WEBVTT - #591 Jason Flom with Andrew Krivak 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:02.900 The episode you're about to hear was produced in the 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:06.699 first year of this podcast back in 2017. It was 0:00:06.760 --> 0:00:10.360 episode number 33. At the time, this was an episode 0:00:10.420 --> 0:00:14.410 of Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars because Andrew Krivak was still 0:00:14.490 --> 0:00:17.310 sitting in a maximum security prison cell in New York 0:00:17.329 --> 0:00:21.910 State Prison. But two years after this interview, Andy's conviction 0:00:21.950 --> 0:00:25.650 was finally vacated. And in October of 2020, he was 0:00:25.710 --> 0:00:28.580 finally released on bail. It was an honor for me 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:31.200 to be there with his team to walk him out 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:35.620 of jail. The Deskovic Foundation helped bring on additional legal counsel, 0:00:35.780 --> 0:00:39.340 the legendary Oscar Michelin and Karen Newworth, to represent Andy 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:43.220 at his 2023 retrial. The jury returned a verdict of 0:00:43.380 --> 0:00:48.090 not guilty, and Andy was finally exonerated after 24 long, 0:00:48.310 --> 0:00:51.330 miserable years in prison. In 2024, Putnam County paid him 0:00:51.350 --> 0:00:57.710 a $ 20 million settlement. To hear more about Andy's incredible case, 0:00:57.810 --> 0:01:00.250 tune in to Season 5 of Bone Valley, titled The 0:01:00.290 --> 0:01:04.510 Devil's Quarry. Paul Solitaroff tells the story of Andy's co-defendant, 0:01:04.670 --> 0:01:07.789 Anthony DePippo, and the crime that landed both Andy and 0:01:07.950 --> 0:01:11.730 Anthony wrongfully in prison. A second installment of The Devil's 0:01:11.770 --> 0:01:15.149 Quarry is coming soon. It investigates another case in the 0:01:15.250 --> 0:01:19.840 same town with eerie links to Andy Krivak's story. Look 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:22.840 out for the first episode on September 30th. Trust me, 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.649 you don't want to miss it. And now Here is 0:01:26.730 --> 0:01:27.309 Andy's story. 0:01:32.350 --> 0:01:34.459 I think we have the best legal system. It's just 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:36.300 the people that implement it. 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:38.880 They get lost along the way and forget what their 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:39.780 job really is. 0:01:41.380 --> 0:01:44.020 He just kept on trying to remind me that who 0:01:44.060 --> 0:01:47.289 was in authority, who was in control, and how easy 0:01:47.350 --> 0:01:51.610 it was for my body to be found in any 0:01:51.770 --> 0:01:52.930 alley of New York City. 0:01:54.100 --> 0:01:56.720 It's a tough prison when you have the guards going 0:01:56.760 --> 0:02:00.070 against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison. 0:02:01.410 --> 0:02:01.950 They do that. 0:02:01.990 --> 0:02:04.310 They'll give a guy a life sentence and go home 0:02:04.350 --> 0:02:05.710 and eat spaghetti like it was nothing. 0:02:07.290 --> 0:02:09.270 And anybody that would say, well, why would you confess 0:02:09.290 --> 0:02:11.970 to something that you didn't do? My question to them 0:02:12.010 --> 0:02:14.880 would be, why wouldn't you confess when somebody's threatening to 0:02:14.919 --> 0:02:15.540 kill your life? 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:18.980 The judge, he said, how you feel? 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:19.760 I said, I'm okay. 0:02:20.220 --> 0:02:23.380 He said, well, today is your lucky day. You're going home. 0:02:25.630 --> 0:02:30.190 Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. We have a very unique 0:02:30.570 --> 0:02:34.810 case and a very special episode of Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars. 0:02:35.470 --> 0:02:37.600 Today is going to be the noisiest episode. I just 0:02:37.620 --> 0:02:39.859 want to warn you up front because we're inside Wendy 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:44.160 Maximum Security Prison in Buffalo, New York. So apologies in advance, 0:02:44.180 --> 0:02:47.080 but I promise you, you're going to hear an extraordinary 0:02:47.139 --> 0:02:50.210 interview today. And so hang in there and hear the 0:02:50.250 --> 0:02:55.960 story of Andrew Krivak. You've probably heard Andrew's co-defendant, Anthony DePippo, 0:02:56.400 --> 0:02:59.859 his episode of Wrongful Conviction aired recently. And so this 0:02:59.919 --> 0:03:03.160 is a case where we have Anthony on the show 0:03:04.150 --> 0:03:07.950 having been exonerated, and yet we're still back here behind 0:03:07.990 --> 0:03:12.010 bars interviewing his co-defendant, which makes no fucking sense. But 0:03:12.090 --> 0:03:14.450 here we are. If you hear the cell door slamming, 0:03:14.970 --> 0:03:16.480 you'll know it's as real as it can be. 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:20.800 It was a horrific case, the rape and strangulation in 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:24.579 1994 of angelically beautiful 12-year-old Josette Wright. 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:26.880 And now to a stunning development in a sensational case 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:29.760 of a convicted child killer rapist in Putnam County. 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:31.100 What's wrong with this case? 0:03:31.180 --> 0:03:33.680 This case was created out of whole cloth by the 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:35.710 deputy sheriff in charge of this case. 0:03:36.370 --> 0:03:39.490 Who himself has been indicted by this very county for crimes. 0:03:39.750 --> 0:03:41.790 DePippo still maintains his innocence. 0:03:41.890 --> 0:03:44.390 The jury in Putnam County found him not guilty. The 0:03:44.430 --> 0:03:46.810 main witness against him was a former girlfriend who said 0:03:46.850 --> 0:03:49.430 she witnessed the attack, but the jury didn't buy it. 0:03:49.630 --> 0:03:51.770 What we learned at this trial is that the eyewitness 0:03:51.790 --> 0:03:52.390 wasn't credible. 0:03:52.530 --> 0:03:55.130 The defense was allowed to suggest Howard Gombert is the 0:03:55.150 --> 0:03:58.010 real killer, seen with the victim shortly before her disappearance 0:03:58.310 --> 0:04:01.410 and currently in a Connecticut prison on sex assault charges. 0:04:01.650 --> 0:04:05.330 Judge Robert Neary ordered DePippo released on a million dollars bail. 0:04:05.350 --> 0:04:07.960 The Putnam County District Attorney, though, isn't backing down. He 0:04:08.010 --> 0:04:10.620 insists not guilty is not the same as innocent. 0:04:11.940 --> 0:04:13.640 Andrew, welcome to the show. 0:04:14.020 --> 0:04:14.280 Thanks. 0:04:14.620 --> 0:04:16.220 In this case, I can say I'm sorry you're here. 0:04:16.500 --> 0:04:18.380 Usually I'm happy to have our guests on the show, 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:20.219 but I'm sorry to be taping it in this facility. 0:04:20.260 --> 0:04:23.400 I'm looking forward to seeing you on the outside sometime soon. 0:04:23.660 --> 0:04:24.960 Thank you very much. I appreciate it. 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:29.040 We also have with us another very special guest, someone 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:31.700 who I consider to be a sort of royalty. A 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:33.140 lot of people consider her to be royalty in the 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:37.040 innocence community. The one and only Adele Bernhardt is here. 0:04:37.060 --> 0:04:38.060 Adele, welcome. 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:40.170 Thank you very much. I'm very glad to be here. 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.190 I'm really glad you're focusing on Andy's case. I think 0:04:43.230 --> 0:04:45.029 it's important and I'm glad. 0:04:45.250 --> 0:04:48.510 So Adele has been representing Andy for over 10 years now. 0:04:48.710 --> 0:04:49.969 Well, close to 10, I guess. 0:04:50.230 --> 0:04:53.850 Unfortunately, it's easy to get wrongfully convicted and undoing it. 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:56.480 We know it takes thousands of hours of legal work. 0:04:56.980 --> 0:05:00.750 In this case, it's no different. So, Andy, going back 0:05:00.970 --> 0:05:03.150 to the beginning, where were you from? Where were you 0:05:03.170 --> 0:05:03.850 born originally? 0:05:04.410 --> 0:05:06.650 I was originally born in Putnam County, New York, Putnam 0:05:06.670 --> 0:05:11.600 County Hospital. Raised there until probably like 1990. Then my 0:05:11.650 --> 0:05:14.340 family moved to Stormville, New York, to take care of 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:17.560 my grandmother, me and my father, my grandmother and my brother, 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:19.480 and at the time, my stepmother. 0:05:19.500 --> 0:05:23.320 And your childhood, was it a happy childhood? How were things? 0:05:24.140 --> 0:05:24.539 It was. 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:26.480 I mean, you know, we had our normal problems like 0:05:26.540 --> 0:05:28.760 anything else. I can't say that, you know, I was 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:31.640 subjected to anything unusual. It was normal for the most part. 0:05:31.690 --> 0:05:34.570 I had my, you know, little issues growing up, primarily 0:05:34.589 --> 0:05:37.290 because I didn't know my real mother. So, you know, 0:05:37.589 --> 0:05:40.289 I was emotional a lot on that end of things. 0:05:40.390 --> 0:05:42.010 But it was pretty normal. 0:05:42.589 --> 0:05:45.300 And, I mean, upstate New York, pretty nice place to 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:48.180 grow up. It's beautiful around here. Did you play sports? 0:05:48.540 --> 0:05:50.960 Yeah, I grew up. Actually, I started fifth grade football. 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:53.120 From that point on, I played baseball. 0:05:53.500 --> 0:05:54.120 Basketball. 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:57.760 I did that probably up until junior high with the 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:01.250 hopes that I could go into high school playing sports 0:06:01.330 --> 0:06:02.450 and see how far I can go. 0:06:02.950 --> 0:06:04.270 Unfortunately, that never panned out. 0:06:04.970 --> 0:06:09.740 So you were a teenager growing up doing teenager type stuff, right? 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:13.119 Certainly not getting in trouble, right? That's a double negative. 0:06:13.140 --> 0:06:14.260 But yeah, I mean, like, you know. 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:17.200 Nothing major. I mean, you know, juvenile things. 0:06:17.500 --> 0:06:18.680 But you were not a violent guy. 0:06:18.900 --> 0:06:18.979 No. 0:06:19.020 --> 0:06:22.470 No. So you're going along trying to find your way, 0:06:22.690 --> 0:06:26.190 like a lot of teenagers, and then one day something 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:31.800 absolutely horrifying happens. A young girl, 12-year-old girl named Josette Wright, 0:06:32.740 --> 0:06:36.780 was raped and brutally murdered. But they didn't know that 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:39.300 at the time. All they knew was that she had disappeared. Yes. 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:40.260 Did you know her? 0:06:40.290 --> 0:06:43.700 I knew her from being around the area. seeing her, 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:48.820 knowing her older sisters. Carmel's a small community, so everybody interacted. 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:50.670 You know, when a fair comes around, everybody goes to 0:06:50.690 --> 0:06:52.370 the fair, they got a plaza, so they have all 0:06:52.430 --> 0:06:55.890 these regular areas that you would run into people. So, yeah, 0:06:56.010 --> 0:06:59.530 for that part of in passing or being around somewhere 0:06:59.950 --> 0:07:02.049 or being in a fair, yeah, I knew her to that. 0:07:01.950 --> 0:07:02.630 Extent, yes. 0:07:02.870 --> 0:07:05.299 And, Adele, this is a very strange aspect of this 0:07:05.380 --> 0:07:08.820 case because here you have this small community, sounds sort 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:13.190 of idyllic in a lot of ways, and... This lovely 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:14.850 young girl disappears one day. 0:07:14.870 --> 0:07:15.410 All right. 0:07:15.630 --> 0:07:17.810 Now, you know, we all see on TV when these 0:07:17.850 --> 0:07:20.810 things happen, the search parties are formed. There's, you know, 0:07:20.830 --> 0:07:24.150 the whole town comes out, almost pandemonium, but controlled pandemonium 0:07:24.170 --> 0:07:26.430 where people are just searching everywhere to find this little girl. 0:07:26.740 --> 0:07:29.020 But that's not what happened, right? The authorities didn't at 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:32.140 first believe that she even was really missing. They thought 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:32.760 she ran away. 0:07:33.020 --> 0:07:35.260 Well, from what I could tell from the records they've 0:07:35.320 --> 0:07:38.460 turned over to us, the police didn't seem to take 0:07:38.500 --> 0:07:42.480 her disappearance terribly seriously at all. So they put up 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:45.880 some wanted posters, but that's about it. So as far 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:48.980 as I can see from all of the records that 0:07:49.100 --> 0:07:53.119 I've gathered, unless I'm missing something, they figured she'd come back. 0:07:53.380 --> 0:07:56.640 They figured she was a runaway. They didn't really take 0:07:56.660 --> 0:07:59.380 it very seriously. They logged a couple of calls. People 0:07:59.440 --> 0:08:02.980 reported seeing her later on in the malls. But I 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:05.680 guess they thought, well, easy come, easy go. She'll be back. 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:09.640 I mean, as a parent, It's just outrageous. 0:08:10.060 --> 0:08:11.280 I think it's very shocking. 0:08:11.580 --> 0:08:14.940 And it's particularly outrageous because of her age. I mean, 0:08:14.980 --> 0:08:17.160 it's not like she was 17 where you could say, well, 0:08:17.260 --> 0:08:18.640 you know, sometimes 17-year-olds run away. 0:08:19.020 --> 0:08:22.260 She was in school every day. She wasn't getting into 0:08:22.300 --> 0:08:25.310 trouble with older people from anyplace else. So the fact 0:08:25.350 --> 0:08:29.250 that she all of a sudden wasn't there was, I think, 0:08:29.410 --> 0:08:30.630 pretty serious. Yes. 0:08:31.090 --> 0:08:34.810 She was 12. I mean, Jesus, it's so young. The 0:08:34.850 --> 0:08:39.450 horror of that is unimaginable. But so... Months and months 0:08:39.490 --> 0:08:39.910 go by. 0:08:40.250 --> 0:08:40.450 Right. 0:08:40.630 --> 0:08:43.189 You've obviously heard about the case. Everybody's probably heard about 0:08:43.210 --> 0:08:43.589 the case. 0:08:43.630 --> 0:08:43.870 Yes. 0:08:44.370 --> 0:08:47.630 And then, I think it was 13 months later, her 0:08:47.670 --> 0:08:51.890 body was found in the woods. And now everything changes. 0:08:52.190 --> 0:08:52.390 Right. 0:08:52.929 --> 0:08:55.480 All of a sudden, once they found the bones and 0:08:55.550 --> 0:09:00.400 they were able to identify the dental records as belonging 0:09:00.460 --> 0:09:03.880 to her, suddenly the police realized that they should have 0:09:03.900 --> 0:09:07.020 been paying more attention. This is my interpretation of the records. 0:09:07.110 --> 0:09:10.110 It looked like they realized, hey, we should have been 0:09:10.130 --> 0:09:13.230 taking this more seriously all the way along. Now we 0:09:13.270 --> 0:09:16.110 know this is a homicide. It's not just a runaway. 0:09:16.390 --> 0:09:19.830 She's not coming back. And we didn't follow up the 0:09:19.890 --> 0:09:24.170 leads that might have let us discover what happened much, 0:09:24.230 --> 0:09:26.990 much earlier when the trail wasn't so cold. 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:31.120 So, Andrew, now we have a situation where not only 0:09:31.460 --> 0:09:35.699 is there the very real problem of the fact that 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:40.040 there's a brutal child killer in the midst of this town, right, 0:09:40.620 --> 0:09:43.250 and everything that that would mean to the authorities, many 0:09:43.270 --> 0:09:45.450 of whom have kids of their own or relatives or nieces, 0:09:45.490 --> 0:09:48.610 whatever it might be. So on a personal level, all 0:09:48.630 --> 0:09:50.710 of a sudden there's a real sense of urgency, but 0:09:50.809 --> 0:09:53.030 also there's got to be a lot of pressure from 0:09:53.070 --> 0:09:54.590 the community when something like this happens. 0:09:54.970 --> 0:09:55.410 Absolutely. 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:58.230 So they've now got, and we see this over and 0:09:58.270 --> 0:10:01.240 over again, they've got a real... scramble and they got 0:10:01.260 --> 0:10:05.220 to find somebody because otherwise it's going to be difficult. 0:10:05.340 --> 0:10:06.980 Obvious that they didn't do their job. 0:10:07.179 --> 0:10:09.510 And it's going to be a lot more pressure brought 0:10:09.530 --> 0:10:11.630 to bear on them. There could be people losing their jobs. 0:10:11.770 --> 0:10:14.229 Who knows what could happen? People getting voted out. They 0:10:14.270 --> 0:10:16.930 got to find this guy or people who did this, right? 0:10:17.470 --> 0:10:20.450 So Things start to go downhill quick from this point. 0:10:20.809 --> 0:10:25.530 And ultimately, you end up being arrested and charged with 0:10:25.570 --> 0:10:30.189 this crime that you must have been like, are you kidding? 0:10:30.330 --> 0:10:31.510 I mean, were you like, are you kidding? 0:10:31.870 --> 0:10:32.589 I was in shock. 0:10:32.670 --> 0:10:37.109 I mean, you know, the actual process was like 50 0:10:37.110 --> 0:10:39.950 paces behind my brain, like trying to catch up. 0:10:39.990 --> 0:10:40.620 Like, wait a minute. 0:10:41.270 --> 0:10:44.160 You mean your brain was 50 paces behind what was happening? 0:10:44.179 --> 0:10:46.540 Yeah, my conscious, you know, it's like trying to wait. 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:49.120 Am I really sitting here? You know, as a juvenile, 0:10:49.140 --> 0:10:52.559 I've been in and out of little situations. So, but 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:57.880 to being told that I raped and murdered somebody at 17, like, 0:10:58.200 --> 0:10:58.900 are you serious? 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:00.760 Right. You know what I'm saying? 0:11:00.820 --> 0:11:04.540 Like, I mean, just anybody who knows me would like, 0:11:04.620 --> 0:11:07.490 like they don't correlate the two. And, you know, for 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:09.830 me to try to process that I'm being accused of 0:11:09.890 --> 0:11:13.130 it and sitting in there and having, you know, these 0:11:13.150 --> 0:11:15.430 people yell at me and say, there's evidence, there's witnesses, 0:11:15.450 --> 0:11:18.370 there's people. And I'm, Yelling back, you're lying, you're crazy, 0:11:18.390 --> 0:11:21.290 you're making it up. I don't really think it still 0:11:21.330 --> 0:11:24.190 has hit me because I refuse to let it. It's 0:11:24.210 --> 0:11:26.330 like I'm in this altered state of just trying to 0:11:26.429 --> 0:11:28.230 figure this out. Like, wait a minute, you know, it's 0:11:28.270 --> 0:11:29.950 got to be a bad dream. I'm waking up sometime. 0:11:30.550 --> 0:11:33.790 How did they land on you and Anthony? I mean, 0:11:33.820 --> 0:11:35.240 I know the story, but I want to hear it 0:11:35.250 --> 0:11:38.880 from your perspective because it's so bizarre. There was no 0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:42.580 physical evidence connecting you. Do you understand how that happened? 0:11:43.380 --> 0:11:45.810 No, and I think about it every day. You know, 0:11:45.830 --> 0:11:48.680 I have since this has happened. My only consensus of 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:52.120 it is maybe prior run-ins being an easy target. 0:11:52.540 --> 0:11:52.939 I don't know. 0:11:53.240 --> 0:11:54.959 Like I said, you know, you try to make sense 0:11:55.020 --> 0:11:58.220 of something that doesn't make sense and you drive yourself crazy. 0:11:58.780 --> 0:12:01.620 For one thing, what happened is that Denise Rose got 0:12:01.660 --> 0:12:02.540 herself arrested. 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:05.260 Well, eventually, I mean, yeah, you know, later on down 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:08.030 the line through their talking to people, whatever the case 0:12:08.050 --> 0:12:11.870 may be, different names came up. I think at least personally, 0:12:11.910 --> 0:12:15.030 that it still extends farther than just people mentioning names 0:12:15.050 --> 0:12:18.640 because you would think that the professionals that are actively 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:22.780 pursuing leads and looking for the culprits or the culprit 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:26.240 that committed this crime would be able to hang themselves 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:30.100 onto something tangible as opposed to, oh, well, yeah, he 0:12:30.140 --> 0:12:32.370 knew her or she knew him or, you know what 0:12:32.380 --> 0:12:34.310 I'm saying? So I think it's a little bit more 0:12:34.429 --> 0:12:35.870 than that. To what extent? 0:12:35.950 --> 0:12:36.410 I don't know. 0:12:36.730 --> 0:12:41.130 It's obvious that there's more to it. than just singling 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:42.940 us out because a name was mentioned. 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:44.790 Do you want to jump in here, Adele? 0:12:45.010 --> 0:12:49.930 Sure, I mean... When Denise Rose got arrested, they had 0:12:50.270 --> 0:12:54.790 an idea of who the likely suspects were in the town. 0:12:55.090 --> 0:12:58.790 And I think that Anthony, in particular, was a likely 0:12:58.870 --> 0:13:02.579 suspect just because he was a big guy, they knew him, 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:06.620 he'd gotten in trouble for various juvenile kinds of things. 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:10.520 And so when Denise gets arrested and she's in trouble 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:14.820 and they know that she had been arrested, his girlfriend 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:18.300 at around the time that they now decided that this 0:13:18.350 --> 0:13:21.930 little girl was murdered, they immediately started putting the pressure 0:13:22.070 --> 0:13:24.610 on her. Did you know him? You knew him then. 0:13:24.690 --> 0:13:27.110 How did you know him? Weren't you with him? Weren't 0:13:27.130 --> 0:13:30.030 you with him that night? Didn't you see what happened? 0:13:30.510 --> 0:13:34.109 And they talked to her time and time again. They 0:13:34.490 --> 0:13:37.950 talked to her at least three different times while she 0:13:37.990 --> 0:13:41.170 was in jail, after she'd gotten arrested, while she was 0:13:41.330 --> 0:13:45.410 worried about about going to jail herself. And so little 0:13:45.429 --> 0:13:48.200 bit by little bit by little bit, they got her 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:51.200 to start thinking that maybe there would be something in 0:13:51.300 --> 0:13:55.100 it for her to put these pieces together for them 0:13:55.260 --> 0:13:58.760 when she could perfectly well see where they wanted her 0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:02.120 to go, which was to give them something about this 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:06.830 murder that involved Anthony. And of course, Anthony's friend, who 0:14:06.870 --> 0:14:09.270 he was with a lot of the time, is auntie. 0:14:09.700 --> 0:14:11.840 So it's a little bit of a house of cards. 0:14:12.100 --> 0:14:14.990 And Denise would not seem to have been the most 0:14:15.070 --> 0:14:18.190 credible witness since by her own admission she smoked crack 0:14:18.290 --> 0:14:19.350 thousands of times. 0:14:19.390 --> 0:14:21.710 Yeah, but I don't know that they knew that then. 0:14:22.670 --> 0:14:25.820 That came out in this third trial where there was 0:14:25.860 --> 0:14:30.900 some really very pointed cross-examination and a lot of discovery 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:33.640 about who she was and what she had done. I 0:14:33.680 --> 0:14:36.300 don't know how much the police knew or even thought 0:14:36.330 --> 0:14:38.450 about it at the time. I just know that they 0:14:38.510 --> 0:14:42.410 realized that maybe this is a way into this case, right? 0:14:42.490 --> 0:14:45.430 Maybe we can put pressure on this gal and then 0:14:45.470 --> 0:14:47.050 the whole thing will fall into place. 0:14:47.350 --> 0:14:49.630 Why they would have assumed that she would know who 0:14:49.670 --> 0:14:52.590 the killer was, that's for anybody to speculate. Right. 0:14:52.730 --> 0:14:56.460 Only because they already had in their mind this idea. 0:14:56.480 --> 0:14:59.600 I mean, if she had been somebody else's boyfriend during 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:01.760 that time. They might have picked on somebody else. But 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:03.600 I think it was a way like, okay, we've got 0:15:03.660 --> 0:15:06.500 pressure on you. You know the other kids. You know 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:09.360 all the kids in this community. Okay, the gal who 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:12.300 disappeared was a kid. Maybe you know something about it. 0:15:12.500 --> 0:15:14.350 We're going to go with this. Right. 0:15:14.410 --> 0:15:17.650 And she ultimately came up with a very farcical story, 0:15:18.190 --> 0:15:21.130 which has been disproven in every imaginable way. I mean, 0:15:21.170 --> 0:15:22.710 it never made sense in the first place, but now 0:15:22.750 --> 0:15:26.010 it's actually been disproven. Adele, what was this story that 0:15:26.090 --> 0:15:28.340 she She told a. 0:15:28.340 --> 0:15:31.800 Completely, as far as I'm concerned, incredible story. And so 0:15:31.860 --> 0:15:35.260 I think that the police had in their minds, because 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:38.270 I really think this story came from the investigating officers. 0:15:38.330 --> 0:15:40.890 I think they came up with this idea of how 0:15:41.030 --> 0:15:44.470 they thought that the crime must have happened. And they 0:15:44.630 --> 0:15:50.490 pushed their hypothesis onto everybody, eventually convincing juries that this 0:15:50.730 --> 0:15:53.890 is indeed what happened. And it starts from where they 0:15:53.950 --> 0:15:57.300 found the body because they found these bones off of 0:15:57.340 --> 0:16:01.020 a dirt road, which was a road that all the 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:03.830 kids in the community used to go to to smoke pot. 0:16:04.310 --> 0:16:07.320 So they knew that people drove down there. and they 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:10.120 knew that people smoked pot. So from there, they kind 0:16:10.180 --> 0:16:13.660 of worked backwards and said, oh, what must have happened 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:16.280 is that she must have gone with these older kids, 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:18.960 and they were smoking pot, and then they killed her 0:16:19.140 --> 0:16:22.110 and threw her body into the woods. So they had 0:16:22.170 --> 0:16:25.910 this idea in their minds, is my belief, before they 0:16:25.970 --> 0:16:28.610 talked to her. And then they got her to say 0:16:28.770 --> 0:16:32.570 exactly what they thought. Now, remember, they had been investigating 0:16:32.630 --> 0:16:35.200 the case before. for months before they talked to her. 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:38.130 So they knew where the body was found. They knew 0:16:38.210 --> 0:16:42.150 how far that road was from where the kids all lived. 0:16:42.610 --> 0:16:45.590 They knew who drove down that road. And they said, 0:16:45.810 --> 0:16:49.739 isn't this what happened, Denise? And she's like, yeah, that's right. 0:16:49.790 --> 0:16:51.360 We're all in a van. 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:55.980 We're all high. And there were, according to her story, 0:16:56.260 --> 0:16:59.340 her fairy tale, there were five people besides the victim 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:00.000 in the van. 0:17:00.200 --> 0:17:00.600 Correct. 0:17:00.720 --> 0:17:02.500 All of whom knew what was going on, including her. 0:17:02.820 --> 0:17:03.080 Right. 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:05.219 But she made it sound like she wasn't involved. And 0:17:05.260 --> 0:17:09.879 what I find absolutely preposterous about all of this is 0:17:09.940 --> 0:17:14.000 that let us not forget that 13 months had gone by, 0:17:14.180 --> 0:17:18.389 or more, by the time they interviewed her. And somehow, magically, 0:17:18.609 --> 0:17:20.850 not she or any of the other people in the 0:17:20.890 --> 0:17:23.690 van ever breathed a word of it to anyone. 0:17:24.210 --> 0:17:27.890 Right, so she claims that she is present and sees 0:17:27.910 --> 0:17:31.300 a rape and a murder of a 12-year-old girl that 0:17:31.380 --> 0:17:35.100 happens in a car right in front of her eyes, 0:17:35.220 --> 0:17:39.159 that she sees the whole thing, and she never mentions 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:40.119 it to a soul. 0:17:40.300 --> 0:17:43.040 Not her mother, not a priest, not anybody. Not her 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:44.580 best friend. Not her best friend, right. 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:48.220 Teenage girls have best friends. They tell them everything. 0:17:48.290 --> 0:17:50.290 Adele, I've never been a teenage girl, but are teenage 0:17:50.310 --> 0:17:52.770 girls good at keeping secrets? No, they do not keep secrets. 0:17:52.790 --> 0:17:53.929 They're not good at keeping secrets, okay. And we don't 0:17:53.970 --> 0:17:56.510 want to sound sexist here. Teenage boys are no good 0:17:56.550 --> 0:17:59.610 at it either. In this case... You'd have to look 0:17:59.650 --> 0:18:04.640 at that and go, no, that's not possible. Somebody's lying 0:18:04.780 --> 0:18:08.660 because that didn't happen the way she says or somebody 0:18:08.740 --> 0:18:10.580 else would have known and it would have gotten out there. 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:14.159 So anyway, so she makes up this story about the 0:18:14.220 --> 0:18:17.010 five of us in the van and the victim and 0:18:17.050 --> 0:18:19.369 we're driving with her to go smoke pot, whatever the 0:18:19.410 --> 0:18:20.129 hell she's saying. 0:18:20.650 --> 0:18:21.850 Can I just interject for a minute? 0:18:22.230 --> 0:18:24.550 Before it even got to that point, you got to 0:18:25.150 --> 0:18:28.310 be aware that there were two previous statements. both of 0:18:28.350 --> 0:18:31.149 which she doesn't know nothing, more along the lines of 0:18:31.170 --> 0:18:35.649 the truth. For whatever reasons, it came to her disclosing, oh, 0:18:36.710 --> 0:18:41.480 I witnessed this heinous crime, is obvious in the sense. 0:18:41.260 --> 0:18:43.700 Where the police. 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:48.040 Detectives in the case, primarily Patrick Costaldo, had seen her 0:18:48.140 --> 0:18:52.699 several times and either badgered her, threatened her, intimidated her, 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:55.690 bullied her, all of the above, but finally convinced her 0:18:55.770 --> 0:18:59.350 that it was in her best interest, to lie and 0:18:59.410 --> 0:19:02.929 to say she was a witness of this crime that 0:19:02.970 --> 0:19:05.070 she never witnessed and that we never committed. 0:19:05.530 --> 0:19:07.570 And it wasn't her best interest because who knows what 0:19:07.609 --> 0:19:09.100 she would have been facing herself. 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:09.960 Well, absolutely. 0:19:09.980 --> 0:19:12.459 And again, too, she was actually older than both me 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:16.640 and Anthony. So she was already on probation. She's had 0:19:16.940 --> 0:19:21.270 arrests for drugs. So it's easy to understand how that 0:19:21.350 --> 0:19:24.370 type of threat of going to jail would influence her 0:19:24.450 --> 0:19:26.590 to go along with the cop's version of events. 0:19:26.690 --> 0:19:29.100 It's a very real threat. And also, we know, too, 0:19:29.190 --> 0:19:31.440 that she was a teenager, even though she was older 0:19:31.460 --> 0:19:33.660 than you. She was still a very young woman. And, 0:19:34.260 --> 0:19:36.260 you know, she may not have been able to process 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:40.600 the real consequences of her actions. Your case has many 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:44.010 of the causes that we see most frequently in wrongful convictions. 0:19:44.170 --> 0:19:47.149