Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Geetha Angara Pt. One

Transcript

Geetha Angara Pt. One · The Path Went Chilly

0:30
Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm
0:35
Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. February eighth, two thousand
0:41
and five, Totowa, New Jersey, Forty three year old chemist Gita Angara
0:47
shows up to worker shift at the Passaic Valley Water Commission treatment facility, which
0:51
turns up missing. The following day, Gita's body is discovered inside one of
0:56
the water tanks, and her cause of death is determined to be drowning.
1:00
A number of bruises on Gita's neck and body suggests that she got into a
1:04
violent struggle before she was placed in the tank, so her case is classified
1:10
as a homicide. Police investigated a number of Guida's coworkers, but the killer
1:15
is never identified and the motive for the crime remains unknown. After that,
1:22
the path went chilly, So we've got a pretty harrowing case to cover today,
1:26
the two thousand and five death of Ghita Anghara. The victim in this
1:30
story is a chemist who emigrated to the United States from India in order to
1:34
start a family and wound up getting a job at a water treatment plant.
1:38
However, she inexplicably vanished during one of her shifts before her body was discovered
1:44
inside one of the plant's water tanks. The evidence seemed to suggest that someone
1:49
violently attacked Ghita and choked her to death before removing a panel from the floor
1:53
and dumping her body inside the tank. Given that the plant was a secure
1:57
facility which could not be acts by outsiders, it seemed obvious that Gita was
2:02
killed by one of her co workers, but in spite of an extensive investigation,
2:07
no one can figure out who is responsible or what their motive could have
2:09
been, and believe it or not. There are also some people who believe
2:15
that Gita's death might have actually been a tragic accident, which occurred when she
2:19
failed to notice an open panel in the floor and wound up falling into the
2:22
tank. Whatever the case, there's still no conclusive answers about what happened,
2:27
So we're going to explore all the different theories on today's episode. So,
2:30
like you guys said, there's really no other explanation. She's in this secured
2:36
area where it has to be one of her coworkers or someone who has access
2:39
to the plant, and so your pool is quite small, but with no
2:44
evidence and no idea of what was going on. It's almost more maddening to
2:49
know that we have a lineup of people that have to be the suspect,
2:53
and yet there's really nothing to go on to say we can narrow it down
2:55
to these three, or this is where we can go accusing one of these
3:00
people of her homicide. It's quite tragic. It's not one of those cases
3:04
where you say, what could have happened, We know what happened, and
3:07
now it's who did it. Yeah, it's almost like a setup with an
3:10
old school murder mystery, where you have a certain amount of people in a
3:15
secure facility and you realize that only one of these people had to have committed
3:19
the murder. But unlike a piece of fiction, they were not able to
3:22
narrow it down just one suspect and solve the mystery. It was pretty much
3:25
we have a whole bunch of people working here, and we know one of
3:28
them had to have done this, but we can't figure out who did it
3:30
or why, and that's why it's so frustrating. One case, this reminds
3:36
me of what was the name of the woman, Robin she I think she
3:39
worked for Southwest oh Sue Tarascalis, Sue Tarascoiz just because of the male dominated
3:46
workplace, her being a woman up in a really high position. I know
3:50
you will you'll later draw parallels to another case, but this one really reminded
3:55
me of that, just because of all of the adversity that she faced it
4:00
inner workplace. Yeah, that's definitely a good comparison, because, as we're
4:03
going to talk about, it was rumored that there was a lot of animosity
4:08
towards Geta for having such a high position in the plant. But unlike Sue
4:12
Tarascoitz case, it doesn't sound like she faced any outward harassment or there are
4:15
any solid suspects who really wanted to harmor so we still have no idea if
4:21
that could have been the reason for her death. Our story begins in two
4:27
thousand and five in Totawa, New Jersey, a borough in Passaic County which
4:31
has a population of around ten thousand people and is located about twelve miles outside
4:36
of Newark. Our central figure is forty three year old Gita Angara, who
4:42
works at the treatment facility for the Passaic Valley Water Commission. The commission is
4:46
responsible for providing drinking water to over eight hundred thousand residents, and their facility
4:53
purifies an estimated eighty three million gallons of water every day. Gita originally from
5:00
Chennai, India, and became the first woman to ever attend Loyola College when
5:04
the school officially became co ed. She wound up earning both a bachelor's and
5:10
a master's degree in chemistry and received a gold medal after graduating as the top
5:15
student in her class. Gita also got married to her husband, Jaya Angara,
5:19
and the couple would immigrate to the United States in nineteen eighty four.
5:25
After attaining additional master's degrees and a doctorate in organic chemistry and New York University,
5:30
Gita eventually started her job with the Passaic Valley Water Commission. By this
5:35
point, she has been employed at the water treatment plant for over twelve years
5:40
and lives with her family about forty five minutes away in Holmdel Township. Gita
5:45
and Jaya now have two daughters, nineteen year old Pavitra and nine year old
5:49
Priya, along with a thirteen year old son named Vivic. In two thousand
5:55
and four, Gita would earn her plant operator's license and was promoted to the
6:00
position of senior chemists, which meant she would be responsible for the calibration of
6:03
one hundred and thirty five devices of the plant, including water clarity sensors.
6:10
At this point, the facility is currently in the midst of a seventy million
6:14
dollar project which will transition from the usage of chlorine treatments to purify the water
6:18
to an ozone disinfection system instead. One of Gida's responsibilities is to oversee the
6:24
new ozone generators and ensure that the plant's water quality remains within the standards of
6:30
the Environmental Protection Agency. On the morning of February the eighth, Guida arrived
6:35
at the water treatment facility to beginner shift, which ran from eight am until
6:40
four pm. Shortly before ten am, Guida was chatting with some of her
6:44
coworkers in the break room when the technicians from her lab walked in and informed
6:47
her that the plant's filters and clarity sensors needed to be calibrated. Shortly thereafter,
6:54
Geita returned to the lab, and sometime between ten fifteen and ten thirty
6:58
she left the area. Will carry a clipboard, a beaker, and a
7:00
two way radio. The instruments which needed to be calibrated were located in the
7:04
plant's basement, which was a series of eight foot wide tunnels lined with large
7:10
pipes. When Geeda did not return, the lab technician, who asked her
7:14
to go down there, went into the basement to search for He noticed some
7:16
broken glass on the floor, but could not find Gida, and when he
7:19
returned upstairs to ask if anyone had seen her anywhere, they said they didn't
7:24
know where she was. Well, in spite of this, several more hours
7:28
would pass before anyone at the plant made a big deal about Geda's absence.
7:32
That right there speaks volumes of what the culture and climate would be because this
7:35
is a supervisor. This is someone a with her license to help run this
7:41
whole facility. She's a mom and a wife. She's a hard worker,
7:46
she's an immigrant who has quite a success story. And yet when you see
7:50
signs that there's been a struggle, something dangerous has happened, you don't seem
7:56
to raise any concern for her. To me, that shows a culture climate
8:00
that's not healthy from the start. Well, to make another parallel to the
8:05
Sue Tarascuoitz case which we talked about, that was one where the victim went
8:09
missing when she went on a lunch run to get sandwiches for entire crew,
8:13
and she never returned for the rest of her shift, and no one sounded
8:16
the alarm. She was never even reported missing for another thirty six hours,
8:20
and that showed a major cultural problem going on in here. And it's pretty
8:24
much the same thing with Geta, where she can disappear or she can leave
8:28
some broken fragments from a lab beaker behind, yet nobody really does anything.
8:31
For several hours that evening, Guita was supposed to give one of her daughters
8:37
a ride to a basketball game, but never showed up. She also failed
8:41
to return home, and all calls to her cell phone went unanswered. At
8:46
around nine pm, the plant was ready to close for the day, but
8:48
one of the guards noticed that Gita's car was still in the parking lot.
8:54
It turned out that Guitah's coat, purse, and cell phone were still inside
8:56
the lab and the soundwhich she'd been planning to eat for lunch, was on
9:01
her desk. A search was performed to the plant and an interesting discovery was
9:05
made in the basement corridor next to the spot where the lap technician had discovered
9:09
broken glass earlier. That day. There was a series of water tanks located
9:15
underneath the floor, which could be accessed by opening up some four foot fifty
9:18
pounds aluminum diamond plated panels. They were ordinarily held in place by a dozen
9:24
screws, but it turned out that one of the panels was slightly ajar and
9:28
many of the screws were broken or missing. When a full search failed to
9:33
turn up any trace of Guida, the manager called the police to officially report
9:37
her missing at eleven twenty two pm. The authorities would focus their attention on
9:41
the loose panel in the basement, as the tank beneath it was thirty five
9:46
feet deep and one hundred feet in diameter and held a million gallons worth of
9:50
water. At around two am on February ninth, the police ordered the plant
9:56
to be shut down and began the process of draining the tank. Once all
10:00
the water was drained out, Gidah's radio and clipboard were discovered inside the empty
10:03
tank, but there was still no sign of her. A decision was made
10:07
to start draining the plant's other water tanks in case Geta's body had managed to
10:13
drift into one of them. Sure Enough, at around six thirty pm,
10:16
that evening, her body was discovered inside a tank known as the clear well,
10:20
which is the final storage space for filtered water after it has completed the
10:24
filtration and disinfection processes. The tank would be drained and the Passaic Valley Water
10:31
Commission issued a precautionary boil water order, a public health advisory which is sent
10:37
out when the community's drinking waters has been contaminated, as the order recommends that
10:41
residents boil their water in order to purify it. See, her death becomes
10:46
a trauma for the whole community. It's do you guys remember the what was
10:50
the hotel documentary inside the Cecil Hotel? Yeah, same kind of thing,
10:56
right where people are showering with the brown water and being told, well,
11:00
it's there, old pipes, it is what it is, and it wasn't.
11:01
It was the remains of the poor girl who had fallen into the yeah,
11:07
on the roof. And so it does. It becomes this kind of
11:11
trauma that's widespread across the community. In more ways, it's a physical trauma
11:15
for many people. But then you go back to the plant and you go
11:18
back to Gita, and I'm wondering it's in the two thousands, are there
11:24
not security cameras and things, because this had to take some time to unscrew
11:28
all of those screws. It had to make some noise to lift those heavy
11:31
steel panels. How did someone get away with this? Well, as we're
11:37
going to talk about, there were a lot of security cameras on the outside
11:39
of the plant, but security cameras inside were I don't think there were many
11:43
at all, and there certainly weren't any in the basement. And that was
11:46
one of the big issues here is that it was very difficult to get inside
11:50
the plant if it was unauthorized, but you could move around pretty freely,
11:54
So you can understand why someone could kill Gita and put her body in that
11:58
tank and somehow be able to do it without being noticed. An autopsy would
12:05
reveal that Gita was still alive when she first entered the water, so her
12:07
official cause of death was drowning. However, there were also a number of
12:11
deep bruises on Guita's neck to suggests that someone had attempted to strangle her,
12:16
as well as additional bruises on her waist and elbow to indicate she had been
12:20
involved in a violent struggle. It was suspected that someone had attacked and incapacitated
12:24
Gita in the plant's basement before removing one of the access panels, dumping her
12:30
body into the water tank, and hastily replacing the panel. There was a
12:33
five foot gap between the water and the panel, and since the tank was
12:37
not equipped with a ladder or any lighting, it would have been impossible for
12:41
Geda to climb out, even if she was still conscious. As a result
12:45
of these findings, the Passaic County Prosecutor's office announced that the case would be
12:50
investigated as a homicide. There was no sign of sexual assault on Gita's body,
12:54
and investigators believed that her killer did not use a weapon to attack her
12:58
and only strangled her with their bare hands. The temperature of the water inside
13:03
the tanks was only thirty six degrees fahrenheit, and since Ghita was believed to
13:07
be submerged in there for around thirty two hours, the heavy chlorine levels would
13:11
have corroded and eliminated any potential trace evidence that the perpetrator left behind, such
13:18
as DNA and fingerprints. Another issue is that since a number of other people
13:22
had walked through the basement tunnels in the hours following Gita's death, the potential
13:26
crime scene was compromised. In fact, even though the shards of broken glass
13:31
found near the panel seemed to be consistent with the beaker Geita had been carrying,
13:35
employees had swept them up and threw them away before the police arrived.
13:41
Even though the tank contained a censor which was designed to set off an alert
13:43
about changes with the water displacement, it happened to be broken at this time
13:48
and was not set off when Gheeta's body entered the water. Like I just
13:52
said, there were also no security cameras in the basement, and it contained
13:56
a lot of loud machinery which likely muffled any noise which may have been caused
14:01
by an attack on Yeta. It's almost as if the force was simply needed
14:05
to get her subdued and get her to the water taste, because I'm assuming
14:09
once you drop somebody down into that, there's really no way to get back
14:15
out, because there's there's no purpose for human entry into that, And so
14:22
I'm assuming this person attacks her violently, is strangling her so that she's not
14:26
making as much noise, she can't scream for help, those kinds of things,
14:31
and then possibly she passes out, and when they drop her down there,
14:33
even if there was access out, she wouldn't be able to It's interesting,
14:39
do you think signs of sexual assault could go away with the chemicals and
14:43
things like that, or it was thirty two hours she was submerged there,
14:46
would they really be able to tell those kinds of details. Wasn't that just
14:50
clear water though, Like it was the final stage, the clear well where
14:54
water would just stand. It wasn't being treated with chemicals at that point,
14:58
was it? It was just chlora. So they say the chlorine could eliminate
15:01
DNA and fingerprints belong to a third party, But I don't know if that
15:05
would have been strong enough to get rid of any sign of sexual assault.
15:09
I mean, if there was semen inside her body, that still would have
15:11
shown up, right, I guess yeah, yeah, And for me,
15:16
I don't think you would have enough time to do all of this and then
15:18
sexual abuse as well. It seems like they needed her gone. Someone who's
15:22
resentful of her position, someone who's resentful of someone who's an immigrant working and
15:26
being in a supervisory position, someone who doesn't like a woman being their boss.
15:31
Somebody had a problem with her and needed her gone, so I think
15:33
the purpose was just to eliminate her, and the bruising would be a sign
15:39
to subdue her and get her to a point where possibly unconscious, so they
15:43
could drop her in and there'd be no fight back. That's what I'm thinking
15:46
as well. And it's always been debated about whether this was a planned murder
15:50
or just a crime of passion where just someone something escalated out of control and
15:54
they didn't plan to kill Gita, but once they realized what they'd done,
15:58
they knew how to dispose her body. And I have a feeling that if
16:00
sexual assault had been the motive, they probably wouldn't have been risky enough to
16:03
do it in the plant's basement when anyone could have walked in at any time.
16:08
In a bizarre turn of events, just over one year before Gita's death,
16:14
the plant had been used as a filming location for an episode of the
16:17
TV series Law and Order Special Victims Unit. The episode, titled Brotherhood,
16:22
featured a scene in which the body of one of the characters was found floating
16:26
inside a water tank. In spite of this, investigators do not suspect that
16:32
the episode inspired Geita's death, and believed that the whole situation was nothing more
16:37
than an unfortunate coincidence. Since access to the plant was restricted, it seemed
16:42
very likely that one of Geta's coworkers may have been responsible for her death.
16:48
There was only one driveway to access the facility, and anyone who entered had
16:52
to check in at a manned security post, which was monitored by a camera
16:56
and had a ten foot high gate. Number of cameras and motion detectors surrounding
17:02
the perimeter, and the only section of the property which was not surrounded by
17:06
a fence was the south side of the Passaic River. While it would have
17:10
been very difficult for an outsider to enter the plant, security inside the facility
17:15
was not that tight, as none of the areas required access with a key
17:18
card and the employees could walk around freely anywhere. As a result, this
17:23
would make it difficult for investigators to track the movement for each employee and determine
17:29
which ones might have been in the basement during the time period that Guida was
17:33
killed. So I know that they're processing large amounts of water. This is
17:37
a very big plant. How many people would have been working there and on
17:41
her shift? I mean, are we talking hundreds of people. We talked
17:45
about ten people. How big is this pool of suspects? I was just
17:49
about to talk about that they had a total of eighty five employees, and
17:52
fifty of them happened to be working during the time period when Nigita went missing.
18:00
So yeah, like I said, security records showed that fifty of them
18:03
were present and working on the day Guida died. And while all of these
18:07
employees willingly provided DNA samples to police, this did not prove very useful since
18:11
all potential DNA evidence had been eradicated by the chlorine. When investigator started looking
18:17
into Geda's background, she was described as a very friendly, cheerful person who
18:22
generally had good relationships with her coworkers and management. However, there were some
18:26
coworkers who reportedly did not like her and were resentful of her promotion to senior
18:32
chemist. Even though Geda always downplayed her own academic achievements, there was apparently
18:37
some jealousy about her PhD. When this case was later featured in an article
18:41
in People magazine, an anonymous employee alleged that there was rachel prejudice towards Geta,
18:48
stating quote, ninety eight percent of the plant is white, and not
18:51
all of them like seeing immigrants do well end quote. I could definitely see
18:56
racism playing a role here. When you look at this, you you could
19:00
see resentment and jealousy, kind of insecurity with a woman who's immigrated here to
19:07
the United States. She is a high achieving woman with a solid family,
19:12
She's hard working, she has her PhD. That and of itself can be
19:17
threatening to people who just simply look at someone and they say, why her
19:21
right, why did she get this? And they almost cast this kind of
19:26
elitism on her, even though she's not necessarily carrying herself that way. And
19:30
so if someone said, I've been working here for years, she hasn't.
19:33
I've you know, been in this field for this long. How come she
19:37
got to jump ahead? I could see that. Plus someone who has a
19:42
anger and kind of a racist attitude, of course that's going to cause a
19:48
bigger fuel of anger. And Geita not only had her doctorate, but she
19:53
had like three master's degrees, isn't that right, Robin, Like she got
19:57
one at Loyola and then also her bachelor's and then when she immigrated to the
20:03
United States, she then got I think two more master's degrees. And her
20:07
PhD. Exactly, yeah, so, and she got a gold medal for
20:12
being the top student in her class at Loyola. So she already achieved really
20:15
high in India and only did better when she immigrated to the US to get
20:21
additional accomplishments. So she probably had better education and more accomplishments than nearly anybody
20:26
else working at that plant. And even though she was very humble about it,
20:30
she didn't like to brag. I could still see how there might be
20:33
some resentment from some of the more blue collar folks. Do you know what
20:37
percentage of the employees were women? They never actually said that. I mean,
20:44
we just gave the statistic that ninety eight percent were white, but I
20:47
don't have any information about how many other women worked there. But to hearken
20:51
back to the Sue Tuasco its case, like she was one of the only
20:53
women working at the airline at the time of her death, and there was
20:57
just so much resentment about her getting a promotion and being a supervisor to some
21:03
of these other men. And I could see the same thing happening with Geeta,
21:06
where not only is she a woman, but she's also an immigrant woman.
21:10
And I think there could have been some men there who had a problem
21:12
with that. My stepdad, for years, he just retired recently, worked
21:17
at a water treatment facility and it was a huge water treatment facility, state
21:22
of the art. And I can only say, I don't want to project
21:25
this onto this case because I don't know what the what the statistics are there,
21:30
how many women were employed. But I do know in his workplace,
21:33
I think the total people there that might have worked were maybe around fifty And
21:40
I also think that of that maybe there was one woman, maybe two.
21:45
And this is like a few years back, and maybe now there's more women
21:48
working there. But I do know it was definitely skewed way more towards men.
21:53
So I could say that in there was some strange politics that happened at
21:57
that place. If there was a woman who was in the highest position,
22:02
I would have thought, based on the way my stepdad described it, that
22:06
there would have been certain men there who would have been resentful of her position.
22:11
There was also tension about the plant's transition from chlorine treatments to an ozone
22:17
disinfection system, as some employees apparently did not agree with the initiative. In
22:22
the weeks prior to her death, a pinkish substance was found in some treated
22:26
water while Gita was outsick. Even though the issue was resolved in her absence,
22:32
it was not done according to the plant's protocol, so Gida would be
22:36
a signed to retrain some of her co workers. This did not go over
22:40
well with everyone, and some employees reportedly blamed Gida and the plant's knew ozone
22:45
cleansing process for the appearance of the pinkish substance. Her husband, Jia,
22:49
would state, quote, my wife told me the atmosphere was very hostile at
22:53
the time. There was friction end quote. However, investigators suspect did that
23:00
Gita's death was not a premeditated murder and could have been the result of a
23:03
workplace dispute which escalated out of control. I find it a little difficult to
23:10
say you could rule out a premeditated murder because I might have that in the
23:14
back of my head and when we get into a fuss, I go,
23:15
now's the time to take this woman out. So I don't know that you
23:18
can completely rule that out. But when you look at Gita, she is
23:22
a supervisor. She's one of the top people at this plan, and so
23:26
right here's case in point that when there's a problem she's gone, it gets
23:30
resolved, but when she gets back, she now has to go back and
23:34
basically get on to everyone and reteach them, retrain them. These are people
23:40
who feel like they are competent at their job, they do the right thing.
23:44
They don't like this new system. They've already voiced that they're frustrated with
23:48
it. There was a problem, and now one of the women instituting the
23:52
new system is going to sit them down and retrain them, which could feel
23:56
very belittling to them. They could be very resentful and upset with that.
24:00
And so I could see where those kinds of moments where she's either disciplining someone
24:04
or having to quote retrain people who might, in their own head think I
24:10
know all of this stuff. I don't need her especially to be retraining me.
24:14
I could see where that would create that kind of friction that her husband
24:15
described. Oh yeah, we're going to talk about this more in the episode.
24:21
But they did say that some of the employees who worked at that plant
24:23
were described as quote unquote old school, So it sounds like they liked the
24:29
old system, they didn't like these new changes. And if you bring in
24:32
this woman to retrain them and kind of throw everything for a loop. I
24:36
can see how that would create potential resentment. After spending a month interviewing all
24:41
of the plant's employees, police narrowed down the field of potential suspects to eight,
24:45
but after a year long investigation, it was announced that the number had
24:49
been narrowed down to three. While none of these three potential suspects were named
24:53
publicly, it was revealed that all of them were male and had been working
24:57
at the plant on the day was killed. It also turned out that one
25:02
of these suspects was a supervisor and one of the others was the lab technician
25:07
who would ask Gheeta to go down into the basement to calibrate the filters and
25:11
clarity sensors. But it must be noted that, according to plant records,
25:15
these instruments did need to be calibrated that day, so his story checked out.
25:19
According to Lieutenant James Wood, the chief homicide detective for the Passaic County
25:25
Prosecutor's Office, none of these three men had solid alibis, and he believed
25:29
that one of them was on the verge of confessing until he decided to lawyer
25:33
up and stop speaking. With the police. They reach asked to take light
25:37
detector tests, and while one of them refused to do so, one of
25:40
the men did wind up passing, and the other man's results were inconclusive.
25:44
There was just no conclusive evidence to implicate any of the three suspects, so
25:48
the investigation would reach a standstill until a theory started to form that Gheta's death
25:53
may have been an accident. Hmmm, I'm wondering about the bruises on our
25:57
body, because if you have marks of strangulation around your neck and you have
26:02
bruises on your waist in your arms, I don't really know how you could
26:07
say that's an accident. Maybe there's an explanation for the bruising around her neck,
26:11
but I'll wait to hear that when we talk about the three suspects.
26:15
I know that one man was in the right place at possibly the wrong time,
26:19
and it checks out with these sensors. How were the other two pulled
26:22
in? Had they had conflicts with her? What made the other two men
26:26
a suspect? I wish I had that information, but nothing has been released
26:32
about them publicly. I guess this could have been done so that they didn't
26:34
want the public figuring out their identities, so potentially falsely accusing them if they
26:38
didn't do anything. I mean, we do know that one of them,
26:42
this lab technician, was the same man who found the broken glass near the
26:47
spot where Gita went into the tank, but he didn't really do anything,
26:49
and nobody noticed she was missing for the next several hours. But it could
26:55
be, like I said, his story did check out. He did have
26:56
a reason to send Gieda down there, so you can't just assume that this
27:00
was some sort of elaborate setup and he lured her down there to kill her.
27:04
But because this investigation is so secret and we have other than knowing about
27:08
the lab technician, we have no information whatsoever about these three potential suspects and
27:14
what kind of motive they might have had to kill Gieda. Here's a quick
27:18
question, Robin. Okay, so we talked about this earlier, but I
27:22
just want to confirm. Did we say that her clipboard was found in one
27:27
of the water tanks and she was found in another. Let me just double
27:33
check that. I think her radio or something was found in the other tank.
27:37
Yeah. Yeah, the radio and the clipboard were found in the tank
27:41
beneath the panel where she had gone into, but they thought that her body
27:45
had floated to the other tank where she was eventually found. Okay, so
27:48
they were connected. It wasn't like I don't believe this was an accident due
27:52
to her injuries. But hypothetically, if she had fallen in the tank,
27:56
her clipboard could have been found in one and she could have floated to the
28:00
other. Yes, exactly. So they think that if she had fallen in
28:04
her items could remain behind, but she could have floated to the other place
28:07
where she was eventually found. Detectives would consult with Derek Pounder, a forensic
28:14
pathologist from the University of Dundee in Scotland who was considered to be an expert
28:18
in the field of drownings. Even though the bruising on Gita's neck suggested that
28:23
she'd been strangled, Pounder had an alternate explanation for them. He claimed there
28:29
were a few documented cases of drowning victims being found with similar bruising, which
28:33
had been caused by extremely cold water. According to Pounder, if Gita was
28:38
still conscious when she entered the water tank, the cold temperatures could have caused
28:42
her to go into shock. If her head and neck were above the water
28:47
while this was taking place. This may have led to hemorrhaging at the neckline,
28:51
which caused her bruises to form. During an article published in The New
28:55
York Post, an anonymous insider from the plant came up with a potential expert
29:00
nation for how Geda could have entered the water accidentally. According to this insider,
29:04
on the day of Gita's death, the state ordered some testing on the
29:07
water due to the appearance of a pinkish haze. Even though water samples could
29:12
be collected from the tanks with some newer machinery, there was apparently one water
29:18
quality supervisor who was described as very old school and still had a tendency to
29:22
take water from the tank manually. This would have involved removing a panel from
29:26
the floor of one of the basement corridors, so a potential theory is that
29:30
someone could have done this and left the scene without putting the panel back in
29:34
place. Since the corridors were dimly lit, it's possible that Gita unknowingly walked
29:41
over the opening in the floor and fell into the water tank, while when
29:45
the responsible party returned to the scene and put the panel back into position,
29:49
they may have been unaware that Gueda was inside the tank, or if they
29:52
did know, they decided to cover their tracks in order to avoid potential liability
29:57
issues. Well, believe eive it or not. After the lead homicide detective
30:02
James Wood retired, he stated during an interview that he had changed his mind
30:07
about the case and now believe the Gidah's death was an accident caused by negligence
30:11
rather than an intentional homicide. Question that there are not deaths where there was
30:18
bruising due to cold water, but it sounds very odd to me. It's
30:22
frustrating when you read this because any of these options, the option of someone
30:27
knowing she had fallen in there and covering it on purpose to avoid liability,
30:33
and or someone putting her there, those are both tragic situations. Someone who
30:37
came by and put the lid back on and screwed the floor back down partially,
30:42
that would be, you know, absolutely understandable. But the other two
30:47
explanations are both tragic. Right, someone knew and didn't help and didn't say
30:51
anything, let her sit there for thirty two hours, or someone murdered her.
30:56
I'm still leaning towards somebody hurt her. There was tension, there was
31:00
frustration with her. She had confided in her husband that there was stress at
31:04
work. And to me, the bruising around the neck is worrisome. I
31:07
need more information of how and why that bruising occurs with cold water. And
31:11
what could you say about the bruising around the waist If you're going to explain
31:15
the bruising because her neck was above water and that was like a contact point
31:22
and it caused the bruising due to the shock, how could you explain the
31:26
bruising at the waist? And let me ask you this too. When you
31:29
think about when you tread water, you don't sit in one location for minutes.
31:34
I mean, when you tread water, you're using your arms. You're
31:37
pushing your body up and down, up and down, up and down,
31:38
so the water is constantly moving across your neck and your shoulders, and eventually
31:44
you would get exhausted. But at that point I almost think only your head
31:47
would like the top of your face would be out, you know what I
31:49
mean. So around her neck, I can't imagine just treading water to my
31:55
neck is in the same position for long enough to bruise. It just seems
31:59
odd and by your logic, which makes total sense to me. If it
32:04
was going to bruise, like the University of Dundee guy said, then I
32:07
would think a Pounder that was his name, But I would think that it
32:10
would also be all the way up the neck, right, so you'd see
32:14
bruising through the length of a neck, because You're right, she'd be bobbing
32:16
up and down. So if that cold water and the shot caused bruising,
32:21
wouldn't you see that bruising like in multiple, multiple locations, multiple layers at
32:27
least. Yeah, like multiple layering where I could hold my body here and
32:30
then here and then here, and I got so tired I went under like
32:32
banded bruising. And another issue I have is that even though Pounder is considered
32:38
to be an expert in drownings, how many other drownings has he studied under
32:43
these exact circumstances, Because I'm guaranteeing that there's probably not too many other examples
32:47
of someone drowning after falling in a water tank and a plant, and they
32:52
talk about the circumstances that this was completely dark and she was something like five
32:55
feet below the opening, so it's kind of like drowning even if he has
33:00
found other documented cases of someone drowning with bruises on their neck. I'm willing
33:06
to bet that those other cases aren't anything like Geeta's, and so how could
33:09
he accurately predict what kind of bruising she's gonna get on her body when she's
33:14
in such unusual position. However, the biggest issue was that Derek Pounder's theory
33:19
was based on nothing more than guesswork, as he apparently did not view the
33:22
original autopsy report. He also couldnot examine Geta's body, as her family had
33:28
elected to cremate her in accordance with Hindu funeral customs. During the initial stages
33:32
of the investigation, Gita's body and autopsy report have been examined by no less
33:37
than five separate pathologists from Passaic County, and they all came to the same
33:43
conclusion that her death was a homicide. Geedah's family also did not agree with
33:46
the accident theory, noting that she was a very conscientious person with a reputation
33:52
for being a perfectionist, and they found it doubtful that she would have walked
33:54
through the basement corridor without noticing an open panel on the floor beneath her.
34:00
Her oldest daughter Pavritha, would state quote, I think he would have to
34:02
ignore a lot of facts to believe it was an accident end quote. For
34:07
their part, other plant employees claimed that they had never personally witnessed an incident
34:12
where someone removed a floor panel and left it open for an extended period of
34:15
time after leaving the scene. In two thousand and seven, the Angara family
34:21
would file a wrongful death lawsuit against the Passaic Valley Water Commission, alleging that
34:25
the plant had a history of safety violations which were never remedied. The suit
34:30
was tied up in litigation for two years before a state judge ordered the parties
34:34
to mediate for a potential settlement. But I'd been not able to find out
34:37
how this lawsuit ultimately turned out. In twenty fifteen, a tenth anniversary article
34:44
was published about Gitta's death, where John Ladaka, the former Passaic County Chief
34:49
Assistant prosecutor, confirmed that the three men considered to be potential suspects during the
34:53
early stages of the investigation, were no longer believed to be responsible. Ladaraki
35:00
stated quote, there were a couple of people who raised their antennas, but
35:04
when push came to shove, we looked into the additional things that became areas
35:07
of concern in interviewing these folks, and based on that we thought that while
35:12
there were reasons they came across as hinky, we ultimately didn't believe the actively
35:16
killed her end quote. At the moment, the case is described as quote
35:22
open but inactive. So there's still no answers about what caused the death of
35:25
Guita and Gara. So I guess you could say the path went Chiley.
35:30
I'm praying that her family was able to get some kind of financial compensation to
35:36
help with you know, they lost their mother and their matriarch and one of
35:42
the major breadwinners in their family, and you know, it's difficult to go
35:46
on as a widower and to have your little ones that you're trying to raise
35:50
on your own, and you've lost an income. So I think the financial
35:53
compensation that they were seeking, whether it was a murder or an accident,
35:58
means something of the lab had gone wrong, something that that plant had gone
36:01
wrong, and so I am praying to get financial compensation. However, we
36:06
all know that financial compensation doesn't help with the emotional loss of their mother and
36:10
wife, and so not having the answers. We talk about this all the
36:14
time. You could have given them fifty million dollars And I still want to
36:17
know what happened to her, How did this happen to her? Why weren't
36:22
things in place that would have prevented this from happening to her, or that
36:24
would have allowed us to have some kind of justice or understanding of how she
36:29
died. And so my heart is just so sad. She had three children
36:34
correct, yes, yeah, three little ones that she left behind that were
36:38
young. They needed their mom, and their mom's not going to be there
36:42
for any of their major life events. She worked so hard, she moved
36:45
herself here to create a better life so she could have those babies and she
36:51
could provide a life for them. And that's what she was doing, and
36:53
it was taken away. So, whether an accident or a murder, things
36:59
most likely could have been done better to help either the investigators figure out who
37:02
it was, or to keep the people, all people, not just her
37:07
that we're working in that plant much safer, are you guys? Just as
37:12
frustrated by the comments from John lotteraca how vague they are, where he says
37:15
that well, we have three potential suspects, but we don't believe they're responsible
37:19
now. But they don't provide any specific details why. They just essentially just
37:22
say, well, they looked suspicious at first, but we ultimately don't believe
37:27
that they killed her. But why, I mean, how do you know
37:30
that? Yeah, tell us, why how do you know that? And
37:32
like I said, the bruising and saying that that was all proof of an
37:36
accident, it's just not convincing enough for me to say, oh, okay,
37:39
that's good, thank you for updating us, and now we can all
37:42
go to sleep and rest easy. We don't have any information to go and
37:45
say, okay, now I'm confident that he's right. And we know that
37:50
people are pissed off about having to be retrained about this pinkish hued water,
37:53
and what is Geeda doing. She's going to get water as a sample to
37:59
test and figure out why this pink isshue is there. But as a result
38:02
of that whole situation, she has been put in a leadership role again,
38:07
tasked with doing this thing, which obviously a lot of the employees don't like.
38:13
They probably don't like it because she's a racial minority and the plant was
38:16
predominantly white, and because she's a woman, so I would think that tempers
38:21
could be potentially running hot at this exact time. So to rule out it
38:27
being a homicide and to say that, oh, yeah, very well,
38:30
could be an accident, I think like you said, Robin, and I
38:34
think was a really good point that Pounder, the probability is low that he's
38:37
ever investigated a death in water, that is, in conditions that are similar
38:44
to this, So it can be really difficult to say that, oh,
38:47
well, it happened in these other cases there was bruising, and we don't
38:51
know how many cases, and what the exact temperatures were of the water,
38:55
what was the position of the body, was the size of the person.
38:59
Was a woman, was it a man. There's so many different variables that
39:02
go into this, and to just kind of dismiss it and say that it
39:07
was an accident, it just seems so preposterous. That's why I'm hoping that
39:10
when a lot of Roco made those statements that he wasn't ruling out the suspects.
39:15
Based on Derek Pounder's conclusions, that he now thinks it's a homicide.
39:17
Because you remember their methods they said, well, we narrowed it down to
39:21
eight, and then we narrowed it down to these three. And I'm like,
39:23
well, if you don't think these three are responsible, then you should
39:27
start over because somebody in that plant had to kill her. So I can
39:30
understand that our family must be frustrated that there haven't been any new developments in
39:36
the investigation for over a decade now, So you're wondering are they reinvestigating these
39:40
people? Like what are exactly are they doing to try to figure out who
39:44
killed Gita? So I think this would be a good time to bring an
39:47
end to part one. But join us next week as we present part two
39:51
of our series about the unexplained death of Geta and Ghara. Robin, do
39:55
you want to tell us a little bit about the Trailment Cold Patreon. Yes,
40:00
the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we
40:02
offer these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send
40:07
out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on
40:13
Patreon if you join our five dollars tier Tier two. We also offer monthly
40:17
bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on The Trail
40:22
Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon and if you join our
40:27
highest tier, Tier three, the ten dollar Tier. One of the features
40:30
we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawd Mysteries, where
40:36
you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode
40:40
on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the
40:45
background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this
40:50
episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track
40:53
over was the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a
40:58
commentary track and try I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor than be
41:02
sure to join Tier three. So I want to let you know a little
41:06
bit about the Jewels and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad free episodes of
41:09
The Path Went Chili. We've got our Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always
41:14
over an hour, so they're not very mini, but they're just too short
41:16
to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those. So we
41:21
hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link them in the show notes.
41:23
So I want to thank you all for listening and any chance you have to
41:27
share us on social media with a friend or to rate and review is greatly
41:30
appreciated. You can email us at the Pathwentchili at gmail dot com. You
41:35
can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwin. So until next time, be
41:38
sure to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.
41:43
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy