HOUSTON – On a “Black Friday” in 1998, a man walked into a specialty wig store on Weslayan Street near Bissonnet and attacked two women with a knife.
What followed was an international manhunt and a motive that shocked the city.
“You see a lot of murders when you work in Houston, but you don’t generally see anything as vicious as this,” said Mike Peters, retired Houston Police Department Homicide detective.
‘You Must Be Kidding’
Houston police said a man walked into Wigs by Andre around 4 p.m. and immediately attacked Manuela “Manny” Silverio, who had worked at the shop for more than two decades.
Silverio was stabbed several times during the attack and died.
One of the store’s owners, Roberta Ingrando, was also attacked. Ingrando was critically injured and later gave police a recorded interview.
“This young man walked straight to the counter,” Ingando told detectives during a 1998 interview.
“Have you ever seen that young man?” A detective asked.
“In my mind (he) is a man I saw earlier in the day,” said Ingrando.
Police believe the attacker entered the shop the same morning of the attack. Police said when the attacker entered the shop in the afternoon, he immediately walked up to Silverio.
“It happened very fast. I looked up and he was there,” said Ingrando. “Then she says aloud, ‘You must be kidding,’ and then I stop, I say, ‘I’m going to call 911.’”
“When she said, ‘you must be kidding,’ what kind of voice did she have?” detectives asked.
“Fear,” Ingrando said.
Ingrando said it appeared the attacker was punching Silverio when in reality, he was stabbing her with a knife. Ingrando grabbed a phone to dial 911 and was then attacked.
“I did not know it was a knife, until, I mean, I saw myself in the middle of the blood,” said Ingrando. “I thought he was punching.”
“How many times did he “punch” you?” detectives asked.
“I’ve been told, because I did not actually count, 14 times,” Ingrando said.
Ingrando’s husband, Roland, was working in the back of the shop at the time of the attack. When he heard his wife’s screams, he immediately raced to the front of the shop and confronted the attacker. Roland Ingrando was injured during the scuffle and the attacker ran away.
‘Luckily, there was a witness’
Court documents read Dr. Randall Beckman was buying dog food in the same shopping center as Wigs by Andre. Peters said Beckman saw the attacker run out of the shop and jump into an SUV.
“Thinking that someone might need assistance, Dr. Beckman got into his car and followed the man across the parking lot. Dr. Beckman saw the man get into a dark Lincoln Navigator and back out of a parking space. Dr. Beckman then passed the Navigator in the parking lot and was able to see the driver, as the two vehicles passed the driver’s side window. After passing the Navigator, Dr. Beckman turned around and wrote down the license plate of the Navigator,” read court documents.
“I think we all have a radar in our system where we pick up something that doesn’t look right,” said Peters. “We were very lucky that he took the interest that he did and got us a license plate.”
Peters said Beckman then went into the wig shop, saw what happened, and tried to help Silverio and the Ingrandos until police and paramedics arrived. Peters said the license plate led officers to a home less than three miles away.
Officers found a black, 1998 Lincoln Navigator in the driveway.
“One of the officers touched the hood of the Navigator and it was still warm,” court documents read.
Dror Haim Goldberg
Peters said a housekeeper answered the officers’ knock on the home’s door. She told officers the owners were out of town, but their son, Dror Goldberg, was left in charge.
“Whose SUV was that?” asked KPRC 2 Investigator, Robert Arnold.
“It was his father’s girlfriend’s (SUV),” said Peters. “Goldberg’s father had him drive them to the airport. He had to drive them to the airport, drop them off, and he brought the vehicle back home to their house.”
Peters said as officers were conducting their investigation at the house, Goldberg arrived in his pick-up truck.
“He denied any involvement in the murder. He did admit that he had been in the the wig shop previously, and he denied any knowledge of the the murder and the assault,” said Peters.
Goldberg was taken to the police department for questioning. Court documents read, “During the ride to the police station, (Goldberg) told the police officer that the Navigator had been stolen in the past, but that every time it was stolen, the thief always just returned it.”
“One of the odd things he said, I thought, was that he wanted to talk more to us, but he wanted to talk to his mother first, and then he wanted a lawyer, which really at that point, when they say they want a lawyer, we can no longer interview him,” said Peters.
Peters said fibers consistent with wigs were found in the SUV. Peters said the murder weapon was never found.
“Dr. Beckman looked at a photo array containing the Polaroid taken of (Goldberg) and indicated he was 80% certain that (Goldberg) was the man he had seen running from the wig shop. Dr. Beckman and Mrs. Ingrando were later shown the videotaped line-up and both identified (Goldberg) as the assailant,” court documents read.
‘What is the German word for stupid?’
Goldberg was indicted on murder charges on Feb. 17, 1999.
“We didn’t know his name or anything until the grand jury indicted him, which was three months later,” said Yvonne Palmer, Silverio’s daughter. “They told us they had a warrant for his arrest, and we were waiting for him to, you know, we were down there at the DA’s office waiting to see who it was that killed our mother and he never showed up.”
Peters said Goldberg fled the country and traveled to several cities. A federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution was filed.
“It was like ‘whack-a-mole,’” said Peters. “I was getting calls that he was seen here, he was seen in Mexico, he was seen in Israel. Anywhere you could imagine, I was running my tail off running down all these clues.”
Palmer and her sister, Yvette Menendez, were determined to keep their mother’s case in the public eye during the six months Goldberg was on the run.
“This is where we had to take matters into our own hands to make sure that my mother’s case just did not fall through the cracks. It wasn’t just another murder in Houston,” said Palmer.
Working with the then-head of the City of Houston’s Victims’ Assistance Office, Andy Kahan, the sisters were consistently posting flyers with Goldberg’s pictures and contacting the media regularly.
“They drove my lieutenant crazy, which I was grateful for,” said Peters. “We had a named suspect and they wanted to see justice done, and they did.”
Eventually, Goldberg was caught at an airport in Frankfurt, Germany. Court records show Goldberg had a layover in Frankfurt while traveling from Bangkok to Mexico City. However, Goldberg left the transit area of the airport to go to a store, when he returned to the transit area, he had to present his passport to an officer with the German Border Police Department.
The officer noticed Goldberg had a warrant out for his arrest and took him into custody.
“When Officer Raupach told (Goldberg) that if he had not left the transit area he would not have had to show his passport, (Goldberg) asked Raupach what the German word for “stupid” was,” court documents read.
The Notebook
“Did you ever find out why that wig shop,” asked Arnold.
“No, I never uncovered that,” said Lester Blizzard, a Harris County prosecutor at the time of Goldberg’s trial. “It’s not a traditional motive, and we were struggling for how this type of horrible event could pop out of really nowhere, and then, in such a nice section of our town.”
During her investigation, lead prosecutor Kelly Siegler discovered Goldberg had a prior arrest in 1995 while he was a student at Bellaire High School.
Susie Pendergrass was one of the arresting officers.
“It was a sunny day and I was a brand new rookie,” Pendergrass remembers.
Pendergrass said Goldberg was in a car with other high school boys when he threw what appeared to be a beer can out of his car window.
“We got him out of the car and he voluntarily admitted he had been drinking, they had a party the night before, and that they had liquor in the trunk,” said Pendergrass.
Pendergrass added that she was searching Goldberg’s backpack when she found a spiral notebook.
“(I) saw this picture of the devil. I’m not easily moved by hand drawing, but this was striking and (I) flipped the page and read, ‘How to Kill a Woman,’” Pendergrass said. “I started reading and it was his thoughts, that wasn’t a poem, it wasn’t a letter, it wasn’t just something a kid’s writing down. He’s telling you how he’s doing it.”
Pendergrass later testified during Goldberg’s trial about the contents of the notebook.
“He said, ‘I’m making tiny slits all over her body so that when she looks down, she’ll see red and she knows she’s going to die,” Pendergrass recalled a passage in the notebook.
Pendergrass said there were also passages about raping a woman.
“I had nightmares after reading that notebook, that thing never left me,” said Pendergrass. “He hates women. He wants to destroy them.”
Pendergrass said she “begged” her superior officers to let her copy the notebook and keep it in evidence. Pendergrass said she was told, ‘no,’ and the notebook was handed over to Goldberg’s parents. The notebook was presumed destroyed by the time Goldberg went on trial.
Blizzard said while it was never discovered why Goldberg chose Wigs by Andre, the notebook helped jurors understand a motive.
“There’s plenty of indication that there was evil in this man’s heart and it erupted at this time,” said Blizzard. “There’s no denying that notebook was very substantial in what it had to say, and showing a picture to the jury of what evil looks like.”
Peters said Goldberg made comments to Roberta Ingrando while he was stabbing her.
“He said, ‘Does it feel good?’ And to me, that shows that this whole thing is probably something this guy had fantasized about... what he was going to say to this when he committed the act,” said Peters. “He was playing out a fantasy.”
The Trial
“He just saw two vulnerable women, you know, he walked in there and saw two vulnerable women, and, you know, that was his target,” said Palmer. “My mom had jewelry on, Roberta had jewelry, and he wanted nothing. Roberta threw a drawer of money at him and he wanted no money. That wasn’t his motive. He was in there to kill. He was not in there to rob. He was in there to kill, and that’s a psychopath. That’s a serial killer. That’s a murderer.”
Palmer said she, her sister and Kahan all had gag orders placed on them during the trial.
“We had to sit there day in and day out, you know, listening to everything, just horrified,” said Palmer. “One time when they were showing my mom’s bloody clothes, I had a panic attack and ran out of there.”
The jury deliberated for 16 hours over two days before finding Goldberg guilty of murder. He was sentenced to 48 years in prison.
Parole Denied
“She got here from Cuba when she was 18 years old. She went to school, she always struggled, you know, raising her daughters, minding her own business, helping others. She had a passion for being a hairstylist,” said Palmer. “ I think it’s 24 years that she worked for Wigs by Andre.”
Palmer said she often thinks about how her mother moved the family to Houston from Miami because her sister lived here and Houston had a lower crime rate.
“Go figure,” said Palmer.
Goldberg became eligible for parole for the first time in 2023. Palmer, her sister and Kahan opposed his parole by testifying before the parole board in Angleton and by recording a video for parole board members to watch. The video is part of a program created by Kahan and Crime Stoppers of Houston to help victims’ family members memorialize their thoughts if they can’t meet with the parole board in person.
“This is a hole in my heart. This is in my head every single day, every moment,” said Palmer. “My mother was everything to us, everything. We miss her so much. I miss her not being here, she never got to grow old. She never got to see my kids, nothing. I’m 54, I’m actually older than she was when she died.”
Goldberg was denied parole and will not be reviewed again until 2028.
“When they deny somebody’s parole, they can review anywhere from one year, two years, three years, four years, five years; five years is the max. And I said, ‘We got to get the max,’ that’s what you’re going to ask,” Kahan said of his conversation with Silverio’s daughters. “We got the max.”
In a statement to KPRC 2, a spokesperson for the parole board wrote, “The nature of the offense and the amount of time served is not congruent with the offense severity.”
Goldberg denied KPRC 2′s request for an interview.