Latest / Legally Brunette / Killer Thriller Docu: A missing teen, 30 years without answers, and the suspect who could soon walk free
Transcript
- 0:13Speaker 1: Hi, you guys.
- 0:13Speaker 2: Welcome back to Killer Thriller Docu Edition. So Robin Murphy
- 0:17Speaker 2: was just 17 when she disappeared in 1995. Police initially
- 0:22Speaker 2: believed she may have run away, but as the search continued,
- 0:25Speaker 2: disturbing clues emerged, including a connection to Howard John Gombert Jr.,
- 0:31Speaker 2: who was a convicted violent offender who was never charged
- 0:34Speaker 2: in Robin's disappearance. So now, 30 years later, investigative journalist
- 0:39Speaker 2: Paul Solitaroff is revisiting the case in The Devil's Quarry 2,
- 0:43Speaker 2: digging into the original investigation, the people he's uncovered, and
- 0:47Speaker 2: what investigators might have missed, and whether we are any
- 0:50Speaker 2: closer to finding out what happened to Robin Murphy.
- 0:53Speaker 1: Hello. Hello. How are you, Paul?
- 0:56Speaker 3: Jennifer, how are you?
- 0:57Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us.
- 0:59Speaker 3: I'm delighted to be here.
- 1:01Speaker 1: We are delighted to have you.
- 1:02Speaker 3: I'm delighted, at least for the hour we're on. not
- 1:07Speaker 3: to be writing or reporting about a pedophile.
- 1:12Speaker 1: I don't blame you.
- 1:13Speaker 2: And honestly, I was going to ask you, I wasn't
- 1:15Speaker 2: going to start out with this question, but in what
- 1:18Speaker 2: you do, do you ever get, and I've asked a
- 1:21Speaker 2: lot of my guests this because we do true crime here,
- 1:25Speaker 2: but do you ever get nervous? I mean, just reading
- 1:29Speaker 2: about some of these just atrocious, disgusting, awful, horrible people,
- 1:35Speaker 2: And then talking to people that actually have been interviewing
- 1:38Speaker 2: everyone around them. First of all, I should tell our guests,
- 1:42Speaker 2: they may already know this, but we are talking about
- 1:44Speaker 2: a fellow, well, an investigative journalist, a very famous, important one,
- 1:47Speaker 2: but also a podcaster. So guys, we're talking, by the way,
- 1:51Speaker 2: about podcasts. That's what the Devil's Quarry is. And by
- 1:54Speaker 2: the way, also, your voice is very mesmerizing, my friend.
- 1:59Speaker 3: Thank you.
- 2:01Speaker 1: Do you hear that a lot?
- 2:02Speaker 3: Yes. I mostly hear that I've got a great face
- 2:06Speaker 3: for radio. But yes, occasionally someone will throw me a
- 2:12Speaker 3: breadcrumb about my voice. So let me answer the question
- 2:18Speaker 3: you put, which is, do sociopaths like Gombert scare me?
- 2:24Speaker 3: The answer is no. So I've spent my entire life
- 2:28Speaker 3: in the gym. I'm a lot scarier. in a dark alley. Really?
- 2:34Speaker 2: Well, listen, I don't, I, this guy freaks me out.
- 2:39Speaker 2: I think in part, it amazes me how he had
- 2:43Speaker 2: vetted the law for so long and was walking the
- 2:48Speaker 2: streets and just how repulsive he actually was. And I'm
- 2:53Speaker 2: just talking about, you know, his behaviors.
- 2:57Speaker 1: Yes. The murders. Yes. But also just, I don't, and
- 3:02Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you questions about it.
- 3:03Speaker 2: I don't understand how this guy was such a raging
- 3:06Speaker 2: pedophile and never got caught for that, but I'm way, okay,
- 3:10Speaker 2: let's go. I'm getting way ahead of myself with you,
- 3:12Speaker 2: my friend. First, I want to know, tell me how
- 3:15Speaker 2: Robin Murphy's case first came onto your radar and why,
- 3:20Speaker 2: how did you realize there was still a story to
- 3:21Speaker 2: tell 30 years later?
- 3:23Speaker 3: Oh my God. Well, first of all, so I've spent
- 3:27Speaker 3: the better part of 38 years getting the wrong information
- 3:32Speaker 3: convicted out of prison, right? I know.
- 3:34Speaker 1: I read that about you.
- 3:35Speaker 3: Amazing. I've walked innocent men off death row. I've walked
- 3:38Speaker 3: them out of LWOP, life without parole.
- 3:42Speaker 1: Is that really your passion first? Or is it right?
- 3:44Speaker 1: I mean, all of this.
- 3:45Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. I am a justice avenger. Some journalists are
- 3:55Speaker 3: interested in the exoneration stuff. That's half the job. For me,
- 4:03Speaker 3: the full job is extricating the wrongly convicted from prison
- 4:08Speaker 3: and replacing them in those cells with the crooked cops,
- 4:12Speaker 3: the corrupt prosecutors, the in-the-bag judges who all played some
- 4:19Speaker 3: knowing part in these wrongful convictions, typically of young black
- 4:25Speaker 3: men from, say, West Philly or South L.A. or Southside Chicago.
- 4:32Speaker 3: So I've done deep, deep investigative dives into some of
- 4:37Speaker 3: the most troubled and troublesome police departments in America. Why
- 4:43Speaker 3: this story? After three decades of investigating crooked cops, gang
- 4:51Speaker 3: cops in LA, crooked homicide cops in Chicago, crooked elite
- 5:00Speaker 3: field narcotics cops in West Philly, there was one itch
- 5:06Speaker 3: I had to scratch yet. And that was if it's
- 5:09Speaker 3: this bad in big city, uh, police departments. So I
- 5:15Speaker 3: often worked hand in glove with the mothership, the innocence
- 5:19Speaker 3: project office, the one that started the entire innocence movement, the, uh,
- 5:28Speaker 3: the guys, Peter Neufeld, Barry Scheck, Nina Morrison, who not
- 5:33Speaker 3: only spearheaded this notion of provable forensic innocence, but have now,
- 5:43Speaker 3: I don't know what the latest count is, we're up
- 5:46Speaker 3: in the vicinity of 400 people that they have exonerated
- 5:52Speaker 3: by use of DNA, by use of of essentially debunking
- 6:01Speaker 3: all the junk science that crooked cops, corrupt prosecutors have
- 6:06Speaker 3: used in the past. Dental bite analysis, garbage. Really? Absolute garbage.
- 6:13Speaker 3: Junk science of a class with polygraphs, photo arrays, photo
- 6:22Speaker 3: array lineups in which cops constantly manipulate photographs to lead
- 6:31Speaker 3: supposed eyewitnesses to the one picture that they're trying to
- 6:39Speaker 3: build the narrative around, the guy that they're framing. So I,
- 6:45Speaker 3: over the years, have become good friends and confidants with
- 6:50Speaker 3: the the top of the ladder at Innocence Project. And
- 6:56Speaker 3: I've been asking them for years, I really want to
- 6:59Speaker 3: go investigate small town policing. Please tell me you've got
- 7:04Speaker 3: a case. And I'll go anywhere. I don't care. And
- 7:09Speaker 3: I'll embed there. They said, Paul, you don't have to
- 7:12Speaker 3: buy a plane ticket. Just drive 50 miles north of
- 7:16Speaker 3: the Bronx to Putnam County, New York. A community of
- 7:22Speaker 3: white flight, blue collar families, formerly of the Bronx, of
- 7:29Speaker 3: the outer boroughs like Queens, who when urban renewal was
- 7:35Speaker 3: heavily funded by the federal government, suddenly all of these
- 7:39Speaker 3: towers went up in the Bronx, in Queens, in Brooklyn,
- 7:45Speaker 3: all of those Italian, Irish, Polish, families, cops, firemen, con
- 7:53Speaker 3: ed workers, sanitation guys, they all got the hell out
- 7:58Speaker 3: of Dodge. Where'd they go? Some of them went to
- 8:02Speaker 3: less expensive communities in Westchester, but a bunch of them
- 8:07Speaker 3: went to Putnam County, which was barely populated. It was
- 8:11Speaker 3: essentially a seasonal county with some bungalows. on these man-made lakes.
- 8:18Speaker 3: So Putnam County, for those of you who don't live
- 8:21Speaker 3: in the tri-state area, has been designated New York City's watershed.
- 8:28Speaker 3: And big chunks of the Hudson River have been diverted
- 8:31Speaker 3: to create reservoirs for New York City drinking and tap water.
- 8:39Speaker 3: Long story short, these communities that were only during the
- 8:46Speaker 3: summer in the 70s, 80s, and 90s suddenly grew from
- 8:50Speaker 3: a couple of thousand year-round residents to 35,000 like Carmel,
- 8:55Speaker 3: New York, the setting for the Devil's Quarry. So you've got,
- 9:04Speaker 3: in bright blue New York State, you've got this carve-out,
- 9:09Speaker 3: this blood-red carve-out of New York City cops, sanitation, blah, blah, blah. Well,
- 9:17Speaker 3: in 1994, a beautiful young girl who is deeply unhappy
- 9:23Speaker 3: at home, who feels neglected, abused, et cetera, and who
- 9:30Speaker 3: is taken to wandering the streets of this rural town, Carmel,
- 9:35Speaker 3: which barely has a downtown, at all hours of the
- 9:39Speaker 3: day or night, disappears on the afternoon of October 3rd, 1994.
- 9:45Speaker 3: It's never seen again in town limits. Cops, the crooked
- 9:52Speaker 3: cops at the Putnam Sheriff's Office, and typically you don't
- 9:58Speaker 3: get guests on here, leading with crooked cops.
- 10:01Speaker 1: No, we don't.
- 10:02Speaker 2: But we definitely have had guests that were, that worked
- 10:06Speaker 2: with the Innocence Project and their, whose message has been
- 10:11Speaker 2: similar and wrongly convicted, uh, you know, prisoners, that has
- 10:17Speaker 2: been their passion. So it's some of my favorite because
- 10:21Speaker 2: the fact that you actually give a shit enough to
- 10:25Speaker 2: say to the Innocence Project, send me to a small town.
- 10:29Speaker 3: Exactly.
- 10:30Speaker 2: Like Putnam, where clearly, clearly something happened here. And so
- 10:35Speaker 2: please go on.
- 10:36Speaker 3: So why do I use the word crooked? Because it's
- 10:41Speaker 3: been adjudicated. because we have all of this forensic evidence
- 10:47Speaker 3: that the two cops who framed two young boys, Anthony DePippo,
- 10:54Speaker 3: 18 when they arrested him, Andy Krivak, 17 when they
- 10:59Speaker 3: arrested him, both kids that I call sideways kids, kids
- 11:04Speaker 3: with ADHD, kids with low-level drug intakes, mostly weed, occasionally
- 11:13Speaker 3: ecstasy and pills. The cops, instead of investigating the disappearance
- 11:19Speaker 3: of Joseph Wright in October, November, et cetera, did absolutely
- 11:24Speaker 3: nothing on her case.
- 11:26Speaker 1: Just like with Robin Murphy.
- 11:28Speaker 2: I mean, I couldn't get over when you described her
- 11:32Speaker 2: friend actually creating this search group As opposed to the
- 11:37Speaker 2: cops finding the real, finding for bad, the first real
- 11:40Speaker 2: piece of evidence because the cops weren't doing shit.
- 11:44Speaker 1: And I just couldn't get over it.
- 11:46Speaker 3: Well, wait till you hear season three. So we're now
- 11:51Speaker 3: on season two. Season one, for those who are new
- 11:53Speaker 3: to the series, focused entirely on the wrongful convictions of
- 11:59Speaker 3: Anthony DePippo and Andy Krivak for the murder of Josette Ray,
- 12:04Speaker 3: 12-year-old girl. Not only did they not rape and murder Josette,
- 12:10Speaker 3: we know who did in any event. Anthony DePippo did
- 12:15Speaker 3: the most extraordinary thing I've ever encountered in 30 years.
- 12:20Speaker 3: So Anthony could barely read when he went to prison. Again,
- 12:24Speaker 3: he had a significant learning disorder. He dropped out of
- 12:30Speaker 3: or failed the ninth grade three times. He gets convicted
- 12:35Speaker 3: of murdering a girl he met once to offer a
- 12:39Speaker 3: cigarette to on the street. He goes to the worst
- 12:43Speaker 3: place on earth, what we in New York refer to
- 12:48Speaker 3: as up top. When you've committed really heinous crimes, you
- 12:54Speaker 3: don't just go to prison. You go to the worst
- 12:57Speaker 3: prisons in all of the Northeast. You go to Attica.
- 13:01Speaker 3: You go to.
- 13:03Speaker 3: Dannemora, you go to Western, you go to Shawangunk. Anthony
- 13:08Speaker 3: was at all of those places. So first he taught
- 13:12Speaker 3: himself to read in the law library by reading the
- 13:17Speaker 3: case law reporter, which is the standard text, which has
- 13:21Speaker 3: the summaries and in some cases transcripts. of these legal proceedings,
- 13:29Speaker 3: criminal proceedings, murders, serial rapes, et cetera, et cetera. And
- 13:34Speaker 3: so he taught himself first to read, then he taught
- 13:36Speaker 3: himself to write, and then he taught himself how to
- 13:39Speaker 3: investigate his own case. And we're gonna get to Robin
- 13:42Speaker 3: in just a second. So the thing about Anthony that's
- 13:46Speaker 3: a little different aside from the fact that he turns
- 13:49Speaker 3: out to be innately one of the most brilliant legal
- 13:53Speaker 3: minds in America.
- 13:55Speaker 1: And that's not.
- 13:56Speaker 3: Me saying it. So America has one lawyer at the very,
- 14:03Speaker 3: very top of criminal law. And anyone who's seen the P.
- 14:07Speaker 3: Diddy documentary has met Mark Agniflo. Anybody who has watched
- 14:12Speaker 3: The Vow about Keith Raniere and that crazy sex cult,
- 14:18Speaker 3: Mark represented Diddy, got him off of 36 of 40
- 14:22Speaker 3: counts for interstate racketeering, sex trafficking. You got Harvey Weinstein off.
- 14:32Speaker 3: I mean, this is a guy who markets himself to
- 14:37Speaker 3: those people he says are truly fucked. He got a
- 14:41Speaker 3: hold of Anthony's case in 2016, drove up to Putnam
- 14:46Speaker 3: County to meet with his client at Putnam County Jailhouse
- 14:51Speaker 3: and realized within five minutes that he was sitting there
- 14:55Speaker 3: with the second best lawyer in America, even though Anthony,
- 14:58Speaker 3: of course, had no memory. And so to get through
- 15:04Speaker 3: the post-conviction relief process and get a judge to read
- 15:09Speaker 3: your brief that you yourself as a convict have written,
- 15:13Speaker 3: the odds are, let's call it one in 100,000, for
- 15:18Speaker 3: a judge to then refer your brief to the Court
- 15:23Speaker 3: of Appeals where a seven panel, seven justice panel that
- 15:29Speaker 3: oversees all convictions in the state of New York agrees
- 15:35Speaker 3: not only wrongly convicted, but your lawyer should be disbarred.
- 15:41Speaker 1: And I cannot believe has not been.
- 15:44Speaker 3: Has not been disbarred. In fact, Anthony's criminal lawyer, who
- 15:48Speaker 3: is himself a criminal, is now a judge in Putnam County.
- 15:53Speaker 3: A man who committed the most horrific ethical offense I've
- 15:59Speaker 3: ever heard of. He was Anthony DePippo's capital murder lawyer,
- 16:06Speaker 3: while he also represented the guy who should have been
- 16:10Speaker 3: the prime suspect, the man you've been talking about, Howard
- 16:14Speaker 3: John Gover. Right.
- 16:16Speaker 2: Unreal.
- 16:16Speaker 3: Hit that from Anthony, hit it from the judge. It
- 16:20Speaker 3: was only when Anthony got a hold of his case
- 16:22Speaker 3: file and saw.
- 16:23Speaker 1: That It was the same lawyer.
- 16:26Speaker 3: Leader had represented Gombert in two different rape cases. So
- 16:35Speaker 3: in the course of investigating his own conviction, Anthony stumbles
- 16:41Speaker 3: across this name in witness statements that had never been
- 16:45Speaker 3: raised at his trial by his own shitty lawyer, Robert Leader,
- 16:50Speaker 3: the name of Howard Gombert. And Anthony had heard the
- 16:54Speaker 3: name before, but he couldn't remember in what connection. And
- 16:59Speaker 3: so he hired a private detective to start digging into
- 17:03Speaker 3: this man, Howard Gomber. And lo and behold, Gomber turns
- 17:07Speaker 3: out to be a one-man sex crime wave in Putnam County.
- 17:14Speaker 3: And before Putnam County, New York, 12 miles east in Litchfield, Connecticut,
- 17:21Speaker 3: he had raped the when she was 11, 12, 13,
- 17:26Speaker 3: another girl. He was convicted in Connecticut of raping a
- 17:32Speaker 3: seven-year-old girl. He's now in prison. He's been in prison
- 17:36Speaker 3: since 2000, but, and he was sentenced to 30 years,
- 17:42Speaker 3: but in Connecticut, 30 years turns out to be more
- 17:47Speaker 3: like 24, 25. So he's getting out soon?
- 17:49Speaker 1: Is that what you're saying?
- 17:50Speaker 3: He's getting out in less than three months. This monster.
- 17:56Speaker 3: This is why I came back to do the pod series. So,
- 18:00Speaker 3: Robin Murphy. Robin Murphy disappears exactly six months after Joseph
- 18:08Speaker 3: Wright does. Again, a small, white-only town where there is
- 18:14Speaker 3: no violent crime. Part of the problem, Jennifer, is that
- 18:18Speaker 3: these mall cops, these rented cops, who were never trained
- 18:23Speaker 3: to be cops... were suddenly tasked with solving not one,
- 18:29Speaker 3: but two murders of girls in their town. And because
- 18:36Speaker 3: they've never done anything like this, the sheriff's department says, well,
- 18:40Speaker 3: fuck it. Let's just hang the murder on two of
- 18:44Speaker 3: the kids we hate. And what's the difference? Well, the
- 18:49Speaker 3: difference is, had you investigated and caught The actual perp,
- 18:56Speaker 3: when Joe's head disappeared, Robin Murphy would be alive. Well,
- 19:01Speaker 3: we'd know where she is. Yeah. Robin worked with Gombert's
- 19:05Speaker 3: long-suffering baby mama, who we called Anne Marie.
- 19:10Speaker 2: Okay, so let me just stop you because he was
- 19:12Speaker 2: 30 and she was 16.
- 19:13Speaker 1: Is that what I'm remembering?
- 19:14Speaker 3: Yes.
- 19:15Speaker 1: Approximately?
- 19:16Speaker 3: Yes.
- 19:16Speaker 2: That's what I'm not understanding. In these towns, 30-year-old man
- 19:20Speaker 2: is getting with a 16-year-old girl. He gets pregnant. That's
- 19:24Speaker 2: the part I haven't understood. Where were the parents? Where
- 19:26Speaker 2: were the cops when that was happening?
- 19:29Speaker 3: There is a culture in Putnam County, and I don't
- 19:33Speaker 3: want to globalize it. I don't want to say that
- 19:37Speaker 3: this is what small-town white America looks like because you
- 19:43Speaker 3: can't extrapolate from one example. But what I have seen
- 19:48Speaker 3: over and over and been told over and over by
- 19:53Speaker 3: Robin's girlfriends, by Josette's classmates, is if you were a
- 19:58Speaker 3: girl growing up in Putnam County, in the town of Carmel,
- 20:02Speaker 3: in the town of Brewster, in the town of Patterson,
- 20:06Speaker 3: the cops would fuck with you relentlessly. If you were
- 20:11Speaker 3: one of those kids who smoked a joint and ditched class,
- 20:14Speaker 3: they always found you. If they found you with a joint,
- 20:19Speaker 3: if they found you ditching school, if they found you
- 20:22Speaker 3: in the woods drinking a 40 at 2 o'clock in
- 20:25Speaker 3: the afternoon, this is what I've been told again and
- 20:28Speaker 3: again and again. This is what season three is going
- 20:32Speaker 3: to be about. The boys would get arrested and forced
- 20:37Speaker 3: to snitch and set up their friends for a drug
- 20:41Speaker 3: deal so the cops could bust them too. And the
- 20:44Speaker 3: girls had to blow the cop at the wheel to
- 20:47Speaker 3: get out of the back of that street. So this
- 20:52Speaker 3: is the culture of this godforsaken county, Putnam County.
- 20:58Speaker 1: And now I'm picturing Robin being kind of this goth girl.
- 21:01Speaker 3: That's right. She already stood out as a kind of
- 21:06Speaker 3: ringer in this scruffy working class town. Right.
- 21:10Speaker 1: Easy target.
- 21:11Speaker 3: An easy target, but also this monster had a nose.
- 21:17Speaker 3: He had a sixth sense for vulnerable girls and lonely
- 21:21Speaker 3: single mothers. And lonely single mothers were Howard Gombert's delivery
- 21:27Speaker 3: device for their daughters. So, He did this with the
- 21:33Speaker 3: girl we call Rachel R. He did this with Sarah Lindley,
- 21:37Speaker 3: her real name. We know that Gombert was a machine.
- 21:43Speaker 3: We also know that Gombert had been working up to
- 21:48Speaker 3: these horrific sexual assaults from an early age. He was
- 21:55Speaker 3: what the FBI wanted. calls a sexual burglar. Have you
- 22:00Speaker 3: heard this term before?
- 22:01Speaker 1: No, I haven't. Please, tell us.
- 22:03Speaker 3: Then you break into someone's home to steal watches, cameras,
- 22:08Speaker 3: cash if there's cash on hand, small appliances you can resell.
- 22:13Speaker 3: The first and last thing you want to do is
- 22:14Speaker 3: get the hell out of there as quickly as possible
- 22:17Speaker 3: because you're not just risking your liberty as a burglar,
- 22:20Speaker 3: you're risking your life. If by any chance someone's home
- 22:24Speaker 3: and you think the house is empty, A sexual burglar
- 22:27Speaker 3: is someone who goes in to rob the place but
- 22:30Speaker 3: sticks around to rummage through the lingerie drawers of his victims.
- 22:37Speaker 3: And Gombert didn't just steal panties and bras. He had
- 22:42Speaker 3: duffel bags full of them when they finally searched his
- 22:46Speaker 3: dwellings in the late 90s, early 2000s. He literally... They
- 22:54Speaker 3: found so many stolen bracelets, watches, cameras, purses, handbags, but
- 23:01Speaker 3: what they found were girls' and women's intimates amassed over
- 23:07Speaker 3: we don't know how long. Long story short, Robin worked
- 23:14Speaker 3: as a cashier at the Shopperay in Carmel. At the
- 23:17Speaker 3: next register was Anne Marie, Gombert's former 16-year-old baby mama,
- 23:23Speaker 3: now 19, and she had just filed rape and sodomy
- 23:28Speaker 3: charges against this monster. I won't go into why those
- 23:31Speaker 3: were dismissed.
- 23:33Speaker 2: Why, by the way, because you say that also on
- 23:35Speaker 2: the pod, that you don't want to go into it.
- 23:37Speaker 2: Is that just because it's not the timing? You don't
- 23:39Speaker 2: screw anything up for the future?
- 23:41Speaker 3: Gombert was a compulsive archivist of his sex crimes. He
- 23:46Speaker 3: always took Polaroids of his victims. He had boxes and
- 23:51Speaker 3: boxes of Polaroids of underage girls, naked or scantily dressed.
- 23:57Speaker 3: He had compiled a photo album of pictures of Anne
- 24:03Speaker 3: Marie bound, gagged, with foreign objects wedged inside her. And
- 24:08Speaker 3: he showed, his lawyer showed that collection of photos to
- 24:14Speaker 3: the ADA in Anne Marie's rape and sodomy case. And
- 24:19Speaker 3: convinced that ADA that this was evidence that the Gumbert's
- 24:28Speaker 3: rapes and sodomies were consensual.
- 24:32Speaker 1: I couldn't believe when you said it. I was in shock.
- 24:35Speaker 3: Only in Putnam County would someone's lawyer provide evidence of
- 24:42Speaker 3: the crimes that their client is charged with. And the
- 24:47Speaker 3: ADA going, yeah, you know what? You're right. I'm wrong.
- 24:51Speaker 3: She obviously is a hoe and consented to all of this.
- 24:56Speaker 3: And that's what happened with Anne Marie's case. So Anne
- 25:01Speaker 3: Marie fled to a shelter.
- 25:03Speaker 1: And he followed her, right? He's a smart motherfucker.
- 25:06Speaker 3: He's a smart motherfucker, but he is so obsessive. Once
- 25:11Speaker 3: he has his thumb on a girl, he never lets
- 25:14Speaker 3: her go. whether he's with someone else, whether he's three
- 25:18Speaker 3: times removed from that assaultive relationship, he stalks, surveils all
- 25:24Speaker 3: of his victims. Long story short, she had fled to
- 25:28Speaker 3: a shelter. He tracked her to that shelter. She ran
- 25:31Speaker 3: to another shelter. He tracked her to that one. She
- 25:35Speaker 3: was driving home one day in Danbury, Connecticut, when suddenly
- 25:40Speaker 3: he puts his fist against her windshield. For some reason,
- 25:48Speaker 3: she rolls down her driver's side window. He sticks a
- 25:50Speaker 3: knife to her throat and says, shove over. She screams,
- 25:54Speaker 3: starts blowing the horn. The motorists behind her start blowing
- 25:58Speaker 3: their horns. He runs away. Within a month of that happening,
- 26:03Speaker 3: Robin Murphy disappears. And nobody except her friends and her
- 26:09Speaker 3: family give a shit. Mind you, There's a dead girl
- 26:14Speaker 3: in the woods who has just disappeared six months earlier.
- 26:32Speaker 1: Paul, where were that?
- 26:33Speaker 2: Where were, because you don't talk about them a lot
- 26:34Speaker 2: on the pod. I'm sure there's a reason for that.
- 26:36Speaker 2: But where were the parents in this?
- 26:38Speaker 3: They were fighting tooth and nail to get the cops
- 26:41Speaker 3: to do their job. They never hauled Gombert in for
- 26:45Speaker 3: a grilling in the interrogation box. They did it with
- 26:52Speaker 3: Robin's stoner friends. They did it or kept trying to
- 27:00Speaker 3: haul in her father and her older brother for hostile questioning.
- 27:08Speaker 3: The one person they didn't interrogate was Howard Gomber. Now,
- 27:15Speaker 3: the question you're going to ask me is, how on
- 27:19Speaker 3: earth does a man who has been charged with rape
- 27:22Speaker 3: five times in police filings, many more that we know of,
- 27:30Speaker 3: how is it that every cop in Putnam County knew
- 27:34Speaker 3: who he was, knew what he did, and allowed him
- 27:38Speaker 3: to go on hunting?
- 27:39Speaker 1: That certainly is my question.
- 27:42Speaker 3: I have an answer. I can't say it on the air.
- 27:44Speaker 1: Oh, come on.
- 27:47Speaker 3: Why?
- 27:47Speaker 1: Can you say why you can't say it? Are there
- 27:49Speaker 1: legal reasons?
- 27:50Speaker 3: Well, it's something I can't yet prove.
- 27:53Speaker 1: I'm saying, okay, fair enough.
- 27:56Speaker 3: I ask cop after cop, what was your training? If
- 28:00Speaker 3: you're a New York City cop, if you're a Philadelphia cop,
- 28:03Speaker 3: if you're an LA cop, six months of academy. Plus,
- 28:07Speaker 3: if you want to do any specialized work, if you
- 28:10Speaker 3: want to be a narc, If you want to work homicide,
- 28:14Speaker 3: if you want to work major robberies, you have to
- 28:17Speaker 3: go for, first of all, you have to pass a
- 28:20Speaker 3: sergeant's exam. Second of all, you have to sit for
- 28:24Speaker 3: intensive detection coursework. There is this constant learning, this constant
- 28:33Speaker 3: skill sharpening, at least for cops who actually solve crimes.
- 28:37Speaker 3: The vast majority of cops on any city force do
- 28:40Speaker 3: absolutely nothing except stand there and look scary. But the
- 28:46Speaker 3: folks who actually solve the crimes in every city are
- 28:49Speaker 3: the top 20% of the cops. And by the way,
- 28:53Speaker 3: the folks who commit all the wrongful shootings, the wrongful arrests,
- 28:57Speaker 3: the racial incidents, they're the bottom 20%. You've got the 60%
- 29:01Speaker 3: in the middle. In Carmel, nobody got trained to be
- 29:06Speaker 3: a cop. Not sheriff's deputies, not, and so, No one
- 29:12Speaker 3: ever told them that they could be anything more than
- 29:15Speaker 3: bullies with a badge and a gun. And as we
- 29:19Speaker 3: say in season one, Putnam County is a place where
- 29:24Speaker 3: no bad deed goes punished.
- 29:26Speaker 2: Just in terms of Robin, right, for a moment, because
- 29:29Speaker 2: that case is still not solved. This girl died, was
- 29:33Speaker 2: murdered 30 some odd years ago, right? And here, I
- 29:38Speaker 2: don't know how Robin's character are dealing with this because
- 29:41Speaker 2: I'm sure that they now believe that Gambart is the
- 29:42Speaker 2: one that did it.
- 29:43Speaker 3: Well, I can give you an update there. So Robin's
- 29:47Speaker 3: poor parents were so tortured by the disappearance of the
- 29:52Speaker 3: family star. I mean, this girl was so bright. She
- 29:56Speaker 3: was beautiful. And she just had... that it.
- 30:02Speaker 1: Did she?
- 30:02Speaker 2: I'm glad you're telling us because I just, I know
- 30:05Speaker 2: she was, it sounds like she was smart. Even the
- 30:08Speaker 2: manager at ShopRite or whatever it was, talked about how
- 30:11Speaker 2: she was never late and she was so studious and
- 30:14Speaker 2: there was something, she seemed like an introvert, but really
- 30:16Speaker 2: she was, you know, she was commanding the room, right?
- 30:20Speaker 1: But she was very goth. I wonder if that was
- 30:21Speaker 1: part of this in terms of the cops.
- 30:24Speaker 3: We were not supposed to have the case file. We
- 30:26Speaker 3: have the thousand page case file. I don't want to
- 30:29Speaker 3: say how we got it.
- 30:31Speaker 1: I don't want to know how you got it. Right. Okay.
- 30:34Speaker 3: You cannot believe what you as a lay person are
- 30:40Speaker 3: reading page after page after page, thinking to yourself, all right,
- 30:44Speaker 3: I've seen law and order. I've seen homicide life on
- 30:49Speaker 3: the streets. I've seen, you know, NYPD blue. I know
- 30:54Speaker 3: exactly what they should have done next. And every single
- 30:58Speaker 3: time they did something else. Every time they should have
- 31:01Speaker 3: gone right, they went left.
- 31:04Speaker 1: And Robin's poor parents are, what happens now?
- 31:09Speaker 3: So Robin's father, who was an elevator repairman in New
- 31:17Speaker 3: York City, commuting back and forth, wound up essentially drinking
- 31:23Speaker 3: himself into the grave.
- 31:26Speaker 2: Oh.
- 31:27Speaker 3: At a very precocious age. He died of cirrhosis, I
- 31:35Speaker 3: assume cirrhosis could have been liver cancer, exactly 13 years
- 31:39Speaker 3: to the day after his baby disappeared. His mother now,
- 31:44Speaker 3: her mother now lives upstate. The entire family is so haunted.
- 31:51Speaker 3: So mom, Judy, in her and her frustration and her
- 31:57Speaker 3: grief began writing to psychics. She saw on the Sally
- 32:02Speaker 3: Jesse Raphael show. She saw on Dr. Phil. And she
- 32:07Speaker 3: got them to come to Carmel and lead the cops
- 32:10Speaker 3: around by their noses. And the cops, who wouldn't actually
- 32:14Speaker 3: interview witnesses, but did anything and everything that these crackpots
- 32:21Speaker 3: on Sally Jesse Raphael suggested they do, spent three years
- 32:26Speaker 3: chasing their own tails to go investigate this body of
- 32:31Speaker 3: water or that barren patch of woods or when all
- 32:37Speaker 3: along the killer was sitting in front of them. But
- 32:43Speaker 3: he had lawyered up. He had lawyered up. And in Carmel,
- 32:48Speaker 3: if you have a lawyer, we can't touch you. When
- 32:53Speaker 3: the cops went to talk to Howard Gombrich, he had
- 32:55Speaker 3: just tried to kill himself on the lawn of his
- 32:58Speaker 3: father's house five days after Robin disappeared. You can't have
- 33:02Speaker 3: a more blatant act of what lawyers call consciousness of guilt.
- 33:11Speaker 3: It is like a deathbed confession, right? Swallowed a bunch
- 33:14Speaker 3: of sleeping pills, washed it down with vodka, wound up
- 33:18Speaker 3: in a semi-coma on his father's lawn. Almost confessed twice.
- 33:23Speaker 3: while he came back to his senses. So when they
- 33:26Speaker 3: go interview him at the hospital, they ask him, you know,
- 33:30Speaker 3: can you reconstruct your movements that night? Can you? No,
- 33:35Speaker 3: you know, this guy is the prime suspect. You grab him,
- 33:40Speaker 3: you cuff him, you take him to your precinct and
- 33:45Speaker 3: you sweat him until he breaks. That's what you've done
- 33:48Speaker 3: with every child you framed or you know, sent to
- 33:53Speaker 3: rehab or to juvie, but you can't do it with
- 33:57Speaker 3: this guy? Well, the day after they completely blew their
- 34:01Speaker 3: shot at him, he called his lawyer, Bob Leder, who
- 34:05Speaker 3: was a public defender, and said, well, well, well, the
- 34:08Speaker 3: cops are after me. He sent them a cease and
- 34:12Speaker 3: desist letter saying, do not speak to my client unless
- 34:15Speaker 3: I'm there. Had he sent that letter to a New
- 34:18Speaker 3: York City detective, he would have said, Here's the address
- 34:22Speaker 3: where you can see your client. It's called the Tombs.
- 34:25Speaker 3: We're arresting him and we are interviewing him at 9A.
- 34:31Speaker 3: By all means, attend. But we're getting that piece of
- 34:35Speaker 3: shit on the record about what he knew, where he was,
- 34:40Speaker 3: and who or who cannot provide him an alibi. The
- 34:44Speaker 3: cops never did that.
- 34:45Speaker 2: They were just so intimidated that he had this lawyer.
- 34:48Speaker 2: That was, I mean, I think it sounds, It's not
- 34:50Speaker 2: just that. Clearly, they had dealings with him that started way.
- 34:54Speaker 1: Before his disappearances.
- 34:57Speaker 2: But then that was just their MO that if you
- 35:00Speaker 2: have a lawyer, you're untouchable. I mean, I know it's
- 35:02Speaker 2: a small town. I get that there wasn't a lot
- 35:06Speaker 2: of money around, but that is crazy.
- 35:10Speaker 3: But this is what bad policing looks like. There are
- 35:14Speaker 3: police departments, and I've written about great cops. I believe
- 35:18Speaker 3: great cops... are artists. I have written about five or
- 35:24Speaker 3: six extraordinary cops in my career, and I've basically erected
- 35:29Speaker 3: statues to these guys. They tend to be federal cops,
- 35:33Speaker 3: but great homicide cops, great armed robbery cops, they are
- 35:39Speaker 3: artists at criminal detection. Bad cops are the most dangerous
- 35:47Speaker 3: people in any community. Because there are the crimes that
- 35:51Speaker 3: they themselves commit. I'm about to report a season about
- 35:56Speaker 3: one crooked police department in Putnam County. What these cops
- 36:01Speaker 3: did to one woman. It's coming.
- 36:04Speaker 1: And then there's Robin.
- 36:06Speaker 3: And then there's Robin and Josette.
- 36:08Speaker 1: And Josette.
- 36:09Speaker 3: I'll remind you. So I haven't told you about my
- 36:12Speaker 3: conversation with DA Robert Tendi when I spoke to him
- 36:16Speaker 3: two weeks ago. I asked him to confirm what his
- 36:19Speaker 3: task force had told me, that they are actively investigating
- 36:23Speaker 3: both cold cases. He said, no, we're not reinvestigating the
- 36:28Speaker 3: murder of Choset, right? We got the guys. I said,
- 36:31Speaker 3: what do you mean you got the guys? Have you
- 36:33Speaker 3: released the identities of these perps to the public? He said,
- 36:37Speaker 3: we tried them. They were acquitted, but we got the killers.
- 36:42Speaker 3: I said, do you mean the young men you paid
- 36:44Speaker 3: upwards of $ 40 million to? Are those the killers you're
- 36:49Speaker 3: referring to? The two young men who were not just
- 36:53Speaker 3: exonerated by the jury, by Pottham County juries, they wanted
- 36:59Speaker 3: to indict you. They wanted to indict your star witness,
- 37:03Speaker 3: Denise Rose. So what do you mean you've got the killer?
- 37:07Speaker 1: What does that mean?
- 37:09Speaker 3: It means he is pathologically unable to admit that he's wrong.
- 37:17Speaker 3: that he fucked up. And it's not me saying he
- 37:22Speaker 3: fucked up. It's two separate juries who said, are you
- 37:25Speaker 3: out of your mind you convicted these guys?
- 37:28Speaker 1: These poor guys. These poor kids. They were kids. Okay,
- 37:47Speaker 1: so It ain't over. And I don't just mean... No,
- 37:50Speaker 1: it's not.
- 37:51Speaker 3: It ain't over.
- 37:51Speaker 2: I want to know what happens now. So these two
- 37:55Speaker 2: cold cases and these parents, and I haven't even... We're
- 37:58Speaker 2: supposed to be talking about Robin. I want to talk
- 38:00Speaker 2: about Josette also, of course. But do they have an
- 38:03Speaker 2: idea about what's coming?
- 38:05Speaker 1: Is it.
- 38:05Speaker 2: I know that this pod, because I've seen the effect of...
- 38:10Speaker 2: documentaries and pods like this and what they can do.
- 38:13Speaker 2: So I know that this is going to take off.
- 38:15Speaker 3: Oh, it's taken off already. We've been top 20 ever
- 38:17Speaker 3: since we dropped season one.
- 38:19Speaker 2: So wait, so we are waiting for season three to
- 38:22Speaker 2: come out for the shit to hit the fan?
- 38:24Speaker 3: No, we haven't started. No, in fact, we're still near
- 38:28Speaker 3: the end of the production of season two. We have
- 38:34Speaker 3: dropped the first three episodes. The Fourth will be out
- 38:41Speaker 3: next Tuesday. The eighth and final episode will not be
- 38:48Speaker 3: released until we know what's happening with that monster and
- 38:53Speaker 3: his pending release from Cheshire Correctional Facility.
- 38:57Speaker 1: Well, what could be happening? What's on the table?
- 39:01Speaker 3: He thinks he's getting out, signing a piece of paper
- 39:04Speaker 3: that says, yes.
- 39:05Speaker 1: Forget about what he thinks. What do you think?
- 39:07Speaker 3: There's what I know. And can't say because.
- 39:11Speaker 1: You don't want to get in the way of it.
- 39:13Speaker 3: No, I have been sworn to secrecy by the folks
- 39:19Speaker 3: working this case.
- 39:21Speaker 1: So it's not just you, right?
- 39:23Speaker 3: No, no, no, no.
- 39:23Speaker 1: There are folks working this case now.
- 39:26Speaker 3: Not just this case, but Colt. of his in other states.
- 39:33Speaker 3: As I say, this man was a one-man crime wave.
- 39:36Speaker 3: He got caught in Connecticut.
- 39:37Speaker 2: Are the other cases murder cases?
- 39:40Speaker 3: They are rape in the first cases.
- 39:42Speaker 1: Okay.
- 39:43Speaker 3: Children.
- 39:44Speaker 2: He's only been convicted on one case. There's only one
- 39:48Speaker 2: girl that he did time for.
- 39:51Speaker 3: He's still doing that time. For some reason, they convicted
- 39:57Speaker 3: him of attempted rape in the first of a seven-year-old girl.
- 40:02Speaker 3: Why they didn't convict him, why they didn't charge him
- 40:07Speaker 3: with rape in the first, which is life without parole.
- 40:10Speaker 1: What about statutory rape with Anne-Marie?
- 40:13Speaker 3: So statutory rape is that has... an expiration limit. What
- 40:21Speaker 3: does not have an expiration limit is rape in the first.
- 40:25Speaker 3: So what is rape in the first? In Gombert's case,
- 40:30Speaker 3: where the victim is under 13 and there is at
- 40:33Speaker 3: least a two-year age gap, meaning he's at least two
- 40:37Speaker 3: years older, he is permanently at risk of arrest, trial,
- 40:45Speaker 3: conviction for rape in the first. which is a minimum,
- 40:49Speaker 3: mandatory minimum of 30 years. But there is also an
- 40:54Speaker 3: abundance of what is called CSAM material. You know what
- 40:58Speaker 3: CSAM material is? Child sex abuse material. What do I mean?
- 41:05Speaker 1: The pictures.
- 41:06Speaker 3: He's an archivist. He keeps not just pictures, he kept
- 41:12Speaker 3: the panties of his victims. So when the when the
- 41:19Speaker 3: Carmel PD cops finally, finally, years, six years after Robin's disappearance,
- 41:26Speaker 3: searched Howard Gombert's dwelling, they found a suitcase. And in
- 41:33Speaker 3: that suitcase were 12 pairs, not nine, we report nine,
- 41:37Speaker 3: but there were 12 pairs of girls' and women's underwear, lovingly,
- 41:44Speaker 3: painstakingly separated, and sealed in vacuum-locked plastic bags.
- 41:55Speaker 1: Grow up. Why?
- 41:57Speaker 3: Why do serial pedophiles do this?
- 42:01Speaker 1: Same reason. I've heard the serial killers, too. It's a
- 42:04Speaker 1: pride thing, right?
- 42:05Speaker 3: It's not pride. It is, first of all, their way
- 42:11Speaker 3: of remembering the victim, remembering... their helplessness, remembering their suffering,
- 42:19Speaker 3: it is also the most potent way for them to
- 42:23Speaker 3: re-experience the rape, to re-experience the violation. Why? That underwear
- 42:32Speaker 3: is unwashed. It's taken from... So, yeah, and You know,
- 42:41Speaker 3: we spent a lot of time talking to FBI profilers.
- 42:45Speaker 3: One in particular was very good on why men like
- 42:51Speaker 3: Gombert always stage these rituals with his victims. They were
- 43:00Speaker 3: always bound, very often had their soiled underwear shoved in
- 43:06Speaker 3: their mouths as gags. and their bras tied around their
- 43:10Speaker 3: eyes as a blindfold. And he was an extraordinarily skillful outdoorsman,
- 43:19Speaker 3: someone who had grown up sleeping in a tent because
- 43:22Speaker 3: he'd been kicked out of his father's house at 15
- 43:25Speaker 3: and 16. And he literally overwintered in the thick of
- 43:31Speaker 3: a northeast winter for years in the woods behind his
- 43:35Speaker 3: father's house in a flimsy tent with just a blanket
- 43:40Speaker 3: and whatever he was wearing for warmth. And so this
- 43:46Speaker 3: is a guy who knows those woods like the back
- 43:49Speaker 3: of his hand. This was particularly important in the jokes
- 43:55Speaker 3: at Wright Murder, because when I went into the woods
- 43:58Speaker 3: where she was buried, I am telling you, Jennifer, you
- 44:02Speaker 3: could not get there from the road. It was so dark.
- 44:06Speaker 3: impossible to get through the thorns, the stickers, the rock walls.
- 44:13Speaker 3: It took me a half hour with three private detectives
- 44:19Speaker 3: and two veteran woodsmen to get to the scene of
- 44:23Speaker 3: where Josette was buried. It was so impenetrable.
- 44:28Speaker 1: And the fact that he... So it's just Moore, as
- 44:30Speaker 1: if Moore is needed, to say.
- 44:32Speaker 3: Exactly.
- 44:32Speaker 1: Not many.
- 44:34Speaker 2: young boys, not to Pippo, not that it's, it's a right.
- 44:39Speaker 1: We're already.
- 44:40Speaker 3: Yes.
- 44:41Speaker 1: Tell me this. He's getting out in January.
- 44:45Speaker 3: 11th is the date we hear.
- 44:46Speaker 1: Okay.
- 44:47Speaker 2: So my question is, so now thank God he was
- 44:51Speaker 2: so steadfast about keeping these poor fucking girls tokens. And
- 44:56Speaker 2: tell me now that you have that. I'm picturing he's
- 44:59Speaker 2: going to walk out of the jail. He's going to
- 45:02Speaker 2: get picked up by the police and they're going to
- 45:05Speaker 2: deposit him right back in. I mean, I'm picturing that
- 45:09Speaker 2: is what's going to happen.
- 45:11Speaker 3: That is not only the hope, but the plan. But
- 45:16Speaker 3: there are still three months and there are multiple, multiple
- 45:25Speaker 3: things going on in the background that I just can't
- 45:27Speaker 3: talk about.
- 45:28Speaker 1: And tentacles.
- 45:29Speaker 2: And it seems as if this is not just going to,
- 45:31Speaker 2: he's not the only one going down. I mean, that's what,
- 45:35Speaker 2: you know, I'm, I'm getting, I'm picking up from what
- 45:37Speaker 2: you're putting down here, but Paul, I cannot believe it's,
- 45:40Speaker 2: it's a.
- 45:41Speaker 1: Very different thing.
- 45:42Speaker 2: Listening to this, listening to the pot and getting to
- 45:45Speaker 2: talk to you like this. We have three episodes out,
- 45:48Speaker 2: three or out, three out the eighth. We're not, you're
- 45:51Speaker 2: not putting up.
- 45:53Speaker 3: And unfortunately, because we've had so little time to make
- 45:56Speaker 3: season two, it took us, 13 months to make season one.
- 46:00Speaker 3: We've had four and a half because the series was
- 46:02Speaker 3: so popular. We wanted to come right back with season two.
- 46:08Speaker 3: But so we've got seven episodes that are either written, produced,
- 46:13Speaker 3: recorded or in process. And then the eighth will save
- 46:18Speaker 3: until the click of those manacles go. Yes.
- 46:23Speaker 2: So when you come back though, and we can discuss
- 46:26Speaker 2: it now, maybe in three episodes or something, we'll give
- 46:29Speaker 2: it three more.
- 46:30Speaker 1: I love that.
- 46:32Speaker 3: Absolutely.
- 46:33Speaker 1: I mean, it's horrifying. It's horrifying. It's sad. It's appalling.
- 46:37Speaker 2: It's infuriating, but it's so, I love doing pods like
- 46:41Speaker 2: this with people like you who are, so it's making
- 46:46Speaker 2: a difference, but you really are.
- 46:48Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us. I'm in awe.
- 46:49Speaker 1: So we'll see you in about three more episodes. Okay.
- 46:52Speaker 3: You've got it, my friend.