Reporter Says Journalism Experience Helped Her Handle Phone Calls From Man Who Was Holding Ex-Wife Hostage

A Connecticut newspaper reporter who received a series of phone calls from a man who had taken his ex-wife hostage and was holding police at bay says her experience as a journalist helped her through the ordeal.

Karen Florin, a court reporter for The Day newspaper in New London, received the calls from ad executive Richard Shenkman on Tuesday after he took ex-wife Nancy Tyler hostage in their South Windsor home, the paper reported.

"I think my 15 years of reporting experience prepared me for this," Florin said in an e-mail interview. "Imagine being a rookie reporter and receiving phone calls from somebody who was holding a hostage? I had to try to keep him calm at the same time that I was eliciting information from him."

Shenkman called Florin four times over a three-hour period. During their conversations (see video from The Day website) Shenkman made a series of bizarre requests. At one point he asked Florin to have a priest sent to his house to give Tyler her last rites. "I don't understand why you want a priest to give her her last rites if you're not going to harm her," Florin told Shenkman.

At another point Shenkman told Florin, "I don't want to take innocent people's lives."

Florin responded, "Well then why do you have your wife there, your ex-wife?"

Shenkman held police at bay for 13 hours and threatened to blow up the house. Tyler eventually managed to escape, and Shenkman was arrested after setting the home ablaze. He is being held on $12.5 million bail.

Florin said Shenkman probably called her because she had interviewed him previously. Florin had covered the couple's divorce proceedings and Shenkman's 2007 arrest for allegedly burning down a summer house.

"I had listened to him patiently during phone calls over the years and had reported his point of view even when it was unsavory," she said. "I knew him for five or six years. I had covered a local Indian tribe, the Eastern Pequots, when he and his now ex-wife were their media reps. I then covered him when he was charged with burning down a home that was in dispute in the divorce."

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