Carol Anne Gotbaum's desperate last call
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BY SOO YOUN in Phoenix
and ALISON GENDAR in New York
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Wednesday, October 3rd 2007, 4:00 AM
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The daughter-in-law of city Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum frantically dialed home when Phoenix ticket agents refused to let her board a flight to a stint in alcohol rehab.
"They are not letting me on! It's all falling apart," Carol Anne Gotbaum told her husband, Noah, before she dropped the phone at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, witnesses said.
Noah Gotbaum called back, desperately trying to persuade the U.S. Airways Express agent to calm his wife and let the mother of three board the plane for the $42,000-a-month Cottonwood de Tucson rehab program, friends and witnesses said.
"It will be okay. She just needs to take her medication. ... She hasn't taken it today," an airline worker said Noah Gotbaum begged. His wife was taking prescriptions for anxiety and depression, sources said.
The airline agent called Phoenix police, who soon grappled with and cuffed the distraught 45-year-old, then shackled her to a bench in an airport holding area Friday.
Less than an hour later, Carol Anne Gotbaum was dead, apparently strangled by the 16-inch chain used to hook her handcuffs to the bench.
Cops say she appeared to have gotten tangled up trying to shift the cuffs from back to front.
Gotbaum's family has hired famed forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht to perform a second autopsy after the official one conducted yesterday. No cause of death was released pending toxicology reports.
After about three years of trouble with alcohol, Gotbaum, who was married to a son of longtime New York labor leader Victor Gotbaum and his former wife, had agreed the day before to enroll in the month-long Cottonwood program.
Others familiar with Carol Anne Gotbaum's history said she had longstanding mental health issues. Gotbaum attempted suicide twice in the past year, they said. She had also tried a brief detox program last fall at Manhattan's St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, but it did not work.
Gotbaum was sober on the flight from Manhattan to Phoenix, but a friend who was supposed to meet her at the terminal for the last leg to Tucson failed to show, sources said.
She had lunch solo at the terminal, got drunk and didn't hear her connecting flight being called for Tucson, airline workers said.
She was jittery as she went through security and was pulled aside to be patted down, a witness said. Gotbaum said, "I have to get my flight. I'm late for my flight," the witness said.
She arrived at the gate just eight minutes before the plane was supposed to leave and was turned away.
Phoenix police said they soon had to subdue the distraught woman, whom witnesses heard shout, "I'm not a terrorist! I'm a sick mom!"
Gotbaum family lawyer Michael Manning of Phoenix said she could have been unsupervised as long as 30 minutes. A police spokesman said she was unsupervised no more than five to 10 minutes in the holding cell.
Family members were racked with guilt for letting her travel alone, sources said.
Why not wait and see why she was acting frantic/irrational~ whatever, before we indict her. For all we know one of her kids was sick and she needed to get there yesterday...(which is more specuation, we just don't have any facts yet, so let's wait and see)
