Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #591 Jason Flom with Andrew Krivak

Transcript

#591 Jason Flom with Andrew Krivak · Wrongful Conviction

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The episode you're about to hear was produced in the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: first year of this podcast back in 2017. It was
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: episode number 33. At the time, this was an episode
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: of Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars because Andrew Krivak was still
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: sitting in a maximum security prison cell in New York
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: State Prison. But two years after this interview, Andy's conviction
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: was finally vacated. And in October of 2020, he was
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: finally released on bail. It was an honor for me
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: to be there with his team to walk him out
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: of jail. The Deskovic Foundation helped bring on additional legal counsel,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the legendary Oscar Michelin and Karen Newworth, to represent Andy
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: at his 2023 retrial. The jury returned a verdict of
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: not guilty, and Andy was finally exonerated after 24 long,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: miserable years in prison. In 2024, Putnam County paid him
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: a $ 20 million settlement. To hear more about Andy's incredible case,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: tune in to Season 5 of Bone Valley, titled The
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Devil's Quarry. Paul Solitaroff tells the story of Andy's co-defendant,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Anthony DePippo, and the crime that landed both Andy and
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Anthony wrongfully in prison. A second installment of The Devil's
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Quarry is coming soon. It investigates another case in the
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: same town with eerie links to Andy Krivak's story. Look
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: out for the first episode on September 30th. Trust me,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: you don't want to miss it. And now Here is
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Andy's story.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: I think we have the best legal system. It's just
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: the people that implement it.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: They get lost along the way and forget what their
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: job really is.
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: He just kept on trying to remind me that who
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: was in authority, who was in control, and how easy
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: it was for my body to be found in any
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: alley of New York City.
• 1:54
  Speaker 5: It's a tough prison when you have the guards going
• 1:56
  Speaker 5: against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: They do that.
• 2:01
  Speaker 6: They'll give a guy a life sentence and go home
• 2:04
  Speaker 6: and eat spaghetti like it was nothing.
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: And anybody that would say, well, why would you confess
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: to something that you didn't do? My question to them
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: would be, why wouldn't you confess when somebody's threatening to
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: kill your life?
• 2:15
  Speaker 6: The judge, he said, how you feel?
• 2:19
  Speaker 7: I said, I'm okay.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: He said, well, today is your lucky day. You're going home.
• 2:25
  Speaker 7: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. We have a very unique
• 2:30
  Speaker 7: case and a very special episode of Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars.
• 2:35
  Speaker 7: Today is going to be the noisiest episode. I just
• 2:37
  Speaker 7: want to warn you up front because we're inside Wendy
• 2:40
  Speaker 7: Maximum Security Prison in Buffalo, New York. So apologies in advance,
• 2:44
  Speaker 7: but I promise you, you're going to hear an extraordinary
• 2:47
  Speaker 7: interview today. And so hang in there and hear the
• 2:50
  Speaker 7: story of Andrew Krivak. You've probably heard Andrew's co-defendant, Anthony DePippo,
• 2:56
  Speaker 7: his episode of Wrongful Conviction aired recently. And so this
• 2:59
  Speaker 7: is a case where we have Anthony on the show
• 3:04
  Speaker 7: having been exonerated, and yet we're still back here behind
• 3:07
  Speaker 7: bars interviewing his co-defendant, which makes no fucking sense. But
• 3:12
  Speaker 7: here we are. If you hear the cell door slamming,
• 3:14
  Speaker 7: you'll know it's as real as it can be.
• 3:17
  Speaker 8: It was a horrific case, the rape and strangulation in
• 3:20
  Speaker 8: 1994 of angelically beautiful 12-year-old Josette Wright.
• 3:24
  Speaker 5: And now to a stunning development in a sensational case
• 3:26
  Speaker 5: of a convicted child killer rapist in Putnam County.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: What's wrong with this case?
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: This case was created out of whole cloth by the
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: deputy sheriff in charge of this case.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Who himself has been indicted by this very county for crimes.
• 3:39
  Speaker 8: DePippo still maintains his innocence.
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: The jury in Putnam County found him not guilty. The
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: main witness against him was a former girlfriend who said
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: she witnessed the attack, but the jury didn't buy it.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: What we learned at this trial is that the eyewitness
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: wasn't credible.
• 3:52
  Speaker 5: The defense was allowed to suggest Howard Gombert is the
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: real killer, seen with the victim shortly before her disappearance
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: and currently in a Connecticut prison on sex assault charges.
• 4:01
  Speaker 8: Judge Robert Neary ordered DePippo released on a million dollars bail.
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: The Putnam County District Attorney, though, isn't backing down. He
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: insists not guilty is not the same as innocent.
• 4:11
  Speaker 7: Andrew, welcome to the show.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 4:14
  Speaker 7: In this case, I can say I'm sorry you're here.
• 4:16
  Speaker 7: Usually I'm happy to have our guests on the show,
• 4:18
  Speaker 7: but I'm sorry to be taping it in this facility.
• 4:20
  Speaker 7: I'm looking forward to seeing you on the outside sometime soon.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
• 4:25
  Speaker 7: We also have with us another very special guest, someone
• 4:29
  Speaker 7: who I consider to be a sort of royalty. A
• 4:31
  Speaker 7: lot of people consider her to be royalty in the
• 4:33
  Speaker 7: innocence community. The one and only Adele Bernhardt is here.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Adele, welcome.
• 4:38
  Speaker 6: Thank you very much. I'm very glad to be here.
• 4:40
  Speaker 6: I'm really glad you're focusing on Andy's case. I think
• 4:43
  Speaker 6: it's important and I'm glad.
• 4:45
  Speaker 7: So Adele has been representing Andy for over 10 years now.
• 4:48
  Speaker 6: Well, close to 10, I guess.
• 4:50
  Speaker 7: Unfortunately, it's easy to get wrongfully convicted and undoing it.
• 4:54
  Speaker 7: We know it takes thousands of hours of legal work.
• 4:56
  Speaker 7: In this case, it's no different. So, Andy, going back
• 5:00
  Speaker 7: to the beginning, where were you from? Where were you
• 5:03
  Speaker 7: born originally?
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: I was originally born in Putnam County, New York, Putnam
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: County Hospital. Raised there until probably like 1990. Then my
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: family moved to Stormville, New York, to take care of
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: my grandmother, me and my father, my grandmother and my brother,
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: and at the time, my stepmother.
• 5:19
  Speaker 7: And your childhood, was it a happy childhood? How were things?
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, we had our normal problems like
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: anything else. I can't say that, you know, I was
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: subjected to anything unusual. It was normal for the most part.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: I had my, you know, little issues growing up, primarily
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: because I didn't know my real mother. So, you know,
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: I was emotional a lot on that end of things.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: But it was pretty normal.
• 5:42
  Speaker 7: And, I mean, upstate New York, pretty nice place to
• 5:45
  Speaker 7: grow up. It's beautiful around here. Did you play sports?
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I grew up. Actually, I started fifth grade football.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: From that point on, I played baseball.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Basketball.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: I did that probably up until junior high with the
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: hopes that I could go into high school playing sports
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: and see how far I can go.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, that never panned out.
• 6:04
  Speaker 7: So you were a teenager growing up doing teenager type stuff, right?
• 6:09
  Speaker 7: Certainly not getting in trouble, right? That's a double negative.
• 6:13
  Speaker 7: But yeah, I mean, like, you know.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Nothing major. I mean, you know, juvenile things.
• 6:17
  Speaker 7: But you were not a violent guy.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: No.
• 6:19
  Speaker 7: No. So you're going along trying to find your way,
• 6:22
  Speaker 7: like a lot of teenagers, and then one day something
• 6:26
  Speaker 7: absolutely horrifying happens. A young girl, 12-year-old girl named Josette Wright,
• 6:32
  Speaker 7: was raped and brutally murdered. But they didn't know that
• 6:36
  Speaker 7: at the time. All they knew was that she had disappeared. Yes.
• 6:39
  Speaker 7: Did you know her?
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: I knew her from being around the area. seeing her,
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: knowing her older sisters. Carmel's a small community, so everybody interacted.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: You know, when a fair comes around, everybody goes to
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: the fair, they got a plaza, so they have all
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: these regular areas that you would run into people. So, yeah,
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: for that part of in passing or being around somewhere
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: or being in a fair, yeah, I knew her to that.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Extent, yes.
• 7:02
  Speaker 7: And, Adele, this is a very strange aspect of this
• 7:05
  Speaker 7: case because here you have this small community, sounds sort
• 7:08
  Speaker 7: of idyllic in a lot of ways, and... This lovely
• 7:13
  Speaker 7: young girl disappears one day.
• 7:14
  Speaker 6: All right.
• 7:15
  Speaker 7: Now, you know, we all see on TV when these
• 7:17
  Speaker 7: things happen, the search parties are formed. There's, you know,
• 7:20
  Speaker 7: the whole town comes out, almost pandemonium, but controlled pandemonium
• 7:24
  Speaker 7: where people are just searching everywhere to find this little girl.
• 7:26
  Speaker 7: But that's not what happened, right? The authorities didn't at
• 7:29
  Speaker 7: first believe that she even was really missing. They thought
• 7:32
  Speaker 7: she ran away.
• 7:33
  Speaker 6: Well, from what I could tell from the records they've
• 7:35
  Speaker 6: turned over to us, the police didn't seem to take
• 7:38
  Speaker 6: her disappearance terribly seriously at all. So they put up
• 7:42
  Speaker 6: some wanted posters, but that's about it. So as far
• 7:45
  Speaker 6: as I can see from all of the records that
• 7:49
  Speaker 6: I've gathered, unless I'm missing something, they figured she'd come back.
• 7:53
  Speaker 6: They figured she was a runaway. They didn't really take
• 7:56
  Speaker 6: it very seriously. They logged a couple of calls. People
• 7:59
  Speaker 6: reported seeing her later on in the malls. But I
• 8:03
  Speaker 6: guess they thought, well, easy come, easy go. She'll be back.
• 8:06
  Speaker 7: I mean, as a parent, It's just outrageous.
• 8:10
  Speaker 6: I think it's very shocking.
• 8:11
  Speaker 7: And it's particularly outrageous because of her age. I mean,
• 8:14
  Speaker 7: it's not like she was 17 where you could say, well,
• 8:17
  Speaker 7: you know, sometimes 17-year-olds run away.
• 8:19
  Speaker 6: She was in school every day. She wasn't getting into
• 8:22
  Speaker 6: trouble with older people from anyplace else. So the fact
• 8:25
  Speaker 6: that she all of a sudden wasn't there was, I think,
• 8:29
  Speaker 6: pretty serious. Yes.
• 8:31
  Speaker 7: She was 12. I mean, Jesus, it's so young. The
• 8:34
  Speaker 7: horror of that is unimaginable. But so... Months and months
• 8:39
  Speaker 7: go by.
• 8:40
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 8:40
  Speaker 7: You've obviously heard about the case. Everybody's probably heard about
• 8:43
  Speaker 7: the case.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 8:44
  Speaker 7: And then, I think it was 13 months later, her
• 8:47
  Speaker 7: body was found in the woods. And now everything changes.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 8:52
  Speaker 6: All of a sudden, once they found the bones and
• 8:55
  Speaker 6: they were able to identify the dental records as belonging
• 9:00
  Speaker 6: to her, suddenly the police realized that they should have
• 9:03
  Speaker 6: been paying more attention. This is my interpretation of the records.
• 9:07
  Speaker 6: It looked like they realized, hey, we should have been
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: taking this more seriously all the way along. Now we
• 9:13
  Speaker 6: know this is a homicide. It's not just a runaway.
• 9:16
  Speaker 6: She's not coming back. And we didn't follow up the
• 9:19
  Speaker 6: leads that might have let us discover what happened much,
• 9:24
  Speaker 6: much earlier when the trail wasn't so cold.
• 9:27
  Speaker 7: So, Andrew, now we have a situation where not only
• 9:31
  Speaker 7: is there the very real problem of the fact that
• 9:35
  Speaker 7: there's a brutal child killer in the midst of this town, right,
• 9:40
  Speaker 7: and everything that that would mean to the authorities, many
• 9:43
  Speaker 7: of whom have kids of their own or relatives or nieces,
• 9:45
  Speaker 7: whatever it might be. So on a personal level, all
• 9:48
  Speaker 7: of a sudden there's a real sense of urgency, but
• 9:50
  Speaker 7: also there's got to be a lot of pressure from
• 9:53
  Speaker 7: the community when something like this happens.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 9:55
  Speaker 7: So they've now got, and we see this over and
• 9:58
  Speaker 7: over again, they've got a real... scramble and they got
• 10:01
  Speaker 7: to find somebody because otherwise it's going to be difficult.
• 10:05
  Speaker 6: Obvious that they didn't do their job.
• 10:07
  Speaker 7: And it's going to be a lot more pressure brought
• 10:09
  Speaker 7: to bear on them. There could be people losing their jobs.
• 10:11
  Speaker 7: Who knows what could happen? People getting voted out. They
• 10:14
  Speaker 7: got to find this guy or people who did this, right?
• 10:17
  Speaker 7: So Things start to go downhill quick from this point.
• 10:20
  Speaker 7: And ultimately, you end up being arrested and charged with
• 10:25
  Speaker 7: this crime that you must have been like, are you kidding?
• 10:30
  Speaker 7: I mean, were you like, are you kidding?
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: I was in shock.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, the actual process was like 50
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: paces behind my brain, like trying to catch up.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Like, wait a minute.
• 10:41
  Speaker 6: You mean your brain was 50 paces behind what was happening?
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, my conscious, you know, it's like trying to wait.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: Am I really sitting here? You know, as a juvenile,
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: I've been in and out of little situations. So, but
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: to being told that I raped and murdered somebody at 17, like,
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: are you serious?
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Right. You know what I'm saying?
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Like, I mean, just anybody who knows me would like,
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: like they don't correlate the two. And, you know, for
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: me to try to process that I'm being accused of
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: it and sitting in there and having, you know, these
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: people yell at me and say, there's evidence, there's witnesses,
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: there's people. And I'm, Yelling back, you're lying, you're crazy,
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: you're making it up. I don't really think it still
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: has hit me because I refuse to let it. It's
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: like I'm in this altered state of just trying to
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: figure this out. Like, wait a minute, you know, it's
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: got to be a bad dream. I'm waking up sometime.
• 11:30
  Speaker 7: How did they land on you and Anthony? I mean,
• 11:33
  Speaker 7: I know the story, but I want to hear it
• 11:35
  Speaker 7: from your perspective because it's so bizarre. There was no
• 11:39
  Speaker 7: physical evidence connecting you. Do you understand how that happened?
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: No, and I think about it every day. You know,
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: I have since this has happened. My only consensus of
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: it is maybe prior run-ins being an easy target.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: Like I said, you know, you try to make sense
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: of something that doesn't make sense and you drive yourself crazy.
• 11:58
  Speaker 6: For one thing, what happened is that Denise Rose got
• 12:01
  Speaker 6: herself arrested.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: Well, eventually, I mean, yeah, you know, later on down
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: the line through their talking to people, whatever the case
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: may be, different names came up. I think at least personally,
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: that it still extends farther than just people mentioning names
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: because you would think that the professionals that are actively
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: pursuing leads and looking for the culprits or the culprit
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: that committed this crime would be able to hang themselves
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: onto something tangible as opposed to, oh, well, yeah, he
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: knew her or she knew him or, you know what
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: I'm saying? So I think it's a little bit more
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: than that. To what extent?
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: It's obvious that there's more to it. than just singling
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: us out because a name was mentioned.
• 12:42
  Speaker 7: Do you want to jump in here, Adele?
• 12:45
  Speaker 6: Sure, I mean... When Denise Rose got arrested, they had
• 12:50
  Speaker 6: an idea of who the likely suspects were in the town.
• 12:55
  Speaker 6: And I think that Anthony, in particular, was a likely
• 12:58
  Speaker 6: suspect just because he was a big guy, they knew him,
• 13:02
  Speaker 6: he'd gotten in trouble for various juvenile kinds of things.
• 13:07
  Speaker 6: And so when Denise gets arrested and she's in trouble
• 13:10
  Speaker 6: and they know that she had been arrested, his girlfriend
• 13:15
  Speaker 6: at around the time that they now decided that this
• 13:18
  Speaker 6: little girl was murdered, they immediately started putting the pressure
• 13:22
  Speaker 6: on her. Did you know him? You knew him then.
• 13:24
  Speaker 6: How did you know him? Weren't you with him? Weren't
• 13:27
  Speaker 6: you with him that night? Didn't you see what happened?
• 13:30
  Speaker 6: And they talked to her time and time again. They
• 13:34
  Speaker 6: talked to her at least three different times while she
• 13:37
  Speaker 6: was in jail, after she'd gotten arrested, while she was
• 13:41
  Speaker 6: worried about about going to jail herself. And so little
• 13:45
  Speaker 6: bit by little bit by little bit, they got her
• 13:48
  Speaker 6: to start thinking that maybe there would be something in
• 13:51
  Speaker 6: it for her to put these pieces together for them
• 13:55
  Speaker 6: when she could perfectly well see where they wanted her
• 13:58
  Speaker 6: to go, which was to give them something about this
• 14:02
  Speaker 6: murder that involved Anthony. And of course, Anthony's friend, who
• 14:06
  Speaker 6: he was with a lot of the time, is auntie.
• 14:09
  Speaker 7: So it's a little bit of a house of cards.
• 14:12
  Speaker 7: And Denise would not seem to have been the most
• 14:15
  Speaker 7: credible witness since by her own admission she smoked crack
• 14:18
  Speaker 7: thousands of times.
• 14:19
  Speaker 6: Yeah, but I don't know that they knew that then.
• 14:22
  Speaker 6: That came out in this third trial where there was
• 14:25
  Speaker 6: some really very pointed cross-examination and a lot of discovery
• 14:30
  Speaker 6: about who she was and what she had done. I
• 14:33
  Speaker 6: don't know how much the police knew or even thought
• 14:36
  Speaker 6: about it at the time. I just know that they
• 14:38
  Speaker 6: realized that maybe this is a way into this case, right?
• 14:42
  Speaker 6: Maybe we can put pressure on this gal and then
• 14:45
  Speaker 6: the whole thing will fall into place.
• 14:47
  Speaker 7: Why they would have assumed that she would know who
• 14:49
  Speaker 7: the killer was, that's for anybody to speculate. Right.
• 14:52
  Speaker 6: Only because they already had in their mind this idea.
• 14:56
  Speaker 6: I mean, if she had been somebody else's boyfriend during
• 14:59
  Speaker 6: that time. They might have picked on somebody else. But
• 15:01
  Speaker 6: I think it was a way like, okay, we've got
• 15:03
  Speaker 6: pressure on you. You know the other kids. You know
• 15:06
  Speaker 6: all the kids in this community. Okay, the gal who
• 15:09
  Speaker 6: disappeared was a kid. Maybe you know something about it.
• 15:12
  Speaker 6: We're going to go with this. Right.
• 15:14
  Speaker 7: And she ultimately came up with a very farcical story,
• 15:18
  Speaker 7: which has been disproven in every imaginable way. I mean,
• 15:21
  Speaker 7: it never made sense in the first place, but now
• 15:22
  Speaker 7: it's actually been disproven. Adele, what was this story that
• 15:26
  Speaker 7: she She told a.
• 15:28
  Speaker 6: Completely, as far as I'm concerned, incredible story. And so
• 15:31
  Speaker 6: I think that the police had in their minds, because
• 15:35
  Speaker 6: I really think this story came from the investigating officers.
• 15:38
  Speaker 6: I think they came up with this idea of how
• 15:41
  Speaker 6: they thought that the crime must have happened. And they
• 15:44
  Speaker 6: pushed their hypothesis onto everybody, eventually convincing juries that this
• 15:50
  Speaker 6: is indeed what happened. And it starts from where they
• 15:53
  Speaker 6: found the body because they found these bones off of
• 15:57
  Speaker 6: a dirt road, which was a road that all the
• 16:01
  Speaker 6: kids in the community used to go to to smoke pot.
• 16:04
  Speaker 6: So they knew that people drove down there. and they
• 16:07
  Speaker 6: knew that people smoked pot. So from there, they kind
• 16:10
  Speaker 6: of worked backwards and said, oh, what must have happened
• 16:13
  Speaker 6: is that she must have gone with these older kids,
• 16:16
  Speaker 6: and they were smoking pot, and then they killed her
• 16:19
  Speaker 6: and threw her body into the woods. So they had
• 16:22
  Speaker 6: this idea in their minds, is my belief, before they
• 16:25
  Speaker 6: talked to her. And then they got her to say
• 16:28
  Speaker 6: exactly what they thought. Now, remember, they had been investigating
• 16:32
  Speaker 6: the case before. for months before they talked to her.
• 16:35
  Speaker 6: So they knew where the body was found. They knew
• 16:38
  Speaker 6: how far that road was from where the kids all lived.
• 16:42
  Speaker 6: They knew who drove down that road. And they said,
• 16:45
  Speaker 6: isn't this what happened, Denise? And she's like, yeah, that's right.
• 16:49
  Speaker 6: We're all in a van.
• 16:51
  Speaker 7: We're all high. And there were, according to her story,
• 16:56
  Speaker 7: her fairy tale, there were five people besides the victim
• 16:59
  Speaker 7: in the van.
• 17:00
  Speaker 6: Correct.
• 17:00
  Speaker 7: All of whom knew what was going on, including her.
• 17:02
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 17:03
  Speaker 7: But she made it sound like she wasn't involved. And
• 17:05
  Speaker 7: what I find absolutely preposterous about all of this is
• 17:09
  Speaker 7: that let us not forget that 13 months had gone by,
• 17:14
  Speaker 7: or more, by the time they interviewed her. And somehow, magically,
• 17:18
  Speaker 7: not she or any of the other people in the
• 17:20
  Speaker 7: van ever breathed a word of it to anyone.
• 17:24
  Speaker 6: Right, so she claims that she is present and sees
• 17:27
  Speaker 6: a rape and a murder of a 12-year-old girl that
• 17:31
  Speaker 6: happens in a car right in front of her eyes,
• 17:35
  Speaker 6: that she sees the whole thing, and she never mentions
• 17:39
  Speaker 6: it to a soul.
• 17:40
  Speaker 7: Not her mother, not a priest, not anybody. Not her
• 17:43
  Speaker 7: best friend. Not her best friend, right.
• 17:44
  Speaker 6: Teenage girls have best friends. They tell them everything.
• 17:48
  Speaker 7: Adele, I've never been a teenage girl, but are teenage
• 17:50
  Speaker 7: girls good at keeping secrets? No, they do not keep secrets.
• 17:52
  Speaker 7: They're not good at keeping secrets, okay. And we don't
• 17:53
  Speaker 7: want to sound sexist here. Teenage boys are no good
• 17:56
  Speaker 7: at it either. In this case... You'd have to look
• 17:59
  Speaker 7: at that and go, no, that's not possible. Somebody's lying
• 18:04
  Speaker 7: because that didn't happen the way she says or somebody
• 18:08
  Speaker 7: else would have known and it would have gotten out there.
• 18:10
  Speaker 7: So anyway, so she makes up this story about the
• 18:14
  Speaker 7: five of us in the van and the victim and
• 18:17
  Speaker 7: we're driving with her to go smoke pot, whatever the
• 18:19
  Speaker 7: hell she's saying.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Can I just interject for a minute?
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: Before it even got to that point, you got to
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: be aware that there were two previous statements. both of
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: which she doesn't know nothing, more along the lines of
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: the truth. For whatever reasons, it came to her disclosing, oh,
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: I witnessed this heinous crime, is obvious in the sense.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: Where the police.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: Detectives in the case, primarily Patrick Costaldo, had seen her
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: several times and either badgered her, threatened her, intimidated her,
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: bullied her, all of the above, but finally convinced her
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: that it was in her best interest, to lie and
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: to say she was a witness of this crime that
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: she never witnessed and that we never committed.
• 19:05
  Speaker 7: And it wasn't her best interest because who knows what
• 19:07
  Speaker 7: she would have been facing herself.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Well, absolutely.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: And again, too, she was actually older than both me
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: and Anthony. So she was already on probation. She's had
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: arrests for drugs. So it's easy to understand how that
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: type of threat of going to jail would influence her
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: to go along with the cop's version of events.
• 19:26
  Speaker 7: It's a very real threat. And also, we know, too,
• 19:29
  Speaker 7: that she was a teenager, even though she was older
• 19:31
  Speaker 7: than you. She was still a very young woman. And,
• 19:34
  Speaker 7: you know, she may not have been able to process
• 19:36
  Speaker 7: the real consequences of her actions. Your case has many
• 19:40
  Speaker 7: of the causes that we see most frequently in wrongful convictions.
• 19:44
  Speaker 7: Whatever the reverse of a jackpot is, you hit it
• 19:47
  Speaker 7: because you had incentivized witnesses. You had solicitors. sloppy or
• 19:50
  Speaker 7: incompetent police work, a known liar who was the guy
• 19:54
  Speaker 7: who administered the polygraph. We know that because he was
• 19:57
  Speaker 7: the same guy from Jeffrey Deskovic's case who lied in
• 20:00
  Speaker 7: his case. Then the false confession in your case, which
• 20:04
  Speaker 7: is really one of the main reasons why you're still
• 20:07
  Speaker 7: here where the state, county authorities have admitted that they
• 20:12
  Speaker 7: got it wrong, right? Anthony's home and he's been on
• 20:16
  Speaker 7: the show. He's live and in person and you're still here.
• 20:21
  Speaker 7: And I think it's fair to say that one of
• 20:23
  Speaker 7: the main reasons for that is the fact that they
• 20:24
  Speaker 7: did manage to elicit a false confession from you, which
• 20:26
  Speaker 7: again is confounding to so many people who look at
• 20:30
  Speaker 7: me with these faces and they go, I would never
• 20:33
  Speaker 7: confess to something I didn't do. And a jury can't
• 20:36
  Speaker 7: understand that either, right? How did they get you to
• 20:38
  Speaker 7: confess to a crime you didn't commit?
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: Well, it's not my words. I didn't confess to nothing.
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: It's a pre-written statement made by them that I wound
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: up breaking down and signing.
• 20:46
  Speaker 6: I think that's important.
• 20:48
  Speaker 7: It is.
• 20:48
  Speaker 6: It's not his words. It's their words on a piece
• 20:50
  Speaker 6: of paper.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: To understand my interrogation, I came in. I denied everything, obviously.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: And at the time, my mind was working like, oh,
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: lie detector test. They'll see I pass it. They'll understand
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: I made a mistake. And I'll be let go.
• 21:06
  Speaker 7: So you believe they were after justice. They wanted to
• 21:08
  Speaker 7: do the right thing.
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: Yes, my naivete at the time believed in the good
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: of the system and not to, at that particular moment,
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: think that they were devising this big operation to get
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: themselves to solve a case by any means necessary. Now
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: I know, obviously. But yeah, I was still believing that
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: even if they were under the impression I had any involvement,
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: by me giving a lie detector's test would clear that up.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: And then it would reevaluate and go somewhere else. That's
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: what my belief was. So I answered the questions. They
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: didn't like them, obviously. So I said, well, give me
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: lie detector tests. I have nothing to hide. I have
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: nothing to be untruthful about. And I took three consecutive
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: lie detector tests by Daniel Stevens.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: And then the interrogation continued. You lied. You failed.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: More aggressive. More intimidating. I keep denying it. There's yelling
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: back and forth. So it's like at that point in time,
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: I'm going through it. You know, they're not listening to me.
• 22:04
  Speaker 7: Did you have a lawyer or a parent or anybody
• 22:06
  Speaker 7: in there with you?
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: Well, ironically, from what I found out after the fact was,
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: all right, just to bring it back a little bit,
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: at the time of my arrest, it's crazy because I
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: was reporting to my probation office in Beacon, New York.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: It was a morning.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: I was at the time with a girl who was
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: my girlfriend. She was in the car. So we left
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: my house. I went and reported to probation. I was
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: going to meet my father to go to work because
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: at the time I worked for him. And, um, While
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: I was in my probationer's office, four detectives come in
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: the room, Castaldo and Quick from Putnam County and two
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: Beacon detectives. And they detained me, put me in the
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: car and bring me to Putnam County. Now my girlfriend
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: is still sitting in the car. Okay, so she calls
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: my family. My father finds out. Now apparently everybody goes
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: to the sheriff's department to find out what's going on,
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: why did it happen. And apparently while I was being interrogated,
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: the news was outside in the parking lot. My family
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: was out there, so I guess there was a whole
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: scrum going on out there while I'm in the back
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: room being worked over. One of the things I beat
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: myself up with is how I was allowed to just
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: give in. But again, a sense in my mind that
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: was working was like, you can't make an untruth truth.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: So regardless of what's written on paper, it's words on paper.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: It's not evidence. And I really felt that if it
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: had to come to litigation, meaning court, that the evidence
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: and the truth would come out and solidify my innocence. again,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: that's being young and naive into the system. And I
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: pretty much helped them convict me wrongfully for this crime.
• 23:39
  Speaker 7: But you were young and naive, and I don't think
• 23:41
  Speaker 7: you can really beat yourself up. The thing is, I
• 23:44
  Speaker 7: think for me anyway, having met and befriended and worked
• 23:49
  Speaker 7: for and with so many people who not only signed
• 23:52
  Speaker 7: a piece of paper like you did, we see all
• 23:55
  Speaker 7: different types of false confessions.
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: I think it's perfectly understandable and reasonable to think that
• 24:02
  Speaker 6: the truth is going to come out and that you
• 24:05
  Speaker 6: can't change it. And if you're innocent, that that will
• 24:08
  Speaker 6: eventually be the story that emerges, which is, I think
• 24:13
  Speaker 6: what he's saying is, I figured the truth would prevail.
• 24:16
  Speaker 6: I'm innocent. Everyone will eventually know that.
• 24:20
  Speaker 7: Yeah. And correct me if I'm wrong, Andrew, but when
• 24:24
  Speaker 7: you're in that room, and I'm just trying to put
• 24:27
  Speaker 7: myself in your shoes and it's giving me the chills,
• 24:29
  Speaker 7: but it became clear after many hours of interrogation that
• 24:34
  Speaker 7: these guys were not going to listen to you.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: No, absolutely not.
• 24:37
  Speaker 7: I mean, there was nothing you could, by now you'd
• 24:39
  Speaker 7: said everything you could say, and they keep telling you
• 24:41
  Speaker 7: you're lying, and they keep becoming more aggressive, right? So
• 24:45
  Speaker 7: at a certain point you go, well, this ain't working, right?
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: No.
• 24:48
  Speaker 7: This is not getting me anywhere. But somebody somewhere is
• 24:52
  Speaker 7: going to be on my side because it's called the
• 24:54
  Speaker 7: justice system. And I'm just a kid and I didn't
• 24:57
  Speaker 7: do anything. So I got to get out of this
• 25:00
  Speaker 7: room and into a different place where there's people with
• 25:04
  Speaker 7: robes on and things like that that are like, you know,
• 25:07
  Speaker 7: wise and that are not these sort of half crazed interrogators.
• 25:12
  Speaker 7: They're not letting up, and you ain't getting out of
• 25:14
  Speaker 7: that room. I mean, it's not like they said, well,
• 25:15
  Speaker 7: one more hour, we're going to let you go home, right?
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: No, no.
• 25:18
  Speaker 7: You're there indefinitely.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: They pretty much wanted to hear me admit that I
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: committed this crime, and I kept getting more aggressively.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: In my nature of telling them that I didn't commit it.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: And it was a volcano getting ready to erupt.
• 25:33
  Speaker 7: Were you worried that they were going to be physically
• 25:36
  Speaker 7: violent with you?
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: Daniel Stevens already had, upon my completing the polygraph test,
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: when he told me I failed, grabbed me by my throat,
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: punched me in my stomach, told me that I was
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: a piece of shit, I'm going to get what I
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: deserve and all this other stuff.
• 25:49
  Speaker 6: We know he's made other people falsely confess. That's what
• 25:52
  Speaker 6: you didn't know at the time.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: No, we didn't know at the time.
• 25:55
  Speaker 7: He's also been similarly violent in other cases and was
• 25:58
  Speaker 7: brought up on charges for at least one of those, right? Okay,
• 26:00
  Speaker 7: so now we're getting really to the crux of it.
• 26:02
  Speaker 7: So you now have a guy who is a very
• 26:05
  Speaker 7: real danger to you.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 26:06
  Speaker 7: I mean, he has now physically assaulted you. and you
• 26:11
  Speaker 7: have no way out of this room, nobody who's listening
• 26:14
  Speaker 7: to you, and you've now been beaten, and you don't
• 26:18
  Speaker 7: know what's coming next. So at a certain point, you say, okay, well,
• 26:22
  Speaker 7: here's this piece of paper. It's my way out, and
• 26:25
  Speaker 7: then we're going to get this sorted out later because
• 26:27
  Speaker 7: the truth is the truth. You didn't do it.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's always been my belief.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, even to this day, like I said, I mean,
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: I just find it completely preposterous that they could try
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: to stand behind that argument when all the physical, scientific,
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: and forensic evidence disproves what's.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: On that paper.
• 26:44
  Speaker 7: Oh, by the way, did you fail a polygraph test? No.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: We had our own polygraphist at the time who was
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: a retired polygraph expert for the feds, was on the
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: polygraph board of administrators, who came and reviewed my tests
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: and determined that the attempts were to make it fail
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: by disconnecting parts in the machine. And he said, despite
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: all of that, I was truthful in every answer.
• 27:07
  Speaker 7: Wow, they're disconnecting parts of the machine. I mean, on
• 27:10
  Speaker 7: top of everything else, it's just like.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Well, Daniel Stevens, I mean.
• 27:14
  Speaker 7: Where are we, in Russia?
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: This is what was exposed with Jeffrey Deskovich into his
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: procedure and his version of what he does and the
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: correct manner in which to perform a polygraph test. I mean,
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of dynamics in my case that don't
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: make sense. Like, how was that introduced as evidence when
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: it's not allowed? It was never a mechanism for them
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: to try to ascertain the truth.
• 27:33
  Speaker 6: That's correct.
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: It was a sole tactic of an interrogatory process to manipulate,
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: beat me down, to get me in a position to
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: give them what they wanted, which they eventually did.
• 27:42
  Speaker 7: Heads you lose, tails you lose. And now we know, too,
• 27:45
  Speaker 7: like on top of all those other causes, that the
• 27:47
  Speaker 7: three central police figures in this investigation have all been
• 27:53
  Speaker 7: either indicted or convicted of other crimes. I mean, the
• 27:56
  Speaker 7: system really failed you. so many ways and these are
• 28:01
  Speaker 7: ways that we as a society have to address because
• 28:04
  Speaker 7: if we don't it's going to happen to somebody else
• 28:07
  Speaker 7: and for those of you out there listening it could
• 28:08
  Speaker 7: be someone you love it could be you and there's
• 28:18
  Speaker 7: so much in this case there was a guy who
• 28:20
  Speaker 7: was initially suspected of being a killer right the rapist
• 28:24
  Speaker 7: and killer and somehow the tension was diverted From him.
• 28:30
  Speaker 7: And now that guy is in prison for child sex crimes. Yes. So,
• 28:37
  Speaker 7: I mean, coincidence? I mean, maybe, but the circumstantial evidence
• 28:41
  Speaker 7: is mounting and there's a very real chance that he
• 28:44
  Speaker 7: might hold the key. He may be the only guy
• 28:47
  Speaker 7: who knows who did this.
• 28:48
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 28:48
  Speaker 7: And there's also a statement that came out that he
• 28:51
  Speaker 7: apparently made in prison to another inmate where he claimed
• 28:57
  Speaker 7: that there's a couple of, I think he said a
• 28:59
  Speaker 7: couple other suckers were taking the fall for his crime
• 29:01
  Speaker 7: in this particular case. And that's got to just make
• 29:04
  Speaker 7: you insane to hear a guy like that, who is
• 29:07
  Speaker 7: really a scumbag. Yeah. I mean, he is.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Very, very much so.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: And, you know, just to point out, that's why I
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: say there's dynamics to the case that are so overwhelmingly obvious.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: It puzzles you to say, how do you ignore it?
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: Here it is as a person at that time that
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: was in his, I think, late 20s, who goes back
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: to the 80s of rapes and sodomies, who is known
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: through the Legal Aid Society and the police departments in Carmel.
• 29:32
  Speaker 7: He's a monster.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: So with all the initial investigations going on and all
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: the statements that were provided to the police, his name
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: is repeated and brought up time and time again. Two
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: of the witnesses from Anthony's recent trial were victims of halogama.
• 29:48
  Speaker 7: Let's go back to that for a second. Anthony DePippo,
• 29:52
  Speaker 7: who was convicted of the same crime that you were
• 29:53
  Speaker 7: convicted of, in separate trials for reasons we'll get into,
• 29:56
  Speaker 7: but he was convicted of the same crime. Co-defendants. And
• 29:58
  Speaker 7: I think people out there are probably saying, well, wait
• 29:59
  Speaker 7: a minute, if you're both convicted of the same crime
• 30:01
  Speaker 7: and he's out, what are you doing here? Why are
• 30:03
  Speaker 7: you here? And Anthony served 20 years and you're in
• 30:06
  Speaker 7: your 21st year now, right? And it's like, where and
• 30:10
  Speaker 7: when is some sanity going to enter the picture? That's
• 30:13
  Speaker 7: what we're here to try to get to the bottom
• 30:15
  Speaker 7: of it, to try to help bring attention to, because...
• 30:18
  Speaker 7: It's madness that he's out. Everyone's acknowledged now. It wasn't easy,
• 30:23
  Speaker 7: but now it's been proven and acknowledged that he's innocent.
• 30:27
  Speaker 7: And you are too, but they don't want to take
• 30:30
  Speaker 7: their foot off your neck just yet, right? They want
• 30:33
  Speaker 7: to still, like, drive this madness into a deeper hole.
• 30:37
  Speaker 7: And with you as just sort of sitting here like
• 30:40
  Speaker 7: a pinball or something, just being knocked around.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, it's unfortunate deficiencies of the system when
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: you have people– the power that can abuse it legally.
• 30:50
  Speaker 7: And then defend it. I mean, it's like they're defending
• 30:52
  Speaker 7: something that's been disproven already and leaving out the guy
• 30:57
  Speaker 7: who is so clearly should be under extreme scrutiny for
• 31:02
  Speaker 7: this crime and should be being questioned and should be
• 31:05
  Speaker 7: held accountable. He should be held accountable. I mean, this
• 31:07
  Speaker 7: little girl deserves justice, and she's not getting it either.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: And may I just point out, too, we've got to
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: go back to 1994 because this is when she was
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: first reported missing. I was 17 at the time, Anthony
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: was 18 at the time. Shortly thereafter, another young woman
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: became missing that had ties to Howard Gombert and who's
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: been investigated for her disappearance and I believe still is.
• 31:29
  Speaker 6: Yeah, the police were looking at this fellow Gombert for
• 31:33
  Speaker 6: another somewhat similar homicide that occurred in that area at
• 31:38
  Speaker 6: around the same time.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 31:40
  Speaker 6: So we know from the records that they were looking
• 31:43
  Speaker 6: at him. Why they dropped the ball on this... Hopefully,
• 31:47
  Speaker 6: someday we'll find out.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: You know, you can speculate and try to figure out
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: so many areas of why they did what they did.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: Some things become more obvious than others. You have a
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: different police agency other than the sheriff's, which is a
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: common police department. And they believed that Gombert was responsible
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: for both crimes. They wanted to work together to try
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: to tackle the evidence and come to a consensus. And
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: the sheriff's department basically told them to take Ike. And again,
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: is it politics? Rearing its ugly head?
• 32:18
  Speaker 7: Maybe Gombert had some powerful friend somewhere.
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: Who knows?
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Maybe he did.
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: I mean, it makes you scratch your head because you
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: sit there and say, this is obvious. It's not like
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: you see similar cases where you could get the wrong
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: impression by evidence just by interpreting. And that's understandable. And then,
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: you know, they run down the line and say, oh, well,
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: this is how I got him wrong. It didn't start
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: off like that. This was blatant disregard to certain elements
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: of the case. And this is decisions that were made
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: knowingly by the police involved.
• 32:46
  Speaker 6: I mean, one thing, if there was some sort of
• 32:48
  Speaker 6: an ironclad alibi, you know, they had records that Mr.
• 32:52
  Speaker 6: Gombert was in Canada at the time or something like that,
• 32:55
  Speaker 6: but there's nothing to show that.
• 32:57
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 32:58
  Speaker 6: Because all of the evidence points to him.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: And they do nothing.
• 33:01
  Speaker 6: He was connected to the victim. He knew the victim.
• 33:04
  Speaker 7: He was a suspect already in other similar crimes. He's
• 33:06
  Speaker 7: been convicted of other similar cases.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: So here it is.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: You have an individual that if you're going to fit
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: a mold of any type of area, I mean, like what,
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: What more do you look for?
• 33:16
  Speaker 7: So now it comes to trial. A bunch of time
• 33:18
  Speaker 7: had passed, right? You'd been sitting in jail presumably this
• 33:21
  Speaker 7: whole time waiting for your trial?
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: Yes, since July 1st, 1996, and ever since I've been incarcerated.
• 33:27
  Speaker 7: But I'm talking about from July 1st, 1996 was when
• 33:30
  Speaker 7: you were arrested?
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: Arrested, yes.
• 33:32
  Speaker 7: When was the trial?
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: I think 97, early 97. So you were in jail for?
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: For over a year.
• 33:37
  Speaker 7: Better part of a year for a waiting trial. And
• 33:39
  Speaker 7: then you go to trial. At this point, did you
• 33:41
  Speaker 7: still have hope that the system was going to work?
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I did.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: A lot of that was under the pretense of my
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: lawyer at the time and the things that he was
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: telling me, making me believe that certain things were going
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: to be addressed. And his disclosure to me about how
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: he was going to present the evidence to disprove that
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: we committed this crime led me to believe that I
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: was going to be successful in establishing that. But he
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: did none of what he said he was going to do.
• 34:08
  Speaker 7: You had a lawyer who was definitely not on his A-game,
• 34:11
  Speaker 7: let's just say that. Yeah. which happens, sadly, tragically, more
• 34:15
  Speaker 7: frequently than it should ever be allowed to. But you
• 34:18
  Speaker 7: go to trial. Your family's there. I want to get
• 34:21
  Speaker 7: to the moment when the jury went out and everything
• 34:25
  Speaker 7: that could be said had been said. And then you
• 34:27
  Speaker 7: get called back to the courtroom because a verdict is ready.
• 34:30
  Speaker 7: How long was the jury out?
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: I think like maybe 35, 40 minutes. I don't know.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: It was like during lunch break.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: But like by the time I literally got brought to them,
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: like two minutes later, they said.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: They got a verdict.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: And I got back in the car and went back
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: up to the court building. So, like, that's how fast
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: it was.
• 34:45
  Speaker 7: Can you just paint the picture for us? Like, at
• 34:47
  Speaker 7: that moment when they stole your life from you, what
• 34:50
  Speaker 7: went through your mind?
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, the same thing that's going through my mind now. Like,
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, when they came back and read the verdict
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: that I was guilty on both charges, I was still
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: in shock.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, through the whole process.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: Like I said, I don't think I really ever adjusted
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: to it really settling in. And I stood up and
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: I addressed the court saying that they got it wrong,
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: that somebody else committed this crime, and that one day
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: the truth will come out. I didn't have an emotional outburst.
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: I didn't break down. I just gathered my inner self
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: and just faced it.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: It's hard.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's like I broke inside, but I didn't
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: allow myself to break completely. I don't know if that
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: makes sense. It's like, what do you do? What's the
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: next course of action? How do you do it? Somebody
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: has to listen. Somebody has to see it. And even
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: though that happened, I still believed that the truth will
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: come out. Even though I didn't know 99% of what
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: I know now of Howard Gomber, to the extent of
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: his involvement, his participation in a lot of things, to
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: the degree of the cops and, you know, all the
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: information I've gathered through the years that I can now
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: look back on and say, wow, really? It just became
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: more obvious to, like I said, it wasn't a truth-finding
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: element to where they was trying to justify arresting somebody
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: and solving a case. It was a hatchet job for
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: whatever reason to exacerbate their positions like they were the
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: good and to put closure on a case that probably
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: they looked bad on from the very beginning.
• 36:24
  Speaker 7: Closure, yeah, that's a big word, closure. Get it off
• 36:28
  Speaker 7: the desk and on to the next one. Just let
• 36:30
  Speaker 7: you rot and then meanwhile let this guy who's at
• 36:34
  Speaker 7: this point still out there.
• 36:35
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know when he was arrested for the
• 36:37
  Speaker 6: case that he's serving time on now.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: I think mid-2000s.
• 36:40
  Speaker 7: Okay, so let's just reflect on that for a second, too.
• 36:43
  Speaker 7: Had this investigation been conducted properly, and had he been arrested.
• 36:46
  Speaker 6: He might have been arrested, and that would have been prevented.
• 36:49
  Speaker 7: Those other victims would have just been able to go
• 36:51
  Speaker 7: on about their lives and never go through this horrific experience,
• 36:54
  Speaker 7: them and their families and the whole thing. I find
• 36:57
  Speaker 7: that fucking outrageous. It's just fucking outrageous. Then you find
• 37:01
  Speaker 7: yourself in a maximum security prison. You're locked up as
• 37:05
  Speaker 7: someone who's convicted, wrongly, but convicted... of the worst crime
• 37:10
  Speaker 7: that you can be convicted of, which is a child
• 37:12
  Speaker 7: rape and murder.
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 37:13
  Speaker 7: How the hell did you manage to survive that ordeal
• 37:17
  Speaker 7: and get to where we are now, where there's actually
• 37:19
  Speaker 7: a ray of hope?
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Just, like I said, facing it straight up. It hasn't
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: been easy.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: To this day, it's still not easy because it's something
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: that's always exemplified and used against you. You know, the
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: word that, oh, he's convicted of a rape and murder,
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: it's a 12-year-old girl, automatically it's a completely different outlook
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: to me. So now there's certain restrictions in place. There's
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: certain attitudes I'm dealt with. There's certain ways I'm looked at.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: And it's a battle trying to say that, yo, that's
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: not me. But one of the things in prison is
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: you hear 99% of the population talk about they're innocent
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: of a crime. So it's like the boy who cried wolf.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: So it's a constant that I'm facing on a daily basis.
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: And it's gone extreme in certain cases. But again, it's just,
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: what else do I do? Sign in, live in a shell,
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: just conform to the outlook that they have in a
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: negative manner?
• 38:11
  Speaker 7: No.
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: One of the things that I'm going to do is
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: I'm going to scream loud and proud because I didn't
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: do it. It's ugly, it's nasty, and it's understandable how
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: people can look at it one way. But in order
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: to overcome that and realize just to how significant my
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: situation is, you need to understand that there's other elements
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: that you don't know about. So if you're going to
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: judge me, judge based on everything in its entirety, not
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: just off the face of what's being said or what
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: I've introduced into the bottom of the corrections for.
• 38:39
  Speaker 7: I want to get to the aspect of your mental
• 38:41
  Speaker 7: state because you seem to be somebody who's very calm, rational, thoughtful.
• 38:48
  Speaker 7: Even I want to say you maintain a very real
• 38:51
  Speaker 7: sense of hope in a situation that, to a lot
• 38:54
  Speaker 7: of people, I think it would just collapse and they
• 38:56
  Speaker 7: would just, you know, and no one could blame you
• 38:58
  Speaker 7: for that, right? I mean, to find yourself in a
• 39:01
  Speaker 7: place like this for over 20 years.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's not easy, and it's taken me a
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: long time to get this calm. I'm forced in this situation.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: It's reality. It is what it is.
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: So I could allow things to overwhelm me and make
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: them harder, or I could just face it and deal
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: with it the best way that I can, and that's
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: what I chose to do. I got a voice and
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: I try to put it out there as much as
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: I can. And I got to just be a warrior
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: and just face everything. that comes my way, all adversity.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: And it's hard. Each conflict that I go through allows
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: me to deal with something different in a more positive way.
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: So I try to take all of that on a
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: daily basis to gain my strength.
• 39:44
  Speaker 7: That's amazing. I don't even know what to say after.
• 39:47
  Speaker 7: But I will say, that is important for you to know.
• 39:51
  Speaker 7: And we spoke to Anthony DiPippo on the way in today,
• 39:54
  Speaker 7: and he wanted us to communicate to you that he
• 39:57
  Speaker 7: is standing strong with you and that he's going to
• 39:59
  Speaker 7: be there when you have your hearings and he's going
• 40:02
  Speaker 7: to bring a group of exonerees. I mean, he's another one.
• 40:05
  Speaker 7: He's a fighter. I mean, he's a guy you would
• 40:07
  Speaker 7: want on your side. And I'll let you know, too,
• 40:10
  Speaker 7: that there's a lot of other people out there, people
• 40:12
  Speaker 7: you don't even know about who are aware of your
• 40:14
  Speaker 7: case and many more that are going to be aware
• 40:16
  Speaker 7: of it that care about you and and want to
• 40:19
  Speaker 7: see justice finally brought to bear on this terrible situation. Adele,
• 40:26
  Speaker 7: now we find ourselves here in 2017, 23 years from
• 40:31
  Speaker 7: the time of the crime, 21 years from the time
• 40:34
  Speaker 7: that you were convicted, and that doesn't even include the
• 40:37
  Speaker 7: time you spent in jail awaiting trial. And what are
• 40:40
  Speaker 7: the prospects, and how are you approaching this now, and
• 40:44
  Speaker 7: what can people who are listening do to help?
• 40:47
  Speaker 6: Well, basically, we're doing what you said right in the beginning,
• 40:50
  Speaker 6: which is we're trying to raise the specter of justice. Why,
• 40:56
  Speaker 6: if two people have been convicted of the same crime
• 40:58
  Speaker 6: on the same evidence, essentially, why is one free and
• 41:01
  Speaker 6: one in jail? That just seems wrong. It seems unjust.
• 41:04
  Speaker 6: And it seems like we should be able to do
• 41:06
  Speaker 6: something about that. In this situation, Andrew didn't get the
• 41:11
  Speaker 6: new trial that Anthony got. So he hasn't had an
• 41:14
  Speaker 6: opportunity to to let a jury hear about the evidence
• 41:19
  Speaker 6: pointing to Howard Gombert. So he hasn't yet had that opportunity.
• 41:24
  Speaker 6: And we've asked the appellate court to review the lower
• 41:29
  Speaker 6: court ruling that denied him that opportunity. And the appellate
• 41:32
  Speaker 6: courts have given us the opportunity to raise that argument
• 41:36
  Speaker 6: and brief that issue. So we believe that we're going
• 41:40
  Speaker 6: to get an opportunity to have a trial where Andrew
• 41:43
  Speaker 6: as well will get to put in front of a
• 41:46
  Speaker 6: jury the same evidence that Anthony used that resulted in
• 41:50
  Speaker 6: his acquittal. So we're hoping to be in that same place,
• 41:54
  Speaker 6: but we're not there yet. So we're still waiting. We
• 41:57
  Speaker 6: have to brief the case at the Appellate Division. They've
• 41:59
  Speaker 6: got a rule in our favor. They have to order
• 42:02
  Speaker 6: that he gets a new trial, and then we'll have
• 42:05
  Speaker 6: that new trial if The district attorney's office wants to
• 42:08
  Speaker 6: retry him a second time.
• 42:10
  Speaker 7: Or they can just vacate the conviction.
• 42:12
  Speaker 6: Or they can just vacate the conviction, right, which they
• 42:14
  Speaker 6: could do now, frankly.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 42:16
  Speaker 7: But that's a very unlikely scenario.
• 42:18
  Speaker 6: It's very unlikely. But that's not something that we have
• 42:21
  Speaker 6: completely given up on. We're in touch with the DA.
• 42:23
  Speaker 6: If new evidence gets developed, we'll continue to talk to
• 42:26
  Speaker 6: the DA about this case and about how they could
• 42:29
  Speaker 6: do the right thing and they could save everybody a
• 42:31
  Speaker 6: lot of time and a lot of trouble.
• 42:33
  Speaker 7: Right, and go after the guy.
• 42:34
  Speaker 6: To we suspect who the evidence points to. I mean,
• 42:37
  Speaker 6: clearly he's never been charged. We're talking about him as
• 42:41
  Speaker 6: though he were in fact the guilty party. We don't
• 42:44
  Speaker 6: know that. What we know is that the evidence certainly
• 42:47
  Speaker 6: points to him. He's done things that are very similar
• 42:51
  Speaker 6: to what they've been convicted of. So we have a
• 42:54
  Speaker 6: reason to believe that he is the person, but we
• 42:57
  Speaker 6: don't know that, obviously, and it hasn't been proved in
• 43:00
  Speaker 6: a court of law.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: Just in the manner of the way that this case
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: was presented has a lot of associative ties to Gombert
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: and his culpable acts against other victims. Yet evidence points
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: to that. You have a lot of dots that connect that.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: I'm not here to do anything other than prove I
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: was not the one who committed this crime. To exemplify that,
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: focus on the evidence. Focus on the facts. Keep it simple.
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: I'm not an investigator, nor should I have to be.
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: But one thing that's paramount is that evidence discloses I
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: did not commit this crime. The evidence that's been brought
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: forth in Anthony's retrial is that he did not commit
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: this crime. The prosecution's theory is that we... together participated
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: committing this crime. There's nothing separate outside of this purported confession.
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: And again, it's words on paper, so you can't turn
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: that into more evidence against me to say, oh, well,
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: you admitted it. No, the forensic and pathological evidence disproves
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: those words, disproves Denise Rose. She disproves her own through
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: her testimony, words, and her statement. So there's all of
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: these different avenues to come to a conclusion that they're
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: refusing to do.
• 44:10
  Speaker 6: Yeah, the only evidence is her testimony. There really is
• 44:13
  Speaker 6: nothing else. They say, well, this happened in this van
• 44:17
  Speaker 6: and there's no forensic evidence linking the victim to the van.
• 44:20
  Speaker 6: There's just nothing there. There's supposed to be other witnesses
• 44:23
  Speaker 6: who were in the van with Denise and all of
• 44:26
  Speaker 6: them say, oh, I didn't see that happen. The police
• 44:29
  Speaker 6: tried to make me say that that's what happened, but
• 44:32
  Speaker 6: I refused to say that because it didn't happen. So
• 44:36
  Speaker 6: that's what Adam Wilson says. He says, oh, the police
• 44:39
  Speaker 6: tried to make me go along with that story. They
• 44:42
  Speaker 6: tried to make me corroborate what Denise Rose said, but
• 44:45
  Speaker 6: I wouldn't do it because it didn't happen.
• 44:47
  Speaker 7: The only evidence is the testimony of this crack addicted
• 44:52
  Speaker 7: young woman who has been refuted by the other people
• 44:56
  Speaker 7: that were there with her at the time. Correct. The
• 44:58
  Speaker 7: physical evidence, not only is there no physical evidence that,
• 45:01
  Speaker 7: because there's always going to be skeptics, right? There's people
• 45:03
  Speaker 7: out there going, well, there must be something. Well, you know,
• 45:06
  Speaker 7: in this case, there's nothing. There's no physical evidence connecting
• 45:09
  Speaker 7: you to the crime. And the evidence that does exist
• 45:13
  Speaker 7: would indicate that the story, well, clearly the story is
• 45:16
  Speaker 7: not true.
• 45:16
  Speaker 6: Well, certainly the forensic evidence is completely consistent with innocence
• 45:20
  Speaker 6: and not at all consistent with guilt.
• 45:23
  Speaker 7: So if we are to believe that you actually did this,
• 45:26
  Speaker 7: you would have to be a master criminal. You'd have
• 45:28
  Speaker 7: to be like.
• 45:29
  Speaker 6: You'd have to have cleaned up the entire van that
• 45:32
  Speaker 6: they said it happened in so that no trace of
• 45:35
  Speaker 6: this victim could be found in the van, which I
• 45:38
  Speaker 6: think is really beyond the abilities of two teens, especially
• 45:44
  Speaker 6: when the van... that they said it happened in was
• 45:48
  Speaker 6: already in police custody, or was already off the road.
• 45:52
  Speaker 6: It was already off the road and inoperable at the
• 45:55
  Speaker 6: time they said it happened.
• 46:08
  Speaker 7: So there's one more thing that we have to talk about,
• 46:11
  Speaker 7: which is that the prosecution's theory revolved around the idea
• 46:15
  Speaker 7: that this horrible crime was committed in a van with
• 46:20
  Speaker 7: five people and the victim. And there's a pretty big
• 46:24
  Speaker 7: problem with that, which is that there's a mechanic who
• 46:27
  Speaker 7: has testified that the van, in fact, was up on
• 46:32
  Speaker 7: blocks at the time, right? It didn't have any wheels
• 46:34
  Speaker 7: on it.
• 46:34
  Speaker 6: And the fact of the matter is he testified to
• 46:37
  Speaker 6: that in this recent trial where Anthony was acquitted, but
• 46:41
  Speaker 6: he also testified to that back at the first trial.
• 46:45
  Speaker 6: This isn't even new evidence.
• 46:46
  Speaker 7: The police knew that.
• 46:48
  Speaker 6: And there was no reason to disbelieve the mechanic. I mean,
• 46:52
  Speaker 6: there was no reason to think that he was somehow
• 46:55
  Speaker 6: in cahoots with With the defendants and, you know, trying
• 46:59
  Speaker 6: to improperly create a reasonable doubt where there was none.
• 47:04
  Speaker 7: There was all sorts of stuff with the van. It
• 47:06
  Speaker 7: was on blocks, right? The tires were off it. The
• 47:08
  Speaker 7: engine was screwed up.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can explain some of that.
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: But just before I get into that, just so everybody
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: knows and is aware of just the extent and involvement
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: of these detectives, is initially on the statements it was
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: a Bronco.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: That was crossed out and changed to van.
• 47:27
  Speaker 6: What happens is that they later on, okay, because remember
• 47:32
  Speaker 6: there's this long period of time between the time that
• 47:35
  Speaker 6: Josette disappears and the time that they realize it's a homicide.
• 47:40
  Speaker 6: So during that period of time when they're not really
• 47:42
  Speaker 6: investigating this case and they're not following up their leads
• 47:46
  Speaker 6: on Howard Gombert, during this time they seize this van.
• 47:51
  Speaker 6: So by the time they arrest Andrew, they've got it
• 47:55
  Speaker 6: in their custody.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: Well, they legally stole it.
• 47:57
  Speaker 6: Right, they kept it. They seized it and they never
• 48:00
  Speaker 6: returned it. So at that point, it becomes helpful for
• 48:04
  Speaker 6: them to have the crime occur in the van, which
• 48:07
  Speaker 6: is in their possession. So they then change it from saying, oh,
• 48:11
  Speaker 6: it was the Bronco, to saying, oh, this must have
• 48:14
  Speaker 6: happened in Andy's van, not knowing... that there was an
• 48:18
  Speaker 6: actual witness out there who could say, oh, that's impossible
• 48:23
  Speaker 6: because the man was actually up on blocks and inoperable
• 48:27
  Speaker 6: at the time that you're saying that this child was
• 48:30
  Speaker 6: actually murdered.
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: Yes, which was in 1994 from there.
• 48:34
  Speaker 6: So I think Andrew's right to say that when you
• 48:37
  Speaker 6: look at this from the point of view of thinking
• 48:39
  Speaker 6: about the police after the fact— Having a hypothesis, which
• 48:45
  Speaker 6: they tried to make the facts conform to, that this
• 48:50
  Speaker 6: evidence actually does support that theory. And I think that's
• 48:56
  Speaker 6: what happened.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's simple orchestration.
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: What they did was they said, this is the crime
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: and we're going to get the people to say this
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: is what happened.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: And that's what they did. They glued it together.
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: But again, simplifying and keeping it to the evidence, it
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: tells its own story. And going back to Denise Rose
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: and her claims of her witnessing and you just reading
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: the statement, you read it and you see words crossed
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: out and replaced with other words. and then you listen
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: to the actual main areas of this statement which is
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: supposed to be a version of her reciting witnessing a
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: crime and you can see that it's like it's almost
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: like you know you're putting a play together you know
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: you're no this fits better over here no say it
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: like this so it comes across more believable but all
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: the meat And potatoes, so to speak, are the essential
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: facts that one would digress if they really witnessed something.
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: It's not a part of the statements. And the forensic
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: evidence conflicts with her version.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: So who do you believe?
• 49:49
  Speaker 7: So they actually did, when you think about it, a
• 49:52
  Speaker 7: very sloppy job of framing you. Because, in fact, if
• 49:56
  Speaker 7: they had been a little bit more thoughtful, somebody would
• 49:59
  Speaker 7: have said, wait a minute, let's not go with that
• 50:00
  Speaker 7: van theory because I just found out that the van
• 50:03
  Speaker 7: is over at Mechanic Auto Shop. up on a thing
• 50:06
  Speaker 7: with an engine that doesn't work and no tires. But
• 50:08
  Speaker 7: they didn't even bother to do that.
• 50:09
  Speaker 6: And guess what? They didn't need to, did they?
• 50:11
  Speaker 7: No, they didn't. And that's why, again, there is another
• 50:15
  Speaker 7: side to what the prosecution is saying. I'm not saying
• 50:18
  Speaker 7: they're wrong all the time. They're certainly not.
• 50:20
  Speaker 6: You're absolutely right. We want to hold the prosecution, the police,
• 50:25
  Speaker 6: and the prosecution to a high standard. There's a burden
• 50:28
  Speaker 6: of proof in a criminal trial, which is beyond a
• 50:30
  Speaker 6: reasonable doubt, and we want to be holding people to
• 50:32
  Speaker 6: that standard. And make them prove that case.
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, just to point out, it would
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: be easy for me to just jump on that bashing,
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: you know, aspect or mindset. And even as hard as
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: it is, I understand and believe in the system. There's
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: a lot of good and, you know, I believe in
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: what it's supposed to be there for. But again, this
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: isn't something that, it wasn't something that you could take
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: and say, it's understandable how these two were wrongfully convicted
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: because there was a lot of close ties to the
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: evidence that would indicate the possibility of them being guilty.
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: This is the furthest from that. This is blatant setting up.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: This is the ugliest of the ugly. This is conscious
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: decisions of the people that are there to protect and
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: serve that are throwing all of that away to make
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: themselves look like they are those protectors by closing a case,
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: getting pats on the back, commendations, knowingly fabricating evidence, bullying
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: and intimidating people, and getting a wrongful conviction on it
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: and shattering lives. And not just us. They lied to
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: the victim's family. They lied to the population. They did
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: all of these things that have a ripple effect. It's
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: not just me. I want to point out that regardless
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: of what anybody can say, that's to the extent this
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: case is. This isn't one of those just close-knit, oh,
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: we understand it. No, this was individuals choosing to go
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: against the law that were in the powers to get
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: people to believe them because of their positions and just
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: shattered lives.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: They say light comes to the dark.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: Three of those same people that were involved have since been,
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: in some form, been convicted of misconduct. From the boss
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: of the boss and to the senior detectives that were
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: actively involved in our case.
• 52:14
  Speaker 7: Adele, there's one more aspect of this case that troubles me,
• 52:17
  Speaker 7: and it highlights the fact that there was so much
• 52:19
  Speaker 7: time elapsed from the time of the crime to the
• 52:22
  Speaker 7: time of the arrests. And they came up with a
• 52:24
  Speaker 7: little girl who said she remembered something about some jewelry
• 52:27
  Speaker 7: or something, which I found so far-fetched.
• 52:31
  Speaker 6: Well, the police said that they had found jewelry belonging
• 52:36
  Speaker 6: to the victim, Josette, in this van. which we know
• 52:41
  Speaker 6: that even if they had committed the crime, they couldn't
• 52:44
  Speaker 6: have committed it in this van. But anyway, they said
• 52:46
  Speaker 6: they had found jewelry in the van. They then called
• 52:50
  Speaker 6: witnesses at the trial to say that they recognized the
• 52:54
  Speaker 6: jewelry as belonging to Josette. When I first learned about
• 52:57
  Speaker 6: this case, which was quite a long time ago, Andy
• 53:00
  Speaker 6: wrote me, and he described the evidence. And I got
• 53:04
  Speaker 6: involved in the case because I thought the evidence was
• 53:06
  Speaker 6: completely unconvincing and untrue to common sense. I didn't believe
• 53:10
  Speaker 6: that a 17-year-old girl would have witnessed a crime like
• 53:13
  Speaker 6: this and not told anybody. I didn't believe it. And
• 53:16
  Speaker 6: they also said, despite the lack of any forensic evidence
• 53:20
  Speaker 6: linking the girl to the van, there was jewelry found
• 53:24
  Speaker 6: in the van that witnesses have identified as belonging to
• 53:27
  Speaker 6: the victim. And I just didn't believe that that could
• 53:29
  Speaker 6: possibly be true. Because I didn't believe that little girls, 14,
• 53:33
  Speaker 6: because they were 14 by the time they testified at trial,
• 53:36
  Speaker 6: would have remembered what their girlfriend was wearing on the
• 53:41
  Speaker 6: day that she disappeared two and a half years earlier.
• 53:46
  Speaker 6: Because we're talking here about jewelry that would have been
• 53:49
  Speaker 6: bought from the five and dime store, right? An earring,
• 53:52
  Speaker 6: a necklace, and they were claiming.
• 53:55
  Speaker 7: Generic.
• 53:57
  Speaker 6: How special could they have been? Little girls have lots
• 53:59
  Speaker 6: of different jewelry. You would never recognize what one person
• 54:03
  Speaker 6: was wearing from one day to the next. So the
• 54:06
  Speaker 6: fact that they said at trial under oath, I recognize
• 54:10
  Speaker 6: this piece of jewelry, I found extremely suspect. And again,
• 54:14
  Speaker 6: I think it is evidence of how, in fact, careful
• 54:18
  Speaker 6: the police were trying to be to try to overcome
• 54:22
  Speaker 6: the lack of any forensic evidence because they didn't have
• 54:27
  Speaker 6: traces of Josette in this van. So they were bound
• 54:31
  Speaker 6: and determined to come up with something that would link
• 54:34
  Speaker 6: her to this supposed crime scene.
• 54:36
  Speaker 7: I'm thinking now, right, about that courtroom in that moment, right?
• 54:39
  Speaker 7: And I'm sure the jury, there must have been almost
• 54:41
  Speaker 7: like a gasp, like, oh, my God, the jewelry. The
• 54:44
  Speaker 7: poor girl's jewelry was found in the van. And now
• 54:46
  Speaker 7: I would ask anyone listening to conduct a little test,
• 54:51
  Speaker 7: which is think of who you were hanging out with
• 54:52
  Speaker 7: yesterday and describe what kind of jewelry they were wearing,
• 54:56
  Speaker 7: unless your friend has the Hope Diamond on. I think
• 54:59
  Speaker 7: the chance of you remembering whether they had a ring
• 55:02
  Speaker 7: on which finger, on whether they had a necklace and
• 55:05
  Speaker 7: what it looked like, I mean, you're not going to
• 55:07
  Speaker 7: be able to do it. I mean, it's just not realistic.
• 55:09
  Speaker 7: And I'm talking about yesterday. So the idea that it
• 55:11
  Speaker 7: was 13 months ago or more, actually.
• 55:14
  Speaker 6: Because by the time they got to the trial, they're saying, yes,
• 55:16
  Speaker 6: I can remember distinctly. What she was wearing. Now, they
• 55:18
  Speaker 6: weren't saying that they were with her at the time
• 55:20
  Speaker 6: that this supposedly happened. They're just saying, yeah, I saw
• 55:24
  Speaker 6: her that day, earlier that day, the night before. And yes,
• 55:27
  Speaker 6: I can remember this is her jewelry. That's what she
• 55:29
  Speaker 6: was wearing.
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: I have to point out pertaining to the jewelry. One
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: of the things, again, that I mean, it's just it's
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: so funny that it's not funny, but it's funny. The
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: homicide detectives illegally took possession of my van at the
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: time in 1995. It's never left their custody. So some
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: of the jewelry that they mentioned, now bear in mind,
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: a state trooper in April of 1995 did an inventory search.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: No jewelry was found.
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: Well, I get arrested on May 11th, 1995 on a
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: warrant for marijuana possession. And from that point on, the
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: van was in possession of the Putnam County Sheriff's Department.
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: And the jewelry that they claimed to have found in
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: the map compartment was already searched by two other officers.
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: So it never left your possession. It wasn't found how
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: does it get found conveniently.
• 56:17
  Speaker 6: They had the van they searched the van they didn't
• 56:20
  Speaker 6: see it and then suddenly after they had decided how
• 56:24
  Speaker 6: this case is going to go all of a sudden
• 56:27
  Speaker 6: oh there's jewelry in the van that wow people can
• 56:31
  Speaker 6: link to the homicide.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: Now it's a piece of physical evidence because all the
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: dna testing up into point in that time fiber blood
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: analysis whatever was going on did not support their version
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: there was not a hair of Joe's right inside that vehicle.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: She's never been in the vehicle. She's never been in
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: none of my vehicles.
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: So it systematically became obvious that they needed some more to.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: Push this version of events.
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: And by doing so, they say there's now physical evidence
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: of Joe's right being inside that van, so you must
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: believe Denise Rose.
• 57:05
  Speaker 7: And I'm sitting here now thinking about maybe they were
• 57:07
  Speaker 7: sitting around having coffee or lunch or maybe having a
• 57:11
  Speaker 7: meeting and the investigator, the prosecutor, whatever it was, and
• 57:14
  Speaker 7: somebody goes, I got an idea. and go, hey, what's that?
• 57:17
  Speaker 7: What if we come up with a jewelry story? What
• 57:20
  Speaker 7: if we come up with a jewelry story? Somebody goes,
• 57:21
  Speaker 7: that's a great idea. How does everybody go so far wrong?
• 57:25
  Speaker 7: It makes me insane. So anyway, there is an overwhelming
• 57:31
  Speaker 7: amount of evidence. We are here now to bring attention
• 57:36
  Speaker 7: to this madness and to your plight, and to hopefully
• 57:41
  Speaker 7: help advance the cause of justice, which... The wheels are turning,
• 57:46
  Speaker 7: and you have a great team. We have this pending motion,
• 57:49
  Speaker 7: I guess, right?
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 57:51
  Speaker 7: And I'm projecting positive outcomes, as I know you are.
• 57:54
  Speaker 6: And we have a lot of legal support, I mean,
• 57:56
  Speaker 6: because all of Anthony's team, they've got great lawyers. They've
• 58:00
  Speaker 6: been totally helpful. I think the whole network, the Innocence Network,
• 58:04
  Speaker 6: will be supportive on the legal issues, at the very least,
• 58:09
  Speaker 6: because of the question of why one person is still
• 58:12
  Speaker 6: in jail and the other one isn't. So I think
• 58:14
  Speaker 6: that appeals just on an emotional gut level to people.
• 58:17
  Speaker 6: So I think we're going to get a lot of
• 58:19
  Speaker 6: support on behalf of our position in the court. So
• 58:22
  Speaker 6: I feel actually quite positively that we'll get a new trial.
• 58:27
  Speaker 7: And when we do, I think it's impossible to imagine
• 58:29
  Speaker 7: how a jury can look at this evidence now and say, yeah, no, yeah,
• 58:34
  Speaker 7: I mean, reasonable doubt, my ass. I mean, this thing is,
• 58:37
  Speaker 7: it's a mountain of shit.
• 58:39
  Speaker 6: In the intervening years, also people have learned a lot
• 58:42
  Speaker 6: about why folks falsely confess and how that happens. I
• 58:46
  Speaker 6: think the public is much more educated and jurors will
• 58:50
  Speaker 6: be as well. So I think at the time that
• 58:53
  Speaker 6: Andy was convicted... Nobody believed that individuals falsely confessed. So
• 58:57
  Speaker 6: if they heard a confession, they figured it must be true.
• 58:59
  Speaker 6: And I don't think they needed much additional evidence. And
• 59:02
  Speaker 6: they had Denise Rose. So with the two of those statements,
• 59:06
  Speaker 6: I think it would have been very hard in that time.
• 59:10
  Speaker 6: to have gotten a not guilty verdict. Now it's a
• 59:12
  Speaker 6: very different story. We know a lot more about what
• 59:15
  Speaker 6: people do, and we know a lot more, unfortunately, about
• 59:18
  Speaker 6: police practices.
• 59:19
  Speaker 7: I'm going to say this before I turn it over
• 59:21
  Speaker 7: to you for closing remarks. Having heard about you and
• 59:24
  Speaker 7: heard about your case for some time now, I really
• 59:27
  Speaker 7: wanted to come up here and meet you. Now that
• 59:28
  Speaker 7: I have met you and getting a sense of your
• 59:31
  Speaker 7: strength and your spirit, I can say that I'm going
• 59:34
  Speaker 7: to do everything in my power to help Adele and
• 59:39
  Speaker 7: the team. There's a lot of people who care about
• 59:43
  Speaker 7: you and care about this case and care about justice,
• 59:47
  Speaker 7: and we're just going to keep going until we get
• 59:49
  Speaker 7: you out. So with that, I mean, you've said a lot,
• 59:52
  Speaker 7: and you don't have to say anything else, but if
• 59:54
  Speaker 7: there's anything else you want to share with the audience,
• 59:56
  Speaker 7: now would be a good time to do it.
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, first I just want to thank you, Sabine, Odell,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: everybody listening for your support, continued support, future support.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: It means a lot. It really does.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: You've got to find strength in yourself in order to
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: face adversity. And going through this situation, it's a constant battle,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: but I won't give up. You can't give up. Everybody
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: will be hearing from you soon. I got a story
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: to tell. I stay positive. I stay driven. Otherwise, I'm
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: subjected to just the whims and the mercy of what
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: they did to me, and I can't let that happen.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 7: Last question. Do you want people to write to you?
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 7: Is there any other social media you want them to
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 7: go to?
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: Do you have a website?
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 7: I mean, absolutely.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: I would love to hear from anybody and everybody.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 7: Can you give the information of where people can write?
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: Wendy Correctional Facility, Alden, New York. I'm not sure what
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: his zip code. I apologize for that.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 7: Wendy, W-E-N-D-E.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: W-E-N-D-E Correctional Facility. It's in Alden, New York. A-L-D-E-N.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: My name is Andrew Krivak, K-R-I-V-A-K. And my DIN number
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: is 97A-4236. If you want to know a little bit
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: more about me, you can look up, obviously, my code
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: for Anthony DePippo. A lot of the information is on
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: his Facebook page.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 7: Or just Google your name.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: Or Google my name.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: You know, there's a lot of news articles recently through
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: the exposure of the evidence and things that came out
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: with Anthony's retrial. Also, Jeffrey Deskovich, who I'm in close
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: contact with, is also in my corner and speaks of
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: my case. And, you know, I want to just thank
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: those that have reached out to me so far, some
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: of which I'm corresponding with. And I'm looking to link
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: up with as many people as possible. Just pay it forward.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: Do something positive.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 7: I'm glad you brought that up, too, because Jeffrey Deskovic,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 7: who had a terrible thing in common with you, which
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 7: was this lying polygraph examiner, has become a very powerful
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 7: advocate for the wrongfully convicted. And he's been on the show.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 7: He passed the bar in New York State. And I
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 7: do want to just mention that he has been a
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 7: very vocal and passionate advocate of yours and Anthony's and
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 7: others who've been wrongfully convicted. So shout out to Jeff.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 7: And I know he's here in spirit and he's on
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 7: your side. He's just another one. We're all pushing this
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 7: snowball up the hill together.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: And I appreciate it. I really do.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: I know sometimes I can't. In the future, people, you'll
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: just see how much I appreciate things. But like I said,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: it's up to us to make change. And eventually we'll overcome.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 7: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars. And
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 7: I want to thank the star of our show today,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 7: who I'm very excited to see on the outside soon,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 7: Andrew Krivak. Thank you for being on. And Adele Bernhardt.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 7: His wonderful lawyer.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 6: Thank you.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 7: Thank you to our producer, Sabine Jansen, for coming and
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 7: making us sound as good as we can even with
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 7: all the jail doors.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 6: Thank you jason for doing this work and making a
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 6: difference in so many people's.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: Lives yeah i want to say that too you know
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: i definitely applaud your um longevity it means a lot
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: like i said you know it's because of people like
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: you that allow people like me to have the opportunity
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: to correct these wrongs so it definitely touches.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 7: Me Can't stop, won't stop, not going to stop. And
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 7: I'm very stubborn. And that's a good thing in this
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 7: line of work because you need it. And like I said,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 7: I've seen too many miracles to stop believing in miracles.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 7: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 7: get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 7: donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 7: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 7: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to InnocenceProject.org to learn
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 7: how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 7: our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardus. The music
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 7: in the show is by three-time Oscar-nominated composer J. Ralph.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 7: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 7: and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 7: Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good Podcast
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 7: in association with Signal Company No. 1.