WEBVTT - Hell and Gone Murder Line: Maria Rodriguez 0:00:46.550 --> 0:00:51.960 School of Humans. Helen Gone Murder Line actively investigates cold 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:55.360 case murders in an effort to raise public awareness, invite 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:58.780 witnesses to come forward, and present evidence that could potentially 0:00:58.820 --> 0:01:02.920 be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:06.140 from family and community members, their statements should not be 0:01:06.180 --> 0:01:09.920 considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts 0:01:10.020 --> 0:01:14.020 inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone is 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:17.140 presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. 0:01:17.990 --> 0:01:20.970 Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply 0:01:21.030 --> 0:01:23.610 that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime 0:01:24.170 --> 0:01:27.070 is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening. 0:01:30.370 --> 0:01:34.990 In the summer of 1980, 16-year-old Maria Rodriguez was living 0:01:35.030 --> 0:01:39.270 with her boyfriend, Milton Colbert Jr., in Long Branch, New Jersey. 0:01:40.430 --> 0:01:42.950 Long Branch is on the Jersey Shore. It's about 50 0:01:42.950 --> 0:01:46.190 miles south of New York City. These days, when people 0:01:46.290 --> 0:01:49.530 think about the Jersey Shore, in my mind, they're mainly 0:01:49.610 --> 0:01:53.520 picturing the highly developed places along the waterfront, like Atlantic 0:01:53.580 --> 0:01:56.600 City and Seaside Heights, where the TV show Jersey Shore 0:01:56.640 --> 0:02:01.920 was filmed. But, especially back in 1980, Long Branch was 0:02:02.020 --> 0:02:06.560 a much more remote area. On July 22nd, Maria and 0:02:06.610 --> 0:02:10.010 her mother, Ana Rodriguez, and two of her sisters, went 0:02:10.050 --> 0:02:13.560 to play bingo at a local synagogue. According to an 0:02:13.660 --> 0:02:16.940 article from August 10th, 1980 in the Asbury Park Press, 0:02:17.460 --> 0:02:19.780 everyone was in a good mood that night because they 0:02:19.820 --> 0:02:24.220 had won at bingo. Now, Maria was living with Milton, 0:02:24.710 --> 0:02:28.750 her boyfriend. He was much older than her. He was 0:02:28.750 --> 0:02:31.250 27 years old at the time. And again, she was 0:02:31.310 --> 0:02:35.560 only 16. We're going to go more in-depth into their 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:38.560 relationship a little bit later, but for now, I'll just 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:41.980 say that even with the controversies around that age difference, 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:47.060 Maria's family seemed in general to approve of Milton. They 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:49.960 told law enforcement that Maria loved Milton and was happy 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:53.480 with him, and vice versa. There seemed to be zero 0:02:53.540 --> 0:02:58.030 drama that night. Maria's mom was driving. She pulled up 0:02:58.070 --> 0:03:00.450 to the home on Union Avenue to drop Maria off. 0:03:01.340 --> 0:03:05.180 When she went inside the house, Milton later told police 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:08.780 he was already in bed. He remembered mumbling goodnight to 0:03:08.820 --> 0:03:12.940 Maria and then falling asleep again. At 3 a.m. in 0:03:12.980 --> 0:03:15.880 the morning, Milton left the apartment to start his shift. 0:03:16.740 --> 0:03:19.740 He worked as a garbage man. He told police that 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:23.100 he kissed Maria's cheek and walked out the door. At 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:26.650 about 4.30 p.m., he came home from his shift. He 0:03:26.690 --> 0:03:29.800 looked around for Maria for a few minutes. Then, when 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:32.580 he went back to his bedroom and opened the closet door, 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:37.840 he found Maria's dead body. She had been strangled with 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:43.710 a belt. I'm Katherine Townsend. Over the past eight years 0:03:43.810 --> 0:03:46.790 of making my true crime podcast, Telling Gone, I've learned 0:03:46.830 --> 0:03:49.210 that there is no such thing as a small town 0:03:49.330 --> 0:03:52.950 where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages 0:03:52.970 --> 0:03:55.530 from people all around the country asking for help with 0:03:55.570 --> 0:03:59.560 an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. 0:04:00.340 --> 0:04:02.040 If you have a case you'd like me and my 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:04.440 team to look into, you can reach out to us 0:04:04.620 --> 0:04:06.530 at our Helen Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. That's 678-744-6145. 0:04:06.540 --> 0:04:08.280 Or you can send us a message on Instagram at 0:04:08.300 --> 0:05:07.220 Helen Gone Pod. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Police 0:05:07.300 --> 0:05:11.600 were taking a close look at Maria's relationships. Even though 0:05:11.660 --> 0:05:14.330 she was 16 years old, It turned out she had 0:05:14.370 --> 0:05:18.590 been living independently of her parents for years. One of 0:05:18.650 --> 0:05:22.150 Maria's sisters, who the paper didn't identify by name, told 0:05:22.190 --> 0:05:25.570 the Asbury Park Press that Maria discovered boys at an 0:05:25.630 --> 0:05:29.420 early age. In eighth grade, Maria stopped going to school. 0:05:30.180 --> 0:05:32.080 At the time of her death, she had not been 0:05:32.140 --> 0:05:35.800 enrolled in school for two years. She seemed to spend 0:05:35.840 --> 0:05:38.820 most of her days kind of hanging around her boyfriend's apartment. 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:43.120 there had been some drama around Maria's decision to stop 0:05:43.180 --> 0:05:46.960 attending school. When she was about 14 years old, she 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:49.120 ran away to Rhode Island and lived with a relative 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:52.940 for several months. Police eventually found her and brought her home. 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:56.740 But according to the Asbury Park Press, when they went 0:05:56.780 --> 0:05:59.500 to pick her up, they found her living in North Jersey. 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:03.820 The paper reported that when Maria's family went to pick 0:06:03.860 --> 0:06:06.680 her up, that they found her living with another man, 0:06:07.300 --> 0:06:11.200 meaning not Milton. Her sister told the Asbury Park Press 0:06:11.300 --> 0:06:14.440 that Maria had had boyfriends before Milton, but that she 0:06:14.500 --> 0:06:18.830 loved him and was faithful to him. Milton met Maria 0:06:18.840 --> 0:06:22.570 three years before her death. He was actually living next 0:06:22.650 --> 0:06:25.710 door to the Rodriguez family at the time, and at 0:06:25.750 --> 0:06:28.330 the time, he was married and had three children with 0:06:28.370 --> 0:06:31.750 his ex-wife. That would mean that Maria was around 13 0:06:31.750 --> 0:06:34.210 years old when they first met, and he would have 0:06:34.230 --> 0:06:38.060 been around 24. By the way, it was reported by 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:41.310 several media outlets that police did speak to Milton and 0:06:41.330 --> 0:06:45.710 that they never considered him a suspect in Maria's death. Eventually, 0:06:45.850 --> 0:06:48.910 according to media reports, Milton and his wife went their 0:06:48.930 --> 0:06:51.870 separate ways. She and the children moved to Florida, and 0:06:51.910 --> 0:06:56.140 Maria and Milton moved in together in New Jersey. Maria 0:06:56.260 --> 0:07:00.100 and Milton didn't seem to socialize much, and they didn't 0:07:00.140 --> 0:07:03.660 really have people over to the house. Most days, she 0:07:03.700 --> 0:07:06.100 would hang out at his house and watch TV. though 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:08.420 sometimes she would venture out to the store to buy 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:11.910 picket lottery tickets. Apparently, Milton played the lottery a lot, 0:07:12.090 --> 0:07:15.730 and she would pick his favorite numbers. So there's actually 0:07:15.750 --> 0:07:19.200 an interesting contradiction in this Asbury Park Press article, which is, 0:07:19.250 --> 0:07:21.190 by the way, one of the only articles I could 0:07:21.230 --> 0:07:25.090 find about this case. The reporter interviewed Milton. He said 0:07:25.290 --> 0:07:28.090 even though he and Maria were different ages and races, 0:07:28.430 --> 0:07:31.130 he was 27 and black, she was 16 and Hispanic, 0:07:31.610 --> 0:07:33.870 that he wasn't aware of anyone having a grudge against 0:07:33.910 --> 0:07:37.630 them or her. racial or otherwise. He also said he 0:07:37.670 --> 0:07:39.870 and Maria didn't go out much or have a lot 0:07:39.890 --> 0:07:43.310 of visitors. But then the reporter talked to neighbors on 0:07:43.430 --> 0:07:46.450 Union Avenue, who said there was a lot of traffic 0:07:46.650 --> 0:07:50.120 going into and out of Milton and Maria's house. It 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:52.820 turned out that Milton had a sister, Sue Elliott, who 0:07:52.860 --> 0:07:56.240 lived upstairs. And Milton told the police that the visitors 0:07:56.300 --> 0:07:58.800 were actually at the house for his sister, not him 0:07:58.940 --> 0:08:02.250 or Maria. Milton said that Maria was good to him, 0:08:02.780 --> 0:08:05.080 He said she cleaned his apartment and took care of him. 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:08.740 Milton told police that when he came home after his 0:08:08.780 --> 0:08:11.150 shift that day, he did think it was kind of 0:08:11.180 --> 0:08:14.250 weird that Maria wasn't at home because normally she seemed 0:08:14.290 --> 0:08:16.050 to kind of wait around the apartment for him to 0:08:16.090 --> 0:08:19.850 get back. But at first, he said he thought maybe 0:08:19.930 --> 0:08:22.810 she went out to buy some lottery tickets. He noticed 0:08:22.830 --> 0:08:25.550 that the front door was unlocked, but he said that 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:29.240 wasn't unusual because Maria would sometimes forget to lock the door. 0:08:30.590 --> 0:08:33.010 Milton said he turned on the TV and hung out 0:08:33.050 --> 0:08:35.630 for a while. Then, after a few minutes, his sister 0:08:35.670 --> 0:08:38.910 Sue came downstairs and said she hadn't seen Maria that day. 0:08:39.820 --> 0:08:42.100 After that, Milton said he went outside to talk to 0:08:42.140 --> 0:08:45.120 some people, and when he got back inside the house, 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:49.600 he noticed that Maria's keys were there. Now, this alarmed 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:52.980 him because he said even though Maria would sometimes forget 0:08:53.020 --> 0:08:55.540 to lock up, she always took her keys with her 0:08:55.560 --> 0:08:57.720 when she left the house. So that's when he started 0:08:57.740 --> 0:09:02.130 looking around again for Maria inside the house. Milton eventually 0:09:02.330 --> 0:09:05.870 opened the bedroom closet and saw the horrific sight of 0:09:05.930 --> 0:09:10.810 Maria's naked body in there. One of Milton's belts, described 0:09:10.870 --> 0:09:14.730 in Maria's autopsy report as a green braided belt, approximately 0:09:14.730 --> 0:09:18.650 73 centimeters long and 3 centimeters wide, had been wrapped 0:09:18.790 --> 0:09:22.890 twice around Maria's neck. The belt had a square metal 0:09:22.950 --> 0:09:26.590 buckle marked Peter, with what the medical examiner described as 0:09:26.630 --> 0:09:32.180 an animal figure resembling a horse. there is not a 0:09:32.220 --> 0:09:36.230 lot of reporting out there about Maria Rodriguez's life. This 0:09:36.410 --> 0:09:38.750 Asbury Park Press article is one of the only ones 0:09:38.850 --> 0:09:41.270 I can find that talks about her and her life, 0:09:41.430 --> 0:09:45.950 her family. And this article says police confirmed they were 0:09:46.130 --> 0:09:49.450 able to figure out that Maria had had sexual intercourse 0:09:49.510 --> 0:09:52.870 before her murder. And there's also another sentence there that 0:09:52.930 --> 0:09:56.730 says they had ruled out rape. So I wonder, who 0:09:56.750 --> 0:09:59.840 did she have sex with? And I wonder how exactly 0:09:59.880 --> 0:10:02.980 they determined that. And how were they able to figure 0:10:03.070 --> 0:10:05.950 out that it was not rape? Was the person that 0:10:05.990 --> 0:10:09.550 she supposedly had intercourse with her boyfriend or someone else? 0:10:10.610 --> 0:10:12.920 It was reported at the time that police were looking 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:16.040 for a suspect described as being around five foot five 0:10:16.100 --> 0:10:19.720 inches tall. That was someone who police supposedly wanted to 0:10:19.780 --> 0:10:22.350 talk to. but then that never seemed to go anywhere. 0:10:22.850 --> 0:10:25.860 To my knowledge, there was never a composite sketch put out, 0:10:26.020 --> 0:10:27.680 and it seems as though that was one of those 0:10:27.740 --> 0:10:30.860 kind of dead-end leads that seemed to go nowhere. Now, 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:33.500 police have not said a lot about this case, but 0:10:33.700 --> 0:10:36.240 one thing they did say is that they believe that 0:10:36.310 --> 0:10:39.170 Maria knew her killer and that she let her killer 0:10:39.310 --> 0:10:42.830 into the house. So, a logical question to ask is, 0:10:43.350 --> 0:10:46.060 was the someone who Maria was having some kind of 0:10:46.100 --> 0:10:50.420 consensual sexual relationship with? Because her family continued to insist 0:10:50.460 --> 0:10:53.160 that Maria loved Milton and that she was not having 0:10:53.300 --> 0:10:56.720 any type of relationship with anyone else. Milton told the 0:10:56.780 --> 0:10:59.860 Asbury Park Press that he believed that as well. He 0:10:59.920 --> 0:11:05.150 believed Maria was faithful to him. police began talking to 0:11:05.210 --> 0:11:10.550 someone else, a 37-year-old man named Damaso Vega. Damaso wasn't 0:11:10.610 --> 0:11:13.630 a stranger. This was someone who knew Maria's family. According 0:11:13.680 --> 0:11:16.700 to accounts of the case, Maria was the daughter of 0:11:16.820 --> 0:11:21.420 one of Damaso's closest friends. Damaso had come to the 0:11:21.460 --> 0:11:24.900 family's aid after Maria was murdered. He had actually helped 0:11:25.000 --> 0:11:28.060 comfort Anna, Maria's mother, after hearing about the murder. He 0:11:28.100 --> 0:11:31.500 was even a pallbearer at Maria's funeral. He even collected 0:11:31.560 --> 0:11:33.960 money from people in the community to help Maria's family. 0:11:34.500 --> 0:11:37.420 But investigators would eventually come to believe there was more 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:40.840 to Damaso Vega's relationship with Maria than just the friendship 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:45.040 with her family. they believed that DeMasso and Maria were 0:11:45.140 --> 0:11:48.500 romantically involved. But suspicion isn't evidence, and at this stage, 0:11:48.580 --> 0:11:52.340 police still needed more connecting DeMasso Vega to Maria's murder. 0:11:53.140 --> 0:11:56.480 So they started to interview people, and eventually, they would 0:11:56.500 --> 0:12:00.600 announce they found three witnesses. The first one was Maria's sister, 0:12:00.940 --> 0:12:05.340 Wilda Rodriguez Soto. Wilda told police that before Maria's death, 0:12:05.710 --> 0:12:09.900 she had seen Maria and DeMasso hugging and kissing. This 0:12:09.950 --> 0:12:12.890 was a big deal because it potentially established the relationship 0:12:12.930 --> 0:12:16.450 that police believed existed between them. If this was true, 0:12:16.510 --> 0:12:19.170 this was a shocking revelation that could point to a 0:12:19.210 --> 0:12:22.750 potential motive for murder. Then there was a second witness. 0:12:23.430 --> 0:12:27.550 This person put DeMaso Vega somewhere much more important because 0:12:27.670 --> 0:12:30.600 according to the testimony that was ultimately presented at trial, 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:35.280 this second witness had seen DeMaso Vega on the porch 0:12:35.340 --> 0:12:38.620 of Maria's house the night before her body was discovered. 0:12:39.510 --> 0:12:43.390 Then a third person, a friend of DeMasso's named Jose Pizarro, 0:12:44.010 --> 0:12:47.540 told detectives that DeMasso Vega had talked about killing Maria 0:12:47.580 --> 0:12:51.880 before the murder. And he said after Maria's murder, DeMasso 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:55.600 told Jose that he did it. So now police weren't 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:58.900 dealing with an anonymous tip or some vague rumor. They 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:02.920 appeared to have three people independently pointing toward the same man. 0:13:04.150 --> 0:13:07.710 police began to build a case against DeMaso Vega, and 0:13:07.730 --> 0:13:11.990 the lead investigator, Detective Pat Lipka, believed that DeMaso Vega 0:13:12.090 --> 0:13:17.090 was their man. On February 4th, 1982, approximately 18 months 0:13:17.230 --> 0:13:21.180 after Maria's death, a grand jury in Monmouth County indicted 0:13:21.220 --> 0:13:25.080 DeMaso Vega for murder. His trial began on June 2nd, 0:13:25.420 --> 0:13:29.060 and obviously the prosecution's case depended heavily on those three people. 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:33.640 Maria's sister described the relationship she said that she'd observed. 0:13:34.170 --> 0:13:37.450 The second witness put DeMasso at Maria's house on the 0:13:37.510 --> 0:13:41.330 night she was killed. And finally, Jose Pizarro gave jurors 0:13:41.390 --> 0:13:44.920 perhaps the most incriminating evidence of all. According to him, 0:13:45.350 --> 0:13:48.960 DeMasso Vega had essentially talked about the killing before it 0:13:49.020 --> 0:13:53.940 happened and then confessed to it afterwards. DeMasso Vega maintained 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:57.020 that he was innocent. There was testimony stating that around 0:13:57.020 --> 0:14:00.990 5 a.m., after Maria's boyfriend left for work, that DeMasso 0:14:01.030 --> 0:14:02.900 would go to Maria's house so that they could hook up. 0:14:03.430 --> 0:14:06.950 but DeMasso totally denied that and reportedly said that he 0:14:06.990 --> 0:14:10.230 had an alibi. By the way, he always claimed that 0:14:10.370 --> 0:14:12.710 even the idea of any kind of hookup with Maria 0:14:12.770 --> 0:14:15.310 was totally false. He said he never had any kind 0:14:15.350 --> 0:14:18.880 of romantic relationship with her and described their existing relationship 0:14:19.020 --> 0:14:22.580 as more like father-daughter. But in the end, the jury 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:27.300 believed the prosecution. On June 8th, 1982, DeMasso Vega was 0:14:27.340 --> 0:14:30.860 convicted of murdering Maria Rodriguez. He was sentenced to life 0:14:30.930 --> 0:14:34.160 in prison. with the possibility of parole in 25 years. 0:14:35.220 --> 0:14:38.050 For Maria's family, the criminal justice system appeared to have 0:14:38.110 --> 0:14:40.870 produced an answer. They seemed to be getting justice and 0:14:40.890 --> 0:14:45.230 the killer was going to prison. Case closed. Except that 0:14:45.370 --> 0:14:50.120 less than two months later, something happened involving the prosecution's 0:14:50.140 --> 0:15:07.890 star witness. On July 30th, 1982, the Daily Register published 0:15:07.970 --> 0:15:11.810 a small story out of freehold. The headline read, Charges 0:15:11.850 --> 0:15:15.890 Dismissed for Murder Trial Star Witness. It turned out that 0:15:16.010 --> 0:15:19.970 Jose Pizarro, DeMasso's friend who said he confessed, was defending 0:15:20.010 --> 0:15:23.580 some criminal charges of his own. Jose had been indicted 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:26.860 over an incident that occurred on July 11th, 1980, so 0:15:26.980 --> 0:15:31.150 shortly before Maria's murder. Jose was accused of beating another 0:15:31.190 --> 0:15:35.230 man with a tire iron. The charges included aggravated assault 0:15:35.330 --> 0:15:39.130 and two weapons offenses. But after DeMaso Vega's trial, those 0:15:39.190 --> 0:15:43.500 charges were dismissed. And according to this contemporaneous newspaper report, 0:15:44.060 --> 0:15:49.100 the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office acknowledged that Jose Pizarro's cooperation 0:15:49.300 --> 0:15:52.320 in the DeMaso Vega murder prosecution was one of the 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:56.180 reasons for that dismissal. Now, that doesn't automatically mean that 0:15:56.240 --> 0:16:00.300 Jose Pizarro lied. Prosecutors make agreements with witnesses all the time. 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:05.060 Cooperating witnesses can receive consideration in their own cases. That's 0:16:05.180 --> 0:16:09.450 not uncommon. Their testimony isn't necessarily false because they get 0:16:09.470 --> 0:16:12.870 some benefit from giving it. But the important question, however, 0:16:13.050 --> 0:16:15.710 is whether the defense and the jury know about this 0:16:15.750 --> 0:16:19.550 potential incentive and precisely what the witness was told or 0:16:19.650 --> 0:16:23.680 understood before taking the stand. At sentencing, according to a 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:28.240 later Los Angeles Times article, DeMasso made an extraordinary declaration 0:16:28.260 --> 0:16:31.670 of innocence. He said that he would eat stone, dust, 0:16:31.810 --> 0:16:34.640 or anything to prove that he wasn't the man responsible 0:16:34.670 --> 0:16:38.770 for Maria's murder. So DeMasso Vega went to prison, and 0:16:38.810 --> 0:16:41.990 that's where he stayed for the next seven years. Over 0:16:42.030 --> 0:16:44.970 the years, he filed several appeals, all of which he lost. 0:16:45.710 --> 0:16:48.390 And that might have been where this story ended, except 0:16:48.410 --> 0:16:52.220 that there was another strange twist in the case. Eventually, 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:56.820 DeMosso Vega's case reached a man named Jim McCloskey. Now, 0:16:56.940 --> 0:17:00.380 Jim is a fascinating character. He served in the Navy 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:03.000 before working in the corporate world. He worked for a 0:17:03.060 --> 0:17:06.980 management consultant company specializing in Japanese business affairs. So he 0:17:07.050 --> 0:17:09.370 actually lived in Tokyo for a while, but he came 0:17:09.410 --> 0:17:13.870 back to the United States and settled in Philadelphia. In 1979, 0:17:13.870 --> 0:17:15.970 he left the corporate world and went back to school 0:17:16.010 --> 0:17:20.390 to become a minister. And after graduating from Princeton Theological Seminary... 0:17:20.340 --> 0:17:25.170 He founded Centurion Ministries in 1983. The organization's mission is 0:17:25.210 --> 0:17:27.990 to investigate cases in which prisoners claim to have been 0:17:28.010 --> 0:17:32.850 wrongfully convicted. Jim's story actually inspired the John Grisham book, 0:17:32.870 --> 0:17:37.570 The Guardians. Jim heard about DeMasso's case and he went 0:17:37.590 --> 0:17:40.730 to interview him in 1984. Jim later said that after 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:44.140 he spoke to DeMasso, he became convinced that DeMasso was 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:47.200 telling the truth, that he was innocent. So Jim went 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:49.060 back to all the witnesses and talked to them again. 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:56.180 And what he found made the case against DeMosso collapse. First, 0:17:56.500 --> 0:17:59.860 Jim spoke to Jose Pizarro, who admitted that he had 0:17:59.900 --> 0:18:03.690 been promised a deal in exchange for his cooperation. Jim 0:18:03.750 --> 0:18:06.870 also figured out that back in July of 1982, immediately 0:18:06.970 --> 0:18:10.670 after the trial, the prosecutor's office had publicly acknowledged that 0:18:10.690 --> 0:18:12.890 this cooperation in the murder case was part of the 0:18:12.910 --> 0:18:16.970 reason that happened. But Jim went further. He was about 0:18:17.010 --> 0:18:20.230 to find a problem with another witness, one that had 0:18:20.270 --> 0:18:24.210 the potential to blow the entire case wide open and 0:18:24.300 --> 0:18:27.100 make people question everything that they thought they knew about 0:18:27.120 --> 0:18:30.660 Maria's murder. The other witness, the one who said that 0:18:30.700 --> 0:18:33.240 he saw DeMosso Vega at Maria's home on the night 0:18:33.260 --> 0:18:37.570 in question, also recanted his story. And his new account 0:18:37.620 --> 0:18:41.210 was even more disturbing because according to the National Registry 0:18:41.250 --> 0:18:44.910 of Exonerations, this second witness said he had seen a 0:18:44.950 --> 0:18:48.340 man near Maria's home, so that part was true. but 0:18:48.360 --> 0:18:52.110 this witness said the person he saw did not fit 0:18:52.170 --> 0:18:56.310 DeMasso Vega's description. And the witness said he told the 0:18:56.390 --> 0:18:59.810 lead detective, Pat Lipka, that the description didn't match from 0:18:59.850 --> 0:19:04.260 the very beginning. This person said Detective Lipka pressured him 0:19:04.340 --> 0:19:08.600 to identify DeMasso anyway. And remember, DeMasso had said that 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:11.800 he supposedly had an alibi. Well, it turned out that 0:19:11.820 --> 0:19:15.830 the time when this witness originally remembered seeing the unidentified 0:19:15.860 --> 0:19:19.540 man was created a problem for the prosecutor's theory because 0:19:19.780 --> 0:19:23.580 DeMosso had an alibi during that period of time. That 0:19:23.620 --> 0:19:26.460 would have conflicted with the case being built against DeMosso. 0:19:27.140 --> 0:19:30.340 The witness said Detective Lipka pressured him to change the 0:19:30.360 --> 0:19:33.100 time when he said he saw the man outside Maria's home. 0:19:34.540 --> 0:19:38.140 This was shocking enough, but what about Maria's sister, the 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:43.490 third witness? Maria's sister changed her story too. When Jim 0:19:43.530 --> 0:19:46.600 talked to her, She said she admitted she had helped 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:50.660 Detective Lipka fabricate the case because she said Detective Lipka 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:54.130 had convinced the family that DeMasso Vega was Maria's killer. 0:19:55.190 --> 0:19:57.630 She later was quoted by the Asbury Park Press as 0:19:57.670 --> 0:20:01.170 saying she felt guilty because even though she mainly blamed 0:20:01.230 --> 0:20:06.450 Detective Lipka, she felt bad about helping fabricate the case 0:20:06.570 --> 0:20:10.570 against DeMasso. She clearly really regretted her role in that. 0:20:11.820 --> 0:20:15.440 So after Jim interviewed these three principal witnesses and all 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:18.140 of them took back their testimony, which meant that all 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:21.020 three crucial parts of the case, the confession, the sighting 0:20:21.060 --> 0:20:25.480 of DeMasso and the kiss, were all bogus. Then things 0:20:25.540 --> 0:20:29.590 got even weirder because investigators started looking into DeMasso's conviction. 0:20:30.010 --> 0:20:33.570 They found that some of Detective Lipka's reports had been altered. 0:20:35.170 --> 0:20:38.520 All three witnesses were brought back into court in 1989 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:42.740 when Superior Court Judge Robert Figueredo heard the post-conviction case 0:20:42.860 --> 0:20:46.780 and evaluated the testimony for himself. The witness who had 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:49.920 placed DeMasso near Maria's home now said DeMasso was not 0:20:49.940 --> 0:20:53.660 the man he had seen. Jose Pizarro now said that 0:20:53.700 --> 0:20:57.680 his original testimony about DeMasso confessing was not true. And 0:20:57.860 --> 0:21:01.560 the testimony that had supposedly established a romantic relationship between 0:21:01.620 --> 0:21:06.300 Maria and DeMasso had also fallen apart. Judge Figuereda said 0:21:06.500 --> 0:21:09.780 he believed the witness's new testimony, and that alone was 0:21:09.900 --> 0:21:13.040 devastating to the state's case. But then the hearing exposed 0:21:13.060 --> 0:21:16.860 something else, that some of Detective Lipka's reports had never 0:21:16.900 --> 0:21:20.340 been turned over, either to the prosecution or the defense. 0:21:21.940 --> 0:21:26.120 So police reports aren't static. Really, they're a moment in time, 0:21:26.140 --> 0:21:28.180 but together they kind of tell the story of the 0:21:28.260 --> 0:21:31.820 evolution of an investigation. So if a witness initially gives 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:35.240 one description and then later gives another description, the original 0:21:35.300 --> 0:21:38.900 report allows lawyers and eventually jurors to see that change. 0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:42.660 And if a story or details change, a judge and 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:45.380 a jury can normally see those changes and factor them 0:21:45.420 --> 0:21:49.170 into their decisions. But according to the court proceedings in 0:21:49.190 --> 0:21:52.770 DeMaso Vega's case, some of Detective Lipka's reports had been 0:21:52.810 --> 0:21:56.480 doctored to remove information that the judge later described as 0:21:56.600 --> 0:22:01.540 vital to both the investigation and to the cross-examination. The 0:22:01.540 --> 0:22:04.640 1989 hearing took place in Middlesex County. Due to the 0:22:04.700 --> 0:22:06.540 fact that so many of the people who had been 0:22:06.580 --> 0:22:09.200 involved in the original hearing by this time were now 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:13.620 judges in Monmouth County. Judge Figuereda addressed the physical evidence. 0:22:14.110 --> 0:22:17.230 and said the semen samples had been taken in Maria's case. 0:22:17.910 --> 0:22:21.970 DiMasso's original lawyer had considered having those samples independently tested, 0:22:22.570 --> 0:22:26.630 but that testing apparently was never done. On November 15th, 1989, 0:22:26.630 --> 0:22:30.870 the judge vacated DiMasso's conviction and ordered a new trial. 0:22:32.050 --> 0:22:36.340 The judge concluded that the problems surrounding Detective Lipka's investigation 0:22:36.500 --> 0:22:39.600 were so profound that they called into question the whole 0:22:39.680 --> 0:22:43.860 process underlying the original prosecution. The judge even went so 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:47.480 far as to apologize to DeMasso Vega for his false imprisonment. 0:22:48.040 --> 0:22:51.100 And he praised the investigative work done by Jim McCloskey 0:22:51.420 --> 0:22:56.180 that had exposed what happened. So DeMasso had spent seven 0:22:56.230 --> 0:23:00.070 years in prison for murdering Maria Rodriguez. Now he was 0:23:00.090 --> 0:23:03.510 going free. But technically, the murder case wasn't over yet. 0:23:04.310 --> 0:23:06.710 The conviction had been vacated, which meant that the state 0:23:06.810 --> 0:23:10.370 could try DeMasso again. But would they want to try 0:23:10.390 --> 0:23:14.330 him again? The Monmouth County prosecutor, John Kay, said that 0:23:14.370 --> 0:23:17.010 in his opinion, there was never any doubt about anyone 0:23:17.050 --> 0:23:19.720 who worked on the case that DeMosso was guilty. But 0:23:19.760 --> 0:23:23.400 now prosecutors were dealing with three witnesses who all completely 0:23:23.460 --> 0:23:26.360 changed their stories. And they had no new witnesses or 0:23:26.420 --> 0:23:30.210 no new physical evidence. And the lead investigator's credibility was 0:23:30.350 --> 0:23:36.470 completely destroyed. So on December 14th, 1989, Monmouth County prosecutor 0:23:36.510 --> 0:23:40.500 John Kay dismissed the murder charge. Now, DeMosso Vega was 0:23:40.560 --> 0:23:44.440 not just free, he had been completely exonerated. He later 0:23:44.500 --> 0:23:47.760 filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Monmouth County. It 0:23:47.800 --> 0:23:52.720 was settled for an undisclosed amount. DeMosso moved on with 0:23:52.760 --> 0:23:55.960 his life. He eventually settled in Philadelphia with his wife 0:23:56.100 --> 0:24:01.550 and family. DeMosso died in 2004. But it's not the 0:24:01.620 --> 0:24:05.050 end of Maria Rodriguez's story, because after DeMosso was set 0:24:05.110 --> 0:24:09.440 free and exonerated, her killer has never been found. Once 0:24:09.480 --> 0:24:12.260 we accept that the evidence used to convict DeMaso Vega 0:24:12.300 --> 0:24:15.420 couldn't be trusted, we have to go back, all the 0:24:15.480 --> 0:24:18.860 way back to 1980, to that home and that closet 0:24:19.040 --> 0:24:22.600 on Union Avenue, where a 16-year-old teen was found strangled 0:24:22.780 --> 0:24:26.510 with a belt. And back to the question, who killed 0:24:26.770 --> 0:24:31.730 Maria Rodriguez? It turned out that Jim McCloskey had some 0:24:31.770 --> 0:24:35.030 leads on that as well, because according to a 1990 0:24:35.030 --> 0:24:38.000 Los Angeles Times profile of Jim, He had found not 0:24:38.060 --> 0:24:41.580 only evidence that witnesses had lied under pressure, but evidence 0:24:41.620 --> 0:24:45.000 that detectives had hidden that he said pointed toward another 0:24:45.040 --> 0:24:59.840 person entirely. That person was identified in a 1987 article 0:24:59.880 --> 0:25:02.660 by the Asbury Park Press, who claimed that a man 0:25:02.720 --> 0:25:06.630 named Luis Rosa who shot his ex-girlfriend and her co-worker 0:25:06.710 --> 0:25:10.290 at a furniture store on March 19, 1987, before fatally 0:25:10.310 --> 0:25:13.910 shooting himself, had a relationship with Maria before her death. 0:25:15.100 --> 0:25:18.720 On that day, March 19, 1987, Luis was in a 0:25:18.740 --> 0:25:22.780 standoff in the furniture store because he mistakenly believed that 0:25:22.800 --> 0:25:25.140 his girlfriend was having an affair with a male co-worker, 0:25:25.500 --> 0:25:29.180 who he shot. Police rushed to the scene, and following 0:25:29.220 --> 0:25:32.330 a brief standoff, Luis hijacked a police car and managed 0:25:32.340 --> 0:25:36.130 to grab one of the officer's guns. After a standoff 0:25:36.170 --> 0:25:40.200 with police, Luis fatally shot himself in the head. It 0:25:40.240 --> 0:25:43.020 turned out there was a connection between Maria and Luis. 0:25:43.540 --> 0:25:45.720 Maria had worked for a brief period of time at 0:25:45.760 --> 0:25:48.920 a die casting business called Donmar Manufacturing a few weeks 0:25:48.980 --> 0:25:51.580 before her death. And a manager there told the Asbury 0:25:51.620 --> 0:25:54.760 Park Press that Luis would speak to Maria in Spanish 0:25:55.280 --> 0:25:58.040 and that the things that Luis said would make Maria 0:25:58.080 --> 0:26:02.560 visibly upset. Maria's supervisor at that job testified in court 0:26:03.080 --> 0:26:06.300 that Maria had lied and told everyone she was 18 0:26:06.300 --> 0:26:08.320 so she would be allowed to work, and he said 0:26:08.440 --> 0:26:12.100 no one suspected otherwise. This is interesting to me because 0:26:12.180 --> 0:26:14.860 we've been hearing since the beginning about how Maria was 0:26:14.900 --> 0:26:17.390 at home by herself, how she didn't have many friends, 0:26:17.770 --> 0:26:20.250 but it turns out she was exposed to a lot 0:26:20.290 --> 0:26:23.070 of different people. She had a large family, she drove 0:26:23.110 --> 0:26:26.190