Dr. Timothy Stryker

This weekend 48 Hours profiled the story of Dr. Linda Goudey, and Dr. Timothy Stryker. The two doctors dated in the early ’90s, but in October of 1993, Goudey ended up dead in the hospital parking lot found in wrapped in a blanket, face down in the backseat of her car. The cause of death: manual strangulation.

Read moreCriminally, no one to date has been held accountable for Goudey’s homicide, but that didn’t stop Goudey’s family from going after Stryker in a wrongful death civil lawsuit. They believed Styker was responsible for their daughter’s death. In June of 2006, a jury found Stryker responsible for Goudey’s death civilly, and awarded her family 15.1 million dollars.

I think most people will see through Dr. Timothy Stryker’s facade simply because Stryker attempted to clear his involvement by getting a man by the name of Craig Pizzano to come forward to share “new” information in the case — more than a decade after the crime.

On the night Goudey disappeared, Pizzano says he saw Goudey and another man in her Saab in the hosptial parking lot, and that other man looked nothing like Stryker. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to dissect the insanity of the story Stryker and Pizzano told, and the police thankfully uncovered the lie.

First, if Pizzano was genuine, why would he ever call Styker? Why would he bother looking up a man he doesn’t know to tell him he saw Dr. Goudey with another man? Wouldn’t most people just call the police directly? It’s much easier, quicker and safe to do.

Second, the timing of Pizzano’s claim is ridiculous. After more than a decade, this man decides to come forward, a man who was just a passerby? Oops, he remembers something now, all of the sudden, something totally irrelevant to his life a decade later? It’s ridiculous.

Pizzano in another amazing feat also recalled how tall the guy was and even what his approximate weight was even though this unknown guy was sitting in a car at night in the dark. Isn’t that just over-the-top? And Pizzano says he looked nothing like Stryker to boot. How convenient.

Also, how many people would think the car sitting next to you in the middle of the night with occupants would likely have a condom, motivating you to get out in the dark and knock on a stranger’s car window to ask for one? Anyone? It’s laughingly hilarious, and an obvious lie just by looking the story alone.

But even knowing that, I think Styker gives us many classic clues that do not support honesty.

1. Styker’s speech is very notable to me. He talks in a higher pitch (or tone?) than normal. It’s slight but instantly notable. I call it the “nice guy facade”. He talks more gentle, more soft and airy, more sweet and innocent than what I suspect his natural voice is. And sure enough, 48 Hours shows clips of Stryker talking to a patient and/or a nurse, and you can hear the difference immediately. The rate of his speech also changes when he is talking to people at the hospital. Why does he feel he has to put on an act on 48 Hours, if he is innocent?
2. When Stryker spoke in this abnormal way, I also kept getting flashes of Hans Reiser in my head. Reiser used the same approach with his voice. These highly intelligent men seemed to be arrogant enough to think they can fool us by falsifying a sweet, gentle demeanor. It then hit me that both Reiser and Stryker were very successful men who courted very successful women –women who were both well regarded OB-GYNs. You can’t help but notice the irony of it. Were both men feeling out-of-control that they couldn’t keep these highly-driven women in their lives?
3. Stryker lacks genuine emotion much like Reiser did, too. They show us fake smiles, but nothing genuine in sadness, anger or joy. It’s strangely missing.

   You have to plug into this equation that Stryker is a practicing doctor who has been considered a suspect to a murder for 15 years. He also has a judgment against him for 15 million dollars. For any innocent person, this would cause incredible anger and feelings of injustice if they are innocent, yet we see none of this with Stryker. It’s very notable. Instead we see Mr. Nice Guy. I’m not buying it.

4. Also, we don’t see any genuine feelings of sadness or concern for what happened to Dr. Goudey. Instead, he tells us how he called her a “pea brain”. Yes, Mr. Sweet and Innocent, the gentleman, called her a pea brain. Do you see the inconsistency? It further supports that Goudey’s friend, Lisa Zolot, who called Stryker controlling, rigid, and self-centered was honest, and Stryker is not. This further supports the facade theory.
5. When Stykers current wife of 14 years, Micael, spoke in his defense and said he he was not abusive or violent, I did not believe her. She was in denial, if you ask me. She also gives a notable shrug of doubt with her lips just after she finishes her claim of Stryker’s character. Try to say something you fervently believe and make a doubt expression (curl your lip down and out). It’s very hard if not impossible to do.

   Notice in court, too, that she cries really hard when the judgment comes down civilly. If your husband was innocent, would you sob in sadness, or be outraged and angry?

6. I also found Stryker’s sister Jean’s story unusual as well when she said her mother told Stryker to go on vacation because he was being harrassed. Stryker missed Goudey memorial service. What mother would advise her son to do that? What man who loved his girlfriend would do that? I’ve italicized the words that are flags for me in what Jean said below.

   “He did mainly because my mother told him to. Yeah, my mother told him to go on vacation because he was talking with her, you know, about all of the harassment he was getting. She’s like, ‘Tim, you need to just go on this vacation.’ ‘Cause I thought it was not such a great idea.”

   I always find it interesting when people answer their own question like Jean did here, “Yeah, my mother told him to go…” Was she trying to convince herself, or us?

   I suspect Jean didn’t think it was a great idea, but I don’t believe it had anything to do with Stryker’s mother.

Unfortunately, 48 Hours wouldn’t let me rewind segments, and note the online segment time markers so I could give them to you. That is a total bummer. I hope they change that in the future.