling out,
had some friction regarding the payment for his services,
which irritated him.
- There was just some bad words between them.
- So in my mind, it was important for them
to find this homeless person.
And I wanna ensure that they've pursued every possible lead.
- Once Ellen brings up that there's a conflict
and this subject is out there,
this is something that has to be followed up
to make sure that, you know, he didn't go and, and kill Ina.
- But Ellen doesn't know this gentleman's name.
So I contact Resurrection House
and speak with the director there.
And he initially did not have an idea,
but he was gonna ask around.
[Faith] Now it's a waiting game.
So detectives turn their attention to other leads,
and on January 11th,
they have their next encounter with Tom Gross.
But this time Tom wants something from investigators.
- Two days after the homicide,
Tom requests the return of his passports
and his laptop bag that were seized
during the search warrant.
So we meet with Tom and his attorney, Mr. Hagopian,
at the office.
And at the same time, we also obtain major case fingerprints
from Tom for elimination purposes.
- I have possession of the passport
and I don't wanna give it back to him
because of the obvious reasons that we believe
he's a prime suspect.
He flees to Israel,
we might not be able to resolve this case.
But the defense attorney threatened to take me
before a judge and hold me in contempt.
So I thought better of it and I gave him back the passport.
- Despite his claims of innocence,
Tom Gross remains the investigator's main suspect,
but they're in a tough spot.
With no means to arrest him,
Tom is free to do whatever he wants.
And that includes leaving the U.S. altogether.
Then, two days after Ina's murder,
an unsolved case in a neighboring city
grabs their attention.
[dramatic music]
- I became aware that there was another homicide
of an elderly woman in Sarasota
in their jurisdiction about a year prior to this.
It's right next door.
It's 15, 20 minutes away.
And there was also quite a lot of violence
in the homicide they had down there.
So I'm thinking this might be related.
It's relatively rare to have elderly women being murdered
in their own home.
Which started making me wonder,
is it possible the same perpetrator
committed both crimes.
- The very next day on January 12th,
the investigators patience pays off.
The homeless person that investigators
have been looking for has been identified.
- A lady that worked at Resurrection House with Ina,
she tells me that a fellow by the name of Jamie King
was a client there at Resurrection House.
And that he on several occasions had come
and fixed Ina's computer at her house.
[soft dramatic music]
And she hypothesizes that he may have seen
some of Ina's financial data on the computer
while he was working on it,
which perhaps would give him a motive to return to the house
and commit a crime.
[ominous music]
- Murders happen over absolutely nothing.
Over- because someone looked at someone wrong.
People kill people over five cents.
- So the next step for me is to go find Mr. King.
But I don't know where Jamie is
[light music]
- Detectives Kenney and Ives wanna question a homeless man
named Jamie King about the brutal murder of Ina Gross.
Could he also be connected to the murder
of another elderly woman in Sarasota?
The problem is because of King's transient lifestyle,
no one knows where to find him.
While a team of investigators searched
some local homeless shelters,
one week after Ina's murder,
her family holds memorial service for their beloved mother
at Temple Emanu-El in Sarasota.
[somber music]
- Abby, my brother Tom, and I all spoke,
and it was really a touching moment
because there were so many people there
for my mom.
- I couldn't imagine what Tom had gone through.
He had seen his mother
dead in the garage and calling 911.
I mean, I felt horrible for him.
And when I saw Ellen,
she practically collapsed in my arms.
Her heart was like gone.
It was removed that night.
[Ellen] I just remember feeling so much grief,
but also feeling just so happy
that my mother had impacted so many lives.
[gentle music]
It further enhanced my understanding
of who my mother was.
[ominous music]
- Following morning,
I find out that Tom has left the United States
and he has actually returned to Israel.
He landed in Tel Aviv at about 11 o'clock in the morning
on their time.
- It upset us that he would go right back
to Israel, I mean, the day after he buries his mother.
It's frustrating because
I shouldn't have given back his passport.
That's something that I regret doing.
- We didn't have any charges pending.
So he was free in fact to go home.
But now with this it complicates the case
because he's in another country.
[light dramatic music]
- Tom did not flee back to Israel.
He went back to Israel
and I knew he missed his family.
I knew he was gonna see his children,
he was gonna see his wife.
I was happy for him.
[Faith] As far as detectives are concerned,
Tom Gross sits squarely on top of the suspect list,
but they can't get tunnel vision.
It's still possible that an intruder murdered Ina.
The hope is that the physical evidence
will reveal the truth.
And on January 18th,
fingerprint results come back
from the 31 prints lifted at Ina's house.
[dramatic music]
- Of all of those lifts,
there was only two that were foreign to either Thomas
or Ina Groves.
And those came from the inside of the side door
leading from the garage to the little service area
where the air conditioner unit is.
And they come back to a technician
that had installed that AC unit back,
I believe it was eight or nine months prior.
Fingerprints can be any age.
You can have fingerprints that are lifted
from a particular environment that are years old.
I received another fingerprint report
regarding the four prints that were,
that were lifted from the actual murder weapon.
One of those fingerprints was identified as being Tom's.
- Because he said he removed the knife,
his fingerprints are on it.
[light ominous music]
- The other three prints
were of no value for identification.
Meaning that they were too smudged,
not clear enough to match it to anyone.
They could have been Tom's as well.
It could have been Ina's,
it could have been another unknown third person.
[Faith] With the possibility of a third person in the mix,
Investigator Ives knows it's time to visit detectives
in Sarasota to get more information
about their violent unsolved homicide.
[dramatic music]
- I went down to Sarasota.
I contact the detective handling that case
and actually taking a look at his case file.
So he and I have a conversation.
- The detective down there said that
there was minor things stolen,
car was stolen.
And there was something done post-mortem to the body.
- Which was not consistent with what I'm looking at
here with Ina.
And there was nothing in there that would link
the two together other than you have an elderly female.
So we determine that we are dealing
with two different perpetrators in this case.
[soft dramatic music]
[Faith] The Sarasota connection is a dead end.
But detectives continue to look for the homeless man,
Jamie King.
And on January 19th,
they take a 25-mile trip to Venice, Florida,
where he was last reported living.
- Detective Kenney and I,
we go over to the mission and the pastor there tells us,
well, let me find out where he might be.
She calls over to the Lutheran church in town
and finds out that Mr. King was there right now.
So Detective Kenney and I drive over there.
[John] We see an individual in the parking lot
smoking a cigarette,
and we wind up approaching him.
- Were obviously dressed as policemen.
- He says, "I was expecting you guys
wanna talk to me about Ina."
Yes, in fact, he does know Ina.
Yes, in fact, he's been to the house.
- When this information was revealed to me,
I go into overdrive.
- He's a cold blood killer.
[ominous music]
- Detectives have finally tracked down Jamie King,
the homeless man who Ina Gross had a recent disagreement with
before she was killed.
Detectives also discovered that King
has a history of threatening violence.
So they invite him down to the local police department
to answer some questions.
- He obviously knows what's happened to Ina.
According to Ellen, there was friction between him and Ina
at one point.
- He makes the statement that yes, in fact he does know Ina.
Yes, in fact, he's been to the house.
Yes, in fact, he's done work there.
[Faith] King had been to Ina's house two or three times
since Ina's husband, Sam died in 2010.
His latest task was to fix a computer.
If Jamie got it working,
Ina would pay him with Sam's old laptop.
- But there was something with the warranty
which would let Jamie be able to fix this computer.
- At some point, Ina did provide Mr. King
with the necessary paperwork to get this laptop repaired.
Mr. King explains to us that
there wasn't really any friction.
He seemed very open and honest when he was speaking with us.
He didn't have any trouble answering any questions.
- We asked him where he was during the weekend of the murder
and he confirmed that he was at a woman's house in Sarasota,
which we later checked out and confirmed.
So Jamie was eliminated as a suspect.
[dramatic music]
- Tom Gross is now the only credible suspect left,
but he's 11,000 miles away in Tel Aviv.
Seemingly, beyond law enforcement's reach.
And while the U.S. and Israel do have an extradition treaty,
the detectives still don't have enough evidence
to show that he killed his mother.
Even if they did,
the extradition process could take years
which leaves detectives wrestling with the question,
how could a son kill his own mother?
And why?
[dramatic music]
- The detectives were asking me if Tom had borrowed
a lot of money from my parents?
And I told them that yes.
- Our belief was the motive for this crime
was probably financial.
Ms. Gross was quite well off.
However, we had learned that Tom was in pretty significant
financial stress.
As a finance manager,
his income tended to be up and down,
but it seemed to have been down a lot more than it was up.
- We heard he was living beyond his means in Israel.
- Some of Ina's friends actually related to us
that she'd made some comments about Tom was asking
for more money and she wasn't going to lend him
any more money.
- Tom wanted that money.
And he probably needed that money to get himself
out of some new debt.
- Now we feel there's more to this story with Tom
and we are in fact barking up the right tree.
[dramatic music]
- Detectives are confident
they've established money as the motive.
And the dog walking neighbor has squashed Tom's alibi.
But one piece of the puzzle still doesn't fit
and investigators think it's central to the entire mystery.
The vomit,
whose was it?
[gentle dramatic music]
- On February 23rd,
we receive a report back from DNA Labs International.
It confirmed that the DNA from the vomit was Ina Gross'.
[suspenseful music]
- Now we know whose vomit it is.
So now how did it get there?
Thinking back to what the neighbor saw
with the car running in the garage,
what if she was drugged?
Why else would her vomit be in the car?
Why else would she be throwing up in the car?
And why is the car running in the garage?
So I get on the phone and I call Dr. Vega
at the medical examiner's office, and I asked her
to run toxicology on the vomit and the stomach contents.
- On March 8th, we receive a report
from the medical examiner's office
that confirms that Ambien and Benadryl
were both found in Ina Gross' system.
[dramatic music]
- The amount of Ambien identified from the vomit
is five to 10 times the amount
that would be normally applied in a normal therapeutic dose,
and could cause drowsiness and nausea.
- So now what's the source of the Ambien?
When originally at the scene,
I inventoried all the medications we
found in the house.
Ambien was not one of them.
- They also speak to her doctors who said
she never had a prescription for Ambien.
- So we have this Ambien that comes from an unknown source.
- The only person we know who was with her
in the relevant timeframe is Thomas Gross.
Thomas Gross may have been the source of that Ambien.
- He's the only one with that opportunity
to be able to place that in her drink,
in her wine,
or in her chill.
[ominous music]
- I speak with a medical examiner
and I learn at this time that my mother had large amounts
of Ambien in her system.
[suspenseful music]
My mother never had taken Ambien in her life.
My mother was extremely conscious
about taking any medication.
[dramatic music]
When this information was revealed to me,
I had this moment where I learned
that my mother had been drugged.
I realized that
my brother had murdered my mother.
But my heart did not want me to believe this.
When I finally had built up enough
nerve and strength to speak to Tom,
I told him that I knew what he had done to my mother.
[dramatic music]
He didn't say to me, "Ellen,
how could you believe that I would do this to mom?"
Instead, he says,
"I'm sorry you've had a change of heart Ellen."
in Ina Gross' body
affirms detective's beliefs that Tom Gross plotted
to murder his mother to collect a large inheritance.
Tom's sister, Ellen Gross,
is stunned and angered by her only brother's betrayal,
and is now determined to help detectives prove
their case against Tom.
- Now that I have learned that my brother
has brutally murdered my mother
and has happily deceived me
for months,
I go into overdrive.
And at this point,
I realize that I need to ensure
that the detectives have any piece of information
that I may have regarding Tom's relationship with my mother,
my father, his relationship with their finances.
And to ensure that Tom will meet his fate.
- Ellen was able to show us where Tom borrowed
$668,000 in lieu of getting the inheritance.
So he was in dire straits
and he had no financial capability of paying it back.
- I don't believe that Tom ever expected
the floodgates to shut,
but he knew that if he murdered my mother,
he no longer had loans that he had to pay her back
because there was no one to pay them to.
My mother was dead.
- That certainly provided a compelling
motive for why he might choose to harm his mother.
- I believe what happened is that Tom administered
Ambien to his mother,
which basically put her out.
[car engine revving]
And then he puts her in the car in the garage
with the car running to make it look like a suicide.
If the car's running and she's drugged,
and she's in the car,
from the carbon monoxide, she's gone asphyxiate.
During the course of this,
he bumps the clicker, you know,
that's in the sun visor or whatever,
and accidentally opens the door.
[ominous music]
- We do have the fact that the neighbor saw
Thomas Gross in the garage with the engine running
and we now have evidence that Ina was in that vehicle.
- So then he closes the door again.
But then he goes back in the house
and mom starts making noise in the garage.
- She vomited up the Ambien and the Benadryl.
The carbon monoxide didn't take over yet,
and she got out of the car,
in a daze probably,
and started walking into the house.
- So then he panics.
He just grabs the knife off the knife block.
He goes into the garage and she's standing there,
and he sets on her from behind and cuts her throat.
- In terms of moving the case forward,
investigators can tick all the boxes.
They know motive, means, and opportunity.
What they don't know is that they're about to step foot
into a year's long journey on the road to justice.
- Detective Ives was able to reach out
to the Israeli police.
There were certain leads he wanted followed up on.
Number one was Tom's medical history
with what prescriptions were prescribed to him.
- Took months to draft the request.
Because it goes to their Department of Justice
and they decide whether or not they're gonna
honor my request.
So I'm waiting and it can get very frustrating.
- The filings, the appeals, the endless red tape,
all of it drags the case out from months to years,
but detectives are unrelenting.
Finally, on June 4th, 2014,
nearly two and a half years after Ina was murdered,
Detective Ives gets word back from the Israeli government
about Tom's medical records.
- It says that Thomas Gross has had
number of prescriptions for Ambien.
And the last one having been filled
just a few days before he flew to the U.S. to meet his mom.
- It's the proof they need to connect Tom to the crime.
- In September, 2014,
I decided that I had enough evidence
to actually charge Mr. Gross.
So to be able to do that,
I'm gonna have to extradite him from Israel.
[ominous music]
- Extradition from any foreign country
is always a multi-year process.
From the date of Ina's death, January 9th, 2012,
until the date that Thomas Gross was returned
to the United States, it was a seven year process.
- March 4th, 2019,
U.S. Marshals arrived at the Orlando Airport
with Mr. Gross in tow.
[dramatic music]
The job's not done till the gavel falls.
But we're so much closer, we've got our man.
[tense music]
- Thomas Gross' trial commences on May the 2nd, 2022.
I feel the state has a very strong case going into trial.
[Faith] On May 6th, 2022,
after deliberating for only 45 minutes,
the jury returns with a verdict.
- Thomas Gross is convicted of first degree
premeditated murder by a Manatee County jury
and is sentenced to life in prison without parole.
- Thomas Gross is a cold blooded killer.
Who kills their mother?
I mean, it's just, it's beyond belief to me.
- My mother never left my vision ever.
Went to bed thinking about my mom,
woke up thinking about my mom.
Went to bed crying about my mom,
woke up crying about my mom.
- She brought sunshine into every room that she entered.
She brought love into everything she did.
- My mother is buried in Sarasota National Cemetery
right next to my father.
I feel that they are truly together forever,
and in my heart,
I have to believe
that they are embracing each other.
[somber music]
- They say that blood is thicker than water.
That family comes first.
But in the case of Tom Gross, money came first.
The extraordinary betrayal of his mother,
whose life he once saved
resulted in blood on his hands.
Ina spent her life loving and serving others,
her husband Sam, her children, her community,
only to have it cruelly taken away
by the last person you'd expect,
her only son.
And what became a killer relationship.