WEBVTT - The Devil's Quarry, with Paul Solotaroff 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:04.680 From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is 0:00:04.760 --> 0:00:09.080 riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:12.119 learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:19.120 production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:29.240 Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my. 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:30.040 Name is Noah. 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.120 They call me Ben. We're joined, as always with our 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:37.159 super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Faked. Most importantly, you 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:41.120 argue you are here. That makes this the stuff they 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:44.800 don't want you to know. A quick disclaimer at the top, folks, 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:50.080 Tonight's episode contains graphic descriptions of true crimes, so listener 0:00:50.120 --> 0:00:54.560 discretion is advised. In the woods outside of Caramel, New York, 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:58.320 a hunter discovers the bones of a twelve year old girl, 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:03.120 launching an investigator into a mystery that could be accurately 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:07.000 described as a real life horror film. Fortunately, folks, we 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:10.119 are not diving into this alone. We are joined with 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:15.160 none other than the award winning investigative journalist, longtime contributing 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:18.760 editor at Rolling Stone, the creator of Bone Valley season five, 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:24.400 The Devil's Quarry. We proudly present the legendary Paul solditarof. 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:28.000 Wow Wow, I Feel like Connor McGregor. 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:35.840 Uh, the dire straits of true crime reporting that that 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:38.080 was a nod to a conversation we had off. 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:41.240 Yes, watch your watch your legs there, Paul, If you're 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:42.960 jumping in as Connor, well. 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.000 Oh no, yeah, didn't he have a bit of a 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:49.040 bad showing? Uh this last time around? I heard it 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:50.200 was a little underwhelming. 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:54.280 Not every day could be the birthday, I guess. Uh, Paul, 0:01:54.480 --> 0:01:58.600 let's uh speaking to jumping in. Let's dive in with 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:02.080 this at the beginning. Could you set the scene by 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:04.640 introducing our audience to a little bit more about your 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:08.720 past work and what led you toward investigative journalism, Like, 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:13.280 was there a single specific turning point you can recall 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:15.640 in your life or did you sort of always know 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:17.120 this is your vocation? 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:27.240 I I bought my nose against investigative journalism after hitting 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:32.600 my forehead on fine Britt Walls. I'm the son of 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:37.440 one of the great literary literary editors of the second 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:41.560 half of the twentieth century, Ted Sulataro, who edited Roth 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:51.600 Mal discovered an entire generation extraordinary novelists and poets. And 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:57.480 I just assumed that as the firstborn I would roll 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:01.079 right down the assembly line and went the writers Workshop 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:08.840 at Iowa to become a novelist. They happily disabused me 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:14.160 of that idea very quickly. They said, yeah, you can 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:18.400 write a sentence, okay, but Jesus Christ, is this what 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:24.800 you're using for material? That shot me like a water 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:31.720 canon into the playwriting program, a graduate playwriting program at 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:37.040 the ILD School of Drama. They wasted even fewer seconds 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:43.160 informing me that again I had the wrong address and 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:47.280 politely referred me to the NU School of Social Work, 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:53.280 where I spent two and a half really unprofitable years 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:58.920 training to be a clinical psychologist. The only thing I 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:04.880 got out of that forty five k student debt was 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:14.520 my subject. So I got placed as a counselor in 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:18.200 training at a community mental health center in the Seth 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:22.640 Bronx and I arrived on the scene about an hour 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:27.320 and a half after this horrific calamity called the happy 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:35.080 Lands Disco fire, in which a couple of three four 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:39.400 hundred people were packed into a basement social club and 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:43.520 someone threw a bullets of cocktailer. Oh my gosh, an 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:49.400 orphaned about three hundred children in East Treemont. In the 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:55.560 Bronx and lo and behold. I suddenly was the designated 0:04:55.640 --> 0:05:01.320 healer for fifteen or twenty children who were a speechless 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:08.760 with grief, with horror, dislocation. And at that point I 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:12.280 realized two things. I still was the person in the 0:05:12.360 --> 0:05:19.320 room who needed the most help, but I needed to 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:24.000 give a voice to these voice, those kids. And when 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:29.520 the Village Voice inexplicably came calling in nineteen eighty eight 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:36.159 they needed an associate editor, I took the job so 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:40.479 that I could do something that I'd been yearing to 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:44.479 do since I was a nine year old getting mugged 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:49.520 on the subways of New York, and that was bully 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:56.680 the bullies. So journalism, especially in long form investigative journalism, 0:05:56.760 --> 0:05:59.599 has given me a chance to get into the ring 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:04.359 with some of the more despicable characters and some of 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:11.160 the more despicable public policy as asters of the second 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:12.880 twentieth century. 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:15.839 I love the idea of journalism as bullying the bullies. 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:18.000 I've never thought about that before, but we should need 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:20.760 that now, maybe more than ever. And there are some 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:22.960 folks that are stepping up and some folks that are 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:25.400 shrinking back, and you kind of really see who's really 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:28.040 got the goods in the face of you know, real 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:29.040 real bullies. 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:35.680 Yeah, bullying that looks exactly like factious. Yeah. And just 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:38.360 to put a pin on this, the first story I 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:46.279 ever wrote was a product of just looking out over 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:48.880 the bridge in my notes. So every day I would 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:51.040 take my launch. The Village Voice used to be in 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:56.920 Greenwich Village. The Village Voice used to be the Premiere 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:03.360 America and Alt Newsweek, and it was an extraordinary place 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:11.240 for young talent too to develop, to grow a clip file, 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:15.280 and then to get the hell out and go right 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:20.760 for an outlet that actually got read and that actually 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:25.280 paid the writer. Every day I would take my lunch 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:28.280 on the West Side Docks. Now this is nineteen eighty eight, 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:34.040 the very pinnacle of the crack pandemic in New York City. 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:37.880 New York went from about three hundred murders here to 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:42.840 twenty seven one hundred in the span of three four years. 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:57.080 And crack was the original diseased back for Woule did 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:01.880 destroyed New York in a way I have never seen 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:07.800 a city gutted. We went from eleven thousand homeless population 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:13.640 to one hundred and fifty thousand primarily single income momb 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:18.520 and children demographic and what I saw on the west 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:22.200 side of the docks, which were in terrible disrepair and truly 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:27.640 a dangerous place, were ten twelve fourteen year old boys 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:33.880 selling their bodies for crack rocks to Wall streeterers who 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:38.160 were either on their lunch break or headed home through 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:42.400 the holland on anyone driving down the West Side Highway, 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:46.120 either to Brooklyn or to get to New Jersey saw 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:49.640 what I saw on a dale. They saw these shirtless 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:59.600 children strolling in November and December in a place with 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:05.640 no shelter from the wind, in an incredibly brutal winter, 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:13.160 and no one stopped. And I began to cultivate those kids. 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:16.280 I take them to breakfast, I take them to lunch, 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:23.920 and they told me the story that became this enormous bombshell. Again, 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:30.280 no intention of destroying. The one institution that pretended to 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:35.800 care about these kids, a fledgling nonprofit called Covenant Ants, 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:42.320 in which I thought, like most downtown New York, was 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:45.280 that those blue vans were out there saving these children. 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:50.520 Well they were. However, the founder and director of Covenant House, 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:56.840 father Bruce Ridder, was taking some of these children into 0:09:56.960 --> 0:09:59.160 the front door and selling them out the back door. 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:04.960 Work for doms, and that story not only level Covenant 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:13.600 House and nominated for Appulitzer, it also really surfaced for 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:19.640 me exactly what my remit as a journalist was, which 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:22.480 was to get names and faiths as to the nameless 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:28.440 can face that's and to make sure that I told 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:34.560 their stories with the kind of power, granularity and gut 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:38.720 punching specificity that you couldn't look away. 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:45.240 Wow, Paul Okay, First of all, for folks who don't 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:48.520 know about the story and haven't read your writing, because 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:51.000 I'm assuming there's some of us out there, including myself, 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:53.840 who have not yet, where can we go to find 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:55.679 that pieces on that work? 0:10:56.040 --> 0:11:00.520 So that story is called Dead Boys, it isn't easy 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:05.320 to find. If I were more ambitious entrepreneur, I'd have 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:08.920 my website and i'd have someone curating it. I got. 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:14.120 But there are a couple of stories I wrote at 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:16.640 the Village Voice that are at this point in the Cannon. 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:22.200 That's one of them. Another called The Power and the 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:29.800 Gory about the world's most homicidal bodybuilder, a guy who 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:35.520 is utterly legendary, but he actually lived, I mean wound 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:41.880 up putting a bullet in his brain. That story is 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:46.080 included in the Best American Writing of the twentieth century. 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:51.560 So if you just google my name, all my stuff 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:54.360 pops on Rolling Stone. I've been at Rolling Stone now 0:11:54.400 --> 0:12:01.400 for thirty three years and have used that ordinary platform 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:06.640 to break the NFL concussion scandal all to read Army 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:10.960 Medical Field hospital scandal. I've been able to walk into 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:14.600 some men off death row. I wrote a story that 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:20.280 helped exonerate forty two thousand drug offend drug defendants in 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:28.280 the state of Massachusetts. Aaron Bernandez story is mine. I've 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:36.240 been given the freedom and the green light to go 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:41.120 where my outrage takes me. And somebody's telling you guys 0:12:41.640 --> 0:12:47.000 off stage in a country that is at this point 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:53.560 one outrage stacked upon another. I am never bored and 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:55.360 never wanting for work. 0:12:56.920 --> 0:13:02.640 That is, unfortunately in incredibly true. Paul, and as we 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:08.120 as we hear this culmination of your work that has 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:14.120 taken you to dangerous places mentally and physically, one of 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:17.760 the next questions we have to ask is that, given 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:24.240 the tragically high amount of unsolved cases of murder and 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:27.640 disappearances in the United States in particular and in the 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:32.800 world abroad, what drew you to the case of Josette right. 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:38.600 Wonderful question. So I was rolling off a series of 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:44.120 cases that allowed me to dig deeply into the prison 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:47.680 industrial complex. I got the wrapper meet Mill out of 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:52.600 Prism in twenty eighteen, not because I fell in love 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:56.280 with Meek Mill. Trust me to know Meek is to 0:13:56.600 --> 0:14:02.800 immediately fall out of love with me. For me was 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:11.040 the most visible example victim of what again all of 0:14:11.120 --> 0:14:18.040 us know about and nobody talks about, the post incarceral 0:14:18.160 --> 0:14:26.160 system in America. Probations parole, this endless long tail that 0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:34.800 law enforcement uses to further impoverish and scapegoat people who 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:41.440 have served their turn, who have rehabilitated themselves, but walk 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:46.880 out of prison without their civil rights having forfeited them 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:50.240 by virtue of being a felon, so they can apply 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:53.960 for food stamps, can't apply for Section eight housing, can't 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:59.960 apply for government back college loans. And Nick was fameless 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:07.200 being portraed by a corrupt judge in Philadelphia and had 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:13.080 been violated on and off parole for eleven years to 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:21.680 the almost annihilation of his career for having allegedly sold 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:25.200 to crack Rocks to an undercover at the age of 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:31.160 eighteen and digging into his story, I saw that the entire. 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:37.760 So called elite West Philly narcotics team was just an 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:41.840 armed robbery crew of guns badges, and wrote the story 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:48.120 that outed that terrific bunch of sociopaths in Bloop. 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:51.800 Just another gang, right, just another day. I couldn't have 0:15:51.840 --> 0:16:00.520 done those stories without the guidance and the the Sage 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:04.200 Council of the Innison Projects. So along the way I 0:16:04.240 --> 0:16:10.360 got to be close professional acquaintances with Peter Neufeld, Barry Shack, 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:16.360 Nina Morrison, the guiding lights at the Innocence Project. And 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:20.280 it was Nina who told me, Well, she called me 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:25.320 one day and she said, you've written add infinitum about 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:29.920 big city police corruption. You have any interest in digging 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:34.040 into what small town policing looks like and how much 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:39.880 worse it is than Chicago, Cleveland, La Chicago pet which 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:46.520 invented police violence, Los Angeles Police Department, which perfected it. 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:51.160 You know, I thought I'd seen the worst that law 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:55.640 enforcement was capable of in the ramparts and crash scandals 0:16:56.200 --> 0:17:01.960 in La Wrong. Just outside of New York City, fifty 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:07.719 miles from the Bronx. North of the Bronx stands the 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:13.200 town of Carmel, not to be confused with the Carmel 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:19.960 of Clint Eastwood. This is a working class, working core 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:26.280 white flight exer of the Bronx that was essentially a 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:33.440 ghost county until urban renewal sent a bunch of angry 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:38.120 white hard hats and blue collars fleeing for their lives 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:43.080 from the Bronx Queens Long Island to Midge State, New York, 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:48.439 where you could buy a Sears Roebuck kit home for 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:52.720 thirty five thousand dollars, PLoP it on the banks of 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:58.280 Lake Carmel or Lake Glenida, and live like a pauper kit. 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:08.760 Of course, unintended consequences. All those cops and firemen and 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:15.240 sanitation workers who did that installed eight septic systems and 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:20.120 immediately sent their gray water waste into these gorgeous man 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:24.160 made lakes that were oh, by the way, the reservoir 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:29.600 as system for you soon and oops. I have never 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:37.320 in my life encountered this profession anywhere except Putnam County. 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:43.359 They bring in a guy not every year, more often 0:18:43.359 --> 0:18:48.439 than they want to admit, to mow the lakes mo 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:54.160 because when you introduce all that runoff nitrogen from septic 0:18:54.240 --> 0:19:01.119 systems into fresh water which you get are massive spores 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:06.000 of E. Coli. E Coli in turn create these huge 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:10.760 blooms of algae. If you want to see Christmas in July, 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:16.280 go swimming in Lake Carmel. You will see weeds rising 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:20.399 thirty feet out of the lake beds floor. That's why 0:19:20.440 --> 0:19:22.560 I could an amphibious lawn. 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:27.480 That's it. I've never even heard of an amphibious lawnmower. 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:30.200 Law no, neither. 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:36.240 You know. And I'm sure the guy who who owns 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:41.800 and runs the operates amphibious lawnmower has been deported, so 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:51.000 we know what jeuez. Well, all right, So in twenty twenty, 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:54.639 I get I get this call from Nina Morrison, who's 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:57.879 now a federal judge and a great one, telling me 0:19:58.040 --> 0:20:04.760 that there are these two young men who falsely targeted, arrested, convicted, 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:07.879 and sent to prison for life for the murder of 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:14.240 twelve year old chist Ray. She said, Paul, if you 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:18.600 think you've seen a parent police corruption, wait until you 0:20:18.720 --> 0:20:24.199 read these trial transcripts. Well, story short, I got up 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:30.480 there and I spent months with this genius. One of 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:35.000 those two kids, Anthony de Pippo, who was a ninth 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:40.280 grade dropout, three times, and who never never made it 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:46.719 to the tenth grade. This huge, hulking halt Hogan worshiped her, 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:55.520 who for giggles broke fluorescent lights and folding chairs over 0:20:55.600 --> 0:21:04.200 his buddies heads in these impromptu backyard wrestling tournaments. David Stage, 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:12.639 that guy who had caught the hostile attention of the 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:19.880 Putnam Sheriff's office, had been grotesquely framed for the rape 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:24.800 and murder of this beautiful twelve year old child who 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:31.600 had gone missing in October nineteen, And it took the 0:21:31.640 --> 0:21:36.560 cops a year and a half to not only coerce 0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:42.480 Menace and brownbeat a false confession from Anthony's best friend, 0:21:42.840 --> 0:21:46.360 a confession that implicated the two of them, but also 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:52.680 to coerce Menace and browbeat their stoner friends into falsely 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:59.000 testifying against them ninety seven, These two young men who 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:09.800 had the most innocuous criminal records possession of throwing a 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:11.760 trash can at a commuter train. 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:15.879 Doesn't Anthony say, by the way, when you speak to 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:19.280 him in Devil's Quarry, you talk a little bit about 0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:23.080 drug charges, and he says, yeah, you could call me 0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:25.080 a drug dealer, but not a successful one. 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:28.840 Exactly right, Anthony may be the only drug dealer in 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:32.040 the history of the continental United States to lose money 0:22:32.480 --> 0:22:37.240 selling drugs, which will happen when you're consuming more of 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:44.320 your product than yourself. These two guys were part of 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:51.720 this kind of rag tag contingent of Wlatchkey kids. Kids 0:22:52.640 --> 0:22:56.000 in the story, I called them sideways kids. These are 0:22:56.000 --> 0:22:59.320 the kids at the back of the classroom whose feet 0:22:59.320 --> 0:23:02.840 are constantly drumming under the table, who was staring off 0:23:02.840 --> 0:23:05.879 in the space. These are kids who, if they'd grown 0:23:05.960 --> 0:23:09.160 up ten miles south in Westchester, would have been flagged 0:23:09.160 --> 0:23:15.600 for add or some you know or dyslexia and been 0:23:15.680 --> 0:23:19.600 diagnosed and treated and going on to become dentists and 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:25.760 bond traders. But they grew up in a community in 0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:37.639 which children, specially female children, were prey. And my initial 0:23:38.240 --> 0:23:41.800 working title for the story that became The Devil you 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:47.639 Know was rape value. It was hard meeting a girl 0:23:48.359 --> 0:23:51.440 now in her thirties forties who grew up in the 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:55.680 town and not been sexually violated by an authority figure 0:23:56.000 --> 0:24:03.239 Jesus Christ, stepdad, principal teacher, the cops themselves. Over and 0:24:03.280 --> 0:24:07.200 over I heard from these girls that in a town 0:24:07.240 --> 0:24:09.560 with nowhere to go and nothing to do. They go 0:24:09.600 --> 0:24:12.560 off to the woods with a forty and a joint, 0:24:13.760 --> 0:24:17.800 and while away a Friday night, the cops always knew 0:24:17.800 --> 0:24:22.600 where they were. They roll up, the boys would get cuffed, 0:24:22.760 --> 0:24:24.840 the girls would get tossed into the back of the 0:24:24.920 --> 0:24:28.160 cruiser and have to blow the cop to get out 0:24:28.200 --> 0:24:37.480 of the cruise. And this community of predatory cops, literally 0:24:38.119 --> 0:24:42.240 leg breaking cops who's only job, as far as I 0:24:42.320 --> 0:24:48.280 could tell, and I investigated them thoroughly, was illegally coercing 0:24:48.440 --> 0:24:53.359 campaign money for the reelection of this crooked sheriff who'd 0:24:53.400 --> 0:25:01.400 been in power for twenty odd years. Those cops discovered 0:25:01.400 --> 0:25:05.840 the remains of Joseph Right in a shallow grave thirteen 0:25:05.840 --> 0:25:08.160 months after she went missing. By the way, those two 0:25:08.200 --> 0:25:12.879 cops never bothered to investigate her disappearance in October of 0:25:12.960 --> 0:25:17.520 ninety four, outside of talking to her teachers, her family, 0:25:17.880 --> 0:25:22.400 throwing up a couple of missing fliers. Never did any legwork. 0:25:23.320 --> 0:25:28.200 When she turns up day in ninety five with her 0:25:28.240 --> 0:25:33.719 hands bound behind her, her panties stuffed down, her throat, 0:25:34.200 --> 0:25:39.119 her skeletal throat, and her broad tied around a mandible 0:25:39.960 --> 0:25:46.399 of her skull, those cops immediately thought, oh shit, maybe 0:25:46.440 --> 0:25:49.679 we should have spent an hour here and there looking 0:25:49.800 --> 0:25:55.480 into her, and immediately began to round up the kids 0:25:55.520 --> 0:26:01.600 that they designated the usual suspects. Not only did they 0:26:01.680 --> 0:26:05.520 sell this family, not only they sell this community an 0:26:05.920 --> 0:26:10.680 enormous toxic pack of law, a pack of lies that 0:26:10.680 --> 0:26:16.080 that family still clings to that family even after the 0:26:16.119 --> 0:26:20.000 exoneration of these two young men. I will go into 0:26:20.000 --> 0:26:22.800 that in a second, because it's a miracle that should 0:26:22.880 --> 0:26:27.000 never have happened. But Anthony to Pippo, that ninth grade dropout, 0:26:28.160 --> 0:26:33.359 did something so extraordinary that I just want to write 0:26:33.359 --> 0:26:38.359 his Nobel speech. It is, in all my years of 0:26:38.400 --> 0:26:43.040 writing about the wrongly convicted, of helping to exonerate the 0:26:43.080 --> 0:26:48.840 wrongly convicted, I have never seen anything more extraordinary heroic 0:26:48.920 --> 0:26:52.440 than what Anthony to Pippo did in the prison library 0:26:52.480 --> 0:26:58.120 at Africa. It is I'll shorthand it by saying this 0:26:59.280 --> 0:27:02.520 Anthony was finally exonerated by the best lawyer in America, 0:27:02.960 --> 0:27:09.760 Mark Agnifilo. Mark Agnifilo is this extraordinary showman who, as 0:27:09.800 --> 0:27:14.159 he says in the podcast, markets himself exclusively to people 0:27:14.400 --> 0:27:20.840 who were some of those people. Harbie Weinstein, p Diddy. 0:27:21.240 --> 0:27:25.960 He got Diddy off of thirty six or forty glaringly 0:27:27.080 --> 0:27:33.040 flagrant sex drafting offenses. He's now representing Luigi Manngioni in 0:27:33.280 --> 0:27:36.280 the trial of the Century that starts this fall. That's 0:27:36.359 --> 0:27:40.919 who Mark Agnifilo is, and what Mark Agnifilo told me 0:27:41.119 --> 0:27:47.679 was when he first met Anthony in the spring of 0:27:47.920 --> 0:27:54.320 twenty sixteen, three months before that trial, his jaw dropped 0:27:54.359 --> 0:27:59.240 open to listen, to sit across from this enormous man 0:27:59.520 --> 0:28:04.680 with an intimidating goateee Anthony six five and a half 0:28:04.800 --> 0:28:12.280 six six three, twenty benches an entire block, and Anthony, 0:28:12.680 --> 0:28:16.200 as Mark agniffelow realized, was the best lawyer in the room. 0:28:16.960 --> 0:28:19.639 And Mark Agnifflo said to himself and then said to me, 0:28:20.960 --> 0:28:24.119 I realized I was going to win this trial after 0:28:24.200 --> 0:28:26.840 my first five minutes with Anthony, because I had a 0:28:26.920 --> 0:28:30.480 secret weapon that the prosecution didn't. I had the actual 0:28:30.560 --> 0:28:34.200 best lawyer in America teach me how to try this case. 0:28:35.640 --> 0:28:38.400 And when he tried that case in the fall of 0:28:38.480 --> 0:28:44.080 twenty sixteen, it wasn't a contest. It was a slaughter. 0:28:44.560 --> 0:28:46.800 But we'll get to one thing I want to focus 0:28:46.800 --> 0:28:51.280 on really quickly. Here is why those particular law enforcement 0:28:51.320 --> 0:28:55.400 officers looked at these guys and those why were those 0:28:55.440 --> 0:28:59.640 guys the go to potential bad guys in town that 0:28:59.800 --> 0:29:04.040 may have done this kind of thing, And specifically about 0:29:04.040 --> 0:29:07.760 a gentleman named Pat Costolato. I think, is how you 0:29:07.800 --> 0:29:08.400 say his name? 0:29:08.880 --> 0:29:12.400 Yes? Castaldo? Yeah? Oh? Was he? 0:29:12.760 --> 0:29:16.080 And why is he like targeting these guys? 0:29:16.560 --> 0:29:19.720 So Pat Costaldo, as near as I could tell, was 0:29:19.960 --> 0:29:23.880 the chief's leg breaker for this crooked sheriff, a goon 0:29:24.120 --> 0:29:30.760 who was notorious for using his hands and his feet 0:29:31.640 --> 0:29:37.720 to enfluce the wall in Putnam County. Big Bruiser looked 0:29:37.760 --> 0:29:44.760 like something out of a trashy drug store detective novel 0:29:44.800 --> 0:29:49.920 from the forties, slicked his hair back in a high 0:29:50.280 --> 0:29:54.960 type pompadour, wore a mowhair top coat in the summer. 0:29:55.480 --> 0:29:58.720 Clearly thought he was Popeye Doyle, although it was here 0:29:58.840 --> 0:30:05.000 was like he can't even drive. Pa Costaldo seems to 0:30:05.040 --> 0:30:12.600 have about three working neurons, and when he discovered when 0:30:13.520 --> 0:30:18.800 his department stumbled upon the bones of Joseph, they were 0:30:18.880 --> 0:30:26.040 under enormous pressure. Already a second beautiful child girl had 0:30:26.040 --> 0:30:29.960 gone missing in Carmel six months prior, and so now 0:30:30.040 --> 0:30:33.680 you had in a town of no violent crime, in 0:30:33.720 --> 0:30:39.400 a town where the law enforcement largely consists of these 0:30:39.440 --> 0:30:44.440 cops responding to bars and domestic spans, you have these 0:30:44.480 --> 0:30:47.720 cops who have never, in their wives worked a murder, 0:30:47.920 --> 0:30:50.680 and as near as I could tell, were never trained 0:30:50.720 --> 0:30:52.320 to be cops in the first place. 0:30:52.640 --> 0:30:58.719 And they're pretty clear about their inexperience. When you speak 0:30:58.760 --> 0:31:01.480 with some of these folks or dive into them in 0:31:01.560 --> 0:31:05.760 Devil's Quarry, we've got to ask poll and pardon me 0:31:05.960 --> 0:31:07.720 if this is a bit of a softball, but I 0:31:07.760 --> 0:31:10.520 think our audience needs to hear it. How did this 0:31:10.640 --> 0:31:15.600 lack of experience, plus they're already loose and fast nature 0:31:15.920 --> 0:31:21.880 as law enforcement operatives, how did this inform what they 0:31:21.960 --> 0:31:25.560 saw as their strategy? Because it sounds when I'm hearing 0:31:25.600 --> 0:31:29.920 this through right and I'm reading your previous work, every 0:31:30.080 --> 0:31:36.400 point of their investigation seems to focus less and less 0:31:36.760 --> 0:31:41.120 on finding the actual murderer and more and more on 0:31:41.400 --> 0:31:42.960 closing out the case. 0:31:43.440 --> 0:31:49.960 Exactly right, So let's step the stage for your listeners. 0:31:51.280 --> 0:31:58.960 Josett Rights discovered November twenty ninety five in that shallow grave, 0:32:00.840 --> 0:32:04.720 what those cops found was evidence of a serial killer. 0:32:05.320 --> 0:32:09.760 At large, so she had been bound and gagged in 0:32:09.920 --> 0:32:18.600 ritualistic and fetishistic style, meaning this was not the doer's 0:32:18.680 --> 0:32:25.920 first rodeo. The staging and the concealment of the corpse 0:32:27.080 --> 0:32:33.840 was planful, was meticulous, and were it not for the 0:32:33.880 --> 0:32:39.840 fact that she was buried in a forest, forest with deer, 0:32:40.400 --> 0:32:49.360 with coyotes, with other large rodents, that grave would have 0:32:49.440 --> 0:32:56.080 held her remains for time immemorial. But one of those 0:32:56.200 --> 0:33:01.480 browsing animals had dug and to part part of her 0:33:01.600 --> 0:33:05.640 skull and made off with it, and that skull was 0:33:05.680 --> 0:33:09.240 discovered underfoot by two hunters on the first day of 0:33:09.320 --> 0:33:11.800 hunting season, So it wasn't this though the cops were 0:33:11.840 --> 0:33:15.840 looking for her. Course, cops had no interest in finding Joseph. 0:33:16.320 --> 0:33:20.040 They had written her off as a runaway a year aware. 0:33:20.400 --> 0:33:25.320 Back to why they chose these guns. So, as I say, 0:33:25.400 --> 0:33:29.000 there was enormous community pressure in a town, in a 0:33:29.080 --> 0:33:34.400 county with no serious violence. And it's one of the 0:33:34.480 --> 0:33:39.640 virtues of living in mystics, particularly the community that is 0:33:39.680 --> 0:33:45.520 inhabited by New York cops by New York unfortunately not 0:33:47.240 --> 0:33:51.480 enforced by New York cops. So who becomes a cop 0:33:52.160 --> 0:33:55.400 in Putnam County. Who becomes a cop in the town 0:33:55.440 --> 0:34:02.880 of Cornwall, It's two different streams of applicants. It's locals 0:34:02.960 --> 0:34:11.680