‘Run, Bambi, Run’ podcaster unsure Bembenek was innocent
Vanessa Grigoriadis can’t rule out the possibility that Laurie Bembenek was involved in the murder of Christine Schultz.
That’s not something you’d expect to hear from someone who’s spent months digging into one of Milwaukee’s most notorious crimes — one with nude cops, shady characters, Playboy Club references, a crazy trial, even a prison break.
“I’m open to the possibility that Laurie was there in the house that night, that Laurie knew something about the murder,” said Grigoriadis, the creator of “Run, Bambi, Run,” an eight-episode Apple TV+ podcast that takes a deeper look at Bembenek, who was convicted of the 1981 murder of Schultz, the ex-wife of Bembenek’s then-husband, Elfred O. Schultz Jr.
“But I think that she had a completely unfair trial.”
The podcast — six episodes of which have already been released, with the final installments landing May 16 and 23 — explores the conflictof-interest-filled investigation that led to Bembenek’s arrest and conviction for the murder; her escape from prison, flight to Canada and headlinegrabbing capture; and her efforts to end her time behind bars and clear her name.
But “Run, Bambi, Run,” based in part on the book by the same name by Kris Radish, is about more than what TV journalist Diane Sawyer reportedly called “the most glamorous murder case of the 1980s.”
It’s also about the state of policing, and the Milwaukee Police Department, in the 1980s, and especially the role of women in police departments.
“Her story on a what-does-it-mean level is about women in policing,” Grigoriadis said of Bembenek. “She believed she was railroaded. She believed she was railroaded because of her gender.”
Hadn’t heard of Bembenek case
At the time Christine Schultz was murdered, Bembenek, who had been in the Milwaukee Police Academy and also worked briefly as a waitress at the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, was working as a security guard at Marquette University. She had been dismissed from the Milwaukee Police Department — unfairly, she maintained. (At the time of the murder, the podcast points out, Bembenek was trying to fight her dismissal, and planned to turn the tables by revealing photographs she’d obtained of cops playing nude volleyball at a bar in Riverwest.)
In March 1982, Bembenek was convicted of first-degree murder and sent to Taycheedah Correctional Institution. After a string of unsuccessful attempts to appeal her conviction, she escaped from Taycheedah in 1990 and fled to Canada. A year later, she returned and agreed to plead no contest to second-degree murder, with her sentence commuted to time served. (Later, she unsuccessfully tried to get her plea thrown out.)
The Bembenek saga is part of Milwaukee lore, but it was news to Grigoriadis, a journalist and co-founder of podcast company Campside Media.
“I specialize in writing about big female icons in America, and I was shocked that, even though I’m a GenX’er, I had never heard of this case,” she said. “I had no idea who Bambi Bembenek was, I didn’t know about her hurried flight to Canada or the ‘America’s Most Wanted’ hunt for her, and I was fascinated by the idea that she was both a bombshell and a feminist.
“And I wanted to try to figure out what it was about her that made so many people mesmerized by her throughout her life.”
‘Everybody around her was a suspect’
Vanessa Grigoriadis, the creator of the podcast “Run, Bambi, Run,” is a journalist and co-founder of Campside Media, a podcast company.
One thing that intrigued Grigoriadis was the cast of characters around Bembenek, from her then-husband, Elfred Schultz, a Milwaukee police detective with a checkered history, to Judy Zess, who lived with Schultz and Bembenek at the time of Christine Schultz’s murder.
Zess, who had some close ties to criminals, also had been fired from MPD after being arrested for marijuana possession; she was with Bembenek at the time of her arrest, and her claim that Bembenek had pot, too, helped get her kicked off the force.
“This is a case where everybody around her was a suspect,” Grigoriadis said.
It also was the kind of story usually told about a male cop getting in too deep with the wrong people. That appealed to Grigoriadis, too.
“There are tons of stories about male cops in the ‘70s and ‘80s having a lot of connections to unsavory characters — I mean, there’s a whole genre that’s about that,” she said. “But I can’t think of one that’s about a female cop that has those connections. They may not have been as deep as they thought they were, but through her friend who betrayed her, Judy Zess, there’s definitely a connection there.
“That’s what was so fascinating about Laurie. You have this person who has a real sense of morality, but yet is also partying with all these sort of sketchy people. And she really didn’t think that was a big deal. But being a woman, and being in that scene, it was a big deal.”
‘Preposterous’ trial
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It was Zess’ testimony in the murder trial — testimony she later recanted — that went a long way toward convicting Bembenek. Since she was convicted mostly on circumstantial evidence, Zess’ later undercutting of her own testimony threw the whole trial in question, Grigoriadis said.
“I spent a lot of time on the trial (in ‘Run, Bambi, Run’) because I think the trial is preposterous,” she said, adding the district attorney’s office “taking the hard position that she is 100% guilty of this crime and she’s the only person involved in this crime” was also “hard to believe.”
“The one thing that we know is true is (Bembenek) was a heavy drinker, and she did use drugs in different parts during her life, and she was just a kid, she was in her early 20s,” Grigoriadis said. “She could have gotten herself mixed up in something that was way bigger than herself. I believe that’s unlikely, but there is an avenue by which you could see that was the case. … That’s what the government made.”
Bembenek’s death in 2010, of liver and kidney failure at age 52, helped dim the limelight that had shined on her case for the previous three decades. But — assuming Bembenek, who as part of her plea deal took legal responsibility for the killing, do it — no one has proved definitely who did it.
“It’s likely to be unsolved forever,” Grigoriadis said.