Speaker 1: My interview with Andrew Kreevak originally aired on August twenty
Speaker 1: first of twenty seventeen, and there's been some incredible development
Speaker 1: since then. In twenty nineteen, a judge throughout Andrew's nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven conviction and granted him a new trial in
Speaker 1: Putnam County Court. At the time I'm recording this, he's
Speaker 1: still in prison awaiting his new trial. But by the
Speaker 1: time you're hearing it, I'm really optimistic that he's going
Speaker 1: to be home. I can't even express what that would
Speaker 1: mean to me, and I know to a lot of
Speaker 1: our audience who followed his case, it's a disgusting miscarriage
Speaker 1: of justice. His co defendant, Anthony Depippo, has been out
Speaker 1: now for several years. He's a dear friend, and the
Speaker 1: fact is it's incomprehensible and inexcusable that for that long
Speaker 1: the authorities have known that Andrew is just as innocent
Speaker 1: as Anthony is, but they've prevented his release for the
Speaker 1: simple fact that Andrew confessed to the crime that they
Speaker 1: both didn't commit while Anthony did not. So, Andrew Kreevac
Speaker 1: justice delayed will not be justice denied.
Speaker 2: I think we have the best legal system, it's just
Speaker 2: the people that implement it.
Speaker 3: They get lost along the way and forget what the
Speaker 3: job really is.
Speaker 4: He just kept on trying to remind me that who
Speaker 4: was in authority, who was in control, and how easy
Speaker 4: it was for my body to be found in any
Speaker 4: alley of New York City.
Speaker 2: It's a tough prison when you have the guards going
Speaker 2: against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison.
Speaker 3: They do that.
Speaker 5: They'll give a guy a life sentence and go home
Speaker 5: in eat spaghetti like it was nothing.
Speaker 4: Anybody that would say, well, why would you confess to
Speaker 4: something that you didn't do? My question to them will
Speaker 4: be why wouldn't you confess when somebody's threatening to kill
Speaker 4: your life? Judge, he said, how you feel?
Speaker 3: I said, I'm okay.
Speaker 4: He said, well the day is You're lucky day.
Speaker 1: You going home. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. We have
Speaker 1: a very unique case and a very special episode of
Speaker 1: wrongful Conviction behind bars. Today is going to be the
Speaker 1: noisiest episode. I just want to warn you up front
Speaker 1: because we're inside Wendy Maximum Security Prison in Buffalo, New York.
Speaker 1: So apologies in advance, but I promise you you're going
Speaker 1: to hear an extraordinary interview today, and so hang in
Speaker 1: there and hear the story of Andrew Kreeback. You've probably
Speaker 1: heard Andrew's co defendant, Anthony Depippo, his episode of wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction aired recently. And so this is a case where
Speaker 1: we have Anthony on the show, having been exonerated, and
Speaker 1: yet we're still back here behind bars interviewing his co defendant,
Speaker 1: which makes no fucking sense, but here we are. If
Speaker 1: you hear the cell door slamming, you'll know it's as
Speaker 1: real as it can be.
Speaker 5: It was a horrific case, the rape and strangulation in
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety four evangelically beautiful twelve year old Josette Wright.
Speaker 6: Now there was funning development in the sensational case of
Speaker 6: a convicted child killer rapist in Putnam County.
Speaker 3: What's wrong with this case?
Speaker 2: This case was created at a hot cloth by the
Speaker 2: deputy sheriff in charge of this case, who himself has
Speaker 2: been indicted by this very county for crimes.
Speaker 1: Di Pippo still maintains his innocence.
Speaker 6: For jury and Putnam County found him not guilty. The
Speaker 6: main witness against him was a former girlfriend who said
Speaker 6: she witnessed the attack, but the jury didn't buy. What
Speaker 6: we learned at this trial is that the eyewitness was incredible.
Speaker 6: The defense was allowed to suggest Howard Gombert is the
Speaker 6: real killer, seen with the victims shortly before her disappearance
Speaker 6: and currently in a Connecticut prison on sex assault charges.
Speaker 5: Judge Robert nearly ordered DiPippo released on a million dollars bail.
Speaker 6: The Putnam County District Attorney, though, isn't backing down. He
Speaker 6: insists not guilty. It's not the same as innocent.
Speaker 1: Andrew Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 1: In this case, I could say I'm sorry you're here.
Speaker 1: Usually I'm happy to have our guests on the show,
Speaker 1: but I'm sorry to be taping it in this facility.
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to seeing you on the outside sometime soon.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: We also have with us another very special guest, someone
Speaker 1: who I considered to be a sort of royalty. A
Speaker 1: lot of people to be royalty in the innocents community.
Speaker 1: The one and only Adele Bernhard is here.
Speaker 5: Adele welcome, Thank you very much. I'm very glad to
Speaker 5: be here. I'm really glad you're focusing on Andy's case.
Speaker 5: I think it's important and I'm.
Speaker 1: Glad so Adele has been representing Andy for over ten years.
Speaker 7: Now, well close to ten, I guess.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, it's easy to get wrongfully convicted and undoing it
Speaker 1: we know takes thousands of hours of legal work, and
Speaker 1: this case is no different. So Andy, going back to
Speaker 1: the beginning, Where were you from? Where were you born? Originally?
Speaker 2: I was rizzily born in Punham County, New York, Punam
Speaker 2: County Hospital. Raised there till probably like nineteen ninety. Then
Speaker 2: my family moved to Stormville, New York to take care
Speaker 2: of my grandmother, Me and my father, My grandmother and
Speaker 2: my brother and at the.
Speaker 3: Time my stepmother.
Speaker 1: And your childhood, was it a happy childhood? How was
Speaker 1: How were things?
Speaker 3: It was?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, we had on normal problems like
Speaker 2: anything else. I can't say that, you know, I was
Speaker 2: subjected to anything unusual. It was normal for the most part.
Speaker 2: I had my you know, little issues growing up, primarily
Speaker 2: because i'd know my real mother, so you know, I
Speaker 2: was emotional a lot on that end of things.
Speaker 3: But it was pretty normal.
Speaker 1: And I mean, upstate New York pretty nice place to
Speaker 1: grow up. It's beautiful around here.
Speaker 2: Did you play sports or yeah, I grew up Actually
Speaker 2: I started fifth grade football. From that point on, I
Speaker 2: baseball basketball. I did that probably up until junior high
Speaker 2: with the hopes that I could go into high school
Speaker 2: playing sports and see how far I can go.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately that never panned out.
Speaker 1: So you were a teenager growing up up doing teenager
Speaker 1: type stuff, right, certainly not not getting in trouble right,
Speaker 1: A's a double negative. But yeah, I mean like you.
Speaker 3: Know nothing major. I mean, you know juvenile things.
Speaker 1: But you were not a violent guy.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: So you're going along trying to find your way like
Speaker 1: a lot of teenagers, and then one day something absolutely
Speaker 1: horrifying happens. A young girl, twelve year old girl named
Speaker 1: Josette Wright, was raped and brutally murdered. But they didn't
Speaker 1: know that at the time. All they knew was that
Speaker 1: she had disappeared. Yes, did you know her.
Speaker 2: I knew her from being around the area, seeing her,
Speaker 2: knowing her older sisters. Carmos a small community, so everybody interacted.
Speaker 2: You know, when a fair comes around and goes to
Speaker 2: the fair. They got a plaza, so they have all
Speaker 2: these regular areas that you would run into people. So yeah,
Speaker 2: for that part of in passing or being around somewhere
Speaker 2: or being in a fair I knew her to that extent.
Speaker 1: Yes, and Adel, this is a very strange aspect of
Speaker 1: this case because here you have this small community, sounds
Speaker 1: sort of idyllic in a lot of ways, and this
Speaker 1: lovely young girl disappears one day. Right now. You know,
Speaker 1: we all see on TV when these things happen, the
Speaker 1: search parties are formed, there's you know, the whole town
Speaker 1: comes out almost pandemonium, but control pandemia, where people are
Speaker 1: just searching everywhere to find this little girl. But that's
Speaker 1: not what happened, right. The authorities didn't at first believe
Speaker 1: that she even was really missing, unless she ran away.
Speaker 5: Well from what I could tell from the records they've
Speaker 5: turned over to us, the police didn't seem to take
Speaker 5: her disappearance terribly seriously at all. So they put up
Speaker 5: some wanted posters. But that's about it so as far
Speaker 5: as I can see from all of the records that
Speaker 5: I've gathered, unless I'm missing something, they figured she'd come back.
Speaker 7: They figured she was a runaway. They didn't really take
Speaker 7: it very seriously.
Speaker 5: They logged a couple of calls people reported seeing her
Speaker 5: later on in the malls.
Speaker 7: But I guess they thought, well, easy companies.
Speaker 1: To go, she'll be back. I mean, as a it's
Speaker 1: just outrageous.
Speaker 7: I think it's very shocking, and.
Speaker 1: It's particularly outrageous because of her age. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not like she was seventeen, where you'd say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes seventeen years run away.
Speaker 5: She was in school every day, she wasn't getting into
Speaker 5: trouble with older people from any place else. So the
Speaker 5: fact that she all of a sudden wasn't there was
Speaker 5: I think pretty serious.
Speaker 1: Yes, she was twelve, I mean, Jesus, it's so young.
Speaker 1: The horror of that is unimaginable. But so months and
Speaker 1: months go by, Right, you've obviously heard about the case.
Speaker 1: Everybody's probably heard about the case, yes, And then I
Speaker 1: think it was thirteen months later her body was found
Speaker 1: in the woods. And now everything changes.
Speaker 5: Right, all of a sudden, once they found the bones
Speaker 5: and they were able to identify the dental records as
Speaker 5: belonging to her, Suddenly the police realized that they should
Speaker 5: have been paying more attention.
Speaker 7: This is my interpretation of the.
Speaker 5: Records, Like they realized, hey, we should have been taking
Speaker 5: this more seriously. All the way along. Now we know
Speaker 5: this is a homicide. It's not just a runaway. She's
Speaker 5: not coming back, and we didn't follow up the leads
Speaker 5: that might have let us discover what happened much much earlier,
Speaker 5: when the trail wasn't so cold.
Speaker 1: So Andrew, now we have a situation where not only
Speaker 1: is there the very real problem of the fact that
Speaker 1: there's a brutal childkiller in the midst of this town,
Speaker 1: right and everything that that would mean to the authorities.
Speaker 1: Many of them have kids of their own, or relatives
Speaker 1: or nieces, whatever might be. So on a personal level,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, there's a real sense of urgency.
Speaker 1: But also there's got to be a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: from the community when something like this happens. Absolutely, So
Speaker 1: they've now got and we see this over and over again,
Speaker 1: they've got to really scramble and they got to find
Speaker 1: somebody because otherwise it's going.
Speaker 7: To be obvious that they didn't do their job.
Speaker 1: Going to be a lot more pressure brought to bear
Speaker 1: on them. There could be people losing their jobs, who
Speaker 1: knows what could happen, people getting voted out. They got
Speaker 1: to find this guy or people who did this, right, So,
Speaker 1: things start to go downhill quick from this point, and
Speaker 1: ultimately you end up being arrested and charged with this
Speaker 1: crime that you must have been like are you were you?
Speaker 1: I mean, were you? Like? Are you kidding? Like?
Speaker 3: I was in shock.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, the actual processes was like fifty
Speaker 2: paces behind my brain, like trying to catch up, Like,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, your.
Speaker 7: Brain was fifty paces behind.
Speaker 3: What's happened my conscious?
Speaker 2: You know, it's like trying to am I really sitting here?
Speaker 2: You know, as a juvenile, I've been in and out
Speaker 2: of little situations, so but to being told that I
Speaker 2: raped and murdered somebody at seventeen, Like are you serious?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, Like, I mean, just anybody
Speaker 2: who knows me like like they don't correlate the two,
Speaker 2: and you know, me to try to process that I'm
Speaker 2: being accused of it and sitting in there and having
Speaker 2: you know, these people yell at me and say this evidence,
Speaker 2: there's witnesses, there's people, and I'm yelling back, You're lying,
Speaker 2: You're crazy, You're making it up. I don't really think
Speaker 2: it still has hit me because I refuse to let it.
Speaker 2: It's like I'm in this altered state of just trying
Speaker 2: to figure this out, like, wait a minute, you know,
Speaker 2: it's gotta be a bad dream I'm making up sometime.
Speaker 1: How did they land on you and Anthony? I mean,
Speaker 1: I know the story, but I want to hear from
Speaker 1: your perspective because it's so bizarre. There was no physical
Speaker 1: evidence connecting you. What do you understand how that happened?
Speaker 2: No, and I think about it every day, you know,
Speaker 2: I have since this has happened. My only consensus of
Speaker 2: it is maybe prior run ends being an easy target.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Like I said, you know, you try
Speaker 2: to make sense of something that doesn't make sense, and
Speaker 2: you can drive yourself crazy.
Speaker 5: For one thing, what happened is that Denise Rose got
Speaker 5: herself arrested.
Speaker 2: Well eventually, I mean yeah, you know, later on down
Speaker 2: the line through there talking to people wherever the case
Speaker 2: may be, different names came up. And I think, at
Speaker 2: least personally, that it still extends farther than just people
Speaker 2: mentioning names, because you would think that the professionals that
Speaker 2: are actively pursuing leads and looking for the culprits or
Speaker 2: the culprit that committed this crime would be able to
Speaker 2: hang themselves on to something tangible as opposed to oh, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: he knew her or she knew him, or you know
Speaker 2: what I'm saying. So I think it's a little bit
Speaker 2: more than that. To what extent, I don't know, it's
Speaker 2: obvious that there's more to it than just singling us
Speaker 2: out because a name was mentioned.
Speaker 1: Do you want to jump in here, adult? Sure?
Speaker 5: I mean, when Denise Rose got arrested, they had an
Speaker 5: idea of who the likely suspects were in the town.
Speaker 5: And I think that Anthony in particular was a likely
Speaker 5: suspect just because he was a big guy.
Speaker 7: They knew him.
Speaker 5: He'd got in trouble for various juvenile kinds of things.
Speaker 5: And so when Denise gets arrested and she's in trouble
Speaker 5: and they know that she had been his girlfriend at
Speaker 5: around the time that they now decided that this little
Speaker 5: girl was murdered, they immediately started putting the pressure on her.
Speaker 7: Did you know him? You knew him?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 7: How did you know him? Weren't you with him? Weren't
Speaker 7: you with him that night? Didn't you see what happened?
Speaker 5: And they talked to her time and time again. They
Speaker 5: talked to her at least three different times while she
Speaker 5: was in jail, after she'd gotten arrested, while she was
Speaker 5: worried about going to jail herself, and so a little bit,
Speaker 5: by little bit, by little bit, they got her to
Speaker 5: start thinking that maybe there would be something in it
Speaker 5: for her to put these pieces together for them, when
Speaker 5: she could perfectly well see where they wanted her to go,
Speaker 5: which was to give them something about this murder that
Speaker 5: involved Anthony. And of course Anthony's friend who he was
Speaker 5: with a lot of the time, is Andy.
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit of a house of cards.
Speaker 1: And Denise would not seem to have been the most
Speaker 1: credible witness since, by her own admission, she smoked crack
Speaker 1: thousands of times.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but I don't know that they knew that then.
Speaker 5: Okay, that came out in this third trial where there
Speaker 5: was some really very pointed cross examination and a lot
Speaker 5: of discovery about who she was and what she had done.
Speaker 5: I don't know how much the police knew or even
Speaker 5: thought about it at the time.
Speaker 7: I just know that they realized that maybe this is.
Speaker 5: A way into this case, right, maybe we can put
Speaker 5: pressure on this gal and then the whole thing will
Speaker 5: fall into place.
Speaker 1: Why they would have assumed that she would know who
Speaker 1: the killer was. That's for anybody to speculate, right.
Speaker 5: Only because they already had in their mind this idea.
Speaker 5: I mean, if she had been somebody else's boyfriend during
Speaker 5: that time, they might have picked on somebody else. But
Speaker 5: I think it was a way like, Okay, we've got.
Speaker 7: Pressure on you.
Speaker 5: You know the other kids, you know all the kids
Speaker 5: in this community. Okay, the gal who disappeared was a kid,
Speaker 5: maybe you know something about it.
Speaker 7: We're going to go.
Speaker 1: With this, right And she ultimately came up with a
Speaker 1: very farcical story which has been disproven in every imaginable way.
Speaker 1: I mean, it never made sense in the first place.
Speaker 1: Right now it's actually been disproven. Dell, What was this
Speaker 1: story that she satisfactured completely?
Speaker 7: As far as I'm concerned. Incredible story. And so I
Speaker 7: think that the police had in.
Speaker 5: Their minds because I really think this story came from
Speaker 5: the investigating officers. I think they came up with this
Speaker 5: idea of how they thought that the crime must have happened,
Speaker 5: and they pushed their hypothesis onto everybody, eventually convincing juries
Speaker 5: that this is indeed what happened. And it starts from
Speaker 5: where they found the body, because they found these bones
Speaker 5: off of a dirt road, which was a road that
Speaker 5: all the kids in the community used to go to
Speaker 5: the smoke pot, so they knew that people drove down there,
Speaker 5: and they knew that people's smoked pots. So from there
Speaker 5: they kind of worked backwards and said, oh, what must
Speaker 5: have happened is that she must have gone with these
Speaker 5: older kids and they are smoking pot and then they
Speaker 5: killed her.
Speaker 7: And threw her body into the woods.
Speaker 5: So they had this idea in their minds, is my belief,
Speaker 5: before they talked to her, and then they got her
Speaker 5: to say exactly what they thought. And remember they had
Speaker 5: been investigating the case for months before they talked to her,
Speaker 5: so they knew where the body was found, they knew
Speaker 5: how far that road was from where the kids all lived,
Speaker 5: they knew who drove down that road. And they said,
Speaker 5: isn't this what happened, Denise? And she's like, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5: We're all in a.
Speaker 1: Van fill high and there were according to her story,
Speaker 1: her fairy tale, there were five people besides the victim
Speaker 1: in the van, correct, all of whom knew what was
Speaker 1: going on, including her, right, But she made a sound
Speaker 1: that she wasn't involved. And what I find absolutely preposterous
Speaker 1: about all of this is that let us not forget
Speaker 1: that thirteen months had gone by or more by the
Speaker 1: time they interviewed her, and somehow magically, not she or
Speaker 1: any of the other people in the van ever breathed
Speaker 1: the word of it to anyone.
Speaker 5: Right now, she claims that she is present and sees
Speaker 5: a rape and a murder of a twelve year old
Speaker 5: girl that happens in a car right in front of
Speaker 5: her eyes, that she sees the whole thing, and she
Speaker 5: never mentions it to a soul.
Speaker 1: Not her mother, not a priest, not her best friends,
Speaker 1: not her best friend.
Speaker 5: Right, teenage girls have best friends and tell them everything.
Speaker 1: I've never been a teenage girl. But our teenage girls
Speaker 1: good at keeping secrets. No, they're not going to keeping secrets, okay,
Speaker 1: And we don't want to sound sexist here. A teenage
Speaker 1: boys are no good at it either. In this case,
Speaker 1: you'd have to look at that and go, no, that's
Speaker 1: not possible. Somebody's lying because that didn't happen the way
Speaker 1: she says. Somebody else would have known and it would
Speaker 1: have gotten out there. So anyway, so she makes up
Speaker 1: this story about the five of us in the van
Speaker 1: and the victim and we're driving with her to go
Speaker 1: smoke pot whatever the hell she's saying.
Speaker 2: Can I just interject for a minute before it even
Speaker 2: got to that point, you gotta be aware that there
Speaker 2: were two previous statements, both of which she doesn't know
Speaker 2: nothing more along the lines of the truth. For whatever reasons,
Speaker 2: it came to her disclosing, oh, I witnessed this. Hannia's
Speaker 2: crime is obvious in this sense where the police detectives
Speaker 2: in the case, primarily Patrick Costaldo, had seen her several
Speaker 2: times and either badgetor threatened her, intimidated her bullet or
Speaker 2: all of the above, but finally convinced her that it
Speaker 2: was in her best interest to lie and to say
Speaker 2: she was the witness of this crime that she never
Speaker 2: witnessed and that we never committed.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't her best interest because who knows what
Speaker 1: she would have been facing herself?
Speaker 2: Well absolutely, and again too, she was actually older than
Speaker 2: both me and Anthony, so she was already on probation.
Speaker 2: She's had arrests for drugs, so it's easy to understand
Speaker 2: how that type of threat of going to jail would
Speaker 2: influence her to go along with the cops version of events.
Speaker 1: It's a very real threat. And also we know too
Speaker 1: that she was a teenager. Even though she was older
Speaker 1: than you, he was still a very young woman, and
Speaker 1: you know, she may not have been able to process
Speaker 1: the real consequences of her actions. Your case has many
Speaker 1: of the causes that we see most frequently in wrongful convictions.
Speaker 1: Whatever the reverse of a jackpot is, you hit it
Speaker 1: because you had incentivized witnesses, you had sloppy or incompetent
Speaker 1: police work, a known liar who was the guy who
Speaker 1: administered the polygraph. We know that because he was the
Speaker 1: same guy from Jeffrey Dedskobek's case who lied in his case.
Speaker 1: Then the false confession in your case, which is really
Speaker 1: one of the main reasons why you're still here, where
Speaker 1: the state county authorities have admitted that they got it wrong. Right,
Speaker 1: Anthony's home and he's been on the show, he's live
Speaker 1: and in person, and you're still here, And I think
Speaker 1: it's fair to say that one of the main reasons
Speaker 1: for that is the fact that they did manage to
Speaker 1: elicit a false confession from you, which again is confounding
Speaker 1: to so many people who look at me with these
Speaker 1: faces and they go, I would never confess to something
Speaker 1: I didn't do. That's and a jury can't understand that either. Right,
Speaker 1: how did they get you to confess to a crime
Speaker 1: you didn't commit.
Speaker 3: Well, it's not my words. I didn't confess to nothing.
Speaker 2: It's pre written statement made by them that I wound
Speaker 2: up breaking down and signing.
Speaker 7: I think that's important.
Speaker 5: It's not his words, it's their words on a piece
Speaker 5: of paper.
Speaker 3: To understand my segregation. I came in.
Speaker 2: I denied everything, obviously, and at the time my mind
Speaker 2: was working like, oh, I detect the test, they'll see
Speaker 2: I pass it, They'll understand they made a mistake, and
Speaker 2: I'll be let go.
Speaker 1: So you believe they were after justice, they wanted to
Speaker 1: do the right thing.
Speaker 2: Yes, my naivete at the time believed in the good
Speaker 2: of the system and not to at that particular moment
Speaker 2: think that they were devising this big operation to get
Speaker 2: themselves to solve a case by any means necessary. Now
Speaker 2: I know, obviously, but yeah, I was still believing that
Speaker 2: even if they were under the impression I had any
Speaker 2: involvement by me giving a lot of detective tests would
Speaker 2: clear that up, and then it would reevaluate and go
Speaker 2: somewhere else. That's what my belief was. So I answered
Speaker 2: the questions. They didn't like them, obviously, So I said,
Speaker 2: we'll give me a lot of text tests. I'm nothing
Speaker 2: to hide, I'm nothing to be untruthful about. And I
Speaker 2: took three consecutive lot of detectives tests by Daniel Stevens,
Speaker 2: and then the integregation continued. You lied, you failed, more aggressive,
Speaker 2: more intimidating. I keep denying it. That's yelling back and forth.
Speaker 2: So it's like, at that point in time, I'm going
Speaker 2: through that. You know they're not listening to me.
Speaker 1: Did you have a lawyer or a parent or anybody
Speaker 1: in there with you?
Speaker 2: Well, ironically, from what I found out after the fact,
Speaker 2: was all right.
Speaker 3: Just to bring it back a little bit.
Speaker 2: At the time of my arrest, it's crazy because I
Speaker 2: was reporting to my probation office in Beacon, New York.
Speaker 3: It was a morning.
Speaker 2: I was at the time with a girl who was
Speaker 2: my girlfriend. She was in the car, so we left
Speaker 2: my house. I went and reported to probation. I was
Speaker 2: going to be my father to go to work because
Speaker 2: at the time I worked for him, and while I
Speaker 2: was in my probationer's office. Four detectives come in the room,
Speaker 2: Castaldoing Quick from Punham County and two Beacon detectives, and
Speaker 2: they detained me, put me in the car, and bring
Speaker 2: me to Punham County. Now, my girlfriend is still sitting
Speaker 2: in the car. Okay, so she calls my family. My
Speaker 2: father finds out. Now apparently everybody goes to the Sheriff's
Speaker 2: department to find out what's going on.
Speaker 3: Why did they have me?
Speaker 2: And apparently while I was being interrogated, news was outside
Speaker 2: in the parking lot. My family was out there, So
Speaker 2: I guess there was a whole scrum going on out
Speaker 2: there while I'm in the back room being worked over.
Speaker 3: One of the things I beat myself up with is
Speaker 3: how I was allowed to just give in.
Speaker 2: But again, a sense in my mind that was working
Speaker 2: was like, you can't make an untruthed truth. So regardless
Speaker 2: of what's written on paper, it's words on paper, it's
Speaker 2: not evidence. And I really felt that if it had
Speaker 2: to come to litigation, meaning court, that the evidence and
Speaker 2: the truth would come out and solidify my innocence. Again,
Speaker 2: that's being young and naive to the system, and I
Speaker 2: pretty much helped them convict me wrongfully for this crime.
Speaker 1: But you were young and naive and and I don't
Speaker 1: think you can really beat yourself up. The thing is,
Speaker 1: I think for me anyway, having met and befriended and
Speaker 1: work for and with so many people who not only
Speaker 1: signed a piece of paper like you did, we see
Speaker 1: all different types of false confessions.
Speaker 5: Well, I think it's perfectly understandable and reasonable to think
Speaker 5: that the truth is going to come out and that
Speaker 5: you can't change it, and if you're innocent, that that
Speaker 5: will eventually be the story that emerges, which is like,
Speaker 5: I think what he's saying is I figured the truth
Speaker 5: would prevail.
Speaker 7: I am innocent. Everyone will eventually know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and correctly if I'm wrong, Andrew. But when
Speaker 1: you're in that room and I'm just trying to put
Speaker 1: myself in your shoes and give me the chills. But
Speaker 1: it became clear, after many hours of interrogation that these
Speaker 1: guys were not going to listen to you.
Speaker 3: No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: I mean there was nothing you could Probably by now
Speaker 1: you'd said everything you could say, and they keep telling
Speaker 1: you you're lying, and they keep becoming more aggressive. Right,
Speaker 1: So at a certain point you go, well, this ain't
Speaker 1: working right, This is not getting me anywhere. But somebody
Speaker 1: somewhere is going to be on my side because it's
Speaker 1: called the justice system and I'm just a kid and
Speaker 1: I didn't do anything. So I got to get out
Speaker 1: of this room and into a different place where there's
Speaker 1: people that robes on and things like that that are
Speaker 1: like you know why, and that are not these sort
Speaker 1: of half crazed interrogators. They're not letting up, and you
Speaker 1: ain't getting out of that room. I mean it's not
Speaker 1: like they said, well one more hour, we're gonna let
Speaker 1: you go home, right, I mean, like you just you're
Speaker 1: there in depth.
Speaker 2: They pretty much, you know, wanted to hear me admit
Speaker 2: that I committed this crime. And I kept getting more
Speaker 2: aggressively in my nature of telling him that I didn't
Speaker 2: commit it and it was it was a volcano getting
Speaker 2: ready to erupt.
Speaker 1: Would you worry that they were going to be physically
Speaker 1: violent with you?
Speaker 2: Daniel Steven has already had upon my completing the polygraph test.
Speaker 2: You know, when he told me I failed, grabbed me
Speaker 2: by my throat, punched me in my stomach, told me
Speaker 2: that I, you know, I was a piece of shit,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get it.
Speaker 3: I get deserved and all this other stuff.
Speaker 7: You know, we know he's made other people for to confess.
Speaker 7: That's what you didn't know at the time.
Speaker 3: No, I didn't know at the time.
Speaker 1: He's also been similarly violent in other cases. I was
Speaker 1: brought up on charges for at least one of those. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So now we're getting really to the crux of it.
Speaker 1: So you now have a guy who is a very
Speaker 1: real danger to you. I mean he has now physically
Speaker 1: assaulted you, and you have no way out of this room,
Speaker 1: nobody who's listening to you, and you've now been beaten,
Speaker 1: and you don't know what's coming next. So at a
Speaker 1: certain point you say, okay, well, here's this piece of paper.
Speaker 1: It's my it's my way out, and then we're going
Speaker 1: to get this sorted out later. Because the truth is
Speaker 1: the truth. You didn't do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's always been my belief. I mean
Speaker 2: even to this day, Like I said, I mean, I
Speaker 2: just find it completely preposterous that they could try to
Speaker 2: stand behind that argument when all the physical, scientific inforence
Speaker 2: evidence disproves what's on that paper.
Speaker 1: Oh, by the way, did you fail a polygraph test.
Speaker 2: No, we had our own polygraphist at the time, who
Speaker 2: was a retired polygraph expert for the FEDES, was on
Speaker 2: the polygraph Board of Administrators who came in and reviewed
Speaker 2: my tests and determined that the attempts were to make
Speaker 2: it failed by disconnecting parts of the machine. And he said,
Speaker 2: despite all of that, I was truthful in every answer.
Speaker 1: Will the disconnecting parts of the machine, I mean, on
Speaker 1: top of everything else, it's just.
Speaker 3: Like Daniel Stevens, I mean Russia.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is what was exposed with Jeffrey Dskovic
Speaker 2: into the you know, his procedure and his version of
Speaker 2: what he does and the correct manner in which to
Speaker 2: perform a polygraph test. I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: dynamics in my case that don't make sense, Like how
Speaker 2: was that introduced as evidence when it's not allowed. It
Speaker 2: was never a mechanism for them to try to ascertain
Speaker 2: the truth. It's kind of so tactic of an interrogatory
Speaker 2: process to manipulate, beat me down, to get me in
Speaker 2: a position to give them what they wanted, which they
Speaker 2: eventually did.
Speaker 1: Heads you lose, tails you lose. And now we know too,
Speaker 1: like a top of all those other causes that the
Speaker 1: three central police figures in this investigation have all been
Speaker 1: either indicted or convicted of other crimes. I mean, the
Speaker 1: system really failed you in so many ways. And these
Speaker 1: are ways that we as a society have to address
Speaker 1: because if we don't, it's going to happen to somebody else.
Speaker 1: And then for those of you out there listening, could
Speaker 1: be someone you love, could be you. And there's so
Speaker 1: much of this case. There was a guy who was
Speaker 1: initially suspected of being the killer, the rapist and killer,
Speaker 1: and somehow the tension was diverted from him, and now
Speaker 1: that guy is in prison for child sex crimes. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I mean coincidence. I mean maybe, but the circumstantial
Speaker 1: evidence is mounting and there's a very real chance that
Speaker 1: he might hold the key. He may be the only
Speaker 1: guy who knows who did this. And there's also a
Speaker 1: statement that came out that he apparently made in prison
Speaker 1: to another inmate where he claimed that there's a couple
Speaker 1: of I think he said a couple other suckers were
Speaker 1: taking the fall for his crime in this particular case.
Speaker 1: And that's got to just make you insane to hear
Speaker 1: a guy like that who is really a scumbag.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean he is very much so.
Speaker 2: And you know, just to point out that's why I
Speaker 2: say this, there's dynamics of the case that is so
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly obvious it puzzles you to say, how do you
Speaker 2: ignore it? Here it is as a person at that
Speaker 2: time that was in his I think late twenties, who
Speaker 2: goes back to the eighties of rapes, insidomies, who is
Speaker 2: known through the Legal Aid Society and the police departments
Speaker 2: in Carmewall.
Speaker 3: He's a monster, absolutely so.
Speaker 2: With all the initial investigations going on and all the
Speaker 2: statements that were provided to the police, his name is
Speaker 2: repeated and brought up time and time again. Two of
Speaker 2: the witnesses from Anthony's recent trial were victims of how wegum.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to that for a second. So Anthony
Speaker 1: de Pippo, who was convicted of the same crime that
Speaker 1: you were convicted of in separate trials for reasons looking
Speaker 1: into but it was convicted the same crime co defendants,
Speaker 1: and I think people out there are probably saying, well, wait,
Speaker 1: minut if you're both convicted the same crime and he's out,
Speaker 1: what are you doing here? Why are you here and
Speaker 1: Anthony served twenty years and you're in your twenty first
Speaker 1: year now, and it's like where, where and when is
Speaker 1: some sanity going to enter the picture. That's what we're
Speaker 1: here to try to get to the bottom of it,
Speaker 1: to try to help bring attention to because it's madness
Speaker 1: that he's out. Everyone's acknowledged now. It wasn't easy, but
Speaker 1: now it's been proven and acknowledged that he's innocent and
Speaker 1: you are too. But they don't want to take their
Speaker 1: foot off your neck just yet, right, They want to
Speaker 1: still drive this this madness into a deeper hole and
Speaker 1: with you as just sort of sitting here like a
Speaker 1: pinball or something just being knocked around.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, it's the unfortunate efficiencies in a system
Speaker 2: when you have people in the power that can abuse
Speaker 2: it legally.
Speaker 1: And then defend it. I mean, it's like they're defending
Speaker 1: something that's been disproven already and leaving out the guy
Speaker 1: who is so clearly should be under extreme scrutiny for
Speaker 1: this crime and should be being questioned and should be
Speaker 1: held accountable. You should be held accountable, I mean, and
Speaker 1: this little girl deserves justice and she's not getting it either.
Speaker 2: And may I just point out too, and we got
Speaker 2: to go back to nineteen ninety four because this is
Speaker 2: when she was first reported missing. I was seventeen at
Speaker 2: the time, Anthony was eighteen at the time. Shortly thereafter,
Speaker 2: another young woman became missing that had ties to Howard
Speaker 2: Gombert and who's been investigated for her disappearance, and I
Speaker 2: believe still is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the police were looking at this fellow Gombert, yes,
Speaker 5: for another somewhat similar homicide that occurred in that area
Speaker 5: at around the same time. Yes, so we know for
Speaker 5: the records that they were looking at him. Why they
Speaker 5: dropped the ball on this. Hopefully someday we'll find out.
Speaker 2: You know, you could speculate and try to figure out
Speaker 2: so many areas of why they did what it did.
Speaker 2: Some things become more obvious than others. You have a
Speaker 2: different police agency other than the sheriffs, which is a
Speaker 2: common police department, and they believed that Gombert was responsible
Speaker 2: for both crimes. They wanted to work together to try
Speaker 2: to tackle the evidence and come to a consensus, and
Speaker 2: the Sheriff's department basically told him to take And again,
Speaker 2: is it politics, it's ugly head.
Speaker 1: Maybe Gombert had some powerful friends somewhere.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe he did.
Speaker 2: I mean it makes you scratch your head because you
Speaker 2: sit there and say, this is obvious. It's not like
Speaker 2: you see similar cases where you could get the wrong
Speaker 2: impression by evidence just by interpretating, and that's understandable. And
Speaker 2: then you know, they run down the line and said, oh, well,
Speaker 2: this is how I got a room. It didn't start
Speaker 2: off like that. This was blatant disregard to certain elements
Speaker 2: of the case. And this is decisions that were made
Speaker 2: knowingly by the police involved.
Speaker 5: I mean, one thing, if there was some sort of
Speaker 5: an ironclad alibi, you know, they had records and mister
Speaker 5: Gombert was in Canada at the time or something like that,
Speaker 5: but there's nothing to show.
Speaker 1: That because all of the.
Speaker 5: Evidence points to him and they do nothing. He was
Speaker 5: connected to the victim, he knew the victim.
Speaker 1: He was a suspect, similar suspect the other.
Speaker 2: So here it is you have an individual that if
Speaker 2: you're going to fit a mold of any type of area,
Speaker 2: I mean, like, what more do you look for?
Speaker 1: So now it comes to trial, A bunch of time
Speaker 1: had passed, right, You've been sitting in jail presumably this
Speaker 1: whole time waiting for your trial.
Speaker 2: Yes, since July first, nineteen ninety six, and ever since
Speaker 2: I've been incarcerated.
Speaker 1: But I'm talking about from July first, nineteenety six, was
Speaker 1: when you were arrested.
Speaker 2: Arrested, Yes, that was a trial I think ninety seven right,
Speaker 2: ear in jail for.
Speaker 1: Over a year better part of a year for a
Speaker 1: waiting trial, and then you go to trial. At this point,
Speaker 1: did you still have hope that the system was going
Speaker 1: to work?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, I did.
Speaker 2: A lot of that was under the pretense of my
Speaker 2: lawyer at the time, and the things that he was
Speaker 2: telling me making me believe that certain things were going
Speaker 2: to be addressed, and his disclosure to me about how
Speaker 2: he was going to present the evidence to disprove that
Speaker 2: we committed this crime led me to believe that I
Speaker 2: was going to be successful in establishing that.
Speaker 3: But he did none of what he said he was
Speaker 3: going to do.
Speaker 1: You had a lawyer who was definitely not on his
Speaker 1: a game, let's just say that, which happens, sadly, tragically
Speaker 1: more frequently than it should ever be allowed to. But
Speaker 1: you go to trial, your family's there. I want to
Speaker 1: get to the moment when the jury went out and
Speaker 1: everything that could be said, had been said, and then
Speaker 1: you get called back to the courtroom because a verdict
Speaker 1: is ready. How long was the jury out I.
Speaker 2: Think like maybe thirty five to forty minutes. I don't know,
Speaker 2: it was like during lunch break. But like by the
Speaker 2: time I literally got brought to them, like two minutes later,
Speaker 2: they said they got a verdict and I got back
Speaker 2: in the corner back up to the court building.
Speaker 3: So like that's how fast it was.
Speaker 1: Can you just paint the picture for us, Like at
Speaker 1: that moment when they stole your life from you, what
Speaker 1: went through your mind?
Speaker 2: I mean, the same thing that's going through my mind now.
Speaker 2: Like I mean when they came back and read the
Speaker 2: verdict that I was guilty on both charges, I was
Speaker 2: still in shock.
Speaker 3: I mean through the whole process.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I don't think I really ever adjusted
Speaker 2: to it really settling in and I stood up and
Speaker 2: rest of court saying that they got it wrong, that
Speaker 2: somebody else committed this crime and that one day the
Speaker 2: truth will come out. I didn't have an emotional outburst,
Speaker 2: I didn't break down. I just gathered my inner self
Speaker 2: and just faced it.
Speaker 3: It's hard. I mean, it's like.
Speaker 2: I I broke inside, but I didn't allow myself to
Speaker 2: break completely. I don't know if that makes sense. It's like,
Speaker 2: what do you do? What's the next course of action?
Speaker 2: How do you do it? Somebody has to listen, somebody
Speaker 2: has to see it, you know. And even though that happened,
Speaker 2: I still believed that the truth will come out, Even
Speaker 2: though I didn't know ninety nine percent of what I
Speaker 2: know now of Howard Gomber to the extent of his involvement,
Speaker 2: his participation in a lot of things, to the degree
Speaker 2: of the cops, and you know, all the information I've
Speaker 2: gathered through the years that I can now look back
Speaker 2: on and say, wow, really, it just became more obvious
Speaker 2: to Like I said, there wasn't a truth finding element
Speaker 2: to where they was trying to justify arresting somebody and
Speaker 2: solving a case. It was a hatchet job for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: to exacerbate their positions like they were the good and
Speaker 2: to put closure on a case that probably they look
Speaker 2: bad on from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: Closure. Yeah, that's the that's a big word of closure.
Speaker 1: Get it off the desk and onto the next one.
Speaker 1: Just let you rot. And then meanwhile, let this guy
Speaker 1: who's at this point still out there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know when he was arrested for the
Speaker 5: case that he's serving time on now.
Speaker 3: I think mid two thousands.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's just reflect on that for a second too.
Speaker 1: Had this investigation been conducted properly, had been.
Speaker 7: Arrested, and that would have been prevented.
Speaker 1: All those other victims would have just been able to
Speaker 1: go on about their lives and never go through this
Speaker 1: horrific experience. Them and their families and the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I find that fucking outrageous. It's it's just fucking outrageous.
Speaker 1: Then you find yourself in a maximum security prison. You're
Speaker 1: locked up as someone who's convicted, but convicted of the
Speaker 1: worst crime that you can be convicted of, which is
Speaker 1: a child rape and murder. Yeah, how the hell did
Speaker 1: you manage to survive that ordeal and get to where
Speaker 1: we are now, where there's actually a ray of hope.
Speaker 2: Just like I said, facing it straight up, it hasn't
Speaker 2: been easy to this day, it's still not easy because
Speaker 2: it's something that's always exemplified and used against you. You know,
Speaker 2: the word that, oh he's convicted of a rape and murder.
Speaker 2: It's a twelve year old girl automatically, it's a completely
Speaker 2: different outlep to me. So now there's certain restrictions in place,
Speaker 2: there's certain attitudes I'm dealt with, there's certain ways I'm
Speaker 2: looked at, and it's a battle trying to say that, yo,
Speaker 2: that's not me. But one of the things in prison
Speaker 2: is you hear ninety nine percent of the population talk
Speaker 2: about their innocent of a crime.
Speaker 3: So it's like the boy you crowd wolf.
Speaker 2: So it's a constant that I'm facing on a daily basis,
Speaker 2: and it's got on extreme in certain cases.
Speaker 3: But again it's just what else do I do?
Speaker 2: Signing living a shell, just conformed to the to the
Speaker 2: outlook that they have in a negative manner. No, one
Speaker 2: of the things that I'm gonna do is I'm gonna
Speaker 2: scream loud and proud because I didn't do it. It's ugly,
Speaker 2: it's nasty, and it's understandable how people can look at
Speaker 2: it one way. But in order to overcome that and
Speaker 2: realize just how significant my situation is, you need to
Speaker 2: understand that there's other elements that you don't know about.
Speaker 2: So if you're gonna judge me, judge based on everything
Speaker 2: in its entirety, not just off the face of what's
Speaker 2: being said or what I'm introduced into the bombing of corrections.
Speaker 1: For I want to get to the aspect of your
Speaker 1: mental state, because you seem to be somebody who's very calm, rational, thoughtful,
Speaker 1: even I want to say, you maintain a very real
Speaker 1: sense of hope in a situation that to a lot
Speaker 1: of people, I think it would just collapse and they
Speaker 1: would just you know, and no one could blame you
Speaker 1: for that, right. I mean to find yourself in a
Speaker 1: place like this for over twenty years.
Speaker 2: There were It's not easy and it's taken a long
Speaker 2: time to get this calm.
Speaker 3: I'm forcing the situation. It's reality. It is what it is.
Speaker 2: So I could allow things to overwhelm me and make
Speaker 2: them harder, or I could just face it and deal
Speaker 2: with the best way that I can. And that's what
Speaker 2: I chose to do. I got a voice, and I
Speaker 2: try to put it out there as much as I can,
Speaker 2: and I got to just be a warrior and just
Speaker 2: face everything that comes my way, all adversity, and it's hard.
Speaker 2: Each conflict that I go through allows me to deal
Speaker 2: with something different in a more positive way. So I
Speaker 2: try to take all of that on a daily basis
Speaker 2: to gain my strength.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. I don't even know what to say after,
Speaker 1: but I will say that it's important for you to know.
Speaker 1: And we spoke to Anthony di Pippo on the way
Speaker 1: in today and he wanted us to communicate to you
Speaker 1: that he is standing strong with you and that he's
Speaker 1: going to be there when you have your hearings, and
Speaker 1: he's going to bring a group of exenrees. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's another one. He's a fighter. I mean, he's a
Speaker 1: guy you would on your side. And I'll let you
Speaker 1: know too that there's a lot of other people out there,
Speaker 1: people you don't even know about, who are aware of
Speaker 1: a case, and many more that are going to be
Speaker 1: aware of it that care about you and want to
Speaker 1: see justice finally brought to bear on this terrible situation. Adele.
Speaker 1: Now we find ourselves here in twenty seventeen, twenty three
Speaker 1: years from the time of the crime, twenty one years
Speaker 1: from the time that you were convicted, and that doesn't
Speaker 1: even include the time you spent in jail awaiting trial.
Speaker 1: And what are the prospects and how are you approaching
Speaker 1: this now? And what can people who are listening do
Speaker 1: to help.
Speaker 5: Well, Basically, we're doing what you said right in the beginning,
Speaker 5: which is we're trying to raise the specter of justice.
Speaker 5: Why if two people have been convicted of the same
Speaker 5: crime on the same evidence, essentially, why is one free
Speaker 5: and one in jail? That just seems wrong, It seems
Speaker 5: injust and it seems like we should be able to
Speaker 5: do something about that. In this situation, Andrew didn't get
Speaker 5: the new trial that Anthony got, so he hasn't had
Speaker 5: an opportunity to let a jury hear about the evidence
Speaker 5: pointing to Howard Gombert. So he hasn't yet had that opportunity.
Speaker 5: And we've asked the appellate court to review the lower
Speaker 5: court ruling that denied him that opportunity, and the appellate
Speaker 5: courts have given us the opportunity to raise that argument
Speaker 5: and brief that issue. So we believe that we're going
Speaker 5: to get an opportunity to have a trial where Andrew
Speaker 5: as well will get to put in front of a
Speaker 5: jury the same evidence that Anthony used that resulted in
Speaker 5: his acquittal. So we're hoping to be in that same place,
Speaker 5: but we're not there yet, so we're still waiting. We
Speaker 5: have to brief the case at the appellate division. They've
Speaker 5: got a rule in our favor. They have to order
Speaker 5: that he gets a new trial, and then we'll have
Speaker 5: that new trial if the attorney's office wants to retry
Speaker 5: him a second time.
Speaker 1: Or they can just vacate. Then they could just.
Speaker 7: Vacate the conviction, which they could do now frankly.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, but that's very unlikely.
Speaker 5: It's very unlikely, but that's not something that we have
Speaker 5: completely given up on.
Speaker 7: We're in touch with the DEA.
Speaker 5: If new evidence gets developed, will continue to talk to
Speaker 5: the DEA about this case and about how they could
Speaker 5: do the right thing and they could save everybody a
Speaker 5: lot of time, a lot.
Speaker 1: Of trouble, right and go after the guy.
Speaker 5: So we suspect who the evidence points to. I mean,
Speaker 5: clearly he's never been charged. Okay, we're talking about him
Speaker 5: as though he were in.
Speaker 7: Fact the guilty party. We don't know that.
Speaker 5: What we know is that the evidence certainly points to him, right,
Speaker 5: He's done things that are very similar.
Speaker 7: To what they've been convicted of.
Speaker 5: So we have a reason to believe that he is
Speaker 5: the person. But we don't know that obviously, and it
Speaker 5: hasn't been proved in a court.
Speaker 2: Of law, just in the manner of the way that
Speaker 2: this case was presented, has a lot of associative ties
Speaker 2: to Gombert and his culpable acts against other victims. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the evidence points to that. You have a lot of
Speaker 2: dots that connect that. I'm not here to do anything
Speaker 2: other than prove I was not the one who committed
Speaker 2: this crime. To exemplify that, focus on the evidence, focus
Speaker 2: on the facts, keep it simple. I'm not an investigator,
Speaker 2: nor should I have to be. But one thing that's
Speaker 2: paramount is the evidence discloses I did not commit this crime.
Speaker 2: The evidence that's been brought forth in Anthony's retrial is
Speaker 2: that he did not commit this crime. The prosecution's theory
Speaker 2: is that we together participated committing this crime. There's nothing
Speaker 2: separate outside of this purported confession. And again it's words
Speaker 2: on paper, So you can't turn that into more evidence
Speaker 2: against me to.
Speaker 3: Say, oh, well, you admitted it.
Speaker 2: No, the forensic and pathological evidence disproves those words, disproves
Speaker 2: Denise rules. She disproves her own through her testimony, words
Speaker 2: and her statement. So there's all of these different avenues
Speaker 2: to come to conclusion that they're refusing to do.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the only evidence is her testimony. There really is
Speaker 7: nothing else.
Speaker 5: They say, well, this happened in this van, and there's
Speaker 5: no forensic evidence linking the victim to the van.
Speaker 7: There's just nothing there.
Speaker 5: There's supposed to be other witnesses who were in the
Speaker 5: van with Denise, and all of them say, oh, I
Speaker 5: didn't see that happen. The police tried to make me
Speaker 5: say that that's what happened, but I refuse to say
Speaker 5: that because it didn't happen. So that's what Adam Wilson says.
Speaker 5: He says, Oh, the police tried to make me go
Speaker 5: along with that story. They tried to make me corroborate
Speaker 5: what Denise Rose said, but I wouldn't do it because
Speaker 5: it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: The only evidence is the testimony of this crack addicted
Speaker 1: young woman who has been refuted by the other people
Speaker 1: that were there with her at the time. The physical evidence.
Speaker 1: Not only is there no physical evidence that because there's
Speaker 1: always going to be skeptics, right, these people out there going, well,
Speaker 1: there must be something, well, you know, in this case,
Speaker 1: there's no nothing. There's no physical evidence connecting you to
Speaker 1: the crime, and the evidence that does exist, would indicate
Speaker 1: that the story, well, clearly the story is not.
Speaker 5: The forensic evidence is completely consistent with innocence and not
Speaker 5: at all consistent with guilt.
Speaker 1: So if we are to believe that you actually did this,
Speaker 1: you would have to be a master criminal.
Speaker 5: You have to be I have cleaned up the entire
Speaker 5: brand that they said it happened in so that no
Speaker 5: trace of this victim could be found in the van,
Speaker 5: which I think is really beyond the abilities of two teens,
Speaker 5: especially when the van that they said it happened in
Speaker 5: was already in police custody, was already off the roads,
Speaker 5: it was already at the time they said it happened.
Speaker 1: So there's one more thing that we have to talk about,
Speaker 1: which is that the prosecutions theory revolved around the idea
Speaker 1: that this horrible crime was committed in the van with
Speaker 1: five people and the victim. And there's a pretty big
Speaker 1: problem with that, which is that there's a mechanic who
Speaker 1: has testified that the van in fact was up on
Speaker 1: blocks at the time.
Speaker 5: Right wheels, And the fact of the matter is he
Speaker 5: testified to that in this recent trial where Anthony was acquitted,
Speaker 5: but he also testified to that back at the first trial.
Speaker 7: This isn't even new evidence.
Speaker 5: The police knew that and there was no reason to
Speaker 5: disbelieve the mechanic.
Speaker 7: I mean, there was no reason to think that he was.
Speaker 5: Somehow in codes with the defendants and you know, trying
Speaker 5: to improperly create a reasonable doubt where there was none.
Speaker 1: There was all sorts of stuff with the van. It
Speaker 1: was on blocks, right, the tires were off it, the
Speaker 1: engine was screwed up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could explain some of that, but just before
Speaker 2: I get into that, just so everybody knows and is
Speaker 2: aware of just to extent an involvement of these detectives
Speaker 2: is initially on the statements, it was a Bronco that
Speaker 2: was crossed out and changed to van.
Speaker 5: What happens is is that they later on okay, because
Speaker 5: remember there's this long period of time between the time
Speaker 5: that Joset disappears and the time that they realize it's
Speaker 5: a homicide. So during that period of time when they're
Speaker 5: not really investigating this case and they're not following up
Speaker 5: their leads on Howard Gombert, during this time.
Speaker 7: They seize this van.
Speaker 5: So by the time they arrest Andrew, they've got.
Speaker 7: It in their custody.
Speaker 3: Well, they legally stole it, right.
Speaker 5: They kept it, they seize it, and they never returned it.
Speaker 5: So at that point it becomes helpful for them to
Speaker 5: have the crime occur in the van, which is in
Speaker 5: their possession. So they then change it from saying oh,
Speaker 5: it was the Bronco to saying, oh, this must have
Speaker 5: happened in Andy's van, not knowing that there was an
Speaker 5: actual witness out there who could say, oh, that's impossible
Speaker 5: because the van was actually up on blocks and inoperable
Speaker 5: at the time that you're saying that this child was actually.
Speaker 3: Murdered, yes, which was in nineteen ninety fourth from there.
Speaker 5: So I think Andrew's right to say that when you
Speaker 5: look at this from the point of view of thinking
Speaker 5: about the police after the fact having a hypothesis which
Speaker 5: they tried to make the facts conform to that, this
Speaker 5: evidence actually does support that theory, and I think that's
Speaker 5: what happened.
Speaker 3: It's simple orchestration.
Speaker 2: What they did was they said this is the crime,
Speaker 2: and we're going to get the people to say this
Speaker 2: is what happened, and that's what they did. They glued
Speaker 2: together but again simplifying it, keep it into the evidence,
Speaker 2: and it tells its own story, and going back to
Speaker 2: Denise Rose and her claims of her witnessing, and you
Speaker 2: just reading the statement. You read it and you see
Speaker 2: words crossed down and replaced with other words, and then
Speaker 2: you listen to the actual main areas of this statement
Speaker 2: which is supposed to be a version of her reciting
Speaker 2: witnessing a crime, and you could see that it's almost
Speaker 2: like you know, you're putting a play together. You know
Speaker 2: this fits better over here, No say it like this,
Speaker 2: so it comes across more believable. But all the meat
Speaker 2: and potatoes, so to speak, of the essential facts that
Speaker 2: one would digress if they really witness something is not
Speaker 2: a part of the statements, and the forensic.
Speaker 3: Evidence conflicts with her version. So who do you believe?
Speaker 1: So they actually did, when you think about it, a
Speaker 1: very sloppy job of framing you, because in fact, if
Speaker 1: they had been a little bit more thoughtful, somebody would
Speaker 1: have said, wait a minute, let's not go with that
Speaker 1: van theory, because I just found out that the van
Speaker 1: is over at Mechanic Autoshop, up on a thing with
Speaker 1: an engine that doesn't work, no tires. But they didn't
Speaker 1: even bother to do that.
Speaker 7: And guess what they didn't need to, did they.
Speaker 1: No, And that's why, again there is another side to
Speaker 1: what the prosecution is saying. I'm not saying they're wrong
Speaker 1: all the time. There's certainly not.
Speaker 7: You're absolutely right.
Speaker 5: We want to hold the prosecution, the police and the
Speaker 5: prosecution to a high standard. There's a burden of proof
Speaker 5: in a criminal trial which is beyond a reasonable doubt,
Speaker 5: and we want to be holding people to that standard
Speaker 5: and make them prove that case.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, just to point out it would
Speaker 2: be easy for me to just jump on that bashing,
Speaker 2: you know, aspect or mindset. And even as hard as
Speaker 2: it is, I understand and believe in the system. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of good and you know, I believe in
Speaker 2: what it's supposed to be there for. But again, this
Speaker 2: isn't something that it wasn't something that you could take
Speaker 2: and say, it's understandable how these two were willfully convicted
Speaker 2: because there was a lot of close ties to the
Speaker 2: evidence that would indicate the possibility then and guilty. This
Speaker 2: is the furthest from that. This is blatant setting up.
Speaker 2: This is the ugliest of the ugly. This is conscious
Speaker 2: decisions that the people that are there to protect and
Speaker 2: serve that are throwing all of that away to make
Speaker 2: themselves look like they are those protectors by closing a case,
Speaker 2: getting pats on the back, commendations, knowingly fabricating evidence, bullying
Speaker 2: and intimidating people and getting a wrongful conviction on it
Speaker 2: and shattering lives, and that you know, not just us.
Speaker 2: They lied to the victim's family, they lied to the population,
Speaker 2: They did all of these things that have a ripple effect.
Speaker 3: It's not just me.
Speaker 2: I want to point out that, regardless of what anybody
Speaker 2: can say that's to the extent this case is, this
Speaker 2: isn't one of those just close knit or we understand it. No,
Speaker 2: this is individuals choosing to go against the lord that
Speaker 2: were in the powers to get people to believe them
Speaker 2: because of their positions, and just shatter lives. They say,
Speaker 2: like comes to dark. Three of those same people that
Speaker 2: were involved have since been in some form been convicted
Speaker 2: of this conduct from the balls at the balls into
Speaker 2: the sceneor detectives that were actively involved in our case.
Speaker 1: I tell there's one more aspect of this case that
Speaker 1: troubles me, and it highlights the fact that there was
Speaker 1: so much time elapsed from the time of the crime
Speaker 1: to the time of the arrests, and they came up
Speaker 1: with a little girl who said she remembered something about
Speaker 1: some jewelry or something, which I found so far fetched.
Speaker 5: Well, the police said that they had found jewelry belonging
Speaker 5: to the victim, Josett, in this van, which we know
Speaker 5: that even if they had committed the crime, they couldn't
Speaker 5: have committed it in this van. But anyway, they said
Speaker 5: they had found jewelry in the van. They then called
Speaker 5: witnesses at the trial to say that they recognized the
Speaker 5: jewelry as belonging to Joeset. When I first learned about
Speaker 5: this case, which was quite a long time ago, Andy
Speaker 5: wrote me and he described the evidence, and I got
Speaker 5: involved in the case because I thought the evidence was
Speaker 5: completely unconvinced an untrue to common sense. I didn't believe
Speaker 5: that a seventeen year old girl would have witnessed a
Speaker 5: crime like this and not told anybody.
Speaker 7: Didn't believe it. And they also said, despite.
Speaker 5: The lack of any forensic evidence linking the girl to
Speaker 5: the van, there was jewelry found in the van that
Speaker 5: witnesses have identified as belonging to the victim. And I
Speaker 5: just didn't believe that that could possibly be true, because
Speaker 5: I didn't believe that little girls fourteen, because they were
Speaker 5: fourteen by the time they testified at trial, would have
Speaker 5: remembered what their girlfriend was wearing on the day that
Speaker 5: she disappeared two and a half years earlier. Because we're
Speaker 5: talking here about jewelry that would have been brought from
Speaker 5: the five and dimes store, right an earring, a necklace,
Speaker 5: and they were learning generic how special could they have been.
Speaker 5: Little girls have lots of different jewelry. You would never
Speaker 5: recognize what one person was wearing from one day to
Speaker 5: the next. So the fact that they said at trial
Speaker 5: under oath, I recognize this piece of jewelry I found
Speaker 5: extremely suspect. And again I think it is evidence of
Speaker 5: how in fact careful the police were trying to be
Speaker 5: to try to overcome the lack of any forensic evidence,
Speaker 5: because they didn't have traces of Joe sat in this van,
Speaker 5: so they were bound and determined to come up with
Speaker 5: something that would link her to this supposed crime scene.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking now right about that courtroom in that moment,
Speaker 1: right and I'm sure the jury, but it must have
Speaker 1: been almost like a gasp, like, oh my god, the
Speaker 1: jewelry her, the poor girl's jewelry was found in the van.
Speaker 1: And now I would ask anyone listening to conduct a
Speaker 1: little test, which is, think of who you were hanging
Speaker 1: out with yesterday and describe what kind of jewelry they
Speaker 1: were wearing. Unless your friend has the Hope diamond on,
Speaker 1: I think the chance of you remembering whether they had
Speaker 1: a ring on which finger on, whether they had a necklace,
Speaker 1: and what it looked like, I mean, you're not able
Speaker 1: to do it. I mean, it's just not realistic. And
Speaker 1: I'm talking about yesterday. So the idea that it was
Speaker 1: thirteen months ago or more actually.
Speaker 5: Because by the time they got to the trial, they're saying, yes,
Speaker 5: I can remember distinctly what she was wearing. Now, they
Speaker 5: weren't saying that they were with her at the time
Speaker 5: that this supposedly happened. They were just saying, yeah, I
Speaker 5: saw her that day, earlier, that day, the night before,
Speaker 5: and yes, I can remember this is her jewelry, that's
Speaker 5: what she was wearing.
Speaker 2: I have to point out, pertaining to the jewelry, one
Speaker 2: of the things again that I mean, it's just it's
Speaker 2: so funny that it's not funny, but It's funny the
Speaker 2: homicide de Texas. We took possession in my van at
Speaker 2: the time in nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 3: It's never left their custody.
Speaker 2: So some of the jewelry that they mentioned now bear
Speaker 2: in mind, a state trooper in April of nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: five did the inventory sarch.
Speaker 3: No jewelry was found.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: I get arrested on May eleventh, nineteen ninety five on
Speaker 2: a warrant for marijuana possession, and from that point on,
Speaker 2: the van was in the possession in the Punham County
Speaker 2: serff's department, and the jewelry that they claim to have
Speaker 2: fine in the map compartment was already searched by two
Speaker 2: other officers. So it never left your possession. It wasn't found.
Speaker 2: How does it get found?
Speaker 5: Conveniently they had, they searched the van, they didn't see it.
Speaker 7: And then suddenly.
Speaker 5: After they had decided how this case is going to go, oh,
Speaker 5: there's jewelry in the van. That wow, people can link
Speaker 5: to the homicide.
Speaker 2: Now it's a piece of physical because all the DNA
Speaker 2: testing up into point in that time, fiber blood analysis
Speaker 2: or whatever was going on, did not support their version.
Speaker 2: There was not a hair of Joseph right inside that vehicle.
Speaker 2: She's never been in the vile, She's never been in
Speaker 2: none of my vehicles. So it systematically became obvious that
Speaker 2: they needed some more to push this version of events.
Speaker 2: And by doing so, they say, there's now physical evidence
Speaker 2: of Joe's right being inside that van, So you must
Speaker 2: believe in these roles.
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting here now thinking about maybe they were
Speaker 1: sitting around having a coffee or lunch, or maybe having
Speaker 1: a meeting in the Investigator of Prosecutors or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: and somebody goes, I got an idea, and go, hey,
Speaker 1: what's that? Well, what if a jewelry story? Yeah, what
Speaker 1: if we go with the jewelry story? So it goes
Speaker 1: that's a great idea. I mean, like, how does it?
Speaker 1: How does everybody go so far wrong? It makes me insane?
Speaker 1: So anyway, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence. We
Speaker 1: are here now to bring attention to this madness and
Speaker 1: to your plight and to hopefully help advance the cause
Speaker 1: of justice, which the wheels are turning. And you know,
Speaker 1: you have a great team. We have this pending motion.
Speaker 1: I guess right, yep, And I'm projecting positive outcomes as
Speaker 1: I know you are, and we have a lot of
Speaker 1: legal support.
Speaker 5: I mean, because all of Anthony's team is they've got
Speaker 5: great lawyers, They've been totally helpful. I think the whole network,
Speaker 5: the innocence network, will be supportive on the legal issue
Speaker 5: at the very least because of the question of why
Speaker 5: one person still in jail and the other one isn't.
Speaker 5: So I think that appeals just on an emotional gut
Speaker 5: level to people.
Speaker 7: So I think we're gonna get.
Speaker 5: A lot of support on behalf of our position in
Speaker 5: the court. So I feel actually quite positively that we'll
Speaker 5: we'll get.
Speaker 7: A new trial.
Speaker 1: And when we do, I think it's impossible to imagine
Speaker 1: how a jury you can look at this evidence now
Speaker 1: and say yeah, no, yeah, I mean reasonable doubt, my ass.
Speaker 1: I mean, this thing is it's a mountain of shot.
Speaker 5: In the intervening years, also, people have learned a lot
Speaker 5: about why folks falsely confess and how that happens. I
Speaker 5: think that public is much more educated.
Speaker 7: And jurors will be as well.
Speaker 5: So I think at the time that Andy was convicted,
Speaker 5: nobody believed that individuals falsely confessed, So if they heard
Speaker 5: a confession, they figured it must be true, and I
Speaker 5: don't think they needed much additional evidence, and they had
Speaker 5: Denise Rose. So with the two of those statements, I
Speaker 5: think it would have been very hard in that time
Speaker 5: to have gotten a not guilty verdict. Now it's a
Speaker 5: very different story. We know a lot more about what
Speaker 5: people do, and we know a lot more, unfortunately about
Speaker 5: police practices.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to say this before I turn it
Speaker 1: over to you for closing remarks. Having heard about you
Speaker 1: and heard about your case for some time now, I
Speaker 1: really wanted to come up here and meet you. Now
Speaker 1: that I have met you and getting a sense of
Speaker 1: your strength and your spirit, I can say that I'm
Speaker 1: going to do everything in my power to help Adele.
Speaker 1: In the team, there's a lot of people who care
Speaker 1: about you and care about this case and care about justice,
Speaker 1: and we're just going to keep going until we get
Speaker 1: you out. So with that, I mean, you've said a
Speaker 1: lot and you don't have to say anything else. But
Speaker 1: if there's anything else you want to share with the
Speaker 1: audience now, it would be a good time to do it.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, you know, first, I just want to
Speaker 2: thank you Sabin, with Dell everybody listening for your support.
Speaker 2: Continued support, future support or it means a lot.
Speaker 3: It really does.
Speaker 2: You got to find strength in yourself in order to
Speaker 2: face adversity and going through the situation. It's a constant battle.
Speaker 2: But I won't give up. You can't give up. Everybody
Speaker 2: be hearing from me soon. I got a start to
Speaker 2: tell I stay positive, I stay driven. Otherwise I'm subjected
Speaker 2: to just the whims and the mercy of what they
Speaker 2: did to me, and I can't let that happen.
Speaker 1: Last question, do you want people to write to you?
Speaker 1: Is there any social media you want them to go
Speaker 1: to you?
Speaker 2: I mean absolutely, I would love to hear from anybody
Speaker 2: and everybody you know.
Speaker 1: Can you give the information of where people can write?
Speaker 2: Wendy Correctional Facility all in New York? I'm not sure
Speaker 2: the zip cord. I apologize for that.
Speaker 1: Wendy wnd WE and.
Speaker 3: De Correctional facility. It's an old in New York.
Speaker 2: Ald E And my name is Andrew kreevac kr I
Speaker 2: v AK and my DIN number is ninety seven A
Speaker 2: four two three six. If you want to know a
Speaker 2: little bit more about me, you could look up obviously
Speaker 2: my colt of Anthony, the Pippo Home, A lot of
Speaker 2: the information is on his Facebook.
Speaker 1: Page or just google your name and my name.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a lot of news articles recently through
Speaker 2: the exposure of the evidence and things that came out
Speaker 2: with Anthony's retrial. Also, Jeffrey Deskovic, who I'm in close
Speaker 2: contact with, is also in my corner and speaks of
Speaker 2: my case. And you know, I want to just thank
Speaker 2: those that have reached out to me so far, some
Speaker 2: of which I'm corresponding with, and I'm looking to link
Speaker 2: up with as many people as possible, just pay forward,
Speaker 2: do something positive.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up too, because Jeffrey Deskovic,
Speaker 1: who had a terrible thing in common with you, which
Speaker 1: was this lying polygraph examiner, has become a very powerful
Speaker 1: advocate for the wrongfully convicted, and he's been on the show,
Speaker 1: he passed the bar in New York State, and I
Speaker 1: do want to just mention that he has been a
Speaker 1: very vocal and passionate advocate of yours and Anthony's and
Speaker 1: others who've been wrongfully convicted. So shout out to jeff
Speaker 1: and I know he's here in spirit and he's on
Speaker 1: your side. Other one, we're all pushing this snowball up
Speaker 1: to health together.
Speaker 3: And I appreciate it. I really do.
Speaker 2: I know sometimes I can't in the future. People, You
Speaker 2: just see how much I appreciate things. But like I said,
Speaker 2: it's up to us to make change and eventually we're over.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Ronfuel Conviction behind bars, and
Speaker 1: I want to thank well the star of our show
Speaker 1: today who I'm very excited to see on the outside soon,
Speaker 1: Andrew Kreevac. Thank you for being on and at del Bernhard.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: This is a wonderful lawyer.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you to our producers, to Bean Jansen for coming
Speaker 1: and making us sound as good as we can even
Speaker 1: with all of the deal cool.
Speaker 5: Thank you Jason for doing this work and making a
Speaker 5: difference in so many people's lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to say that too. You know, I
Speaker 2: definitely applored your longevity. It means a lot. Like I said,
Speaker 2: you know, it's because of people like you that allow
Speaker 2: people like me to have the opportunity to.
Speaker 3: Correct these rooms. So it definitely touches.
Speaker 1: My heart won't stop, not gonna stop, and I'm very
Speaker 1: stubborn and that's a good thing in this line of work.
Speaker 1: Because you need it. And like I said, I've seen
Speaker 1: too many miracles to stop believing in miracles. Don't forget
Speaker 1: to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: it really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in
Speaker 1: supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
Speaker 1: wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot orgorg to learn how
Speaker 1: to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our
Speaker 1: production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in
Speaker 1: the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction
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Speaker 1: and association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 3: The Boy Went the
Speaker 4: Wind, The Boy Undered Dream,