Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #340 Jason Flom with John Giuca Pt.1

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#340 Jason Flom with John Giuca Pt.1 · Wrongful Conviction

0:00
Speaker 1: In recording our coverage of John Juca's case, we realized
0:02
Speaker 1: that there are simply too many twists and turns for
0:05
Speaker 1: one episode, so we split this episode in two and
0:07
Speaker 1: are releasing both at the same time. On October eleventh,
0:14
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, three groups of college kids, one
0:16
Speaker 1: from Long Island, another from Brooklyn, as well as New Jersey,
0:20
Speaker 1: ran into one another at a bar on the upper
0:22
Speaker 1: East side of Manhattan. A mutual friend among them, Angel DiPietro,
0:26
Speaker 1: New Brooklyn night Albert Cleary, as well as her Fairfield
0:30
Speaker 1: University classmate Mark Fisher, a football player from New Jersey.
0:34
Speaker 1: When the knight started to wind down and all of
0:37
Speaker 1: the trains of Long Island and New Jersey had stopped running,
0:39
Speaker 1: Albert Cleary's friend, twenty year old John Juca, offered up
0:42
Speaker 1: his house in Flatbush, Brooklyn for an after party at
0:45
Speaker 1: a place to crash. A few of John and Albert's
0:48
Speaker 1: friends joined, including a neighborhood tough guy named Antonio Russo.
0:53
Speaker 1: Sometime before six am, Angel and Albert walked to his
0:56
Speaker 1: nearby house. Since Angel was the only person Mark Fisher knew,
1:01
Speaker 1: he left to find his way over to Albert's with
1:03
Speaker 1: Antonio Russo and soon ended up fatally shot without his
1:06
Speaker 1: wallet on the driveway across from Albert Cleary's house, a
1:10
Speaker 1: blanket from John's house at its feet. In the immediate aftermath,
1:15
Speaker 1: Antonio Russo cut his dreadlocks and absconded to California. A
1:19
Speaker 1: police investigation revealed that other voices at a car door
1:23
Speaker 1: were heard before the gunshots. Albert and Angel denied any knowledge,
1:27
Speaker 1: and soon statements were made that alleged that John Juca
1:30
Speaker 1: was involved. The motivations and level of involvement buried. But
1:34
Speaker 1: with this many witnesses placing blame on John. There had
1:38
Speaker 1: to be something to it. But this is wrongful conviction.
1:52
Speaker 1: Welcome back to wronful conviction. Today, we have a story
1:54
Speaker 1: that was front page news all over New York City
1:58
Speaker 1: when it happened, with flaring headlines, salacious headlines about want
2:02
Speaker 1: to be Brooklyn gangsters who allegedly conspired at an after
2:05
Speaker 1: party to kill a suburban college football star who just
2:08
Speaker 1: happened to be in their midst, when in fact, there
2:12
Speaker 1: were no gangsters, only a group of friends, and the
2:15
Speaker 1: murder was not a group effort at all. The only
2:18
Speaker 1: group effort here took the form of multiple conflicting false
2:21
Speaker 1: statements against a member of that group, John Juka, and
2:25
Speaker 1: John is calling in from prison in upstate New York
2:27
Speaker 1: right now. I'm sorry you're here under these circumstances, but
2:30
Speaker 1: we're very honored to have you.
2:31
Speaker 2: Thank you.
2:32
Speaker 1: The only good news in this whole, miserable story is
2:35
Speaker 1: that his attorney is Mark Bedow, and Mark is one
2:37
Speaker 1: of the most respected criminal defense attorneys in the New
2:40
Speaker 1: York area and beyond. Mark, Welcome to Rofel Conviction. Glad
2:45
Speaker 1: to be here. Thanks for having me and Mark. Why
2:48
Speaker 1: was this such a high profile case?
2:50
Speaker 3: This was a big one at the time. I was
2:52
Speaker 3: a prosecutor in Manhattan and I remember it in real time,
2:55
Speaker 3: just reading tabloids on the subway going to work. It
2:57
Speaker 3: was in the fall of two thousand and it felt
3:00
Speaker 3: like there was an update on this flawed investigation every day.
3:04
Speaker 3: It was the grid kid murder case, because you had
3:08
Speaker 3: a situation where the victim was the all American son
3:12
Speaker 3: that any parent wish they had as a child. Mark
3:15
Speaker 3: Fisher was a nineteen year old, good looking college football
3:18
Speaker 3: player from New Jersey who went to Brooklyn for the
3:22
Speaker 3: first time in his life, and unfortunately he ended up
3:26
Speaker 3: dead on the street, and certainly that's the kind of
3:29
Speaker 3: thing that is going to feed the tabloids and get
3:33
Speaker 3: the public attention. So the grid Kid murder case became
3:37
Speaker 3: sensational from day one, and.
3:40
Speaker 1: That moniker actually referred to the admitted grid Kid killer,
3:44
Speaker 1: John's co defendant, Antonio Russo. But somehow John's face was
3:50
Speaker 1: also plastered on the front page of those tabloids as
3:54
Speaker 1: if he was some sort of criminal mastermind or co
3:58
Speaker 1: conspirator to somehow actually involved. The prosecution never actually decided
4:05
Speaker 1: on any one theory. They just put all this stuff
4:07
Speaker 1: out there and the press ate it up, and of
4:11
Speaker 1: course this media firestorm polluted the jury pool. Now, don't
4:16
Speaker 1: forget the HBO series The Sopranos was an absolute cultural
4:21
Speaker 1: phenomenon at this time. It's the only thing people were
4:22
Speaker 1: talking about it. So this story of the death of
4:26
Speaker 1: a promising suburban kid allegedly at the hands of these
4:31
Speaker 1: wannabe mafia city kids was like it was the imperfect storm.
4:36
Speaker 1: It just captured everybody's imaginations.
4:38
Speaker 3: By the time his trial came around, you actually had
4:41
Speaker 3: the prosecutor comparing him to Tony Soprano and talking about
4:45
Speaker 3: ordering hits to build up street credibility for a non
4:49
Speaker 3: existent gang, which in fact was just a bunch of
4:51
Speaker 3: knucklehead teenagers in Brooklyn calling themselves names.
4:54
Speaker 1: And this alleged gang was called the Ghetto Mafia. Right, So, John,
4:59
Speaker 1: what exactly was the Ghetto Mafia?
5:02
Speaker 2: Oh? My god, it was a bunch of kids hanging out.
5:04
Speaker 2: We had some people who who used to hang out
5:07
Speaker 2: with us who never even heard of that name, some
5:09
Speaker 2: people who considered it a joke, and there were other
5:12
Speaker 2: people who didn't. One thing was never was an actual gang.
5:16
Speaker 3: John was just a regular, you know, nineteen year old
5:19
Speaker 3: Brooklyn kid.
5:20
Speaker 1: So let's talk about your life before all of this, John,
5:22
Speaker 1: You grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Right.
5:24
Speaker 2: It's like a little enclave in flat Bush called Prospect
5:27
Speaker 2: Park South. I guess you could say I grew up
5:30
Speaker 2: in a regular, middle class upbringing. First, I went to
5:32
Speaker 2: public school PS one thirty nine. Then I went to
5:35
Speaker 2: Catholic school around third grade when my mother met my stepfather.
5:38
Speaker 1: So your parents broke up when you were.
5:40
Speaker 2: Young, Yes, when I was five years old my stepfather,
5:42
Speaker 2: but considered him like my father. Also, I didn't look
5:45
Speaker 2: at it as a negative thing. Really, my real father
5:47
Speaker 2: went on to get married again, and that woman who
5:50
Speaker 2: he married already had kids, so he had a family
5:52
Speaker 2: over there too, and I considered them family also. I
5:55
Speaker 2: looked at it as I had two fathers, like two
5:57
Speaker 2: men in my life who loved me and wanted to
6:00
Speaker 2: see me succeed and support me.
6:01
Speaker 1: Then your biological father ended up suffering a stroke when
6:04
Speaker 1: you were nineteen, which ended up having relevance in this case.
6:08
Speaker 1: But at that time, like you said, both he and
6:10
Speaker 1: your stepdad were supportive of you. You were trying to
6:12
Speaker 1: succeed as an actor and actually got some work as
6:15
Speaker 1: a teenager.
6:16
Speaker 2: Yes, I was on School of Rock. I got to
6:18
Speaker 2: meet Jack Black, the guys from Law and Order. I
6:20
Speaker 2: was on Lawn Order like ten times. I played a
6:23
Speaker 2: dead kid on Law and Order. I remember one funny
6:25
Speaker 2: story that I'm on Law and Order and I'm the
6:27
Speaker 2: dead kids. I'm laying on the pavement and I have
6:29
Speaker 2: fake blood all over my head and everything, and I
6:32
Speaker 2: remember the two actors, Jerry or Back and the other one,
6:35
Speaker 2: the two main.
6:36
Speaker 1: Cops, Jerry or Back and Chris nods.
6:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they have to kneel down and search my pockets.
6:42
Speaker 2: I have a pair of keys that they're supposed to
6:44
Speaker 2: take out of my pockets. And so Jerry Orban kneels
6:46
Speaker 2: down and he kneels right on the keys and he's
6:48
Speaker 2: son of a bitch and they're like caught. And then
6:51
Speaker 2: they shoot it like four, five, six, seven times. They
6:54
Speaker 2: keep trying to shoot it. Things keep going wrong. And
6:57
Speaker 2: then I had smoked some weed before I went. I
7:00
Speaker 2: think I was like six seventeen years old, and this
7:03
Speaker 2: is not part of script, and he goes it smells
7:07
Speaker 2: like marijuana, and they're like, cut and what are you
7:12
Speaker 2: talking about. He's like, I don't know, it smells like marijuana.
7:16
Speaker 2: And my stepfather's looking at me like, oh my god,
7:18
Speaker 2: I'm going to kill you.
7:19
Speaker 1: That's incredible, and Jerry or back rest in peace. I
7:23
Speaker 1: can just picture it in my mind right now. And
7:26
Speaker 1: your stepfather was there too, So it sounds like you
7:29
Speaker 1: had this great sort of blended Brady bunch sort of
7:31
Speaker 1: a family situation. And can you tell us about the
7:34
Speaker 1: woman at the center of it. And I'm talking about
7:36
Speaker 1: your mom, Doreen, And I know her from rallies and
7:40
Speaker 1: events and calls and texts, and she's just a pillar
7:44
Speaker 1: of strength and somebody I admire greatly.
7:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, but she was a recogd stay at home mom.
7:50
Speaker 2: She was more I guess you could say, liberal minded.
7:52
Speaker 2: Like my house was the house where a lot of
7:54
Speaker 2: kids from the neighborood used to come and she used
7:56
Speaker 2: to feed them, or we used to play basketball in
7:58
Speaker 2: the backyard or whatever. She always told me that law
8:01
Speaker 2: enforcement were the good guy. I remember this growing up.
8:04
Speaker 2: She was encouraging me to go to John Jay, encouraging
8:07
Speaker 2: me to become a comp Her brother is a correctional
8:09
Speaker 2: my uncle Eddie.
8:10
Speaker 1: That's another crazy irony about your story, which is that
8:14
Speaker 1: while you were pursuing an acting career, you were also
8:16
Speaker 1: studying criminal justice at John Jay College.
8:19
Speaker 2: Yes, and what you learn about the criminal justice system
8:22
Speaker 2: in school is just one hundred and eighty degrees from
8:25
Speaker 2: the reality of the criminal justice system. They say that
8:28
Speaker 2: you have all these rights, and they're not going to
8:30
Speaker 2: arrest people unless this standard is mad, and then they
8:33
Speaker 2: don't get convicted unless this standard is met, and on
8:36
Speaker 2: and just none of that is true.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, you saw those standards go out the window pretty
8:40
Speaker 1: quickly when the false statements that were used to obtain
8:42
Speaker 1: your arrest, warrant and conviction didn't even form a cohesive narrative. Now,
8:46
Speaker 1: one of the people who gave false testimony against you
8:49
Speaker 1: was your girlfriend at the time, Lauren Calciano. Now we're
8:52
Speaker 1: going to read from her recantation later. But you two
8:54
Speaker 1: had started dating in high school, right.
8:57
Speaker 2: She was my first love. I was with hers since
8:59
Speaker 2: I was about I don't know, fifteen or sixteen. I
9:02
Speaker 2: thought I wanted to get married and everything. We were young.
9:05
Speaker 2: Why used to practically live at her house sometimes I
9:07
Speaker 2: knew her whole family.
9:09
Speaker 1: You ended up hiring her family's attorney, Sam Gregory, who
9:12
Speaker 1: had previously represented her father, sal Cassiano.
9:15
Speaker 2: He was head of the events in the World Trade Center.
9:18
Speaker 2: He went to federal prisons because the World Trade Center
9:20
Speaker 2: got robbed. They said it was about four million Americans,
9:23
Speaker 2: So this is in the nineties.
9:24
Speaker 1: Sometimes, for whatever her father's mistakes were, the DA was
9:28
Speaker 1: eventually able to use her father's situation, among other things,
9:32
Speaker 1: in order to coerce her false testimony against you. They
9:35
Speaker 1: were also able to coerce or incentivize your friend Albert
9:39
Speaker 1: Cleary as well, who was arguably closer to this incident
9:42
Speaker 1: than you were. Albert's mother, Susan Cleary, was the vice
9:44
Speaker 1: president of the King's County GOP Executive Committee, the group
9:47
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn that can authorize what is known as a
9:50
Speaker 1: Wilson pacula, which allows a candidate from another party to
9:53
Speaker 1: run on that party's ticket, and it can be used
9:56
Speaker 1: in order to run unopposed or in the case when
9:59
Speaker 1: a candidate loses party's primary election. Whether or not that
10:02
Speaker 1: was a bargaining ship used to keep her son's name
10:04
Speaker 1: out of the investigation, that's something we'll never know.
10:07
Speaker 2: A lot of people say the system is broken. I
10:09
Speaker 2: don't think it's broken. I think it's working exactly how
10:13
Speaker 2: they intended it to work, as like a battering ram
10:15
Speaker 2: for the rich and powerful.
10:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as we've seen in cases like yours, the
10:19
Speaker 1: prosecutor's office will use high profile cases for publicity with
10:22
Speaker 1: the hope of reaping those benefits come election time. Now,
10:25
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and three, the DA was Charles
10:28
Speaker 1: Joe Hines who was facing a primary challenge in two
10:31
Speaker 1: thousand and five, and wouldn't you know that he stretched
10:34
Speaker 1: out this investigation and prosecution. You guessed it to occur
10:38
Speaker 1: right before the election. He ended up winning both the
10:40
Speaker 1: primary and the general. Now, anyone who's familiar with our
10:43
Speaker 1: podcast is familiar with the problems in Brooklyn during the
10:45
Speaker 1: Heinz era. Nineteen ninety to twenty thirteen is a really
10:49
Speaker 1: dark period for criminal justice in Brooklyn.
10:52
Speaker 3: Hines was a political creature of the first order. That
10:56
Speaker 3: office back then was known as the poster child for
10:59
Speaker 3: wrongful convictions. Maybe in the last ten or fifteen years
11:03
Speaker 3: when people have really been paying attention to the problem
11:06
Speaker 3: of wrongful convictions, but I think a lot of the
11:08
Speaker 3: momentum on this really started when people like Ken Thompson
11:13
Speaker 3: were running against Hines ten years ago and exposing bad
11:17
Speaker 3: case after bad case that was coming out of the
11:19
Speaker 3: Hines Brooklyn DA's office. And this is exhibit A. John
11:23
Speaker 3: Juka to this day is exhibit A.
11:26
Speaker 1: And many of the people who worked under Hines, who
11:27
Speaker 1: were responsible and complicit and so many of the wrongful
11:31
Speaker 1: convictions of that era are still there today. And those
11:34
Speaker 1: who have moved on to private practice or even careers
11:36
Speaker 1: in media, like the trial prosecutor in this case, Anna
11:39
Speaker 1: Sega Nicklazzi. Those former heinz Adas, their reputations in public
11:44
Speaker 1: fates are arguably tied to the political fate of the
11:48
Speaker 1: Brooklyn DA's office.
11:49
Speaker 3: In terms of the graduates of the Hines DA's office.
11:52
Speaker 3: This trial prosecutor was their superstar and the biggest red
11:56
Speaker 3: flag in a case like this when a trial prosecutor
12:00
Speaker 3: markets themselves as I'm a homicide DA and I've never
12:03
Speaker 3: lost a case. I have a perfect record and.
12:06
Speaker 2: Her trial record, let me tell you something, if you
12:09
Speaker 2: want thirty six a poker in a row, you're cheating.
12:12
Speaker 3: And after John's conviction, you know all this marketing. This
12:16
Speaker 3: is a successful DA. She's on TV today as an
12:19
Speaker 3: expert on everything that's right in criminal justice, and it
12:23
Speaker 3: would have been humiliating for the Brooklyn DA to take
12:26
Speaker 3: her down. For years after this conviction, John's was her
12:30
Speaker 3: number one marketing pitch on her greatest hits, and after
12:35
Speaker 3: two post conviction hearings and litigation and covered extensively in
12:39
Speaker 3: the media, when one judge of the New York Court
12:42
Speaker 3: of Appeals ripped the prosecutor a new one and basically
12:45
Speaker 3: all but called her corrupt and deliberately violating his rights,
12:50
Speaker 3: all the references to John's heroic conviction have been scrubbed
12:55
Speaker 3: from the record, which makes you wonder if you're proud
12:58
Speaker 3: of this conviction and proud of what you've done. Why
13:01
Speaker 3: you would do that?
13:02
Speaker 1: Why would anyone be proud of what should be It
13:05
Speaker 1: really should be illegal, sending an innocent man to prison
13:09
Speaker 1: and effectively compounding the tragic loss of another young man's life.
13:14
Speaker 1: So let's get to the incident, the crux of everything
13:18
Speaker 1: we're discussing. Of course, I'm referring to the awful night
13:21
Speaker 1: of October eleventh into the twelfth of two thousand and three.
13:25
Speaker 3: It was Columbus Day weekend. Mark Fisher, who went to
13:27
Speaker 3: Fairfield University in Connecticut and some of his friends went
13:31
Speaker 3: to the city and partied. John Juca and his friend
13:35
Speaker 3: Albert Cleary and a few others also went to the city,
13:38
Speaker 3: and the groups ended up being connected through a very
13:43
Speaker 3: interesting person in this sordid process named Angel DiPietro, who
13:48
Speaker 3: was a college classmate and theoretically friend of Mark Fisher,
13:53
Speaker 3: who also was friendly with Albert Cleary.
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Speaker 1: Angel Dipietro's father was a prominent Long Island defense attorney
13:59
Speaker 1: as well. So you had the Brooklyn contingent, which was
14:02
Speaker 1: John Albert Cleary, and two more neighborhood friends, Angel di
14:06
Speaker 1: Pietro and her friend Meredith Denahan from Long Island and
14:10
Speaker 1: Mark Fisher who had come in from New Jersey, and
14:12
Speaker 1: they met at a bar on the Upper eastide of Manhattan,
14:14
Speaker 1: which at the time was known to college kids for
14:16
Speaker 1: being the home of many bars that had pretty loose
14:19
Speaker 1: id policies. Right and so now it was getting late
14:24
Speaker 1: and the Long Island and New Jersey kids had to
14:26
Speaker 1: figure out a way home on the train.
14:27
Speaker 2: The last train left, the next one didn't leave till
14:30
Speaker 2: sometime the next morning, so they were stranded. So I
14:33
Speaker 2: opened my house to them. In the cab, it was me, Albert,
14:37
Speaker 2: Mary Mark, and Angel. Me and Albert paid for the cab.
14:42
Speaker 2: And then after we got there, a few more people
14:44
Speaker 2: showed up. I'm pretty sure it was Tommy. Jimmy, my
14:47
Speaker 2: brother was home, and then Antonio Russo.
14:50
Speaker 3: Russo had a house right behind John, so they were
14:52
Speaker 3: certainly friendly from the neighborhood now.
14:54
Speaker 1: Antonio Russo was a strongly built high school dropout who
14:59
Speaker 1: wore dreadlocks and sold weed, which was the reason he
15:01
Speaker 1: gave for coming over to John's house in a twenty
15:04
Speaker 1: eighteen interview with the cops to sell weed to some
15:06
Speaker 1: of those who were interested, and according to three people,
15:09
Speaker 1: Russo had a gun in his waistband both before and
15:13
Speaker 1: after the murder. One of those three people said they
15:15
Speaker 1: had been threatened with it.
15:16
Speaker 3: He's the tough guy. He's a little bit crazy, not
15:19
Speaker 3: in the legal sense, just in the real world sense.
15:22
Speaker 3: He's the resident tough guy. He's making everyone uncomfortable.
15:26
Speaker 1: But for now he's supplying weed to this otherwise fun
15:29
Speaker 1: after party at John's house. Now, at some point Mark
15:33
Speaker 1: Fisher made some sort of a faux pas that served
15:36
Speaker 1: as an alleged motive.
15:38
Speaker 2: Everybody was drinking, a couple of people with smoking weed.
15:41
Speaker 2: At one point Marks out on a table and we're
15:45
Speaker 2: going a big deal.
15:46
Speaker 1: Right sitting on a table. I've never heard that be
15:49
Speaker 1: cited as a reason to kill anyone. And what's nice
15:52
Speaker 1: about Antonio Russo's statement to detectives in twenty eighteen is
15:56
Speaker 1: that it takes some of the guest work out of
15:59
Speaker 1: what actually happened. Now, Russo said that he and Fisher
16:02
Speaker 1: went to the ATM together so Fisher could buy weed.
16:06
Speaker 1: Their re seat said for twenty three, but according to
16:09
Speaker 1: the bank it was an hour behind. This was five
16:12
Speaker 1: twenty three am. So. Russo and Fisher returned to John's
16:16
Speaker 1: house a little after that. Now, Albert and Angel were
16:18
Speaker 1: there when they returned, so they soon left together to
16:21
Speaker 1: go to Albert's, which was only a couple of blocks away.
16:24
Speaker 2: They were there when they came back from UTM, Yes,
16:27
Speaker 2: and then they slip out. They say they said goodbye
16:29
Speaker 2: to people, but I don't remember them saying goodbye to anybody.
16:32
Speaker 2: I just remember them disappearing.
16:34
Speaker 1: Without Meredith or Mark, by the way, both of whom
16:36
Speaker 1: had a reasonable expectation that they'd be sticking with Angel
16:38
Speaker 1: and Albert, which was their only connection to this after party.
16:41
Speaker 1: Now we're not sure why they were left behind, but nonetheless,
16:45
Speaker 1: Meredith had fallen asleep, and before Mark actually did you
16:49
Speaker 1: called Albert at five fifty seven am to let him
16:52
Speaker 1: know that Mark was on his way over, and then
16:55
Speaker 1: Russo left with him. Correct Now, it was cold out right,
16:58
Speaker 1: so Mark asked if he could take the blanket that
17:02
Speaker 1: he had draped over his shoulders, and that becomes an
17:04
Speaker 1: interesting topic of conversation or evidence, if you could call
17:07
Speaker 1: it that, later on. What we know is that forty
17:09
Speaker 1: minutes later, Mark Fisher was shot and killed in front
17:12
Speaker 1: of one fifty Argyle Road, which was just a few
17:14
Speaker 1: blocks from John's house and directly across the street from Albert's.
17:17
Speaker 3: Directly across the street from Cleary's house.
17:19
Speaker 1: Correct Now, according to Google Maps, this is about a
17:23
Speaker 1: five minute walk less than a quarter of a mile,
17:26
Speaker 1: so we're not sure what happened in those other thirty
17:29
Speaker 1: five minutes. The free floating radicals, if you will, are
17:32
Speaker 1: Mark Fisher, Antonio Russo, Angel Di Pietro, and Albert Cleary.
17:36
Speaker 1: Now from this twenty eighteen detectives report, Russo said that
17:41
Speaker 1: while on Argyle Road, he pulled out his German Luger
17:45
Speaker 1: nine millimeter, which belonged to him and him alone. He
17:48
Speaker 1: took Fisher's wallet and told him to run before firing
17:52
Speaker 1: a shot at the ground to let Fisher know that
17:54
Speaker 1: the gun was real and loaded. He then fired a
17:57
Speaker 1: shot at Fisher, who fell to the ground. When Fisher
18:01
Speaker 1: asked him why he had shot him, Russo emptied his
18:03
Speaker 1: clip into him, killing him on the spot. Now, Russo
18:06
Speaker 1: said that there was a woman in a car who
18:08
Speaker 1: could identify him. When he was fleeing the scene, he
18:12
Speaker 1: got rid of the wallet at a sewer near his house.
18:14
Speaker 1: It was later recovered by police. Now, immediately after the crime,
18:17
Speaker 1: Antonio Russo did a few things that a guilty person might.
18:21
Speaker 2: He used to wear braids in whole life, and he
18:23
Speaker 2: shaved his head.
18:24
Speaker 3: Russo then decides to take a vacation in California for
18:28
Speaker 3: a month and just disappear.
18:30
Speaker 1: And it'll become clear that Russo's twenty eighteen account is
18:32
Speaker 1: definitely missing a few details. But what is absolutely certain
18:36
Speaker 1: is that he said he did this alone with his
18:39
Speaker 1: own gun.
18:40
Speaker 3: The other interesting factor was the people who lived on
18:44
Speaker 3: Argyle Road. They heard voices right before the shots, and
18:48
Speaker 3: the woman whose bedroom was right above the driveway where
18:52
Speaker 3: Mark was found heard car doors opening and closing. Also
18:56
Speaker 3: heard young voices, and she was adamant that one of
18:59
Speaker 3: them was a female voice.
19:02
Speaker 1: Right the ocumen of one point fifty Argyle, wrote Heroko.
19:05
Speaker 1: Swornick said that she was awakened by her dog barking
19:09
Speaker 1: and heard the sound of a car door opening and shutting,
19:12
Speaker 1: which was later clarified to be a van door. The
19:15
Speaker 1: Clearies owned a van. Swornick went on to say that
19:18
Speaker 1: the view from her second story window was obstructed by foliage,
19:21
Speaker 1: but she heard more than two young people talking. The
19:24
Speaker 1: conversation specifically did not sound like an argument, and one
19:27
Speaker 1: of the voices was female. She said that she went
19:30
Speaker 1: back to bed, and a bit later she and her
19:31
Speaker 1: husband heard gunshots and called police. Mark Fischer's body had
19:35
Speaker 1: been shot five times. The blanket from John's house lay
19:38
Speaker 1: underneath his feet, and there were abrasions on his right
19:41
Speaker 1: hand on the right side of his face, suggesting that
19:43
Speaker 1: he had been in a fight with someone who was
19:46
Speaker 1: left handed. While the suggestion of that physical evidence is
19:49
Speaker 1: not proof positive of anything, John is in fact a
19:52
Speaker 1: writing and also visible in the crime scene photos is
19:55
Speaker 1: a petite, bare footprint left in the mud. But none
19:59
Speaker 1: of those details were even brought up in trial, and
20:02
Speaker 1: neither was what the police heard from neighbors.
20:05
Speaker 2: They did a canvas of the neighborhood. Some people said
20:07
Speaker 2: that they heard shots. Some people said that they heard
20:11
Speaker 2: a flighting van door and also saw a dark colored
20:16
Speaker 2: car speeding away curiously.
20:18
Speaker 1: Antonio Russo also mentioned in that twenty eighteen report being
20:22
Speaker 1: seen by a woman in a car while he fled
20:25
Speaker 1: on foot. And by the way, he's not left handed either.
20:27
Speaker 3: I believe Albert Cleary is left handed. Now let me
20:30
Speaker 3: be clear, I'm not going any farther than that accusing
20:34
Speaker 3: him of anything. But Albert Cleary also had a vehicle
20:39
Speaker 3: of similar make and model that was described by the
20:42
Speaker 3: witnesses on Argyle Road. Our working theory has always been
20:47
Speaker 3: that Albert and Angel stumbled in to Russo doing something
20:53
Speaker 3: bad and didn't want to get involved in coming after
20:57
Speaker 3: him because he's a monster. And I'm not using Albert
21:00
Speaker 3: and Angel of murders or anything like that, but there
21:04
Speaker 3: is a ton of credible evidence that suggests that they
21:07
Speaker 3: were not honest about what they knew. One of the
21:10
Speaker 3: things which is really troubling is at the party, Russo
21:14
Speaker 3: comes in, and Russo has got long dreadlocks, and he's
21:18
Speaker 3: a tough guy. He sticks out like a sore thumb.
21:20
Speaker 3: And when Angel talks to the cops and she says,
21:23
Speaker 3: tell us all the people at the party, she never
21:25
Speaker 3: mentions Russo at all. In fact, she says it's just
21:29
Speaker 3: like a bunch of white guys. Now Russo is not white,
21:32
Speaker 3: but she told her friend, her then boyfriend, that there
21:35
Speaker 3: was a really scary guy there. When trial comes around,
21:39
Speaker 3: Angel identifies John, which is not a big deal, just
21:43
Speaker 3: oh yeah, that's the guy who's house we went to.
21:45
Speaker 3: And she's describing the people there. Remember Russo sitting at
21:48
Speaker 3: the table too. They're on trial at the same time.
21:51
Speaker 3: She's never asked to identify Russo, not even asked. The
21:55
Speaker 3: reality is Russo said he saw a girl. The neighbors
21:59
Speaker 3: heard a girl. There's the footprint that you described by
22:02
Speaker 3: their own admission. Albert and Angel are across the street, now,
22:06
Speaker 3: wouldn't you know it? Who do you think the only
22:08
Speaker 3: people on the block when they interviewed people at the
22:10
Speaker 3: houses who said they didn't hear anything.
22:12
Speaker 1: Which is completely unbelievable because I've been to this neighborhood
22:17
Speaker 1: and the neighbors driveways are maybe at most twenty thirty
22:19
Speaker 1: yards across the street from the other neighbor's front doors.
22:22
Speaker 3: Six point thirty in the morning on a Sunday, and
22:24
Speaker 3: there's boom boom, boom, boom, boom boom, and no one
22:27
Speaker 3: in the Cleary house. Here's the thing. And if you
22:30
Speaker 3: talk to some of the neighbors and they told us
22:32
Speaker 3: this when everybody came out, obviously, I mean it's kind
22:35
Speaker 3: of a big deal in a neighborhood like that. Nobody
22:38
Speaker 3: came out of the Cleary house. The morning after the murder.
22:57
Speaker 3: Him and Angel DiPietro decided to clean the garage after
23:03
Speaker 3: partying all night, which is a bizarre thing before they
23:07
Speaker 3: quickly decamped to her Long Island home, where they hung
23:12
Speaker 3: out with her criminal defense father all day, a place
23:16
Speaker 3: Cleary had never been before. What does that all mean?
23:19
Speaker 3: Who's to say? But this is highly bizarre conduct in
23:23
Speaker 3: the grand scheme of what happened here.
23:25
Speaker 1: And as I mentioned, Angel's father, James D. Pietro, was
23:28
Speaker 1: a prominent defense attorney.
23:30
Speaker 3: He's a prominent lawyer, well respected lawyer, close friend to Hines,
23:34
Speaker 3: frequent financial donor to Hines.
23:37
Speaker 1: Interestingly, Angel had plans to follow in her dad's footsteps
23:40
Speaker 1: and later passed the bar.
23:42
Speaker 3: And then a short time later she gets hired as
23:45
Speaker 3: a prosecutor to the point where her and Nicolozzi are
23:47
Speaker 3: colleagues for years. Who's ever heard of this?
23:50
Speaker 1: So a short time later she got hired as a
23:53
Speaker 1: prosecutor in the Brooklyn DA's office. You can't make this up,
23:58
Speaker 1: so okay, So back to the immediate aftermath. At around
24:01
Speaker 1: ten am that morning, Angel began receiving phone calls from
24:05
Speaker 1: family and friends of Mark Fisher, and she told them
24:07
Speaker 1: that Meredith Denahan had given Mark trainfair and he had
24:10
Speaker 1: taken a train around eight or nine am. Now, in
24:13
Speaker 1: initial interviews, Angel also told detectives that she had spoken
24:16
Speaker 1: to Meredith on the morning of October twelfth, who allegedly
24:19
Speaker 1: told her that Mark had woken John up around six
24:22
Speaker 1: am and asked where to catch a train, but Meredith
24:25
Speaker 1: denied that this conversation ever took place.
24:28
Speaker 3: She didn't talk to Mary for some period of time
24:31
Speaker 3: because Mary was pissed at her for what she believed
24:36
Speaker 3: was being abandoned. Mary is her like Garden City friend,
24:39
Speaker 3: but she doesn't go to Brooklyn that often, and she's
24:42
Speaker 3: left at this house by herself. She's pissed off because
24:45
Speaker 3: she thinks Angel is sneaking out to stup Cleary and
24:48
Speaker 3: just snuck out and left her there.
24:50
Speaker 1: So this is what Meredith told investigators on October fourteenth.
24:53
Speaker 1: So this is two days in and they knew that
24:56
Speaker 1: Angel wasn't telling the truth, and Mark Fisher's friends and
24:59
Speaker 1: family old investigators the same thing. They had a hard
25:02
Speaker 1: time getting a straight answer from Angel.
25:04
Speaker 3: Everyone who is concerned about Mark Fisher is asking Where's Mark?
25:08
Speaker 3: Where's Mark? And Angel is telling different stories about when
25:11
Speaker 3: his friends were calling or when he left. And in
25:15
Speaker 3: two thousand and four, late spring, early summer, A key
25:18
Speaker 3: point of emphasis for law enforcement was Angel, and you
25:21
Speaker 3: could see they spent a lot of time tracking her
25:24
Speaker 3: and trying to interview her friends and roommates, and they
25:28
Speaker 3: all said, we didn't believe her. She's telling different stories.
25:31
Speaker 3: We basically cut her off. We didn't want to be
25:33
Speaker 3: associated with her anymore after this. And the people who
25:38
Speaker 3: believe Angel is not telling the truth more than anyone
25:42
Speaker 3: else are Mark Fisher's family. They have from day one
25:47
Speaker 3: accused her and Cleary of not telling the truth. They
25:50
Speaker 3: went so far as to sue the both of them
25:53
Speaker 3: after their son was murdered and John was convicted, and
25:56
Speaker 3: they wanted to sue Albert and Angel. They asked the
25:59
Speaker 3: DA for this police paperwork that talked about these neighbors
26:02
Speaker 3: on Argyle Road who said we heard a girl, we
26:04
Speaker 3: heard a girl, And the Brooklyn DA's response was, we're
26:07
Speaker 3: not giving you that. They were protecting Angel even back then.
26:10
Speaker 1: It at least appears as if some deal was made
26:13
Speaker 1: with her, or perhaps with her father, to keep her
26:16
Speaker 1: out of the crosshairs. So this is all super interesting,
26:20
Speaker 1: But what the hell does this have to do with
26:22
Speaker 1: John's guilt or innocence. How do the vulnerabilities of Albert
26:26
Speaker 1: and Angel having maybe seen Russo commit this crime and
26:29
Speaker 1: covering for that fact. How does this get directed towards
26:32
Speaker 1: John and this narrative with the Ghetto Mafia.
26:36
Speaker 3: When the cops interviewed Antonio Russo a couple days after
26:39
Speaker 3: the murder, he is the one who planted the seed
26:42
Speaker 3: in the cops ears that there was this big, tough
26:45
Speaker 3: gang named Ghetto Mafia, of which John and others were
26:49
Speaker 3: involved in, and that they could have been behind this.
26:52
Speaker 2: As soon as I found out that the police wanted
26:55
Speaker 2: to talk to me, I went right there to the pricing.
26:57
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, Lauren Calciano drove me that
27:00
Speaker 2: was the seven oh Precinct detectives, which are the same
27:03
Speaker 2: guys who stuck a punger up the guy's ass abnue Luima.
27:07
Speaker 1: And for those who don't remember the awful case of
27:11
Speaker 1: abnue Luima, embrace yourself. It was nineteen ninety seven and
27:15
Speaker 1: the seventieth Precinct, or the seven OZ as it was called,
27:17
Speaker 1: and mister Luima was effectively kidnapped by police from the
27:20
Speaker 1: scene of a fight outside of a club. They accused
27:23
Speaker 1: him of assaulting one of the four police officers with them,
27:27
Speaker 1: then brutally beat him and when back at the seventieth
27:30
Speaker 1: precinct they sexually assaulted mister Luima with a broken broomstick,
27:36
Speaker 1: and yes, it's actually even worse than it sounds. This
27:40
Speaker 1: sparked national outrage and protests here in New York. And
27:43
Speaker 1: so these officers knew that you knew that story.
27:46
Speaker 2: They tried to like subtly threaten me with that too.
27:49
Speaker 2: When I was in the precinct, they said, you have
27:50
Speaker 2: to use the bathroom. I said, I don't have to
27:52
Speaker 2: use the bathroom. They said, you have to use the bathroom.
27:54
Speaker 2: I'm like what, And they took me to the bathroom
27:56
Speaker 2: and then tried to question me in the bathroom. And
27:59
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, my fucking.
28:01
Speaker 1: God, un fucking believable. These fucking dirt bags. I'm guessing
28:05
Speaker 1: that this was before your lawyer got there.
28:07
Speaker 2: Right before my lawyer got there. They just wanted me
28:10
Speaker 2: to either confess or blame someone. That's when my lawyer
28:16
Speaker 2: cuts the interviews often he said, that's it. That's the
28:18
Speaker 2: only thing you guys want to hear. That's it. We
28:20
Speaker 2: have nothing more to say.
28:21
Speaker 1: So these are the tactics that we're being used in
28:23
Speaker 1: the initial investigation back in the fall of two thousand
28:25
Speaker 1: and three, and as the Prosecutor's office took over, things
28:28
Speaker 1: may have been more delicate, perhaps, but still very sinister
28:33
Speaker 1: and very serious. And it appears that Albert Cleary was
28:36
Speaker 1: under the same sort of intense pressure.
28:39
Speaker 3: Now Cleary had denied knowing anything, and he actually had
28:43
Speaker 3: his lawyer go on national TV to say, we're cooperating,
28:47
Speaker 3: we know nothing. They even commissioned a polygraph in which
28:51
Speaker 3: Cleary passed the polygraph in which he said, I don't
28:55
Speaker 3: know anything about this. I've been truthful, I've told the
28:58
Speaker 3: police everything I know, which I'll send. At that time
29:01
Speaker 3: was I know nothing. But a few months later, after
29:04
Speaker 3: he got pressured, according to Cleary, he knew everything.
29:07
Speaker 1: And what becomes clear is that he had become their
29:09
Speaker 1: star witness against you. So, John, when did you get
29:12
Speaker 1: the feeling that this investigation had shifted and the heat
29:15
Speaker 1: was being directed towards you?
29:17
Speaker 2: When they appointed this elite investigative unit consisting of Brooklyn
29:23
Speaker 2: Adas and Major K Squad detectives, and Michael Vickione was
29:27
Speaker 2: spearheading that team.
29:29
Speaker 1: So even with Albert shouting from the rooftops that he
29:32
Speaker 1: quote passed a polygraph saying that he didn't know anything.
29:37
Speaker 1: This elite investigative you that headed by the now disgraced
29:40
Speaker 1: Michael VECCHIONI had Albert ready to say whatever the hell
29:44
Speaker 1: he could dream up in order to save himself. And
29:48
Speaker 1: as we mentioned, he wasn't the only one. The two
29:50
Speaker 1: most important pieces of false testimony centered around when Albert
29:55
Speaker 1: and your girlfriend at the time, Lauren Calciano, met up
29:57
Speaker 1: with you at your house sometime on October twelve, in
30:00
Speaker 1: the aftermath of the murder.
30:01
Speaker 3: What the DA claims is later that night or the day,
30:06
Speaker 3: according to Lauren, that John is meeting with his girlfriend
30:10
Speaker 3: Lauren and Albert in his bedroom. According to the DA,
30:14
Speaker 3: he tells them what happened, and according to Cleary, John
30:19
Speaker 3: tells him Mark disrespected my house by sitting on a
30:24
Speaker 3: table and it pissed me off. So I told Russo
30:29
Speaker 3: take my gun and show him what's up. Basically gave
30:33
Speaker 3: the order. Lauren, again ostensibly at the exact same meeting,
30:38
Speaker 3: says what happened is John told us Russo had approached
30:43
Speaker 3: him that night and said I want to rob Mark.
30:46
Speaker 3: Can I borrow your gun? And John, ever, the loyal
30:50
Speaker 3: friend that he is, would say, here, take my gun.
30:53
Speaker 3: She claims it's during the day, Albert claims it's at night.
30:57
Speaker 3: Albert's claiming John's talking about ordering a hit, Lauren's talking
31:01
Speaker 3: about Russo asking them for a gun. And the common
31:04
Speaker 3: denominator here is that both of these witnesses had denied
31:07
Speaker 3: for a year knowing anything until they were pressured and
31:11
Speaker 3: threatened with all kinds of things. Lauren was threatened with
31:15
Speaker 3: her future, very embarrassing details about her personal life. Albert
31:20
Speaker 3: was threatened with jail, perjury, all kinds of things. He
31:24
Speaker 3: was on probation for kicking the crap out of somebody
31:27
Speaker 3: a few months earlier. And so at a bare minimum,
31:30
Speaker 3: you have conclusive proof that either one of Lauren or
31:34
Speaker 3: Albert take your pick. I would argue it doesn't even matter,
31:37
Speaker 3: just demonstrates they're all full as shit. But you have
31:39
Speaker 3: conclusive proof that the prosecution has no problem calling at
31:44
Speaker 3: least one witness it knows is flat out perjuring themselves,
31:49
Speaker 3: now cleary. He also added to that story that you know,
31:54
Speaker 3: I was talking to John and this guy Rob Register,
31:57
Speaker 3: the head of ghetto mafia, and John and Raw We're
32:00
Speaker 3: talking about how we don't have enough street credibility, so
32:02
Speaker 3: we need to catch your body. Legister at the time
32:05
Speaker 3: was a college student of North Carolina. And we of
32:07
Speaker 3: course have a sworn AFFI David from this legister guy
32:10
Speaker 3: saying this is all a bunch of nonsense. He's never
32:12
Speaker 3: called to testify to any of this. But yet at
32:15
Speaker 3: the trial you have Nicolozzi talking about Capo's soldiers orders
32:21
Speaker 3: Tony Soprano. It's insane.
32:24
Speaker 1: So these are the two fallse statements that eventually got
32:26
Speaker 1: John indicted at a secret grand jurie. Now, Antonio Russo
32:29
Speaker 1: had already been arrested in November two thousand and four.
32:32
Speaker 1: Why that took so long, nobody knows.
32:35
Speaker 2: After Russo got arrested, that was it, I thought. And
32:38
Speaker 2: then I went shopping. It was a couple of days
32:40
Speaker 2: before Christmas, on December twenty one, two thousand and four,
32:43
Speaker 2: and I bought a whole bunch of Christmas gifts for everyone.
32:45
Speaker 2: And I was on my way home to put up
32:47
Speaker 2: the Christmas tree for my mother and I had I
32:50
Speaker 2: was walking home with a whole bunch of bags from
32:53
Speaker 2: Macy's and all different places, and they were there in
32:56
Speaker 2: front of my house and then Detective Burns that have
33:00
Speaker 2: been being good, I said, yeah, what are you doing here?
33:04
Speaker 2: And he said, put your hands behind your back. And
33:06
Speaker 2: then when they put me in the car, I could
33:08
Speaker 2: hear they called Recione and I could hear on the
33:12
Speaker 2: phone because it's so loud, and we're sitting in a
33:14
Speaker 2: quiet car, and he is laughing hysterically, and he said,
33:20
Speaker 2: wish you to marry Christmas while he was just laughing
33:22
Speaker 2: like a cool evil for the fucker their youth.
33:35
Speaker 1: So you spent Christmas on Riker's Island, and with a
33:39
Speaker 1: Class A one felony, you weren't giving any chance to
33:41
Speaker 1: bond out, so you were stuck there for the next
33:44
Speaker 1: nine months.
33:45
Speaker 2: I thought it would have took much longer because every
33:47
Speaker 2: person who was there for an A one film or
33:50
Speaker 2: so serious case like that, a murder case was taken
33:53
Speaker 2: at least two or three years, and they rushed my
33:55
Speaker 2: case to trial in eight months.
33:57
Speaker 1: Because of that election, Joe Hines had a seat as
34:00
Speaker 1: primary challenger Stge Senator John Sampson, and if he lost,
34:03
Speaker 1: he may have had to call in a favor from
34:06
Speaker 1: Albert's mother on the King's County GOP Executive Committee. And
34:09
Speaker 1: I'm not a conspiracy guy, but that's who you call.
34:11
Speaker 1: But as part of his taxpayer funded election campaign. He
34:15
Speaker 1: was making a big splash in the media with your case,
34:18
Speaker 1: the grid kid killer case as they called him, and
34:20
Speaker 1: they didn't plan on losing, so they needed to support
34:24
Speaker 1: their two false witnesses with more bullshit and went out
34:28
Speaker 1: and found another friend of yours with a vulnerability to exploit,
34:33
Speaker 1: a guy named Anthony Bahari who played the part of
34:36
Speaker 1: another alleged mafia soldier whose job it was to get
34:40
Speaker 1: rid of the gun.
34:41
Speaker 3: Yes, he was another witness who satisfied the formula of
34:45
Speaker 3: claimed for a year and a half that he didn't
34:48
Speaker 3: know anything, but after being heavily pressured, claimed that the
34:53
Speaker 3: morning after the homicide that John called him up and
34:57
Speaker 3: asked him to do him a favor and pick up
35:00
Speaker 3: an item and leave it on the corner for somebody
35:04
Speaker 3: else to pick up, and Biharry testified that he looked
35:09
Speaker 3: at the item and that it was a firearm. So
35:12
Speaker 3: that testimony was potentially very damaging, but was problematic for
35:17
Speaker 3: a lot of reasons. He was threatened with losing his son,
35:22
Speaker 3: with being prosecuted for actually possessing the gun, which is
35:26
Speaker 3: a legal fiction. The gun was never recovered. The DA
35:30
Speaker 3: was threatening to prosecute him for possession of a gun
35:33
Speaker 3: that they had no evidence of where it was, or
35:36
Speaker 3: whether it was operable, or anything else.
35:38
Speaker 1: It was alleged that John and Bahari had called each
35:42
Speaker 1: other back and forth to plan how he would leave
35:44
Speaker 1: the gun under a box on the street for some
35:46
Speaker 1: mystery buyer who would leave the money in its place.
35:49
Speaker 2: All they had to do to prove that that wasn't
35:52
Speaker 2: true was get these phone records.
35:54
Speaker 1: And then what case with this many coerced and or
35:58
Speaker 1: incentivized witnesses and a total lack of any concrete evidence
36:03
Speaker 1: would be complete without a jailhouse snitch. So in walks Johnavito,
36:08
Speaker 1: who did time at Rikers while you were there. He
36:10
Speaker 1: had a burglary charge and was eventually sentenced to a
36:12
Speaker 1: drug rehab program with the burglary sentence suspended pending his
36:15
Speaker 1: completion of the program, and I believe a probation period.
36:18
Speaker 1: But he fell off the wagon, and now all of
36:21
Speaker 1: a sudden he had a story to tell, and in
36:23
Speaker 1: swoop the Brooklyn DIA's office to snatch up another willing
36:26
Speaker 1: participant in John's railroading. So you and Antonio Russo went
36:30
Speaker 1: to trial together. So you're in the same courtroom, but
36:33
Speaker 1: you had two separate juries, which I'm led to understand
36:37
Speaker 1: is meant to streamline the process, save money, and then
36:41
Speaker 1: say if there's a jury misconduct issue, then they don't
36:44
Speaker 1: have to toss both convictions. So same trial, separate juries,
36:50
Speaker 1: right red jury and green jury.
36:52
Speaker 2: The green jury.
36:52
Speaker 1: So we've gone over three of the four substantive witnesses,
36:55
Speaker 1: Albert Cleary, Lauren Calciano, and Anthony Bajari. Lauren and Anthony
37:00
Speaker 1: I'm both recanted under oath, as has the jail house
37:02
Speaker 1: snitch John DeVito, whose testimony were about to cover Mark
37:06
Speaker 1: tell us about the state's case.
37:07
Speaker 3: The jury's being told essentially that Juka's childhood friend, Albert
37:12
Speaker 3: Cleary's going to come in and tell you that John,
37:16
Speaker 3: as a member of this gang ghetto mafia, told Albert
37:20
Speaker 3: that they wanted to increase their street credibility, so they
37:23
Speaker 3: needed to kill someone. That Mark Fisher sat on a
37:26
Speaker 3: table in his family room. This was such an act
37:30
Speaker 3: of disrespect that it made jukea rage to the point
37:34
Speaker 3: where he told Antonio Russo, take my gun and you
37:38
Speaker 3: go out and you quote unquote show Fisher what's up,
37:42
Speaker 3: which apparently is their way of saying shoot him.
37:45
Speaker 2: I remember that he tried to say that I told
37:50
Speaker 2: Russo to wait in the bushes and ambush him on
37:52
Speaker 2: Turner Plate, which is a block away from my house. Meanwhile,
37:56
Speaker 2: it was obviously based on nine one one calls where
38:00
Speaker 2: the body was found and the blood. There was no
38:02
Speaker 2: blood trail from Turner all the way to his house,
38:05
Speaker 2: so it was just an obvious lie. Also, and he
38:08
Speaker 2: pushed a one PM phone call up to eleven, which.
38:11
Speaker 1: Angel d Pietro testified falsely to as well. So you
38:16
Speaker 1: had called Albert just before one pm that day. Phone
38:18
Speaker 1: wreckers corroborated that, but both of them testified to an
38:21
Speaker 1: eleven AM call, So it might be plausible that you
38:25
Speaker 1: were the alleged source of all of their shady information
38:28
Speaker 1: during the immediate aftermath. Now there's something else about Albert's
38:31
Speaker 1: time on the stand. Nicolazzi brought up the polygraph he
38:35
Speaker 1: had taken to prove he didn't know anything about the crime,
38:38
Speaker 1: But in a very misleading context, she.
38:41
Speaker 2: Really is slick. Nicolosi when he was on the stands
38:45
Speaker 2: after he says the exact opposite of that polygraph, He
38:47
Speaker 2: says he does know who did this, and he does
38:49
Speaker 2: know everything about it. She asks him, didn't you take
38:53
Speaker 2: a polygraph? And he said yes, and then of course,
38:56
Speaker 2: knowing polygraphs aren't admissible in course, so she knew Gregory
39:00
Speaker 2: would object and it was a firm soul.
39:04
Speaker 1: That's it.
39:04
Speaker 2: The jury thought that he took and past that polygraph
39:09
Speaker 2: about it what he was saying now, It was never
39:11
Speaker 2: cleared up that he took a polygraph to the exact
39:14
Speaker 2: opposite of what.
39:15
Speaker 1: He was saying now, that is really devious. Now they
39:18
Speaker 1: called your ex girlfriend Lauren Colciana to the stand, whose
39:21
Speaker 1: testimony just can't be squared with Albert Cleary's version of
39:25
Speaker 1: the same exact conversation between the three of you on
39:28
Speaker 1: October twelve.
39:29
Speaker 3: Both stories could not be true. There could not have
39:32
Speaker 3: been the same meeting that Albert and Lauren are talking about.
39:35
Speaker 3: And Albert's talking about John complaining about disrespect and ordering
39:40
Speaker 3: Russo to commit a murder, when Lauren is saying, no,
39:43
Speaker 3: what happened as Russo said, I just want to rob
39:45
Speaker 3: the guy? Can I borrow your gun? If that wasn't
39:48
Speaker 3: a red flag, I don't know what is.
39:50
Speaker 1: And John, this was the first time that you were
39:53
Speaker 1: hearing the one time love of your life, falsely implicating
39:56
Speaker 1: you in a.
39:57
Speaker 2: Murder that was crushed. She stared at me the whole
40:01
Speaker 2: time she was up there, and it wasn't like a
40:03
Speaker 2: malicious like. She wasn't staring me down. She was looking
40:06
Speaker 2: at me like as if she was saying I'm sorry
40:09
Speaker 2: with her eyes. I had a conversation with my stepsister
40:11
Speaker 2: about that. She was like, she's being forced to do
40:14
Speaker 2: this as obvious to me. She's telling you, I'm sorry.
40:17
Speaker 1: So at this point the jury had heard from Bihari,
40:20
Speaker 1: Angel DiPietro, as well as from Lauren and Albert, and
40:22
Speaker 1: to anyone paying attention, it would have to be clear
40:26
Speaker 1: that one or both of these versions of events simply
40:30
Speaker 1: were not true.
40:31
Speaker 3: So at the last minute they pull a Hail Mary.
40:34
Speaker 3: This guy John Avito, who is a jailhouse snitch, and
40:37
Speaker 3: he claims that I was in jail with John, and
40:40
Speaker 3: I was having visitation in Riker's Island the same time
40:44
Speaker 3: John was, and he was with his father and two women,
40:48
Speaker 3: and Avito says I overheard John in response to the
40:52
Speaker 3: question from his father, why did you have a gun
40:55
Speaker 3: with you? John said, I don't know, I just did,
40:57
Speaker 3: and in essence acknowledge have a gun. What the jury
41:02
Speaker 3: never learns is that John Juca's father prior to this
41:07
Speaker 3: jailhouse visitation, which did happen, by the way, and it's
41:11
Speaker 3: not surprising that the snitch would use a kernel of
41:14
Speaker 3: truth that could be documented by looking at jail records.
41:17
Speaker 3: But what the jury didn't know, and presumably the DA
41:21
Speaker 3: didn't know, was that John's father had a series of
41:25
Speaker 3: debilitating strokes and as a result, he couldn't speak.
41:29
Speaker 2: He couldn't say what Alvito said that he said, He
41:33
Speaker 2: could only say one or maybe sometimes he would string
41:36
Speaker 2: two words together at the time.
41:38
Speaker 1: Had a Vito even sat close enough to hear your conversation?
41:41
Speaker 2: He sat somewhere near us, but he didn't obviously sit
41:45
Speaker 2: close enough to actually hear my father, because if he did,
41:49
Speaker 2: he would have made up a better lie.
41:50
Speaker 3: The jury also didn't know that the family relatives, the
41:54
Speaker 3: women who were present, would have strenuously denied that occurred.
41:58
Speaker 3: They have sworn under oath and to Davis if this
42:01
Speaker 3: never happened.
42:01
Speaker 1: And there was even more to this false testimony where
42:04
Speaker 1: a Vito claimed to hear incriminating statements directly from John,
42:07
Speaker 1: this time completely changing the location of the crime.
42:10
Speaker 3: The murder unquestionably is on Argyle Road. The shots were
42:15
Speaker 3: heard by the residents, but a Vito says, no, what
42:18
Speaker 3: happened is John told me that he went to the
42:20
Speaker 3: ATM with Mark Fisher, which, as you also said earlier,
42:23
Speaker 3: was an hour before the murder. But this is what
42:25
Speaker 3: snitches do. They read papers, they see the news, and
42:28
Speaker 3: they concoct He says when Mark Fisher withdrew money at
42:32
Speaker 3: the ATM that John told me he pulled out a
42:35
Speaker 3: gun pistol with Mark Fisher beat him up and then
42:38
Speaker 3: Russo took the gun and shot him. So the story
42:42
Speaker 3: changes dramatically. On top of the fact that this is
42:45
Speaker 3: coming from a jailhouse snitch who again was trying to
42:47
Speaker 3: avoid a prison sentence, and they're moving the murder location.
42:52
Speaker 3: This is beyond absurd.
42:55
Speaker 1: So what did Sam Gregory do about a Vito?
42:58
Speaker 3: Unfortunately he didn't even know about John Avito until right
43:04
Speaker 3: before a trial. There's no offer of proof, meaning here's
43:06
Speaker 3: what he's going to say. There's no notice to the
43:09
Speaker 3: defense that, oh, by the way, we're going to argue
43:12
Speaker 3: through this witness that Juca was physically there and did it.
43:14
Speaker 3: So he wasn't prepared to try a case on a
43:17
Speaker 3: theory other than the nonsense inconsistencies that was going to
43:21
Speaker 3: come out of Lauren and Albert. If the defense had
43:24
Speaker 3: been aware of this from the beginning, they could have
43:26
Speaker 3: tactically prepared differently.
43:28
Speaker 1: He could have prepared to have John's father's doctor testify
43:31
Speaker 1: to his father's limitations, or the two women could have
43:34
Speaker 1: testified to the actual substance of the conversation.
43:37
Speaker 3: Instead, they're caught with their pants down now. The defense
43:40
Speaker 3: did argue in their summation that the mere fact that
43:43
Speaker 3: they called the Vito as a witness was kind of
43:45
Speaker 3: a hail mary, because Lauren and Albert had imploded telling
43:50
Speaker 3: inconsistent stories. That was a credible argument that led the
43:54
Speaker 3: prosecutor to respond that John Avito was just for once
43:58
Speaker 3: in his life, being a good guy, motivated to do
44:01
Speaker 3: the right thing, and that's the only reason he's cooperating,
44:04
Speaker 3: and that was just a bald face lie.
44:08
Speaker 1: So they squashed his problems in exchange for testimony for.
44:12
Speaker 3: The time being, they kept him out of jail despite
44:15
Speaker 3: repeated violations in a mandatory prison sentence, and then once
44:19
Speaker 3: he was no longer needed a year later, when he
44:21
Speaker 3: violated the program again, they threw him out with the
44:24
Speaker 3: trash and into prison he went when he no longer
44:27
Speaker 3: had any value to them.
44:29
Speaker 1: So this exchange of leniency for testimony represents just one
44:33
Speaker 1: Brady violation. But there's another major one in which Russo
44:36
Speaker 1: admitted to a fellow inmate named James Ingram to acting alone.
44:39
Speaker 1: And we'll get into that Ingram evidence and more detail later,
44:42
Speaker 1: but back to trial. So now they go from two
44:44
Speaker 1: conflicting versions of this crime to three convicting versions of
44:48
Speaker 1: this crime.
44:48
Speaker 3: Not only are they different, they're internally incompatible. You can't
44:53
Speaker 3: square any one of the stories with the other. Had
44:56
Speaker 3: he gave Russo a gun for a robbery, or he
44:59
Speaker 3: ordered the murder for street credibility, or he told him
45:03
Speaker 3: to show him what's up because he disrespected him by
45:05
Speaker 3: sitting on the table, or he was there himself at
45:08
Speaker 3: the ATM. And the concern here is you throw enough mud,
45:13
Speaker 3: however inconsistent. It is that the risk and concern is
45:16
Speaker 3: that any juror says, if all of these people are
45:19
Speaker 3: saying he did something, I may not know what the
45:21
Speaker 3: hell he did, but he's sure as hell must have
45:23
Speaker 3: done it.
45:24
Speaker 1: Aren't they not supposed to it. Not allowed to offer
45:27
Speaker 1: conflicting theories of the crime.
45:29
Speaker 2: They're really supposed to take one theory and prove it
45:32
Speaker 2: beyond a reasonable doubt. Not give the jurors Chinese suit
45:36
Speaker 2: menu of different theories, because then you might have some
45:39
Speaker 2: jurors that believe this and some jurors that believe that.
45:42
Speaker 2: It's called the unanimity issue, where they have to be
45:45
Speaker 2: unanimous about something.
45:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, to offer a menu of theories and basically say
45:51
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter, you know he did it, which is
45:54
Speaker 3: essentially what the summation amounted to. It's not consistent with
45:58
Speaker 3: due process, and it leadsleads to a jury possibly being
46:02
Speaker 3: six jurors say what if.
46:04
Speaker 1: He ordered a murder?
46:05
Speaker 3: Four jurors saying what if he gave him a gun
46:07
Speaker 3: for a robbery? And what if two jurors say, maybe
46:11
Speaker 3: he was physically there, Okay, but we all agree he
46:14
Speaker 3: did it. Okay, guilty, that's absurd, but that's what happened.
46:18
Speaker 2: It was the worst day of my life. I was
46:22
Speaker 2: sentenced to twenty five to life on October nineteenth, two
46:26
Speaker 2: thousand and five. Every idea you could form in your
46:29
Speaker 2: mind full short of the reality of how bad that is.
46:35
Speaker 2: It's like bleak, hopeless, stabilitating misery. It's crippling, the depression
46:41
Speaker 2: and the space go toward just thinking about how I
46:43
Speaker 2: wasn't even alive for twenty five years at that point
46:46
Speaker 2: when I got sent into side, I don't I didn't
46:48
Speaker 2: even know what twenty five years that was.
46:54
Speaker 1: In Part one of Jean Dreufa's story, you heard about
46:57
Speaker 1: all of the different characters and circumstances that let his
47:00
Speaker 1: arrest and conviction. Now hear about his epic battle through
47:04
Speaker 1: post conviction in Part two, available now. Thank you for
47:14
Speaker 1: listening to Wrongful Conviction Special thanks to our amazing production
47:18
Speaker 1: team Connor hall, Any Chelsea, Jeff Clyburn, and Kevin Wartis,
47:21
Speaker 1: with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
47:25
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
47:28
Speaker 1: Make sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
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Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
47:35
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
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Speaker 1: all three platforms, you can also follow on TikTok and
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Speaker 1: Instagram at its Jason Flamm. That's It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful
47:47
Speaker 1: Conviction is a production of Lava for Good podcasts in
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Speaker 1: association with signal Company Number one