Year later, Pa. lawyer's murder still a mystery

By all accounts, Eric Birnbaum was the consummate provider.

To his two daughters, the divorced Bucks County lawyer supplied cars, college tuition, and daily fatherly calls and text messages.

To his clients, he provided a painstaking advocacy, his case files so meticulously kept that his boss was awed.

To friends and coworkers, Birnbaum was the check-grabbing mensch who remembered birthdays and kept in touch. To his sister in California and his parents in Florida, his was the deep voice on the phone like clockwork, each Monday night and Saturday morning.

But to police long stymied by his execution-style slaying outside his office last year, Birnbaum has provided only frustration.

Thursday will be one year since he was shot in the parking lot of the Gateway Shopping Center on Buck Road in the Holland section of Northampton.

At 9 a.m., Birnbaum, 51, had just stepped from his black Acura sedan. He was chatting with a female coworker when a gunman emerged behind him, fired a .40-caliber slug into the back of his head, and vanished.

Despite more than 100 police interviews and a reward that tops $20,000, investigators have yet to discern a motive, let alone a suspect. "If it was a hit man, tell me why," said Northampton Township Police Detective Charles Pinkerton. "We have investigated all aspects of Mr. Birnbaum's life. In the past year, we haven't found one person to say disparaging things about him."

Police do acknowledge that a messy financial state lay beneath Birnbaum's veneer of free-spending success.

The man who had racks of clothing and 100 pairs of shoes was mortgaged far beyond the value of his modest Northeast Philadelphia condo, and owed $35,000 on credit cards, estate records show.

But police and loved ones said in recent interviews that they had found nothing that would link Birnbaum's debts to his murder. "I didn't see anything alarming, no unusual names on any checks that he wrote," said his sister, Dona Birnbaum, executor of the estate. "Nothing that shouted out that there's something going on that we didn't know about."

Police have seen the debts, Pinkerton said, "but I don't think it is something we are homing in on as a motive."

Birnbaum owned a handgun, but was not known to carry it. Terry D. Goldberg, his best friend, who runs the law firm where Birnbaum worked, said Birnbaum had kept the gun in a safe at his home.

"I think about him all the time," Goldberg said last week. "I go through files and come across letters and pleadings that he's written and think, 'Wow, what a great lawyer.' I pale in comparison."

Goldberg said he still lay awake at night, mentally turning the crime over and over.

Police are working hard, he said, but "I'm not surprised that they're stuck on motive. Who could have done this and why?"

Adding to the angst is the public setting of the crime.

Birnbaum was shot in daylight, near the end of the morning rush hour, yards from a two-lane thoroughfare typically clogged with traffic.

More than 18,500 vehicles pass within sight of the crime scene on an average weekday, according to state transportation figures.

Yet only one witness - Birnbaum's female coworker - is publicly known to have seen the shooter. And her glimpse was only fleeting.

The woman told police that the killer had appeared "out of nowhere" behind Birnbaum, and that she had ducked behind her car in terror as soon as the shot had gone off, not seeing where or how the killer fled. She described him as a man of average height and build, wearing a knit cap and sunglasses.

A second coworker, standing at the law firm's door, saw a blue minivan leave the parking lot immediately after.

Within minutes, Philadelphia police had stopped a light-blue Dodge Caravan on Bustleton Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia. For a few hours, authorities thought they might have the killer.

The driver lived a mile north of the law office, was on state parole for drug offenses, and had recently been charged with assault. But police confirmed his alibi.

Since then, nothing. "We are interested in anything people saw that day," Pinkerton said.

While police were grilling the van driver, former Bucks County President Judge David Heckler was standing on a front porch in Doylestown, announcing his candidacy for district attorney.

Now that he has inherited the case, the new D.A. said last week that no arrests were imminent, "but we haven't given up."

Heckler said the shooter, if not a professional, was at least sufficiently skilled with guns and coolheaded enough to escape unnoticed. "If you are running, or behaving in some way that calls attention to yourself, people notice and remember you," Heckler said. "But if you're not, why would they?"

Patrons of a nearby deli recalled seeing a man in a knit cap seated outside the store before the shooting, smoking with his back to them.

But surveillance cameras in the area "did not yield sufficient data to help us," Pinkerton said. "We are still trying to identify that person."

Dona Birnbaum subscribes to the hired-gun theory.

"Given the way my brother was murdered, the person that did it is a cutout for someone else," she said.

The question is why. "It makes no sense," she said.

She and Goldberg said Birnbaum's debts were neither new nor related to anything unsavory or illegal.

After his separation and divorce a decade ago, Birnbaum paid the equivalent of a second mortgage - $2,000 a month - for support, court records show. "He overpaid, and I told him he was crazy," Goldberg said, "but he ran up some debt to make sure his daughters had what they needed."

Later, Birnbaum borrowed to buy them cars and pay their tuition. His home, valued at $135,000, carries two mortgages totaling $200,000.

It will be offered soon at a sheriff's sale. "He would run up the credit cards until he settled a case," his sister said, "and then pay them off."

He was also an impulsive shopper, Goldberg said.

"If Eric saw a pair of shoes he liked, he'd buy three," he said.

Both said Birnbaum had known that he could borrow from them in a pinch.

"There wasn't anything we didn't share, whether it was good news, bad news, whatever," Dona Birnbaum said.

Goldberg, his friend since boyhood, concurred. "I would have seen it in his face."

Goldberg has decided to close his office Thursday, the one-year anniversary.

"I just don't want everybody here feeling sad, feeling glum," he said. "I might give them Friday off, too, and just start a new era on Monday."

Anyone with information about the shooting can call Northampton police detectives at 215-322-6111.

A reward of $20,500 is being offered through the Citizens Crime Commission for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Eric Birnbaum's killer. The number for the commission's confidential tip line is 215-546-8477.EndText