DETROIT (WXYZ) — Bob Bashara isn't done fighting his conviction for the murder of his wife, Jane, according to Ronald Ambrose, one of the former Grosse Pointe Park businessman's attorneys.
Bashara, 61, is still in the city of Detroit, currently lodged at the Michigan Department of Corrections Detroit Re-entry Center on Ryan Road because of ongoing medical issues.
Still, seven years after Joe Gentz said Bashara hired him to kill his wife, and then, at gunpoint, threatened him to carry out the murder, Gentz is still very concerned about his own safety.
"Do you think Bob Bashara could still be a threat to your life after everything?" 7 Action News Reporter Kim Craig asked.
"Oh, yeah, in a heartbeat," said Gentz from a prison in Muskegon. "If he can get somebody to take me out, oh yeah, he can do that."
Bashara has tried before to hire someone to kill Gentz, after Gentz went to Grosse Pointe Park Police to confess to his role in the murder that captured headlines around the country.
"Bob is not intimidated by anybody," said retired Detroit Police Lieutenant Tom Berry who closely with sources on the case. "There's no doubt that this man killed his wife, had his wife killed at the hands of Joe Gentz.
And while many think Gentz, a 55-year-old man with a low IQ, was easily persuaded and then manipulated into murdering Jane, they agree he is right where he belongs.
Bashara was known in the Grosse Pointe area as "Big Bob" and prosecutors said he wanted his wife out of the way so he could keep her money, his mistress, and the kinky life he led in his sex dungeon that was located in the basement of a commercial property he owned.
"If you could say anything to Bob Bashara right now, what would you say?" Craig asked.
"Nothing. I got nothing to say," Gentz responded.
Even the judge, Vonda Evans, said Gentz was easily manipulated. His own mother told 7 Action News that she hasn't spoken to him since Jane Bashara's murder because she just can't wrap her head around what he did. She says growing up, he was teased a lot and got into a lot of trouble trying to make people think he was smart.
It appears the Bashara's children, Robert and Jessica, have both moved out of state. Jane's mother, who said her son-in-law betrayed all of them, died a little over a month ago.
When it came to the trial that grabbed headlines around the country, Berry said he hated watching the man at the center of it all.
"Big Bob got to sit there everyday. Big Bob got to speak. Big Bob got to be Big Bob in that courtroom. Big Bob got to be on the news every day. He loved every single second of it. It was his last hurrah. And I didn't like it from the standpoint of he killed his wife," he said.
Since Bashara began serving time in prison for trying to hire someone to kill Gentz and then the murder of his wife, he's received six misconduct citations that included being in a cell that was not his, interfering with rules, and possession of stolen property.
