00:00:00
Speaker 1: This series includes sensitive and potentially distressing topics, including sexual assault and abuse involving children. Listener discretion is advised. On November twenty second, nineteen ninety five, a hunter named Peter Erickson walked the woods of Carmel, New York, fifty or so yards in from Fields Lane. He was out there that morning with a buddy of his named Bruce. It was the first day of a hunting season in Putnam County, and the two friends were setting up a tree stand that morning. That's the perch that hunters hinda waiting for a deer.

00:00:44
Speaker 2: My buddy was down below. He's free to heights, so he was handing me stuff and I was up in this tree and all of a sudden, I look out in the road, and there's like twenty cop cars pull up, you know, all at once, and then they start walking into the woods, and you're like, what is going on here?

00:01:05
Speaker 1: The Carminlson County seat of Putnam. It's still a pretty small town enough so that Peter knew some of the cops who swarmed the woods that morning.

00:01:14
Speaker 2: I recognized a few of them, one of them Pat His name was Pacistaldo.

00:01:20
Speaker 1: Pacstaldo, a detective for the Putnam County sheriff straight out of a drugstore novel. He slicked his hair back in a tight pompadour and wore a top coat even when it was warm. Oh and he moonlighted on weekends as an Elvis impersonator in several of the local dives.

00:01:41
Speaker 2: And the guy kind of looked like Elvis a little bit. But that's why he was so memorable to me. It wasn't my friend. I was like an acquaintance that we knew from working there in the jail periodically doing electrical work. So as they were coming in, I say, I ain't doing what's going on? And he goes, well, somebody found something in the woods.

00:02:02
Speaker 1: Earlier that morning, another hunter had stumbled over something in those woods. He went to check it out. It was the skull of a preteen girl.

00:02:12
Speaker 2: He had found that skull, took it home, took it home.

00:02:18
Speaker 1: Later that day, the hunter called the cops. And now, as costalgo told Peter and Bruce, he was out there looking for her body.

00:02:31
Speaker 2: So we're like, no way. You know, this is Putnam County. Back then it was a quieter town. You don't hear this stuff here. So my friend Bruce and I said, do you mind if we kind of look around and help you. So he goes, uh, yeah, no problem.

00:02:49
Speaker 1: Cops rarely let civilians walk their crime scene. According to Peter, though, that's what happened here.

00:02:58
Speaker 2: So I'm walking and my buddy Bruce goes, hey, come over here.

00:03:05
Speaker 1: Castaldo and the other cops rushed over to Bruce. He was crouched in the clearing between the trees, over a mound of sticks and leaves that looked composed. He lifted one of the branches and a chunk of the ground cover came up. He saw something underneath it.

00:03:23
Speaker 2: It was her skeleton. There's a tremendous amount of debris as well. I mean, you see the skeleton, but it's not like this bright white thing that's sticking out in the woods. There was a mandible the lower part of the jaw and her moram was tied inde mandible was sitting on the ground. There was hair there. You could see there was hair there, dirty blonde like hair, just laying there in the leaves. It was the ribbed cage. It looked like it's kind of sickening. I mean, it looked like the rib cage was mostly intact. This skeleton was small too. It was It was a small skeleton. It was horrible.

00:04:10
Speaker 1: The body belonged to a twelve year old girl, a girl going missing a full year prior. Her name was Josette Right and it was Costaldo they put in charge of finding her. The cops taped the site off and gathered forensics. They were clothes draped over the body, including the coach she was last seen wearing. It was badly moldered, with plant where it's growing through it. Her broad been tied around her head. Forensics pros would later say that it had been used to gagger, along with her underwear, which had been stuffed in her mouth. Her hands were bound in a complex odd tie. A sash cord ran from her wrist to both her neck and ankle, yanking her right foot back behind her and not far from her body, cops found a hunting knife rusted in the damp. I'm Paul Salatarov, and for thirty three years I've written for Rolling Stone magazine. I go after racist cops who shoot and kill on her black kids. I investigate me on Nazi's bent on genocide in Virginia, and social media tech lords who look the other way, while the cartel's poisoned children on their platforms. Now, when you write those kinds of stories, one after another, you build a layer of callous around your heart. But this story has pierced the skin and will not give me peace. I keep hearing the voices of girls who'd warned the cops about a demon, a hundred of girls hiding in the woods. And I keep hearing the voice of that demon in the woods, a voice that's still in my head five years later. You'll soon meet him in this reason. In fact, he's lurking here.

00:06:03
Speaker 3: In this episode. To him, my madness, laughter, my fears, sorrows, depths are endless.

00:06:29
Speaker 1: In this.

00:06:31
Speaker 3: Valley of the years. I want to see your revelation. I want to know whar I'm reaching out and desperate shn to the one who's holding the stars, to the one who's holding holding the stars.

00:07:26
Speaker 1: This is the devil's quarry.