Roslyn Pilmar: The Murder, 2019 Trial, and Sentence

Roslyn Pilmar is a New York woman convicted in 2019, alongside her brother Evan Wald, of murdering her husband Howard Pilmar in his midtown Manhattan office in 1996. The case sat unsolved for 21 years before a Manhattan District Attorney’s cold case review, new witness testimony, and DNA evidence produced indictments in 2017. A jury found both defendants guilty of second-degree murder on March 8, 2019, and Judge Gilbert Hong sentenced each to 25 years to life in prison.¹²

Her Husband and the Family Business

Howard Pilmar ran King Office Supply, a Manhattan company his father Frank had founded in 1958 near the Empire State Building. By the mid-1990s the business, known as the King Group, brought in about $14 million a year and employed roughly 50 people.³ In 1992, Howard added a coffee bar named “Philip’s,” after the couple’s young son, and a business-gift boutique to the front of the store.⁴

Roslyn managed the coffee shops. Her brother Evan Wald also worked at the coffee business.⁵ The Pilmars had a nine-year-old son, Philip. The marriage was deteriorating by early 1996, and prosecutors would later tell jurors that Roslyn feared Howard would leave her and take their son with him.⁶

The 1996 Murder

On the night of March 21, 1996, Howard Pilmar was killed in his fourth-floor office at King Office Supply. His throat was slashed and he was stabbed 48 times in the chest, back, and neck.¹ The autopsy recorded a wound running from below his right ear to behind his left ear, reaching roughly two inches deep, with stab wounds to the lungs, heart, trachea, and aorta.⁶ Many of the wounds to his back were inflicted after his heart had stopped, and investigators characterized the attack as “overkill.”⁷

The company’s controller found the body in a large pool of blood at about 5:45 the next morning.⁴⁷⁶

What Prosecutors Said Drove Her

The prosecution’s theory rested on money. Years before the murder, Roslyn had worked as a dental hygienist for Dr. Stanley Weinstock, and she had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars over three to four years by depositing 186 patient checks into her own account.⁷ In late 1995, the dentist’s accountant, Neal Klein, confronted her about the missing money and demanded repayment. By early 1996 he was escalating the pressure.

Roslyn also owed New York State nearly $15,000 in back taxes for Philip’s Coffee. The state had threatened to seize the business and padlock the store if payment did not arrive by March 21, 1996, the day Howard was killed. Prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer told the jury, “She had to find money and she had to find it quickly.”⁷

After Howard’s death, Roslyn collected approximately $1.2 million from two life insurance policies, took ownership of the King Group businesses and two homes, and received full custody of Philip.¹ Prosecutors said she used the insurance proceeds to pay back the money she had stolen from the dentist’s office. About a year after the murder, she was arrested for the embezzlement, and on April 30, 1999, she pleaded guilty to second-degree grand larceny. She was sentenced to probation after repaying the stolen funds.⁸

Why the Case Went Cold

Suspicion had pointed at Roslyn and her brother from the start. The pair were the last people known to have seen Howard alive, having met him at his office that evening. But investigators could not build a prosecutable case. No one saw the killing. The weapon was gone. A small drop of blood on the wall near the body was eventually matched by DNA to Evan Wald, but Wald worked in a food business and had a history of minor cuts on his hands, and the defense had a plausible innocent explanation ready.⁷ Potential witnesses felt intimidated and were reluctant to talk in the months after the killing.⁵

Former NYPD Lieutenant Roger Parrino, the lead detective, later compared the effort to filling a bucket one drop at a time.⁷ In 2013, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. assigned a new team of prosecutors and detectives to reopen the case. They re-interviewed old witnesses, located people who had previously refused to talk, and ran additional forensic testing that confirmed the DNA match of Wald’s blood at the scene.⁵

The Nanny Who Broke the Case Open

Detectives tracked down Allyson Lewis, who in 1996 had been a recent college graduate working as the Pilmars’ nanny and caring for young Philip. She told investigators she had admired Roslyn, describing her as a diligent mother and successful business owner.⁵

On the night of March 21, Lewis took Philip to hockey practice at a sports complex while Roslyn and Wald went to Howard’s office. Lewis testified that Roslyn had never paged her before, but that evening paged her twice. On the second call, Roslyn told her to take Philip home because “we’re not done here.”⁵ When Lewis arrived at the Pilmar apartment, the residence was dark. Roslyn appeared in a bathrobe with wet hair and made it clear she wanted Lewis to leave.

Prosecutors described the phrase “we’re not done here” as chilling, and jurors later called Lewis a “linchpin” of the case.⁵

Indictment and Bail

On August 15, 2017, a Manhattan grand jury indicted Roslyn Pilmar and Evan Wald for second-degree murder.⁹ Roslyn appeared in Manhattan Supreme Court that same day, pleaded not guilty, and was remanded without bail.¹⁰ Her attorney, Sanford Talkin, proposed a $750,000 bond with GPS monitoring, but Justice Jill Konviser denied it. Prosecutors told the court Roslyn had been living for the previous decade with a man who had given her more than a million dollars and that she also had an open tax-evasion case in addition to her 1999 grand larceny conviction.¹¹ Wald was arrested in Virginia and held pending extradition.

The 2019 Trial

Trial began on January 17, 2019, in Manhattan, with Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Lederer leading the prosecution alongside Melissa Hindman. Lederer had spent four years reviewing evidence and cultivating witnesses.⁷

The Prosecution’s Case

Lederer told the jury the murder was “deliberate and detailed” and “meticulously carried out.” The state’s case rested on several strands:

Before the murder, the defendants had requested keys to the building, asked about closing procedures, and inquired about the location of lobby video cameras.¹
Wald’s blood on the wall near the body. Lederer argued that Wald, who is left-handed, held the knife and cut himself as the handle became slippery with blood during the attack.⁷
Roslyn’s mounting debts and the roughly $1.2 million insurance payout she stood to collect.¹
Allyson Lewis’s account of the unusual pages, the “we’re not done here” call, the dark apartment, and Roslyn’s wet hair.⁵
Howard’s sister Heather Pilmar testified that Wald had once told her, “If Howard hurts her in any way… I would kill him.” At the arraignment, Lederer had also referenced a statement Wald allegedly made the night before the killing: “We’re going to kill Howard.”¹²
A voicemail Roslyn left Howard that night, which prosecutors characterized as a contrived timeline crafted for the police.⁷

The Defense

Sanford Talkin represented Roslyn and Daniel Gotlin represented Wald. Both argued that the case was entirely circumstantial, with no direct evidence tying either defendant to the killing. Gotlin told jurors there was “nothing, zero” evidence against his client.⁷

The defense said Wald had cut his hand the day before the killing while cleaning up a dropped plate at a catering event and had worn a bandage that day. They emphasized that no other trace of his blood was found in the office, the bathroom, or the stairwell. Talkin argued that the voicemail was “clearly a woman who is looking for her husband and is worried” and that “needing money does not mean that you’re going to kill your husband.” The defense also argued that police had focused on the family while ignoring other people with grudges against Howard, and Talkin noted that the 21-year gap had made it impossible to canvass the neighborhood, mount a fresh independent investigation, or call witnesses who had died in the interim.⁷ Neither defendant took the stand.

Verdict

The trial ran nearly two months. Jurors described their four days of deliberations as heated, with two holdouts before the panel reached unanimity. On March 8, 2019, the jury found both Roslyn Pilmar and Evan Wald guilty of second-degree murder.⁷ District Attorney Vance said the pair had “planned Mr. Pilmar’s murder together and acting in concert to carry out the cold-blooded killing.”¹

Sentencing

On July 8, 2019, Judge Gilbert Hong sentenced Roslyn Pilmar, then 61, and Evan Wald, then 45, to the maximum 25 years to life in prison.²

Howard’s father Frank Pilmar, then 90, spoke of lying awake at night thinking about “the terror and the fear” his son endured while being “slaughtered and butchered,” and asked his grandson Philip to reconnect with the Pilmar family. Howard’s stepmother Carol Pilmar called the day the body was found the worst of her life and asked for the maximum sentence.⁷

Philip Pilmar, by then working as an Assistant United States Attorney in Brooklyn, spoke on his mother’s behalf. He told the court that “having my mom die in jail will not bring back my dad” and credited Roslyn with raising him to be kind, to value education, and to work hard. He also said that “vengeance is not justice.”²

Appeals

Roslyn Pilmar appealed her conviction. In 2021, the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, First Department, affirmed it in People v. Pilmar, 193 AD3d 467, and denied her leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals.¹³

Evan Wald’s separate appellate track went further. The Appellate Division affirmed his conviction in April 2023. He later argued that the admission of an autopsy report prepared by a medical examiner who did not testify, introduced through a different examiner’s testimony, violated his Sixth Amendment confrontation rights. New York’s highest court had changed the governing rule in People v. Ortega, 40 NY3d 463 (2023), holding autopsy reports testimonial, but the Court of Appeals denied Wald leave to appeal in May 2024. The state argued any error was harmless given what it called a “mountain of evidence,” noting the defense had conceded at trial that Howard was murdered and never contested the cause of death, and that the jury had not requested the autopsy report during deliberations.⁶ On December 9, 2024, the United States Supreme Court denied Wald’s petition for a writ of certiorari.¹⁴

Both Roslyn Pilmar and Evan Wald remain incarcerated, serving their 25-years-to-life sentences.

1
CNN. NYC Cold Case Conviction
2
New York Post. Roslyn Pilmar, Evan Wald Get 25 Years to Life in Coffee Shop Owner Howard Pilmar’s Death
3
New York Daily News. Wife and Brother-in-Law Charged in 1996 Cold Case Murder of Businessman Howard Pilmar
4
The New York Times. Office Supply Entrepreneur Dies at His Family Business
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CBS News. Roslyn Pilmar: Words to the Nanny Become Key in NYC Murder Trial Two Decades Later
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U.S. Supreme Court. Wald v. New York, Brief in Opposition
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CBS News. Howard Pilmar: NYC Millionaire Was Murder a Family Affair
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WRAL. Wife Charged in Murder Case 21 Years Later
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WRAL. Wife Charged in Murder Case 21 Years Later
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CNN. Wife Charged in 1996 Murder Case
11
New York Post. Wife Accused of Cold-Case Murder Denied Bail
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New York Post. Wife Accused of Cold Case Murder Used Insurance Payout for Lavish Trips
13
Findlaw. People v. Wald
14
U.S. Supreme Court. Docket No. 24-5544, Wald v. New York