Featured in the late Dominick Dunne’s Power, Privilege and Justice, Linda Sandler is the ex-wife of a multi-millionaire named Joel Sandler. The couple lived in luxury in a Philadelphia mansion but despite their wealth, skinflint Mr Sandler would urinate into a cup and throw the contents out of the window rather than incur water charges. When Linda Sandler filed for divorce and moved into the couple’s beach house in 2001, Joel Sandler sought out what he thought to be a hit man. His mistake was to be introduced to someone who turned out to be an undercover police officer instead. Convicted in 2003, Joel Sandler was sentenced to 8.5 to 20 years in prison whilst Linda Sandler gained 75% of the couple’s $4.5 million estate. Still in fear of her life, she remains in hiding to this very day.
Watch Dominick Dunne’s account of the case, What, A Price Murder?, here:
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28 comments
He is obviously Jewish, he is definitely not Scottish and we can admire that he is not a spendthrift. However, the lavatory must be flushed once a week, there is a danger of Legionnaires disease. It is a horrible disease, trust me, I have been there too…
I remember this case. He is a psycho and sadly he probably will get her in the end. Locking him up will only have made him more bitter and vengeful. The money is cursed.
Joel Sander will die in prison by the time he’s in his 70’s. He won’t be getting out so Linda Sandler should feel safe.
We can only hope so, Hon.
i was one of his cell mates in state prison that is all he talks about he is very angry what his wife had caused him and still til this day in 2015 he continues to fight the case instead of owning up to his crime and blames his crime on medication prescribed
Well here goes. The story portrayed by dominic Dunn had many flaws. I grew up with Mr sandler in Washington heights
It was a place called castle village. The street was cabrini Blvd. He lived in 140 and I lived in 120 cabrini Blvd. He has a brother named marty and a sister named lolly. We went to P S 187 in Manhattan. I can not tell you much more after the late 60’s except that he contacted me trying to see if I had any interest in some property here in arizona. So whatever was mentioned in the T V show may not be exactly correct.
Wrong Joel Sandler. The man that was convicted was an only child.
Obviously one can’t condone Sandlers actions, but I’m surprised the jury convicted him without him even naming the supposed victim. He never even said it was to be his wife. Very thin evidence compared to similar cases I’ve run into. He was very careful about verbalizing more than the most basic information.
In the show I saw they kept emphasizing how desperately important money was to him. His wife grabs 75% of all his assets, money she didn’t earn a penny of, yet he’s the greedy one. Isn’t that a bit twisted?
Thank you! The divorce laws in this country are a serious injustice! A woman can take half (or more) of a man’s hard-earned wealth simply by divorcing him. And many women set out to do just that. Look at what happened to Paul McCartney. That bitch planned it from the start.
I agree, sure he made a bad choice but didn’t deserve a harsh penalty.qq
You consider his desire to have someone killed (doesn’t matter who) simply a bad choice? Since murder is generally accepted as the worst crime one can commit, it’s not much of a stretch to say that he committed the second worst…
He tried to have his wife killed. She deserves all his money!
I agree, sure he made a bad choice but didn’t deserve to be taken from his hard earned wealth.
Remember…there were children involved! Children that suffered horribly from the abuse & needed extensive therapy afterwards. There is much more to this story…& aftermath.
If the original divorce proceeding had gone through, she would have received about 15%. She wanted to make a clean break and then disappear as he had severely abused her (emergency rooms, ICU, etc.) every time he lost money misreading the markets. So her lawyer hired an accountant to calculate the current value (one check now) of future payments (the checks that she would have received monthly in a normal divorce). Hopefully you can calculate 15% of $3.25 million (the value of THEIR assets at the time of filing, the number the judge has to use). She never received more than a divorce decree from that judge. The criminal courts decided that the estate should be divided into thirds, one for her, one for him, and one for their two children. That is the law here when there is no legal document stating otherwise.
Hey Bruce Ginsberg. His father was Bernard
And his mother was I played basketball and you two were taller and better than me. His father died the night before his BarMitzva. I spoke to him in 1991 about a position at Merrill Lynch. I considered him a close friend. Shocked
About this!
Just saw this post. Ron I remember you. Over the years there are a few more who I have been in touch with.
Bruce Genzburg
Joel Sandberg may well have been the money -obsessed psycho Domick Dunne portrayed him as, or he may have just been a hard working man who couldn’t bare to see his life savings go up in smoke to a selfish wife. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
I agree, sure he made a bad choice but didn’t deserve a harsh penalty.
He’a getting everything he deserves. POS.
I agree, sure he made a bad choice but didn’t deserve a harsh penalty.
I can’t believe that you think that wanting somebody murdered is simply a bad choice…
Is he still in prison?
He’s at SCI Somerset. He’s on their inmate locator today, which only lists current inmates. Doesn’t give release date.
I think he got what he deserved and if he’s still in prison, he’s right where he belongs. He should have just “settled up” 50/50 when he had the chance. He still have half of his money and he would have been free to make more. (It’s Kind of hard to make ANY money while sitting in a jail cell).
When someone loves money so much like Mr. J. Sandler, then he should arrange a separate property marriage.
Her divorce lawyer only asked for 15%. She was certain that asking for more would result in his plotting her death and that was all she needed to disappear. Obviously, she didn’t realize how far he had sank into the deep end of the pool.
He’s in Somerset Correctional Institute. Located him on inmate locator today. Doesn’t give a release date.