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Thread: Charges Dropped for Steven Aubrey in 2016 TX Murder of Ira Tobolowsky

  1. #1
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    Charges Dropped for Steven Aubrey in 2016 TX Murder of Ira Tobolowsky



    Man arrested in 2016 killing of Texas attorney who was set on fire

    By Jaclyn Peiser
    The Washington Post

    By the time the firetrucks arrived at the home of a prominent Dallas attorney in May 2016, the garage was overwhelmed with thick black smoke as flames tore through the enclosed space. Ira Tobolowsky was missing, his wife told the firefighters.

    First responders fought the blaze as they searched for the 68-year-old man. Then they found him — dead on the ground beside his car, his body burned after having been doused with gasoline. The medical examiner later ruled his death a homicide from thermal burns, smoke inhalation and blunt force trauma.

    From the very start, Tobolowsky’s family pointed to a man who had been embroiled in a heated lawsuit with the attorney: Steven Aubrey. Almost six years passed with no arrests.

    That changed Wednesday, when Aubrey, 61, was charged with capital murder in Tobolowsky’s death — a serious offense in Texas that is eligible for the death penalty. He was arrested in Broward County, Fla., jail records show, and is being held on a $2 million bond. It is unclear whether Aubrey has an attorney.

    The Dallas Police Department did not specify what new evidence led to the arrest but noted that Aubrey has been a person of interest since the beginning.

    “Ultimately the information and evidence gathered during the years-long investigation have resulted in making the arrest,” the police department said in a news release.

    In a statement to KTVT, Tobolowsky’s son Michael said the arrest is “amazing news we have long waited for.”

    Tobolowsky’s gruesome death on May 13, 2016, made national headlines. Tobolowsky was a prominent, well-respected attorney in Dallas with deep roots in the Jewish community. He once successfully argued a case in the U.S. Supreme Court. About 1,200 people attended his funeral, according to D Magazine.

    Soon after Tobolowsky’s death, police asked the family whether the lawyer had any enemies. They identified Aubrey and his partner, Brian Vodicka, who in the months leading up to the incident had been on the opposite side of a caustic lawsuit. (Police have not implicated Vodicka in Tobolowsky’s killing.)

    Tobolowsky and Aubrey met in August 2014 when the attorney represented Aubrey’s mother in a lawsuit Aubrey filed after being written out of her will. Throughout the course of the case, Aubrey allegedly grew increasingly antagonistic toward Tobolowsky. Aubrey accused the attorney of several crimes, including witness tampering and bribery, according to D Magazine. He filed a motion that called Tobolowsky an “ISIS butcher,” referring to the terrorist group, and at one point scheduled a deposition during the Jewish high holiday Rosh Hashanah, the magazine reported, and Tobolowsky filed a motion of contempt, accusing Aubrey of making “anti-Jewish remarks that are insulting, cruel, and evil.”

    Aubrey eventually dropped his case. But Tobolowsky filed a defamation lawsuit against Aubrey and Vodicka in the summer of 2015. He also successfully argued that Aubrey should be declared a vexatious litigant, which creates guardrails for someone who files countless frivolous lawsuits. Aubrey would no longer be able to sue someone without a judge’s permission.

    The case was ongoing when Tobolowsky was killed. After suspicions that the slaying could be connected to the case, police provided the judge presiding over it with extra security. He recused himself about a week after the fire. Tobolowsky’s family won $5.5 million in the suit in May 2017.

    Evidence pointed to a planned attack from someone who knew Tobolowsky, police said. Tobolowsky’s family also discovered a hole in the fence, giving a direct line of vision to the garage. Detectives suspected the killer had been watching Tobolowsky for days, tracking his schedule.

    Investigators searched Aubrey and Vodicka’s home three times in the days following the incident, according to police. Records show they were looking for evidence that could tie them to a juice bottle filled with gasoline found at the crime scene, medical supplies used to treat burns and a drill used to make the hole in Tobolowsky’s fence. They also looked for electronics and said they found a computer with a wiped hard drive.

    In the meantime, the couple remained aloof, dodging police when they visited their home and eventually staying in a second apartment they owned in Dallas, D Magazine reported. They were brought in for questioning about a week after the lawyer’s death. Police called in a doctor to assess whether marks on Aubrey’s arm were burns. The doctor’s findings were inconclusive, according to D Magazine.

    At that time, detectives could not compile enough evidence for an arrest.

    In November 2016, the detective on the case told one of Tobolowsky’s sons that his team had circumstantial evidence that Aubrey was involved in the incident but had nothing to prove that he was at Tobolowsky’s house on May 13, D Magazine reported.

    But in the years that followed, Tobolowsky’s sons did not give up hope. The family started working with private investigators and posted an ad on a billboard over a major Dallas highway offering a $25,000 reward for anyone who came forward with evidence that would lead to an arrest.

    Aubrey, who is in custody in Oakland Park, Fla., will be extradited to Texas, police said.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...er-tobolowsky/

  2. #2
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    Steven Aubrey Indicted in 2016 Murder of Dallas Lawyer Ira Tobolowsky

    A 61-year-old man arrested in Florida last month on a capital murder charge in the 2016 slaying of prominent Dallas attorney Ira Tobolowsky has now been indicted in the case.

    Steven Aubrey was booked into the Broward County Jail in April after being accused of Tobolowsky's 2016 murder. The 68-year-old attorney was killed in what was ruled an arson fire in the garage of his home.

    According to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by NBC 5, at about 7:45 a.m. on May 13, 2016, Tobolowsky was preparing to leave for work from his home on Kenshire Drive in Dallas when he was assaulted.

    In the arresting document, police said Aubrey attacked Tobolowsky and then doused him in gasoline and set him on fire with a torch, causing his death. The medical examiner said Tobolowsky's cause of death was thermal burns and smoke inhalation but that he also had a fracture and separation of the cervical spinal column and fractures of the left clavicle and multiple ribs.

    Tobolowsky, according to the affidavit, suffered from a previous spinal condition that caused him to move slowly, hunch his shoulders, struggle to lift his arms above his chest and struggle to turn his neck.

    According to the arrest warrant, Betsy Aubrey, Steven's mother, removed him as a beneficiary of her estate in 2013 which resulted in a number of court filings between the mother and son.

    Tobolowsky represented Steven's mother in the cases against her son.

    Steven, who was living in Austin at the time, was not doing well in the cases against his mother and, according to the affidavit, directed his anger toward her attorney by sending anti-Semitic emails and creating bogus web pages with defamatory blogs and doctored photographs. Tobolowsky ended up filing a defamation suit against Steven Aubrey in July 2015.

    The affidavit said in February 2016 Aubrey had been "financially devastated" by failed business ventures and moved back to Dallas. At the same time, he was also written out of his inheritance which resulted in a loss of between $900,000 and $1.6 million, and he was ordered to pay his mother $250,000 in sanctions.

    As the defamation case moved forward, Aubrey denied a majority of the evidence presented during a deposition in March. The next month, his spouse, Brian Vodicka, "was incoherent and appeared to be heavily medicated" during his deposition for the case. The deposition escalated to the point that Tobolowsky threatened to call the police if Aubrey and Vodicka did not leave the location.

    The next month, Tobolowsky was killed in his garage.

    Following Tobolowsky's death, Aubrey quickly became a person of interest in the case and declined to speak with detectives who noted he had what looked like a healing burn on his hands and lower arms.

    Aubrey eventually consented to have his vehicle, phone and computer searched by police.

    After a search warrant was served at his apartment, a computer was seized from Aubrey and Vodicka's Dallas apartment that officials said showed it "to be in the process of erasing data." Police also found searches for Tobolowsky's home and work addresses, his synagogue, and other searches for "Walmart tracfone," "burner phone" and "alibi definition."

    A search of his apartment revealed propane torches and clothing with flammable residue in the fibers.

    Aubrey and Vodicka moved to Florida in November 2016 and, according to the affidavit, little new evidence was gathered.

    In July 2021 the case was reassigned and the evidence was again reviewed, this time leading to Aubrey's arrest in Florida. Aubrey will be extradited back to Texas, police said.

    https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/st...y/2972733/?amp
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  3. #3
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    Edited:

    Murder charge dropped in 2016 killing of prominent Dallas lawyer Ira Tobolowsky

    By Fox 4 News Staff

    DALLAS - Prosecutors have dismissed the capital murder case against a man charged with the 2016 killing of prominent Dallas lawyer Ira Tobolowsky.

    Documents show that the Dallas County District Attorney's Office filed an order to drop the charges against 63-year-old Steven Aubrey.

    Aubrey was initially considered a person of interest in Tobolowsky's killing, but he was not charged until April 2022.

    The documents filed Friday say prosecutors determined that they were "unable to make a prima facie case" after reviewing the facts. That means they did not have enough evidence to justify trying the case.

    Tobolowsky, the cousin of actor Stephen Tobolosky, was found dead in the garage of his home on Kenshire Lane in North Dallas during a fire investigation in May 2016.

    https://www.fox4news.com/news/ira-to...charge-dropped
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