00:00:00
Speaker 1: The episode you're about to hear was produced in the first year of this podcast back in 2017. It was episode number 33. At the time, this was an episode of Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars because Andrew Krivak was still sitting in a maximum security prison cell in New York State Prison. But two years after this interview, Andy's conviction was finally vacated. And in October of 2020, he was finally released on bail. It was an honor for me to be there with his team to walk him out of jail. The Deskovic Foundation helped bring on additional legal counsel, the legendary Oscar Michelin and Karen Newworth, to represent Andy at his 2023 retrial. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and Andy was finally exonerated after 24 long, miserable years in prison. In 2024, Putnam County paid him a $ 20 million settlement. To hear more about Andy's incredible case, tune in to Season 5 of Bone Valley, titled The Devil's Quarry. Paul Solitaroff tells the story of Andy's co-defendant, Anthony DePippo, and the crime that landed both Andy and Anthony wrongfully in prison. A second installment of The Devil's Quarry is coming soon. It investigates another case in the same town with eerie links to Andy Krivak's story. Look out for the first episode on September 30th. Trust me, you don't want to miss it. And now Here is Andy's story.

00:01:32
Speaker 2: I think we have the best legal system. It's just the people that implement it.

00:01:36
Speaker 3: They get lost along the way and forget what their job really is.

00:01:41
Speaker 4: He just kept on trying to remind me that who was in authority, who was in control, and how easy it was for my body to be found in any alley of New York City.

00:01:54
Speaker 5: It's a tough prison when you have the guards going against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison.

00:02:01
Speaker 2: They do that.

00:02:01
Speaker 6: They'll give a guy a life sentence and go home and eat spaghetti like it was nothing.

00:02:07
Speaker 4: And anybody that would say, well, why would you confess to something that you didn't do? My question to them would be, why wouldn't you confess when somebody's threatening to kill your life?

00:02:15
Speaker 6: The judge, he said, how you feel?

00:02:19
Speaker 7: I said, I'm okay.

00:02:20
Speaker 2: He said, well, today is your lucky day. You're going home.

00:02:25
Speaker 7: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. We have a very unique case and a very special episode of Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars. Today is going to be the noisiest episode. I just want to warn you up front because we're inside Wendy Maximum Security Prison in Buffalo, New York. So apologies in advance, but I promise you, you're going to hear an extraordinary interview today. And so hang in there and hear the story of Andrew Krivak. You've probably heard Andrew's co-defendant, Anthony DePippo, his episode of Wrongful Conviction aired recently. And so this is a case where we have Anthony on the show having been exonerated, and yet we're still back here behind bars interviewing his co-defendant, which makes no fucking sense. But here we are. If you hear the cell door slamming, you'll know it's as real as it can be.

00:03:17
Speaker 8: It was a horrific case, the rape and strangulation in 1994 of angelically beautiful 12-year-old Josette Wright.

00:03:24
Speaker 5: And now to a stunning development in a sensational case of a convicted child killer rapist in Putnam County.

00:03:30
Speaker 2: What's wrong with this case?

00:03:31
Speaker 3: This case was created out of whole cloth by the deputy sheriff in charge of this case.

00:03:36
Speaker 2: Who himself has been indicted by this very county for crimes.

00:03:39
Speaker 8: DePippo still maintains his innocence.

00:03:41
Speaker 5: The jury in Putnam County found him not guilty. The main witness against him was a former girlfriend who said she witnessed the attack, but the jury didn't buy it.

00:03:49
Speaker 2: What we learned at this trial is that the eyewitness wasn't credible.

00:03:52
Speaker 5: The defense was allowed to suggest Howard Gombert is the real killer, seen with the victim shortly before her disappearance and currently in a Connecticut prison on sex assault charges.

00:04:01
Speaker 8: Judge Robert Neary ordered DePippo released on a million dollars bail.

00:04:05
Speaker 5: The Putnam County District Attorney, though, isn't backing down. He insists not guilty is not the same as innocent.

00:04:11
Speaker 7: Andrew, welcome to the show.

00:04:14
Speaker 2: Thanks.

00:04:14
Speaker 7: In this case, I can say I'm sorry you're here. Usually I'm happy to have our guests on the show, but I'm sorry to be taping it in this facility. I'm looking forward to seeing you on the outside sometime soon.

00:04:23
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

00:04:25
Speaker 7: We also have with us another very special guest, someone who I consider to be a sort of royalty. A lot of people consider her to be royalty in the innocence community. The one and only Adele Bernhardt is here.

00:04:37
Speaker 2: Adele, welcome.

00:04:38
Speaker 6: Thank you very much. I'm very glad to be here. I'm really glad you're focusing on Andy's case. I think it's important and I'm glad.

00:04:45
Speaker 7: So Adele has been representing Andy for over 10 years now.

00:04:48
Speaker 6: Well, close to 10, I guess.

00:04:50
Speaker 7: Unfortunately, it's easy to get wrongfully convicted and undoing it. We know it takes thousands of hours of legal work. In this case, it's no different. So, Andy, going back to the beginning, where were you from? Where were you born originally?

00:05:04
Speaker 3: I was originally born in Putnam County, New York, Putnam County Hospital. Raised there until probably like 1990. Then my family moved to Stormville, New York, to take care of my grandmother, me and my father, my grandmother and my brother, and at the time, my stepmother.

00:05:19
Speaker 7: And your childhood, was it a happy childhood? How were things?

00:05:24
Speaker 2: It was.

00:05:24
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, we had our normal problems like anything else. I can't say that, you know, I was subjected to anything unusual. It was normal for the most part. I had my, you know, little issues growing up, primarily because I didn't know my real mother. So, you know, I was emotional a lot on that end of things. But it was pretty normal.

00:05:42
Speaker 7: And, I mean, upstate New York, pretty nice place to grow up. It's beautiful around here. Did you play sports?

00:05:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, I grew up. Actually, I started fifth grade football. From that point on, I played baseball.

00:05:53
Speaker 2: Basketball.

00:05:54
Speaker 3: I did that probably up until junior high with the hopes that I could go into high school playing sports and see how far I can go.

00:06:02
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, that never panned out.

00:06:04
Speaker 7: So you were a teenager growing up doing teenager type stuff, right? Certainly not getting in trouble, right? That's a double negative. But yeah, I mean, like, you know.

00:06:14
Speaker 2: Nothing major. I mean, you know, juvenile things.

00:06:17
Speaker 7: But you were not a violent guy.

00:06:18
Speaker 2: No.

00:06:19
Speaker 7: No. So you're going along trying to find your way, like a lot of teenagers, and then one day something absolutely horrifying happens. A young girl, 12-year-old girl named Josette Wright, was raped and brutally murdered. But they didn't know that at the time. All they knew was that she had disappeared. Yes. Did you know her?

00:06:40
Speaker 3: I knew her from being around the area. seeing her, knowing her older sisters. Carmel's a small community, so everybody interacted. You know, when a fair comes around, everybody goes to the fair, they got a plaza, so they have all these regular areas that you would run into people. So, yeah, for that part of in passing or being around somewhere or being in a fair, yeah, I knew her to that.

00:07:01
Speaker 2: Extent, yes.

00:07:02
Speaker 7: And, Adele, this is a very strange aspect of this case because here you have this small community, sounds sort of idyllic in a lot of ways, and... This lovely young girl disappears one day.

00:07:14
Speaker 6: All right.

00:07:15
Speaker 7: Now, you know, we all see on TV when these things happen, the search parties are formed. There's, you know, the whole town comes out, almost pandemonium, but controlled pandemonium where people are just searching everywhere to find this little girl. But that's not what happened, right? The authorities didn't at first believe that she even was really missing. They thought she ran away.

00:07:33
Speaker 6: Well, from what I could tell from the records they've turned over to us, the police didn't seem to take her disappearance terribly seriously at all. So they put up some wanted posters, but that's about it. So as far as I can see from all of the records that I've gathered, unless I'm missing something, they figured she'd come back. They figured she was a runaway. They didn't really take it very seriously. They logged a couple of calls. People reported seeing her later on in the malls. But I guess they thought, well, easy come, easy go. She'll be back.

00:08:06
Speaker 7: I mean, as a parent, It's just outrageous.

00:08:10
Speaker 6: I think it's very shocking.

00:08:11
Speaker 7: And it's particularly outrageous because of her age. I mean, it's not like she was 17 where you could say, well, you know, sometimes 17-year-olds run away.

00:08:19
Speaker 6: She was in school every day. She wasn't getting into trouble with older people from anyplace else. So the fact that she all of a sudden wasn't there was, I think, pretty serious. Yes.

00:08:31
Speaker 7: She was 12. I mean, Jesus, it's so young. The horror of that is unimaginable. But so... Months and months go by.

00:08:40
Speaker 6: Right.

00:08:40
Speaker 7: You've obviously heard about the case. Everybody's probably heard about the case.

00:08:43
Speaker 1: Yes.

00:08:44
Speaker 7: And then, I think it was 13 months later, her body was found in the woods. And now everything changes.

00:08:52
Speaker 1: Right.

00:08:52
Speaker 6: All of a sudden, once they found the bones and they were able to identify the dental records as belonging to her, suddenly the police realized that they should have been paying more attention. This is my interpretation of the records. It looked like they realized, hey, we should have been taking this more seriously all the way along. Now we know this is a homicide. It's not just a runaway. She's not coming back. And we didn't follow up the leads that might have let us discover what happened much, much earlier when the trail wasn't so cold.

00:09:27
Speaker 7: So, Andrew, now we have a situation where not only is there the very real problem of the fact that there's a brutal child killer in the midst of this town, right, and everything that that would mean to the authorities, many of whom have kids of their own or relatives or nieces, whatever it might be. So on a personal level, all of a sudden there's a real sense of urgency, but also there's got to be a lot of pressure from the community when something like this happens.

00:09:54
Speaker 2: Absolutely.

00:09:55
Speaker 7: So they've now got, and we see this over and over again, they've got a real... scramble and they got to find somebody because otherwise it's going to be difficult.

00:10:05
Speaker 6: Obvious that they didn't do their job.

00:10:07
Speaker 7: And it's going to be a lot more pressure brought to bear on them. There could be people losing their jobs. Who knows what could happen? People getting voted out. They got to find this guy or people who did this, right? So Things start to go downhill quick from this point. And ultimately, you end up being arrested and charged with this crime that you must have been like, are you kidding? I mean, were you like, are you kidding?

00:10:31
Speaker 2: I was in shock.

00:10:32
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, the actual process was like 50 paces behind my brain, like trying to catch up.

00:10:39
Speaker 2: Like, wait a minute.

00:10:41
Speaker 6: You mean your brain was 50 paces behind what was happening?

00:10:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, my conscious, you know, it's like trying to wait. Am I really sitting here? You know, as a juvenile, I've been in and out of little situations. So, but to being told that I raped and murdered somebody at 17, like, are you serious?

00:10:59
Speaker 2: Right. You know what I'm saying?

00:11:00
Speaker 3: Like, I mean, just anybody who knows me would like, like they don't correlate the two. And, you know, for me to try to process that I'm being accused of it and sitting in there and having, you know, these people yell at me and say, there's evidence, there's witnesses, there's people. And I'm, Yelling back, you're lying, you're crazy, you're making it up. I don't really think it still has hit me because I refuse to let it. It's like I'm in this altered state of just trying to figure this out. Like, wait a minute, you know, it's got to be a bad dream. I'm waking up sometime.

00:11:30
Speaker 7: How did they land on you and Anthony? I mean, I know the story, but I want to hear it from your perspective because it's so bizarre. There was no physical evidence connecting you. Do you understand how that happened?

00:11:43
Speaker 3: No, and I think about it every day. You know, I have since this has happened. My only consensus of it is maybe prior run-ins being an easy target.

00:11:52
Speaker 2: I don't know.

00:11:53
Speaker 3: Like I said, you know, you try to make sense of something that doesn't make sense and you drive yourself crazy.

00:11:58
Speaker 6: For one thing, what happened is that Denise Rose got herself arrested.

00:12:03
Speaker 3: Well, eventually, I mean, yeah, you know, later on down the line through their talking to people, whatever the case may be, different names came up. I think at least personally, that it still extends farther than just people mentioning names because you would think that the professionals that are actively pursuing leads and looking for the culprits or the culprit that committed this crime would be able to hang themselves onto something tangible as opposed to, oh, well, yeah, he knew her or she knew him or, you know what I'm saying? So I think it's a little bit more than that. To what extent?

00:12:35
Speaker 2: I don't know.

00:12:36
Speaker 3: It's obvious that there's more to it. than just singling us out because a name was mentioned.

00:12:42
Speaker 7: Do you want to jump in here, Adele?

00:12:45
Speaker 6: Sure, I mean... When Denise Rose got arrested, they had an idea of who the likely suspects were in the town. And I think that Anthony, in particular, was a likely suspect just because he was a big guy, they knew him, he'd gotten in trouble for various juvenile kinds of things. And so when Denise gets arrested and she's in trouble and they know that she had been arrested, his girlfriend at around the time that they now decided that this little girl was murdered, they immediately started putting the pressure on her. Did you know him? You knew him then. How did you know him? Weren't you with him? Weren't you with him that night? Didn't you see what happened? And they talked to her time and time again. They talked to her at least three different times while she was in jail, after she'd gotten arrested, while she was worried about about going to jail herself. And so little bit by little bit by little bit, they got her to start thinking that maybe there would be something in it for her to put these pieces together for them when she could perfectly well see where they wanted her to go, which was to give them something about this murder that involved Anthony. And of course, Anthony's friend, who he was with a lot of the time, is auntie.

00:14:09
Speaker 7: So it's a little bit of a house of cards. And Denise would not seem to have been the most credible witness since by her own admission she smoked crack thousands of times.

00:14:19
Speaker 6: Yeah, but I don't know that they knew that then. That came out in this third trial where there was some really very pointed cross-examination and a lot of discovery about who she was and what she had done. I don't know how much the police knew or even thought about it at the time. I just know that they realized that maybe this is a way into this case, right? Maybe we can put pressure on this gal and then the whole thing will fall into place.

00:14:47
Speaker 7: Why they would have assumed that she would know who the killer was, that's for anybody to speculate. Right.

00:14:52
Speaker 6: Only because they already had in their mind this idea. I mean, if she had been somebody else's boyfriend during that time. They might have picked on somebody else. But I think it was a way like, okay, we've got pressure on you. You know the other kids. You know all the kids in this community. Okay, the gal who disappeared was a kid. Maybe you know something about it. We're going to go with this. Right.

00:15:14
Speaker 7: And she ultimately came up with a very farcical story, which has been disproven in every imaginable way. I mean, it never made sense in the first place, but now it's actually been disproven. Adele, what was this story that she She told a.

00:15:28
Speaker 6: Completely, as far as I'm concerned, incredible story. And so I think that the police had in their minds, because I really think this story came from the investigating officers. I think they came up with this idea of how they thought that the crime must have happened. And they pushed their hypothesis onto everybody, eventually convincing juries that this is indeed what happened. And it starts from where they found the body because they found these bones off of a dirt road, which was a road that all the kids in the community used to go to to smoke pot. So they knew that people drove down there. and they knew that people smoked pot. So from there, they kind of worked backwards and said, oh, what must have happened is that she must have gone with these older kids, and they were smoking pot, and then they killed her and threw her body into the woods. So they had this idea in their minds, is my belief, before they talked to her. And then they got her to say exactly what they thought. Now, remember, they had been investigating the case before. for months before they talked to her. So they knew where the body was found. They knew how far that road was from where the kids all lived. They knew who drove down that road. And they said, isn't this what happened, Denise? And she's like, yeah, that's right. We're all in a van.

00:16:51
Speaker 7: We're all high. And there were, according to her story, her fairy tale, there were five people besides the victim in the van.

00:17:00
Speaker 6: Correct.

00:17:00
Speaker 7: All of whom knew what was going on, including her.

00:17:02
Speaker 6: Right.

00:17:03
Speaker 7: But she made it sound like she wasn't involved. And what I find absolutely preposterous about all of this is that let us not forget that 13 months had gone by, or more, by the time they interviewed her. And somehow, magically, not she or any of the other people in the van ever breathed a word of it to anyone.

00:17:24
Speaker 6: Right, so she claims that she is present and sees a rape and a murder of a 12-year-old girl that happens in a car right in front of her eyes, that she sees the whole thing, and she never mentions it to a soul.

00:17:40
Speaker 7: Not her mother, not a priest, not anybody. Not her best friend. Not her best friend, right.

00:17:44
Speaker 6: Teenage girls have best friends. They tell them everything.

00:17:48
Speaker 7: Adele, I've never been a teenage girl, but are teenage girls good at keeping secrets? No, they do not keep secrets. They're not good at keeping secrets, okay. And we don't want to sound sexist here. Teenage boys are no good at it either. In this case... You'd have to look at that and go, no, that's not possible. Somebody's lying because that didn't happen the way she says or somebody else would have known and it would have gotten out there. So anyway, so she makes up this story about the five of us in the van and the victim and we're driving with her to go smoke pot, whatever the hell she's saying.

00:18:20
Speaker 2: Can I just interject for a minute?

00:18:22
Speaker 3: Before it even got to that point, you got to be aware that there were two previous statements. both of which she doesn't know nothing, more along the lines of the truth. For whatever reasons, it came to her disclosing, oh, I witnessed this heinous crime, is obvious in the sense.

00:18:41
Speaker 2: Where the police.

00:18:43
Speaker 3: Detectives in the case, primarily Patrick Costaldo, had seen her several times and either badgered her, threatened her, intimidated her, bullied her, all of the above, but finally convinced her that it was in her best interest, to lie and to say she was a witness of this crime that she never witnessed and that we never committed.

00:19:05
Speaker 7: And it wasn't her best interest because who knows what she would have been facing herself.

00:19:09
Speaker 2: Well, absolutely.

00:19:09
Speaker 3: And again, too, she was actually older than both me and Anthony. So she was already on probation. She's had arrests for drugs. So it's easy to understand how that type of threat of going to jail would influence her to go along with the cop's version of events.

00:19:26
Speaker 7: It's a very real threat. And also, we know, too, that she was a teenager, even though she was older than you. She was still a very young woman. And, you know, she may not have been able to process the real consequences of her actions. Your case has many of the causes that we see most frequently in wrongful convictions. Whatever the reverse of a jackpot is, you hit it because you had incentivized witnesses. You had solicitors. sloppy or incompetent police work, a known liar who was the guy who administered the polygraph. We know that because he was the same guy from Jeffrey Deskovic's case who lied in his case. Then the false confession in your case, which is really one of the main reasons why you're still here where the state, county authorities have admitted that they got it wrong, right? Anthony's home and he's been on the show. He's live and in person and you're still here. And I think it's fair to say that one of the main reasons for that is the fact that they did manage to elicit a false confession from you, which again is confounding to so many people who look at me with these faces and they go, I would never confess to something I didn't do. And a jury can't understand that either, right? How did they get you to confess to a crime you didn't commit?

00:20:40
Speaker 2: Well, it's not my words. I didn't confess to nothing.

00:20:42
Speaker 3: It's a pre-written statement made by them that I wound up breaking down and signing.

00:20:46
Speaker 6: I think that's important.

00:20:48
Speaker 7: It is.

00:20:48
Speaker 6: It's not his words. It's their words on a piece of paper.

00:20:51
Speaker 3: To understand my interrogation, I came in. I denied everything, obviously. And at the time, my mind was working like, oh, lie detector test. They'll see I pass it. They'll understand I made a mistake. And I'll be let go.

00:21:06
Speaker 7: So you believe they were after justice. They wanted to do the right thing.

00:21:09
Speaker 3: Yes, my naivete at the time believed in the good of the system and not to, at that particular moment, think that they were devising this big operation to get themselves to solve a case by any means necessary. Now I know, obviously. But yeah, I was still believing that even if they were under the impression I had any involvement, by me giving a lie detector's test would clear that up. And then it would reevaluate and go somewhere else. That's what my belief was. So I answered the questions. They didn't like them, obviously. So I said, well, give me lie detector tests. I have nothing to hide. I have nothing to be untruthful about. And I took three consecutive lie detector tests by Daniel Stevens.

00:21:51
Speaker 2: And then the interrogation continued. You lied. You failed.

00:21:55
Speaker 3: More aggressive. More intimidating. I keep denying it. There's yelling back and forth. So it's like at that point in time, I'm going through it. You know, they're not listening to me.

00:22:04
Speaker 7: Did you have a lawyer or a parent or anybody in there with you?

00:22:07
Speaker 3: Well, ironically, from what I found out after the fact was, all right, just to bring it back a little bit, at the time of my arrest, it's crazy because I was reporting to my probation office in Beacon, New York.

00:22:18
Speaker 2: It was a morning.

00:22:20
Speaker 3: I was at the time with a girl who was my girlfriend. She was in the car. So we left my house. I went and reported to probation. I was going to meet my father to go to work because at the time I worked for him. And, um, While I was in my probationer's office, four detectives come in the room, Castaldo and Quick from Putnam County and two Beacon detectives. And they detained me, put me in the car and bring me to Putnam County. Now my girlfriend is still sitting in the car. Okay, so she calls my family. My father finds out. Now apparently everybody goes to the sheriff's department to find out what's going on, why did it happen. And apparently while I was being interrogated, the news was outside in the parking lot. My family was out there, so I guess there was a whole scrum going on out there while I'm in the back room being worked over. One of the things I beat myself up with is how I was allowed to just give in. But again, a sense in my mind that was working was like, you can't make an untruth truth. So regardless of what's written on paper, it's words on paper. It's not evidence. And I really felt that if it had to come to litigation, meaning court, that the evidence and the truth would come out and solidify my innocence. again, that's being young and naive into the system. And I pretty much helped them convict me wrongfully for this crime.

00:23:39
Speaker 7: But you were young and naive, and I don't think you can really beat yourself up. The thing is, I think for me anyway, having met and befriended and worked for and with so many people who not only signed a piece of paper like you did, we see all different types of false confessions.

00:23:58
Speaker 6: I think it's perfectly understandable and reasonable to think that the truth is going to come out and that you can't change it. And if you're innocent, that that will eventually be the story that emerges, which is, I think what he's saying is, I figured the truth would prevail. I'm innocent. Everyone will eventually know that.

00:24:20
Speaker 7: Yeah. And correct me if I'm wrong, Andrew, but when you're in that room, and I'm just trying to put myself in your shoes and it's giving me the chills, but it became clear after many hours of interrogation that these guys were not going to listen to you.

00:24:36
Speaker 2: No, absolutely not.

00:24:37
Speaker 7: I mean, there was nothing you could, by now you'd said everything you could say, and they keep telling you you're lying, and they keep becoming more aggressive, right? So at a certain point you go, well, this ain't working, right?

00:24:48
Speaker 1: No.

00:24:48
Speaker 7: This is not getting me anywhere. But somebody somewhere is going to be on my side because it's called the justice system. And I'm just a kid and I didn't do anything. So I got to get out of this room and into a different place where there's people with robes on and things like that that are like, you know, wise and that are not these sort of half crazed interrogators. They're not letting up, and you ain't getting out of that room. I mean, it's not like they said, well, one more hour, we're going to let you go home, right?

00:25:17
Speaker 5: No, no.

00:25:18
Speaker 7: You're there indefinitely.

00:25:18
Speaker 3: They pretty much wanted to hear me admit that I committed this crime, and I kept getting more aggressively.

00:25:25
Speaker 2: In my nature of telling them that I didn't commit it. And it was a volcano getting ready to erupt.

00:25:33
Speaker 7: Were you worried that they were going to be physically violent with you?

00:25:37
Speaker 3: Daniel Stevens already had, upon my completing the polygraph test, when he told me I failed, grabbed me by my throat, punched me in my stomach, told me that I was a piece of shit, I'm going to get what I deserve and all this other stuff.

00:25:49
Speaker 6: We know he's made other people falsely confess. That's what you didn't know at the time.

00:25:54
Speaker 2: No, we didn't know at the time.

00:25:55
Speaker 7: He's also been similarly violent in other cases and was brought up on charges for at least one of those, right? Okay, so now we're getting really to the crux of it. So you now have a guy who is a very real danger to you.

00:26:06
Speaker 1: Yes.

00:26:06
Speaker 7: I mean, he has now physically assaulted you. and you have no way out of this room, nobody who's listening to you, and you've now been beaten, and you don't know what's coming next. So at a certain point, you say, okay, well, here's this piece of paper. It's my way out, and then we're going to get this sorted out later because the truth is the truth. You didn't do it.

00:26:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's always been my belief.

00:26:31
Speaker 3: I mean, even to this day, like I said, I mean, I just find it completely preposterous that they could try to stand behind that argument when all the physical, scientific, and forensic evidence disproves what's.

00:26:43
Speaker 2: On that paper.

00:26:44
Speaker 7: Oh, by the way, did you fail a polygraph test? No.

00:26:47
Speaker 3: We had our own polygraphist at the time who was a retired polygraph expert for the feds, was on the polygraph board of administrators, who came and reviewed my tests and determined that the attempts were to make it fail by disconnecting parts in the machine. And he said, despite all of that, I was truthful in every answer.

00:27:07
Speaker 7: Wow, they're disconnecting parts of the machine. I mean, on top of everything else, it's just like.

00:27:12
Speaker 2: Well, Daniel Stevens, I mean.

00:27:14
Speaker 7: Where are we, in Russia?

00:27:15
Speaker 3: This is what was exposed with Jeffrey Deskovich into his procedure and his version of what he does and the correct manner in which to perform a polygraph test. I mean, there's a lot of dynamics in my case that don't make sense. Like, how was that introduced as evidence when it's not allowed? It was never a mechanism for them to try to ascertain the truth.

00:27:33
Speaker 6: That's correct.

00:27:33
Speaker 3: It was a sole tactic of an interrogatory process to manipulate, beat me down, to get me in a position to give them what they wanted, which they eventually did.

00:27:42
Speaker 7: Heads you lose, tails you lose. And now we know, too, like on top of all those other causes, that the three central police figures in this investigation have all been either indicted or convicted of other crimes. I mean, the system really failed you. so many ways and these are ways that we as a society have to address because if we don't it's going to happen to somebody else and for those of you out there listening it could be someone you love it could be you and there's so much in this case there was a guy who was initially suspected of being a killer right the rapist and killer and somehow the tension was diverted From him. And now that guy is in prison for child sex crimes. Yes. So, I mean, coincidence? I mean, maybe, but the circumstantial evidence is mounting and there's a very real chance that he might hold the key. He may be the only guy who knows who did this.

00:28:48
Speaker 6: Right.

00:28:48
Speaker 7: And there's also a statement that came out that he apparently made in prison to another inmate where he claimed that there's a couple of, I think he said a couple other suckers were taking the fall for his crime in this particular case. And that's got to just make you insane to hear a guy like that, who is really a scumbag. Yeah. I mean, he is.

00:29:09
Speaker 2: Very, very much so.

00:29:10
Speaker 3: And, you know, just to point out, that's why I say there's dynamics to the case that are so overwhelmingly obvious.

00:29:16
Speaker 2: It puzzles you to say, how do you ignore it?

00:29:19
Speaker 3: Here it is as a person at that time that was in his, I think, late 20s, who goes back to the 80s of rapes and sodomies, who is known through the Legal Aid Society and the police departments in Carmel.

00:29:32
Speaker 7: He's a monster.

00:29:33
Speaker 2: Absolutely.

00:29:34
Speaker 3: So with all the initial investigations going on and all the statements that were provided to the police, his name is repeated and brought up time and time again. Two of the witnesses from Anthony's recent trial were victims of halogama.

00:29:48
Speaker 7: Let's go back to that for a second. Anthony DePippo, who was convicted of the same crime that you were convicted of, in separate trials for reasons we'll get into, but he was convicted of the same crime. Co-defendants. And I think people out there are probably saying, well, wait a minute, if you're both convicted of the same crime and he's out, what are you doing here? Why are you here? And Anthony served 20 years and you're in your 21st year now, right? And it's like, where and when is some sanity going to enter the picture? That's what we're here to try to get to the bottom of it, to try to help bring attention to, because... It's madness that he's out. Everyone's acknowledged now. It wasn't easy, but now it's been proven and acknowledged that he's innocent. And you are too, but they don't want to take their foot off your neck just yet, right? They want to still, like, drive this madness into a deeper hole. And with you as just sort of sitting here like a pinball or something, just being knocked around.

00:30:42
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, it's unfortunate deficiencies of the system when you have people– the power that can abuse it legally.

00:30:50
Speaker 7: And then defend it. I mean, it's like they're defending something that's been disproven already and leaving out the guy who is so clearly should be under extreme scrutiny for this crime and should be being questioned and should be held accountable. He should be held accountable. I mean, this little girl deserves justice, and she's not getting it either.

00:31:11
Speaker 3: And may I just point out, too, we've got to go back to 1994 because this is when she was first reported missing. I was 17 at the time, Anthony was 18 at the time. Shortly thereafter, another young woman became missing that had ties to Howard Gombert and who's been investigated for her disappearance and I believe still is.

00:31:29
Speaker 6: Yeah, the police were looking at this fellow Gombert for another somewhat similar homicide that occurred in that area at around the same time.

00:31:40
Speaker 2: Yes.

00:31:40
Speaker 6: So we know from the records that they were looking at him. Why they dropped the ball on this... Hopefully, someday we'll find out.

00:31:48
Speaker 3: You know, you can speculate and try to figure out so many areas of why they did what they did. Some things become more obvious than others. You have a different police agency other than the sheriff's, which is a common police department. And they believed that Gombert was responsible for both crimes. They wanted to work together to try to tackle the evidence and come to a consensus. And the sheriff's department basically told them to take Ike. And again, is it politics? Rearing its ugly head?

00:32:18
Speaker 7: Maybe Gombert had some powerful friend somewhere.

00:32:20
Speaker 5: Who knows?

00:32:21
Speaker 2: Maybe he did.

00:32:21
Speaker 3: I mean, it makes you scratch your head because you sit there and say, this is obvious. It's not like you see similar cases where you could get the wrong impression by evidence just by interpreting. And that's understandable. And then, you know, they run down the line and say, oh, well, this is how I got him wrong. It didn't start off like that. This was blatant disregard to certain elements of the case. And this is decisions that were made knowingly by the police involved.

00:32:46
Speaker 6: I mean, one thing, if there was some sort of an ironclad alibi, you know, they had records that Mr. Gombert was in Canada at the time or something like that, but there's nothing to show that.

00:32:57
Speaker 7: Right.

00:32:58
Speaker 6: Because all of the evidence points to him.

00:33:00
Speaker 2: And they do nothing.

00:33:01
Speaker 6: He was connected to the victim. He knew the victim.

00:33:04
Speaker 7: He was a suspect already in other similar crimes. He's been convicted of other similar cases.

00:33:08
Speaker 2: So here it is.

00:33:09
Speaker 3: You have an individual that if you're going to fit a mold of any type of area, I mean, like what, What more do you look for?

00:33:16
Speaker 7: So now it comes to trial. A bunch of time had passed, right? You'd been sitting in jail presumably this whole time waiting for your trial?

00:33:22
Speaker 3: Yes, since July 1st, 1996, and ever since I've been incarcerated.

00:33:27
Speaker 7: But I'm talking about from July 1st, 1996 was when you were arrested?

00:33:31
Speaker 2: Arrested, yes.

00:33:32
Speaker 7: When was the trial?

00:33:33
Speaker 2: I think 97, early 97. So you were in jail for? For over a year.

00:33:37
Speaker 7: Better part of a year for a waiting trial. And then you go to trial. At this point, did you still have hope that the system was going to work?

00:33:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did.

00:33:45
Speaker 3: A lot of that was under the pretense of my lawyer at the time and the things that he was telling me, making me believe that certain things were going to be addressed. And his disclosure to me about how he was going to present the evidence to disprove that we committed this crime led me to believe that I was going to be successful in establishing that. But he did none of what he said he was going to do.

00:34:08
Speaker 7: You had a lawyer who was definitely not on his A-game, let's just say that. Yeah. which happens, sadly, tragically, more frequently than it should ever be allowed to. But you go to trial. Your family's there. I want to get to the moment when the jury went out and everything that could be said had been said. And then you get called back to the courtroom because a verdict is ready. How long was the jury out?

00:34:32
Speaker 2: I think like maybe 35, 40 minutes. I don't know. It was like during lunch break.

00:34:35
Speaker 3: But like by the time I literally got brought to them, like two minutes later, they said.

00:34:40
Speaker 2: They got a verdict.

00:34:40
Speaker 3: And I got back in the car and went back up to the court building. So, like, that's how fast it was.

00:34:45
Speaker 7: Can you just paint the picture for us? Like, at that moment when they stole your life from you, what went through your mind?

00:34:52
Speaker 3: I mean, the same thing that's going through my mind now. Like, I mean, when they came back and read the verdict that I was guilty on both charges, I was still in shock.

00:34:59
Speaker 2: I mean, through the whole process.

00:35:01
Speaker 3: Like I said, I don't think I really ever adjusted to it really settling in. And I stood up and I addressed the court saying that they got it wrong, that somebody else committed this crime, and that one day the truth will come out. I didn't have an emotional outburst. I didn't break down. I just gathered my inner self and just faced it.

00:35:21
Speaker 2: It's hard.

00:35:22
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like I broke inside, but I didn't allow myself to break completely. I don't know if that makes sense. It's like, what do you do? What's the next course of action? How do you do it? Somebody has to listen. Somebody has to see it. And even though that happened, I still believed that the truth will come out. Even though I didn't know 99% of what I know now of Howard Gomber, to the extent of his involvement, his participation in a lot of things, to the degree of the cops and, you know, all the information I've gathered through the years that I can now look back on and say, wow, really? It just became more obvious to, like I said, it wasn't a truth-finding element to where they was trying to justify arresting somebody and solving a case. It was a hatchet job for whatever reason to exacerbate their positions like they were the good and to put closure on a case that probably they looked bad on from the very beginning.

00:36:24
Speaker 7: Closure, yeah, that's a big word, closure. Get it off the desk and on to the next one. Just let you rot and then meanwhile let this guy who's at this point still out there.

00:36:35
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know when he was arrested for the case that he's serving time on now.

00:36:39
Speaker 2: I think mid-2000s.

00:36:40
Speaker 7: Okay, so let's just reflect on that for a second, too. Had this investigation been conducted properly, and had he been arrested.

00:36:46
Speaker 6: He might have been arrested, and that would have been prevented.

00:36:49
Speaker 7: Those other victims would have just been able to go on about their lives and never go through this horrific experience, them and their families and the whole thing. I find that fucking outrageous. It's just fucking outrageous. Then you find yourself in a maximum security prison. You're locked up as someone who's convicted, wrongly, but convicted... of the worst crime that you can be convicted of, which is a child rape and murder.

00:37:13
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:37:13
Speaker 7: How the hell did you manage to survive that ordeal and get to where we are now, where there's actually a ray of hope?

00:37:20
Speaker 2: Just, like I said, facing it straight up. It hasn't been easy.

00:37:24
Speaker 3: To this day, it's still not easy because it's something that's always exemplified and used against you. You know, the word that, oh, he's convicted of a rape and murder, it's a 12-year-old girl, automatically it's a completely different outlook to me. So now there's certain restrictions in place. There's certain attitudes I'm dealt with. There's certain ways I'm looked at. And it's a battle trying to say that, yo, that's not me. But one of the things in prison is you hear 99% of the population talk about they're innocent of a crime. So it's like the boy who cried wolf. So it's a constant that I'm facing on a daily basis. And it's gone extreme in certain cases. But again, it's just, what else do I do? Sign in, live in a shell, just conform to the outlook that they have in a negative manner?

00:38:11
Speaker 7: No.

00:38:11
Speaker 3: One of the things that I'm going to do is I'm going to scream loud and proud because I didn't do it. It's ugly, it's nasty, and it's understandable how people can look at it one way. But in order to overcome that and realize just to how significant my situation is, you need to understand that there's other elements that you don't know about. So if you're going to judge me, judge based on everything in its entirety, not just off the face of what's being said or what I've introduced into the bottom of the corrections for.

00:38:39
Speaker 7: I want to get to the aspect of your mental state because you seem to be somebody who's very calm, rational, thoughtful. Even I want to say you maintain a very real sense of hope in a situation that, to a lot of people, I think it would just collapse and they would just, you know, and no one could blame you for that, right? I mean, to find yourself in a place like this for over 20 years.

00:39:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's not easy, and it's taken me a long time to get this calm. I'm forced in this situation.

00:39:11
Speaker 2: It's reality. It is what it is.

00:39:12
Speaker 3: So I could allow things to overwhelm me and make them harder, or I could just face it and deal with it the best way that I can, and that's what I chose to do. I got a voice and I try to put it out there as much as I can. And I got to just be a warrior and just face everything. that comes my way, all adversity. And it's hard. Each conflict that I go through allows me to deal with something different in a more positive way. So I try to take all of that on a daily basis to gain my strength.

00:39:44
Speaker 7: That's amazing. I don't even know what to say after. But I will say, that is important for you to know. And we spoke to Anthony DiPippo on the way in today, and he wanted us to communicate to you that he is standing strong with you and that he's going to be there when you have your hearings and he's going to bring a group of exonerees. I mean, he's another one. He's a fighter. I mean, he's a guy you would want on your side. And I'll let you know, too, that there's a lot of other people out there, people you don't even know about who are aware of your case and many more that are going to be aware of it that care about you and and want to see justice finally brought to bear on this terrible situation. Adele, now we find ourselves here in 2017, 23 years from the time of the crime, 21 years from the time that you were convicted, and that doesn't even include the time you spent in jail awaiting trial. And what are the prospects, and how are you approaching this now, and what can people who are listening do to help?

00:40:47
Speaker 6: Well, basically, we're doing what you said right in the beginning, which is we're trying to raise the specter of justice. Why, if two people have been convicted of the same crime on the same evidence, essentially, why is one free and one in jail? That just seems wrong. It seems unjust. And it seems like we should be able to do something about that. In this situation, Andrew didn't get the new trial that Anthony got. So he hasn't had an opportunity to to let a jury hear about the evidence pointing to Howard Gombert. So he hasn't yet had that opportunity. And we've asked the appellate court to review the lower court ruling that denied him that opportunity. And the appellate courts have given us the opportunity to raise that argument and brief that issue. So we believe that we're going to get an opportunity to have a trial where Andrew as well will get to put in front of a jury the same evidence that Anthony used that resulted in his acquittal. So we're hoping to be in that same place, but we're not there yet. So we're still waiting. We have to brief the case at the Appellate Division. They've got a rule in our favor. They have to order that he gets a new trial, and then we'll have that new trial if The district attorney's office wants to retry him a second time.

00:42:10
Speaker 7: Or they can just vacate the conviction.

00:42:12
Speaker 6: Or they can just vacate the conviction, right, which they could do now, frankly.

00:42:16
Speaker 2: Absolutely.

00:42:16
Speaker 7: But that's a very unlikely scenario.

00:42:18
Speaker 6: It's very unlikely. But that's not something that we have completely given up on. We're in touch with the DA. If new evidence gets developed, we'll continue to talk to the DA about this case and about how they could do the right thing and they could save everybody a lot of time and a lot of trouble.

00:42:33
Speaker 7: Right, and go after the guy.

00:42:34
Speaker 6: To we suspect who the evidence points to. I mean, clearly he's never been charged. We're talking about him as though he were in fact the guilty party. We don't know that. What we know is that the evidence certainly points to him. He's done things that are very similar to what they've been convicted of. So we have a reason to believe that he is the person, but we don't know that, obviously, and it hasn't been proved in a court of law.

00:43:01
Speaker 3: Just in the manner of the way that this case was presented has a lot of associative ties to Gombert and his culpable acts against other victims. Yet evidence points to that. You have a lot of dots that connect that. I'm not here to do anything other than prove I was not the one who committed this crime. To exemplify that, focus on the evidence. Focus on the facts. Keep it simple. I'm not an investigator, nor should I have to be. But one thing that's paramount is that evidence discloses I did not commit this crime. The evidence that's been brought forth in Anthony's retrial is that he did not commit this crime. The prosecution's theory is that we... together participated committing this crime. There's nothing separate outside of this purported confession. And again, it's words on paper, so you can't turn that into more evidence against me to say, oh, well, you admitted it. No, the forensic and pathological evidence disproves those words, disproves Denise Rose. She disproves her own through her testimony, words, and her statement. So there's all of these different avenues to come to a conclusion that they're refusing to do.

00:44:10
Speaker 6: Yeah, the only evidence is her testimony. There really is nothing else. They say, well, this happened in this van and there's no forensic evidence linking the victim to the van. There's just nothing there. There's supposed to be other witnesses who were in the van with Denise and all of them say, oh, I didn't see that happen. The police tried to make me say that that's what happened, but I refused to say that because it didn't happen. So that's what Adam Wilson says. He says, oh, the police tried to make me go along with that story. They tried to make me corroborate what Denise Rose said, but I wouldn't do it because it didn't happen.

00:44:47
Speaker 7: The only evidence is the testimony of this crack addicted young woman who has been refuted by the other people that were there with her at the time. Correct. The physical evidence, not only is there no physical evidence that, because there's always going to be skeptics, right? There's people out there going, well, there must be something. Well, you know, in this case, there's nothing. There's no physical evidence connecting you to the crime. And the evidence that does exist would indicate that the story, well, clearly the story is not true.

00:45:16
Speaker 6: Well, certainly the forensic evidence is completely consistent with innocence and not at all consistent with guilt.

00:45:23
Speaker 7: So if we are to believe that you actually did this, you would have to be a master criminal. You'd have to be like.

00:45:29
Speaker 6: You'd have to have cleaned up the entire van that they said it happened in so that no trace of this victim could be found in the van, which I think is really beyond the abilities of two teens, especially when the van... that they said it happened in was already in police custody, or was already off the road. It was already off the road and inoperable at the time they said it happened.

00:46:08
Speaker 7: So there's one more thing that we have to talk about, which is that the prosecution's theory revolved around the idea that this horrible crime was committed in a van with five people and the victim. And there's a pretty big problem with that, which is that there's a mechanic who has testified that the van, in fact, was up on blocks at the time, right? It didn't have any wheels on it.

00:46:34
Speaker 6: And the fact of the matter is he testified to that in this recent trial where Anthony was acquitted, but he also testified to that back at the first trial. This isn't even new evidence.

00:46:46
Speaker 7: The police knew that.

00:46:48
Speaker 6: And there was no reason to disbelieve the mechanic. I mean, there was no reason to think that he was somehow in cahoots with With the defendants and, you know, trying to improperly create a reasonable doubt where there was none.

00:47:04
Speaker 7: There was all sorts of stuff with the van. It was on blocks, right? The tires were off it. The engine was screwed up.

00:47:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can explain some of that.

00:47:11
Speaker 3: But just before I get into that, just so everybody knows and is aware of just the extent and involvement of these detectives, is initially on the statements it was a Bronco.

00:47:24
Speaker 2: That was crossed out and changed to van.

00:47:27
Speaker 6: What happens is that they later on, okay, because remember there's this long period of time between the time that Josette disappears and the time that they realize it's a homicide. So during that period of time when they're not really investigating this case and they're not following up their leads on Howard Gombert, during this time they seize this van. So by the time they arrest Andrew, they've got it in their custody.

00:47:56
Speaker 2: Well, they legally stole it.

00:47:57
Speaker 6: Right, they kept it. They seized it and they never returned it. So at that point, it becomes helpful for them to have the crime occur in the van, which is in their possession. So they then change it from saying, oh, it was the Bronco, to saying, oh, this must have happened in Andy's van, not knowing... that there was an actual witness out there who could say, oh, that's impossible because the man was actually up on blocks and inoperable at the time that you're saying that this child was actually murdered.

00:48:31
Speaker 3: Yes, which was in 1994 from there.

00:48:34
Speaker 6: So I think Andrew's right to say that when you look at this from the point of view of thinking about the police after the fact— Having a hypothesis, which they tried to make the facts conform to, that this evidence actually does support that theory. And I think that's what happened.

00:48:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's simple orchestration.

00:48:58
Speaker 3: What they did was they said, this is the crime and we're going to get the people to say this is what happened.

00:49:03
Speaker 2: And that's what they did. They glued it together.

00:49:04
Speaker 3: But again, simplifying and keeping it to the evidence, it tells its own story. And going back to Denise Rose and her claims of her witnessing and you just reading the statement, you read it and you see words crossed out and replaced with other words. and then you listen to the actual main areas of this statement which is supposed to be a version of her reciting witnessing a crime and you can see that it's like it's almost like you know you're putting a play together you know you're no this fits better over here no say it like this so it comes across more believable but all the meat And potatoes, so to speak, are the essential facts that one would digress if they really witnessed something. It's not a part of the statements. And the forensic evidence conflicts with her version.

00:49:48
Speaker 2: So who do you believe?

00:49:49
Speaker 7: So they actually did, when you think about it, a very sloppy job of framing you. Because, in fact, if they had been a little bit more thoughtful, somebody would have said, wait a minute, let's not go with that van theory because I just found out that the van is over at Mechanic Auto Shop. up on a thing with an engine that doesn't work and no tires. But they didn't even bother to do that.

00:50:09
Speaker 6: And guess what? They didn't need to, did they?

00:50:11
Speaker 7: No, they didn't. And that's why, again, there is another side to what the prosecution is saying. I'm not saying they're wrong all the time. They're certainly not.

00:50:20
Speaker 6: You're absolutely right. We want to hold the prosecution, the police, and the prosecution to a high standard. There's a burden of proof in a criminal trial, which is beyond a reasonable doubt, and we want to be holding people to that standard. And make them prove that case.

00:50:37
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, just to point out, it would be easy for me to just jump on that bashing, you know, aspect or mindset. And even as hard as it is, I understand and believe in the system. There's a lot of good and, you know, I believe in what it's supposed to be there for. But again, this isn't something that, it wasn't something that you could take and say, it's understandable how these two were wrongfully convicted because there was a lot of close ties to the evidence that would indicate the possibility of them being guilty. This is the furthest from that. This is blatant setting up. This is the ugliest of the ugly. This is conscious decisions of the people that are there to protect and serve that are throwing all of that away to make themselves look like they are those protectors by closing a case, getting pats on the back, commendations, knowingly fabricating evidence, bullying and intimidating people, and getting a wrongful conviction on it and shattering lives. And not just us. They lied to the victim's family. They lied to the population. They did all of these things that have a ripple effect. It's not just me. I want to point out that regardless of what anybody can say, that's to the extent this case is. This isn't one of those just close-knit, oh, we understand it. No, this was individuals choosing to go against the law that were in the powers to get people to believe them because of their positions and just shattered lives.

00:52:00
Speaker 2: They say light comes to the dark.

00:52:02
Speaker 3: Three of those same people that were involved have since been, in some form, been convicted of misconduct. From the boss of the boss and to the senior detectives that were actively involved in our case.

00:52:14
Speaker 7: Adele, there's one more aspect of this case that troubles me, and it highlights the fact that there was so much time elapsed from the time of the crime to the time of the arrests. And they came up with a little girl who said she remembered something about some jewelry or something, which I found so far-fetched.

00:52:31
Speaker 6: Well, the police said that they had found jewelry belonging to the victim, Josette, in this van. which we know that even if they had committed the crime, they couldn't have committed it in this van. But anyway, they said they had found jewelry in the van. They then called witnesses at the trial to say that they recognized the jewelry as belonging to Josette. When I first learned about this case, which was quite a long time ago, Andy wrote me, and he described the evidence. And I got involved in the case because I thought the evidence was completely unconvincing and untrue to common sense. I didn't believe that a 17-year-old girl would have witnessed a crime like this and not told anybody. I didn't believe it. And they also said, despite the lack of any forensic evidence linking the girl to the van, there was jewelry found in the van that witnesses have identified as belonging to the victim. And I just didn't believe that that could possibly be true. Because I didn't believe that little girls, 14, because they were 14 by the time they testified at trial, would have remembered what their girlfriend was wearing on the day that she disappeared two and a half years earlier. Because we're talking here about jewelry that would have been bought from the five and dime store, right? An earring, a necklace, and they were claiming.

00:53:55
Speaker 7: Generic.

00:53:57
Speaker 6: How special could they have been? Little girls have lots of different jewelry. You would never recognize what one person was wearing from one day to the next. So the fact that they said at trial under oath, I recognize this piece of jewelry, I found extremely suspect. And again, I think it is evidence of how, in fact, careful the police were trying to be to try to overcome the lack of any forensic evidence because they didn't have traces of Josette in this van. So they were bound and determined to come up with something that would link her to this supposed crime scene.

00:54:36
Speaker 7: I'm thinking now, right, about that courtroom in that moment, right? And I'm sure the jury, there must have been almost like a gasp, like, oh, my God, the jewelry. The poor girl's jewelry was found in the van. And now I would ask anyone listening to conduct a little test, which is think of who you were hanging out with yesterday and describe what kind of jewelry they were wearing, unless your friend has the Hope Diamond on. I think the chance of you remembering whether they had a ring on which finger, on whether they had a necklace and what it looked like, I mean, you're not going to be able to do it. I mean, it's just not realistic. And I'm talking about yesterday. So the idea that it was 13 months ago or more, actually.

00:55:14
Speaker 6: Because by the time they got to the trial, they're saying, yes, I can remember distinctly. What she was wearing. Now, they weren't saying that they were with her at the time that this supposedly happened. They're just saying, yeah, I saw her that day, earlier that day, the night before. And yes, I can remember this is her jewelry. That's what she was wearing.

00:55:30
Speaker 3: I have to point out pertaining to the jewelry. One of the things, again, that I mean, it's just it's so funny that it's not funny, but it's funny. The homicide detectives illegally took possession of my van at the time in 1995. It's never left their custody. So some of the jewelry that they mentioned, now bear in mind, a state trooper in April of 1995 did an inventory search.

00:55:52
Speaker 2: No jewelry was found.

00:55:54
Speaker 3: Well, I get arrested on May 11th, 1995 on a warrant for marijuana possession. And from that point on, the van was in possession of the Putnam County Sheriff's Department. And the jewelry that they claimed to have found in the map compartment was already searched by two other officers. So it never left your possession. It wasn't found how does it get found conveniently.

00:56:17
Speaker 6: They had the van they searched the van they didn't see it and then suddenly after they had decided how this case is going to go all of a sudden oh there's jewelry in the van that wow people can link to the homicide.

00:56:32
Speaker 3: Now it's a piece of physical evidence because all the dna testing up into point in that time fiber blood analysis whatever was going on did not support their version there was not a hair of Joe's right inside that vehicle.

00:56:47
Speaker 2: She's never been in the vehicle. She's never been in none of my vehicles.

00:56:49
Speaker 3: So it systematically became obvious that they needed some more to.

00:56:55
Speaker 2: Push this version of events.

00:56:58
Speaker 3: And by doing so, they say there's now physical evidence of Joe's right being inside that van, so you must believe Denise Rose.

00:57:05
Speaker 7: And I'm sitting here now thinking about maybe they were sitting around having coffee or lunch or maybe having a meeting and the investigator, the prosecutor, whatever it was, and somebody goes, I got an idea. and go, hey, what's that? What if we come up with a jewelry story? What if we come up with a jewelry story? Somebody goes, that's a great idea. How does everybody go so far wrong? It makes me insane. So anyway, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence. We are here now to bring attention to this madness and to your plight, and to hopefully help advance the cause of justice, which... The wheels are turning, and you have a great team. We have this pending motion, I guess, right?

00:57:50
Speaker 2: Yep.

00:57:51
Speaker 7: And I'm projecting positive outcomes, as I know you are.

00:57:54
Speaker 6: And we have a lot of legal support, I mean, because all of Anthony's team, they've got great lawyers. They've been totally helpful. I think the whole network, the Innocence Network, will be supportive on the legal issues, at the very least, because of the question of why one person is still in jail and the other one isn't. So I think that appeals just on an emotional gut level to people. So I think we're going to get a lot of support on behalf of our position in the court. So I feel actually quite positively that we'll get a new trial.

00:58:27
Speaker 7: And when we do, I think it's impossible to imagine how a jury can look at this evidence now and say, yeah, no, yeah, I mean, reasonable doubt, my ass. I mean, this thing is, it's a mountain of shit.

00:58:39
Speaker 6: In the intervening years, also people have learned a lot about why folks falsely confess and how that happens. I think the public is much more educated and jurors will be as well. So I think at the time that Andy was convicted... Nobody believed that individuals falsely confessed. So if they heard a confession, they figured it must be true. And I don't think they needed much additional evidence. And they had Denise Rose. So with the two of those statements, I think it would have been very hard in that time. to have gotten a not guilty verdict. Now it's a very different story. We know a lot more about what people do, and we know a lot more, unfortunately, about police practices.

00:59:19
Speaker 7: I'm going to say this before I turn it over to you for closing remarks. Having heard about you and heard about your case for some time now, I really wanted to come up here and meet you. Now that I have met you and getting a sense of your strength and your spirit, I can say that I'm going to do everything in my power to help Adele and the team. There's a lot of people who care about you and care about this case and care about justice, and we're just going to keep going until we get you out. So with that, I mean, you've said a lot, and you don't have to say anything else, but if there's anything else you want to share with the audience, now would be a good time to do it.

00:59:58
Speaker 2: All right.

00:59:58
Speaker 3: Well, you know, first I just want to thank you, Sabine, Odell, everybody listening for your support, continued support, future support.

01:00:07
Speaker 2: It means a lot. It really does.

01:00:09
Speaker 3: You've got to find strength in yourself in order to face adversity. And going through this situation, it's a constant battle, but I won't give up. You can't give up. Everybody will be hearing from you soon. I got a story to tell. I stay positive. I stay driven. Otherwise, I'm subjected to just the whims and the mercy of what they did to me, and I can't let that happen.

01:00:32
Speaker 7: Last question. Do you want people to write to you? Is there any other social media you want them to go to?

01:00:38
Speaker 2: Do you have a website?

01:00:39
Speaker 7: I mean, absolutely.

01:00:39
Speaker 2: I would love to hear from anybody and everybody.

01:00:43
Speaker 7: Can you give the information of where people can write?

01:00:45
Speaker 3: Wendy Correctional Facility, Alden, New York. I'm not sure what his zip code. I apologize for that.

01:00:49
Speaker 7: Wendy, W-E-N-D-E.

01:00:51
Speaker 2: W-E-N-D-E Correctional Facility. It's in Alden, New York. A-L-D-E-N.

01:00:56
Speaker 3: My name is Andrew Krivak, K-R-I-V-A-K. And my DIN number is 97A-4236. If you want to know a little bit more about me, you can look up, obviously, my code for Anthony DePippo. A lot of the information is on his Facebook page.

01:01:10
Speaker 7: Or just Google your name.

01:01:10
Speaker 2: Or Google my name.

01:01:12
Speaker 3: You know, there's a lot of news articles recently through the exposure of the evidence and things that came out with Anthony's retrial. Also, Jeffrey Deskovich, who I'm in close contact with, is also in my corner and speaks of my case. And, you know, I want to just thank those that have reached out to me so far, some of which I'm corresponding with. And I'm looking to link up with as many people as possible. Just pay it forward. Do something positive.

01:01:36
Speaker 7: I'm glad you brought that up, too, because Jeffrey Deskovic, who had a terrible thing in common with you, which was this lying polygraph examiner, has become a very powerful advocate for the wrongfully convicted. And he's been on the show. He passed the bar in New York State. And I do want to just mention that he has been a very vocal and passionate advocate of yours and Anthony's and others who've been wrongfully convicted. So shout out to Jeff. And I know he's here in spirit and he's on your side. He's just another one. We're all pushing this snowball up the hill together.

01:02:10
Speaker 2: And I appreciate it. I really do.

01:02:11
Speaker 3: I know sometimes I can't. In the future, people, you'll just see how much I appreciate things. But like I said, it's up to us to make change. And eventually we'll overcome.

01:02:21
Speaker 7: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars. And I want to thank the star of our show today, who I'm very excited to see on the outside soon, Andrew Krivak. Thank you for being on. And Adele Bernhardt.

01:02:35
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.

01:02:36
Speaker 7: His wonderful lawyer.

01:02:37
Speaker 6: Thank you.

01:02:38
Speaker 7: Thank you to our producer, Sabine Jansen, for coming and making us sound as good as we can even with all the jail doors.

01:02:46
Speaker 6: Thank you jason for doing this work and making a difference in so many people's.

01:02:50
Speaker 3: Lives yeah i want to say that too you know i definitely applaud your um longevity it means a lot like i said you know it's because of people like you that allow people like me to have the opportunity to correct these wrongs so it definitely touches.

01:03:06
Speaker 7: Me Can't stop, won't stop, not going to stop. And I'm very stubborn. And that's a good thing in this line of work because you need it. And like I said, I've seen too many miracles to stop believing in miracles. Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to InnocenceProject.org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardus. The music in the show is by three-time Oscar-nominated composer J. Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good Podcast in association with Signal Company No. 1.