On January 25, 2012, in the wealthy suburb of Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan, successful marketing executive Jane Bashara, 56, was found strangled to death in a Mercedes-Benz SUV in a Detroit alleyway. In March 2012, a mentally impaired handyman named Joe Gentz was arrested and charged with first degree murder after telling police that Jane’s husband, Bob Bashara, 57, had paid him $2,000 and an old Cadillac to murder Jane. Investigators also discovered that Mr. Bashara owned an underground sex dungeon in the basement behind a building he owned, where he took women for S&M sex games, and where he was known as “Master Bob.”
In September 2015, Bob Bashara was tried for the murder of his wife. His daughter Jessica, 23, testified that she was unaware of any problems between her parents, who had been married for 26 years, although she knew her father thought her mother was too critical of him. She also mentioned catching her father using a pornographic S&M website. “He told me that he was on pornographic websites because he had been experiencing erectile dysfunction and he wanted to know if the problem was with him or my mother,” says Jessica. Bob Bashara was sentenced to life without parole.
