November 29, 2011. The location: the parking lot of the Planet Fitness gym in the town of Ulster, New York County. When 44-year-old Tom Kolman is found dead by his wife slumped at the wheel of his car, at first everyone suspects he died of a heart attack. Kolman was overweight, and he probably had heart problems and diabetes like most men over 40 who were in the same shape as he was.

That morning, Linda Kolman wanted to get in touch with her husband. She had tried calling him several times before calling the office. That’s when she learned that he had not arrived at work that day. She knew that almost every morning he went to exercise at Planet Fitness, a chain of gyms popular in the region.

Detective Michael Thomas, who was one of the first to arrive at the scene, immediately saw that something was wrong. “It was unusual… this individual, the way he was positioned in the car and where he was parked, it was unusual,” Det. Thomas said. "He was actually in the driver's seat, but yet… he was laying almost flat, as you would if you were sleeping.”

Inside the car, experts find nothing to indicate foul play. There were no signs of a struggle, but also no evidence indicating that Kolman became unwell and tried to call for help. "It wasn't parked near a building. That's the strange thing," Det. Brian Reavy said. "If you're gonna work out in the morning, you're gonna park close to the building."

In Colorado, 1,800 miles away, Tom's first wife, Michele Kolman-Weber, couldn’t believe that her ex-husband – who she thought was in the prime of his life – had died. Michele and Tom had been divorced for 12 years, but still remained close because of their children, 15-year-old Jillian and 17-year-old Bradley.

Also in shock were Tom's mother, Marie, and father, Tom Sr. "He just had a kindness about him," Marie Kolman said. "He was always there for everyone."

Such a kind man

Tom Kolman was not into parties and long nights out. He preferred to spend time with his family. He insisted that it was better to have one loyal friend than ten acquaintances. And that friend was Gilberto Nunez, and the two were inseparable. When Tom met Gilberto, the latter was going through a difficult divorce. He quickly became friends with the Kolmans and began spending most weekends with them.

Originally from the Dominican Republic, Nunez had an exemplary reputation in Kingston. He was a volunteer firefighter and ran a thriving dental practice in the town. Patients and people who worked for him thought of him as an expert with a heart of gold.

"Dr. Nunez is one of the best dentists I've ever worked for," said Mary Ellen McManus, who worked as a hygienist in his office for 13 years. "I have never heard him raise his voice… be angry or fly off the handle."

But the detectives had some questions and some doubts about Nunez. Because when Linda Kolman found her husband's body, she first called the police and then dialed Nunez. When Gilberto arrived at the scene, he ran toward Tom's vehicle, repeating: “What happened? What happened? He's my best friend.”

“I don't see any paramedics, no one is performing CPR. Why? What's going on?” repeated Nunez. Detective Thomas couldn’t forget that when Nunez heard that it was too late for CPR, he fell to his knees. The reaction seemed a little too theatrical.

An indiscreet affair

Meanwhile, police checked the footage from cameras near the parking lot. On all of them, a large white SUV could be seen in several clips. At one point, the car stood near Kolman's car in an almost empty parking lot. Detective Thomas was well aware that this was exactly the same SUV that Nunez drove to the scene. Filled with a growing feeling of unease, three days after Kolman's death he called the dentist to come into the police station for questioning.

The detective wanted to see what Nunez himself would say about his life and his relationship with the victim. And as he predicted, he wanted to talk. A lot. For some reason, he began to confide. After a few minutes, he confessed that he had an affair with Tom's wife, Linda.

Although investigators had already heard rumours of an affair between Nunez and Linda Kolman, they had not taken them seriously until now. The rumours were confirmed by Nunez himself. "I fell in love with his wife, and she fell in love with me," he told Detective Thomas, describing the 11-month-long relationship.

The last meeting with Linda happened about three weeks before Tom's death. Nunez said it didn't bother him that Linda was his friend's wife. Yes, it was a bit awkward, but nothing else.

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  Apart from the affair, Gilberto and Linda shared a strong emotional bond. The lovers constantly exchanged text messages, celebrated anniversaries, and showered each other with gifts. However, Nunez denied that he urged Linda to leave Tom.

Furthermore, the affair continued after they were discovered. In July 2011, Tom and Linda received text messages from an unknown number. They were accused of having an affair. The messages came from Nunez's number. The dentist admitted to sending the messages, saying he felt guilty toward Tom.

When Kolman asked his wife about her affair straight out, and she did not deny it, he stopped speaking to her. A few days later, Nunez went to his friend to beg him for forgiveness. He fell to his knees and begged for mercy. What Kolman's reaction was is unknown. However, Nunez's testimony showed that Tom not only forgave him but even hugged him.

The affair with Linda continued. “From then on, whenever he asked me: 'Have you seen Linda today?’ And I answered in the affirmative, I felt that we were honest with each other and that we didn't have to lie to each other anymore," Nunez testified, infuriating Detective Thomas.

Killer dose

Kolman was not only Nunez’s friend, but also his patient. And as the dentist pointed out during his testimony, Tom suffered from sleep apnea.

“I'm sharing this information in an attempt to help the forensic doctor, perhaps,” he said. Initially, everyone is convinced that the 44-year-old died of heart failure. During the autopsy, it turned out that he had an enlarged heart. The autopsy, however, revealed something else. It turns out that Kolman could have overdosed on the powerful sedative, midazolam.

When asked if Nunez used such a drug in his office, the dentist was taken aback. After a moment, he began to explain that yes, dentistry does use midazolam, but mainly when sedation is necessary.

“I have never used midazolam," Nunez argued. "We don't use sedatives. We don't even have nitrous oxide," his assistant McManus added. Even though the amount of midazolam in Tom's body was not enough to kill him, pathologists say it was an acute poisoning. They also say that in people with sleep apnea, even a dose that seems safe could kill them.

The evidence against Nunez is mounting. Detective Thomas suspects that the doctor sprinkled midazolam into a friend's cup of coffee when they met that morning outside the gym. The problem was that Nunez wasn't the only one who had access to the sedative. Linda Kolman also worked at the local hospital.

Intense media scrutiny

The detectives decided to check how midazolam got into Kolman's body. The strange position in which the body was found was also suspicious. The victim’s trousers were partially unbuttoned, giving the impression that moments before his death, Kolman was about to have sexual intercourse.

But something about the position of Kolman's torso kept nagging at the detectives. It looked like it was theatrically staged.

Both Nunez and Linda were tested with a lie detector. They pass the test. Their stories seemed to hold up to the intensive questioning. Midazolam was neither used in Nunez's office nor in the room where Linda worked as the hospital's administrative assistant. But why wasn't the Kolman house searched?

In February 2012, police called Nunez again. Detectives informed him that he lied when he said he was not near the gym at the time of his friend's death. Nunez denied all the accusations, even when investigators show him CCTV footage of his car. And he didn’t change his statement over the next seven hours of questioning.

Investigators were surprised that Nunez didn’t request a lawyer. He only changed his mind when he heard that police were searching his home and office while he was sitting in the interrogation room. Investigators confiscated a computer and files. In one of the closets, however, they found something else. Two emergency kits, each with one vial of midazolam.

But although the vials are full and unopened, and no traces of Nunez's DNA were found in Kolman's car, police consider him the prime suspect. All along, they have been guided by the theory that the doctor wanted Linda exclusively for himself and decided to get rid of his friend.

The investigation became even stranger when Linda gave the police an email she had received a few months earlier, allegedly from Nunez's mother. It turned out that the message was written by Nunez himself in an attempt to get her to leave her husband.

Nunez, however, did something else. He showed Linda a letter from… the CIA, which indicated that Tom was the one cheating on her. On the doctor's computer, the police also found a fake CIA ID. It was all supposed to be part of an obsessive plan to take Linda away from Tom.

“But does that make me a murderer?” Nunez boldly inquired during another interrogation. So the detectives decided to prove Nunez was a liar by confirming that the car in the parking lot standing next to Kolman's car was, in fact, Nunez's SUV.

The police hired Grant Fredericks, a well-known technician who is an expert in forensic video analysis, to help with the case. Fredericks determined that the car in the video was the same model, colour, and even year of manufacture as Nunez's vehicle. Unfortunately, he was unable to confirm whether the car in the parking lot has emergency lights specific to Nunez's vehicle, who is a volunteer firefighter.

On one of the tapes, Fredericks saw a beam of light from one of the car's headlights that he thought might have been unique to that car. He then conducted tests involving Nunez’s vehicle and an identical SUV model. Only then was he certain.

Freedom! But only conditional

For four years, daughter Jillian Kolman did not exactly know what happened to her father. Bradley, her brother, could never get over it. In 2012, at the age of 18, he took his own life. In his farewell letter, he wrote that he wanted to be with his dad.

While the Kolmans were going through another tragedy, Nunez kept running his dental office and dating a lot online. He met a woman on a dating site, and eventually married her. “I knew he was innocent, but I couldn't get rid of a certain feeling of unease,” she once said.

A year after their marriage, in October 2015, police arrested Gilberto Nunez, charging him with second-degree murder and forgery. However, Nunez is not about to give up without a fight. He hired some of the best lawyers in New York. And he got out of jail on $1 million bail.

After a four-year investigation, a three-week trial, and more than 50 witnesses, the jury ruled Gilberto Nunez innocent of murder. Linda couldn’t contain her anger. "You lying piece of shit. Psychopath!" she shouted as he left the courtroom.

The jury found Nunez guilty of forgery, for which he faced up to 14 years in prison. And that's not the only problem the dentist had. Others included fraud and forged paperwork for a licence to possess weapons. The new charges mean two more trials for Nunez. In February 2017, he was convicted of forgery, insurance fraud, and perjury.

The prosecution requested a 25-year sentence, but the judge only gave him seven years behind bars. After just 19 months, Nunez was released on parole. However, he has been struck off the dentists’ register and cannot ever again work in that profession.

He will remain on parole until October 2, 2023.

– Maria Radzik

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists

– Translated by Roberto Galea

Sources:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gilberto-nunez-ny-dentist-who-stood-trial-for-death-of-tom-kolman-accused-of-more-than-murder/
https://hudsonvalleyone.com/2018/09/13/gilberto-nunez-kingston-dentist-acquitted-of-murder-but-convicted-on-other-charges-set-loose/
https://heavy.com/entertainment/2020/07/linda-kolman-tom-kolman-gilberto-nunez/
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/19336885/dentist-murder-trial-love-triangle-hbo-documentary/
https://www.distractify.com/p/what-happened-to-tom-kolman
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/03/my-dentists-murder-trial