00:00:00
Speaker 1: The episode you're about to hear was originally published in 2017, the very first year of this podcast. It was episode number 25. Now, this interview is near and dear to my heart. Anthony DePippo courageously shared his story with me shortly after he'd been released from prison and exonerated. Since then, Anthony's done a lot of growing, reflecting on and healing from the trauma of being wrongfully incarcerated for two decades. I couldn't be more proud of the man he's become. To hear a lot more of Anthony's story and where he is now, check out Bone Valley Season 5, The Devil's Quarry. Host Paul Solitaroff deeply investigates Anthony's case and the person who may have been implicated instead. A second installment of The Devil's Quarry is coming soon. Paul's back in the same small New York town reporting on a crime with eerie similarities to the one Anthony was originally convicted of. Look out for the first episode on September 30th. Trust me, you won't want to miss it. And now, here is Anthony's story.

00:01:06
Speaker 2: I think we have the best legal system. It's just the people that implement it. They get lost along the way and forget what their job really is.

00:01:20
Speaker 3: 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.

00:01:33
Speaker 4: It's a tough prison when you have the guards going against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison. They do that.

00:01:41
Speaker 2: They'll give a guy a life sentence and go home and eat spaghetti like it was nothing.

00:01:46
Speaker 3: 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?

00:01:56
Speaker 2: The judge, he said, how you feel?

00:01:58
Speaker 4: I said, I'm okay.

00:01:59
Speaker 3: He said, well, today is your lucky day.

00:02:02
Speaker 2: You're going home.

00:02:04
Speaker 1: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom. Today's guest is a larger-than-life character in every way, Anthony DePippo.

00:02:24
Speaker 5: Anthony DePippo went behind bars as a 19-year-old troublemaker, but insists he was never the killer they said he was.

00:02:30
Speaker 4: After 20 years in prison for a crime the courts now say he did not commit.

00:02:34
Speaker 5: A jury in Putnam County found him not guilty in the 1994 rape and murder of 12-year-old Josette Wright. This was his third trial for the same crime. The previous convictions were overturned, then on Tuesday, an acquittal. The main witness against him was a former girlfriend who said she witnessed the attack, but the jury didn't buy it.

00:02:52
Speaker 4: What we learned at this trial is that the eyewitness wasn't credible.

00:02:56
Speaker 5: In the third trial, 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. The Putnam County District Attorney, though, isn't backing down. He insists not guilty is not the same as innocent.

00:03:11
Speaker 1: He was freed six months ago. Anthony, welcome to the show.

00:03:15
Speaker 4: Great to be on the show. Thank you for having me.

00:03:17
Speaker 1: So Anthony is a very interesting guy. I've gotten to know him well over the last several months since he's been out of prison. And when I say he's a larger than life character, what are you, 6'5?

00:03:28
Speaker 4: Almost 6'6.

00:03:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he looks like a gentle giant. So just gregarious and funny and fun to be around. And so it really belies the incredible saga that you've lived through. How you came out with your spirit so, so strong and so positive. And it gives me a lot of joy just hanging around with you. So I'm glad to have you here.

00:03:52
Speaker 4: Thank you. I try to live for the moment and for the future and not in the past. I did 20 years wrongfully, falsely accused of crimes I didn't commit. It's a privilege to be back in society. A lot of people in my situation don't get to make it here.

00:04:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. In fact, we'll get to it. The guy who was wrongfully convicted with you, Is not here because he's still locked up for the same crime, which is crazy because you've been exonerated. And let's go back to the time of the crime. I mean, you were still a kid. Right. Which makes it extra tragic, right, because of the fact that you lost those years. So you grew up where?

00:04:26
Speaker 4: In Carmel, New York.

00:04:28
Speaker 1: Carmel, New York. Nice place. Pretty nice.

00:04:29
Speaker 4: It's a nice place. It's picket fences and people are just living life. It's one of the safest communities according to the state. to live in.

00:04:38
Speaker 1: So you had a relatively happy childhood growing up in Carmel and things are going good. You play sports?

00:04:44
Speaker 4: You know, I was involved in wrestling in school and I wasn't involved with baseball, football, none of that. But, you know, I was doing a lot of stuff that normal kids do. And I did come to an age where, you know, I began experimenting with drugs and I kind of went south on everything. And that kind of led me down the path to how the police started to focus in on me as a person of interest. Just because of what I was doing. I mean, we weren't out threatening people or robbing people or committing sexual assault crimes. But, you know, we were using and selling drugs and we were dressing up and we were playing a part. You know, as the culture shows that, you know, when you're a kid, you kind of go a certain way. You listen to rap music, you're easily influenced. These influences affected me. And I left school.

00:05:29
Speaker 1: Sort of like a knock-around guy, but you weren't hurting anybody.

00:05:32
Speaker 4: No, it wasn't my goal. I didn't wake up in the morning and say, oh, I'm going to rape somebody or I'm going to go rob somebody or I'm going to hurt somebody. But at the same time, we were youths. We were criminal thinkers. I mean, it happens. I'm not a criminal thinker today. I like to think of myself as a mature human being.

00:05:48
Speaker 1: Many of us have had our transgressions at that age. So things are going along pretty well. You're having your different issues, whatever, some of your teenage things that are going on. You've got to get through a lot of people. And then a crazy thing happens in the community, which is a 12-year-old girl was raped and murdered. Right. We're talking 1994 now.

00:06:07
Speaker 4: Yes.

00:06:09
Speaker 1: Her name was Josette Wright.

00:06:10
Speaker 4: Josette Wright.

00:06:11
Speaker 1: And this must have been big news in the community like that.

00:06:13
Speaker 4: It was huge news. It was in the newspapers. Everybody was talking about it. The entire police forces in the community got together and they were trying to solve this crime.

00:06:22
Speaker 1: It took a long time to find her, right?

00:06:24
Speaker 4: 13 months. She was last seen in October of 1994 and Her skeletal remains were found in November 1995. And so they find this girl in the woods. A rope is attached to her. Her hands were bound behind her back. The right leg was pulled up and the rope went around the neck in sort of a half hogtied position. I don't want to be graphic, but the underwear was inside of her mouth and the bra was tied around her face. And she was found prone face down and she decomposed in that position.

00:06:57
Speaker 1: And this is where things start to get really weird, right? Because now you have a really, I mean, I'm getting the chills thinking about it, a really terrifying scenario, right?

00:07:06
Speaker 4: It's the most horrible you can imagine.

00:07:08
Speaker 1: Everybody's worst nightmare, a little girl, innocent, found and having been tortured and killed. And now the pressure mounts, right? The cops, they got to find out who did it, but for a lot of reasons.

00:07:19
Speaker 4: It was, you know, re-election year for the sheriff. And so everybody wanted this case solved.

00:07:24
Speaker 5: So.

00:07:25
Speaker 4: They started looking at people, and one of the people they were looking at was a guy named Howard Gombert, who later had confessed that he committed this crime to several individuals. She was last seen getting into his red car with the Connecticut license plates. Now, the woman eyewitness that had seen this identified his photo out of a photo array as if anybody number two. He was number two. I wasn't in the photo array, and I didn't drive a red car. Howard Gombert did drive a red car with the Connecticut plates. So you have this girl getting in a red car 15 minutes after she walks out of her house for the last time, which is a stone's throw away from her home. Now she's not seen again. The next time they find her, she's in the woods in this condition. When I went to trial, I didn't know about this guy, Howard Gombert. My attorney had previously represented him on a rape charge. So he received the pretrial discovery material that implicated his former client, this guy, Howard Gombert.

00:08:18
Speaker 1: Stop there for a second, right? This is where things get really weird. The fact is, The attorney who was representing you had previously represented the guy who was the actual suspect.

00:08:28
Speaker 4: Correct.

00:08:28
Speaker 1: Which is totally forbidden. I mean, unethical, not allowed, whatever you want to call it. Any lawyer knows that they can't do that. And in fact, he withheld information that he had that would have implicated his former client and ended up screwing. And I'm using a very nice word for it, screwing you, his current client. It's so backwards and so conflicted and so fucked up, honestly, that people can't even imagine that this goes on, but it does. But let's go back to how this started, right? Because it started with a guy named Gombert.

00:09:04
Speaker 4: We're doing the week they found her remains. So they got this eyewitness testimony that week. They also interviewed people that Howard Gombert knew that they were saying he was trying to entice her into a babysitting job and that he was flirting with her and he was acting strange around her. So the cops are focusing on this guy Gombert. But now we're driving along to Jersey City. We go to a rave. Like I said, we were using and selling drugs. We were coming back from this rave and we get pulled over. Now, while we were in the car, present in the car was me, Dominic Neglia, who was a later informant, and Andrew Krivak, who became my co-defendant. We're in this car and we're talking just candidly about they just found this girl in the woods. So when we got arrested, Dominic Neglia told the police that we might have information on that case. So they whisked him away and they promised to treat him with some special treatment to get him off his drug charges or whatever. if he would further give information upon us about what we were talking about.

00:10:04
Speaker 1: He was only 16, right?

00:10:05
Speaker 4: He was 17. We were talking about basic newspaper knowledge. We weren't talking about implied knowledge that we actually participated in this crime. So then what happened from there was that Dominic Negley was repeatedly pulled out of his school, pulled out of his job until he got fired. He worked at the Olive Garden until he was brought to the police station for several hours of interrogation. And this Detective Castallo, Patrick Castallo, and this other Detective William Quick were telling him, They have to get information against me. Otherwise, he's going to go to prison for his charges. And they were paying him money and they were beating him up at the same time. He said, I don't want to do this anymore. It came to a point where he says, everything I said was a fabrication. I don't want to do this anymore. So Castaldo, who was later indicted for dissimilar conduct, hit the guy in the head with the handcuffs and spit on him and said, you ain't got no other choice. So he said, fine. He came back and said, all right, they wanted witnesses. I got your witnesses. Adam Wilson, Denise Rose and Bill McGregor. Supposedly this crime happened in a van and they were there. So the cops took this information and went to Denise Rose and threatened her with life in prison for three weeks.

00:11:13
Speaker 1: Denise Rose was your girlfriend, right?

00:11:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, we were seeing each other on and off. And at the time, shortly prior to her giving a statement, we were seeing each other. But then I broke up with her, which, you know, is not the cause of why she did this to me. But it probably contributed because some women are scorned, you know, when they get a certain feeling towards something. And so she became a witness against me. Now, remember what I told you about how the body was tied up. She said the girl was gagged, her hands were tied in the front, and the rope was tied to nothing else. With the forensic evidence is contrary to that. What the police were mistaken because the finger bones, not to be graphic here, but the finger bones fell to the rib cage. So, they wanted a mistaken impression. The girl's hands were tied in the front. So, they spoon fed this to Denise Rose. So, Denise Rose parrots this. So, she swears that the hands were tied in the front. Now, if your hands are tied in the front and you're gagged in the mouth and you're being attacked or whatever, you're going to be able to reach up to your mouth to pull the gag out and breathe if the theory of death is asphyxiation. But- We were later able to find out that this guy, Howard Gombert, did this to 10 other girls with the same type of bondage and stuff.

00:12:18
Speaker 1: Why did the cops, in your opinion, when they had the guy who turned out to be the right guy, this Gombert, the wrong guy, the right guy, however you want to talk about it, they had the actual perpetrator, right? How did they go so far wrong? They were interviewing him. They were interrogating him. Right. They had it right. All they had to do was, I mean, this thing pretty much came with instructions, right? You had the red car. You had the witnesses. And then ultimately it comes out that he's this serial predator, right? I don't know if they had that information at that time. But why did they go off of him?

00:12:50
Speaker 4: Like I said, Dominic Neglia. And then from Denise Rose, it went on to Adam Wilson, who since recanted, and then Bill McGregor, who since recanted. Supposedly the crime, the theory of the crime was that we got so high in a van, we played spin the bottle, and the girl just wound up dead. That Andy attacked her, stuffed her mouth with the underwear, tied her hands in front, And he went first for a minute and a half. And then supposedly I went first for a minute. And then supposedly we were supposed to dump the body. Now, this is all a fabrication to begin with. But the people that were supposedly playing spin the bottle who were falsely identified by Dominic Neglia had recanted. So Adam Wilson says after a 12, 15-hour interrogation with Dan Stevens, the same guy that coerced Jeffrey Deskovic using a lie detector test. And we all know that Jeffrey Deskovic is innocent because... DNA established, the real killer and the real kill confess, gave the same type of lie detector test to my friend Adam Wilson. And he signed the paper, but immediately recanted, went to his probation officer the next day, said, the story is untrue. I was not in a van. The cops threatened me. They said I was going to be charged as an accomplice on accessory to murder, and I wouldn't be able to go home. So he signed a statement and recanted the next day. Bill McGregor, he recanted. It took him 10 years to recant, but he recanted, gave us a sworn affidavit that cops threatened him with accessory to or accomplice to murder unless he put me in a van. And he said he never met Josette Wright in his life. And he said he doesn't know who Denise Rose was until 96, two years after the crime when the police introduced Denise Rose to him and they had Denise Rose try to spoon feed him the story while he's in the police department because he only said he fell asleep during the crime and woke up at home.

00:14:26
Speaker 1: This is making my head hurt, right? So they have Gombert, right? And then this terrible sequence of events happens where they pull you guys over And then that turns into exactly what we just talked about. But then at the same time, they must have said, all right, well, we're going to let this guy Gombert go because we think we got a different lead. Is that basically how you understand it? Because it's so weird.

00:14:49
Speaker 4: You asked a critical question. How did the focus shift off Gombert to us? So Dominic Neglia, in my view, was that shift. Is there anything more to it? Were they protecting Gombert?

00:15:01
Speaker 1: I don't know.

00:15:02
Speaker 4: All I know is that guilt was shift to actually innocent by the police who either did so maliciously or by mistake, but it was done. And we wound up spending the next 20 years and Andy's still in jail for crimes we didn't commit. I don't know why the cops wanted us so badly, but it just happened. It was a 20 year struggle to get out of prison and God bless us. I'm here and we're going to get Andy out.

00:15:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to get him out. The question is, Gombert, what happened to him?

00:15:33
Speaker 4: So can I just tell the story about Howard Gombert so people can understand?

00:15:37
Speaker 1: All right.

00:15:37
Speaker 4: Howard Gombert is incarcerated now for taking an eight-year-old girl in the woods. threatening her with death. I'm not going to name names because these people are, some of them are still living. He threatens her with death. He sexually assaults her. In the last 11 years of his freedom, he was charged four times serious sex crimes. One girl he was abusing from when she was eight to 18 would repeatedly tie her up and put the underwear in her mouth and tie her hands behind her back with various things, including the rope. He was 64 days prior to the girl that went missing in my case, Joseph Wright. And this is very critical right here. and this is how I know Gomber's guilty, is that he abducted his other babysitter, blonde hair, blue eyes, strikingly similar characteristics at knife point. A knife was also found at the crime scene. He jumps out of the trees and abducts her at knife point, ties her hands behind her back, and repeatedly sexually assaults her. I'm not going to identify no names here, but he put the underwear in her mouth. He tied something around her face. This is an identical modus operandi with a babysitter and he was enticing Joseph to babysit. She quit. She went to the police department, filed a police report that night, documented all this down, documented this. She didn't identify Howard Gombert in the police report because later she said she was scared, but she did call us. We didn't know she existed. She did call us and said, this is what happened. Howard Gombert did this to me. So she comes forward with this information. The modus operandi is distinct and unique. This wasn't an accident. This wasn't somebody who paraded the girl around a gas station for two hours, like the prosecution said, for the entire views and pleasure of the town of Carmel. This is somebody that jumped out of the darkness and fled back off into the night. Now, I just want to build a little bit more on Howard Gombert. Howard Gombert was also seen six months later with Robin Murphy, 17, who's still missing. And Robin Murphy, they were seen at this laundromat. They were together. Years later, they would find Robin Murphy's underwear bearing her DNA, 8 billion to 1 odds that it was her DNA, in a trophy suitcase maintained by Howard Gombert with some underwear from his other rape victims. Her necklace, what we believed to be her necklace, was hanging from his rearview mirror. And when the cops arrested him for the last charge, the 8-year-old, they found this material and they tested it. Now, years go by after that. He's incarcerated. serving time in the McDougal Walker Correctional Facility, where he proceeds to tell a fellow jail inmate that he had sex with Josette Wright when she went missing, and that they'll never find Robin Murphy's remains, and that they have material with Robin Murphy's DNA on it, and that he was trying to entice Josette to babysit, and that he got her in a car with the babysitting lure. Now, all these statements or declarations against penal interest made by Howard Gombert and the Connecticut Correctional Institution that are corroborated by proof, independent of the statements themselves, to attest to their trustworthiness and reliability, which culminated in my third reversal because of the second trial the judge didn't allow any of this in. You know, let the jury hear the name Howard Gombert.

00:18:37
Speaker 1: So there's a number of things here that anybody who has any shred of decency and cares about women, girls in this case, right? The idea is so fucking outrageous that this guy was allowed by the authorities to go free And went on to commit these unspeakable crimes against these young women over and over again. And it took them so long to figure it out when none of those things ever really needed to happen. If they would have done it right the first time, forgetting for a moment the fact that you were robbed of the best years of your life, as was Krivak. But that's what never ceases to blow me away about the idea that these law enforcement people, whether it's prosecutors or cops in some cases or whatever it is, That they can sleep at night knowing that they're locking up the wrong guy. And especially in a case like this. And it's just a tragedy that you sit here and go, it could have been prevented. It didn't have to happen. None of this had to happen. They had the guy. I mean, it wasn't like a big mystery. They had the guys. I mean, I know you must have had, well, you had 20 years to think about this. But I mean, you know, it's just, it's so, I can't, I can't prosecute.

00:19:50
Speaker 4: I look at it like this, right? I'm home now. I was victimized by not only the police department, but this guy, Howard Gombert. I had served his prison time. Andy is serving his prison time collectively. It's 41 years in prison that we're doing for this guy, this heinous individual. Some of these girls that he did this to were my friends. I don't know everybody that he did this to, but some of them were my friends. So we knew these girls growing up and to find out years later that this is what he did. Even Josette, I was friends with the sisters. I was friends with the family. I'm at odds with the family because they were misled for so many years. I have such sympathy for them, but I feel horrible that they feel a certain sort of way. But in certain cases, you know that some families don't accept it as easily as others. And some people want to know and some people don't.

00:20:38
Speaker 1: Well, because let's think about it too. Psychologically speaking, it's another terrible shock to them to find out that the person that they thought was the real perpetrator actually wasn't. And that all these years, the real guy had been allowed to roam the streets and to prey on other people. So that's got to be another thing. to have already gone through this unbelievably terrifying traumatic experience and then have to process that, I could see where there could just be a breakdown. But it's hard for them to, I mean, look, I can see, I can understand it intellectually. No one that's ever not been through it could possibly really understand it. Everything went wrong in your case. Typical of many wrongful convictions. You had an incompetent defense attorney. You had incentivized witnesses who lied on the stand. Incentivized in a lot of ways, right? Because they were being literally given the carrot and the stick. They were either being paid off or beaten up or threatened with being charged with murder. That's a pretty strong incentive, right? So you got convicted in a separate trial from Krivak, right? You both got convicted.

00:22:00
Speaker 3: Right.

00:22:00
Speaker 4: Krivak signed a nine-page false confession after he was given a lie detector test by the same individual, Daniel Stevens, that gave Jeffrey Desvik his lie detector test preceding his false confession, which later was proven false because DNA proved established.

00:22:17
Speaker 1: And let me just say for the audience, in case some people haven't heard Jeffrey's story on wrongful conviction, Jeffrey's a guy who was wrongfully convicted at 16 years old of raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl. and the DNA proved from the outset that he hadn't done it. And then on the back end, when he was finally released 16 years later, the DNA actually identified the real killer who confessed. And we know that the guy that you're referring to now.

00:22:42
Speaker 4: Is the detective that took his false confession, gave him several cups of coffee, had him under the table in a fetal position prior to giving his statement, gave my co-defendant, Andrew Krivak, a lie detector test preceding his false confessions.

00:22:56
Speaker 1: The ironic thing about a lie detector test is that the detective is allowed to lie about the lie detector test. We should be giving the fucking lie detector test to the detective. I mean, it's funny, but it's not. It's so weird to think that they can lie in the process of trying to get you to confess to a crime. They can lie. They can say anything they want. They could say, we got your fingerprints. They could say, we have witnesses. They could say, we got blood or DNA or this, or you lied or the lie detector test, you failed. They can say whatever you want. And we know that in certain cases, they've even been able, especially with a teenager, which you were, which Jeffrey was, they've been able in certain cases to convince people that they actually did do the crime that they didn't do.

00:23:33
Speaker 5: Right.

00:23:34
Speaker 1: And so false confessions are really common in these cases.

00:23:39
Speaker 4: It's problematic though. I mean, 25% of those cases that have been established, DNA proof, actually innocent, involve some sort of confession. One out of every four people that goes in a police department that says they did it, We have to assume they didn't do it. We have to look at it closer because with that kind of statistics, that's demonstrating a tremendous flaw in the criminal justice system. So there has to be some sort of way to corroborate these things. These things should be taped from the beginning to the end, not before the guy starts confessing. But from the minute they bring in a suspect into a police department for an interrogation, they should turn on a camera. They should put a tape recorder there. And if he's going to say anything... Everything that he says, let be recorded. His denials, his omissions, everything. Let's just not start the tape recorder when he starts confessing and then shut it off when you got him to sign the paper. Right.

00:24:30
Speaker 1: It's not okay to have this movie be edited by the detectives who are conducting, which is basically what happens, right? They get to choose and selectively show the parts that they want to build their case. By the way, the good news is that this week, New York State passed the law that we've been fighting for at the Innocence Project and other organizations have been fighting for for so many years. We're now videotaping of interrogations. It's not mandatory. And I think that we have to pay respect to you and others who have gone through this because without you being out there, as you have done on many occasions, telling your story, that probably wouldn't have gone through because the human story is what really, I think in many cases, gets the legislators to understand that that these are changes that need to be made because these are things that happen to real people, right? Real people like you. I want to get to the prison experience because it's so hard to even imagine what it would have been like for you as a teenager to be thrown into the situation where you're going to a maximum security prison as a convicted rapist and murderer of a 12-year-old girl. Yeah, you're a big, strong, tough guy, but still you're in a place that they eat people alive in there, especially people who are convicted of these type of crimes. How did you deal with this? I mean, how could anybody deal with that? How are you here? I mean, it's amazing.

00:25:58
Speaker 4: Survival is man's number one instinct. I got to prison. I ain't going to lie. I was scared to death. I didn't know what I was entering. So I arrive at the Schwanger Correctional Facility. Which, serious things happen there, but it is softer compared to most prisons. Except but for the fact they sent me into B1, which was housing for all the most dangerous people in the state that they have to keep a close eye on. So when I arrived to prison, I didn't readily admit what I was in prison for. When guys asked me, I just blew it off on robbery, murder, this, that, and the other thing. And I just started to go with the flow. When guys started to catch wind of what I was in jail for, then problems started to happen. So I'm in a fight or a death situation. What am I going to do? There was pressure. I politicked mostly. I tried to avoid violence whenever I could. And eventually I got, you know, the attention of certain guys. They saw my paperwork and they gave me a shot. And so I started helping other guys out. And in prison, it's, you know, there's bloods, there's God bodies, which is the five percenters, there's Muslims, there's the Italians, Latin kings. There's all different sorts of sects. So I found my way in with everybody and I showed my paperwork and guys started sticking up for me. And plus, I'm a big guy. So guys didn't want to just straight out say, you know, I had to pay money or this, that and the other thing, as opposed to my co-defendant who was recently cut two weeks ago. I mean, they cut him in the face. The guards is pressing up on him. They're waving a newspaper around. He lost a recent appeal and they're telling all the inmates, you know, what he's in jail for. I was able to politic my way through it. Was it always a joy?

00:27:38
Speaker 5: No.

00:27:38
Speaker 4: I had trouble and there were certain places where the guards were worse than the inmates.

00:27:43
Speaker 1: Because you were transferred around to different places? Yeah.

00:27:45
Speaker 4: And certain guards have morals and ethics that they think it's their ethical duty to see to it that we do hard time. Right.

00:27:52
Speaker 1: And so obviously it is the hardest imaginable type of time because in this country we have don't focus on rehabilitation as other Western countries, do we focus on punishment, which I think is backwards too, except in maybe the most extreme cases, we could have an intelligent discussion about that. And in fact, yours was an extreme case, except you were innocent. But that being said, I don't believe that sentencing somebody to 25 years of life in prison, okay, we can say maybe that's an appropriate sentence, maybe it should be longer, maybe it should be shorter, but sentencing them to be tortured, that's not what we do in America. That's not appropriate. And the fact is that the way we treat people in our prison system effectively is torture. And I want to talk about Privak because his story deserves to be heard and people need to get involved. Maybe they could write to him if you tell people if he's interested.

00:28:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, I always advocate for people to write to him from time to time. I put his address on the Internet. I send him pictures. I try to visit him when I can. It breaks my heart to see him. I bring him in high spirits. He's got a great team. Professor Adele Bernard, Jeffrey Deskovic is behind him. So he's got the support of our community, the innocence community, and we want to see him out. We got his case into the appellate division now, and we're waiting for a decision whether he can leave to appeal because I was acquitted. So based on the same proof, which consists of some new proof, he should be entitled to the same shot that I was recently given.

00:29:19
Speaker 1: It's so strange, right? So you've been acquitted. The actual perpetrator has been identified, arrested, convicted, right? So what possible reason could they have to hold– and I don't know as much about his case as I do about yours. Right.

00:29:32
Speaker 4: Well, it's the same. It's pretty much the same except he's got a confession. I do not. A false confession. I do not. It's the political climate in the community. A, they place their own interest above the interest of justice. So if something happens, if their colleague does something wrong, they cover up for it. B, they're worried about paying compensation. The county was already sued by Jeff. They're being sued by other people right now, two other cases. So the local government wants to keep this swept under the rug for as long as possible for however means they can. So we're moving forward. And if they don't want to accept it, if the Putnam DA's office don't want to accept that Andy's actually innocent, notwithstanding my induction into the National Registry of Exonerees, notwithstanding the fact that the wrongful conviction community accepts me as being actually innocent, we're just going to fight them tooth to nail. And if they have to roll over and we just have to Just keep on marching through. That's what's going to happen. Because I'm not going to tolerate these people. All they want to do is protect their own interests. This is unjust. They should accept responsibility.

00:30:35
Speaker 1: They have their killer.

00:30:37
Speaker 4: They have their killer.

00:30:38
Speaker 1: They know who it is.

00:30:38
Speaker 4: There's DNA proof. There's a confession.

00:30:41
Speaker 1: So what is the possible theory now, Anthony? Are they thinking now, well, maybe he had something to do with it also? I mean, it doesn't make any sense. This one is exactly a match. I mean- you don't have to be a skilled sleuth or detective or Kojak or whatever to figure this one out, right? I mean, everything that you said leading up to this point about how all the other crimes matched and the DNA and everything, it's like, obviously, it was this sick bastard Gombert, right? Howard Gombert, yes. Who did it. And so, the fact that your co-defendant is still rotting and being, you know, horribly abused and cut and everything else in prison, it should keep everybody up at night until this guy is free. It doesn't make any logical sense.

00:31:23
Speaker 4: And I agree with you. And I just want to build a little bit more. We extended the olive branch to the district attorney's office. The prior district attorney, Adam Levy, he actually contacted the attorney general's office to reinvestigate our case and was prepared to vacate my judgment in paperwork that he and my attorneys had drafted together with the attorney general involved based on proof that this guy could stall local horse perjured testimony and based on proof that Howard Gombert is the actual perpetrator. But he lost the election to this new guy, Bob Tendi, who is in bed with the Putnam County Sheriff that's the elected official down there now. So instead of continuing to accept this olive branch, we could work together. We could solve the crime. You could be heroes by being accountable and responsible. And we're not going to, forgive my language, shit on you when you let us out. We're going to big you up and we're going to try and help you look good as long as you do the right thing for us. He said to the attorney general, you could kick rocks. I don't need another advocate for the defendant. And then proceeded to go through the trial. Now, at this point, I made bail. I made a million dollars bail. So I'm free. But I'm on house arrest. I had an ankle bracelet. And I'm sitting there and I'm still waiting to find out if this guy really wants to take a trial or not. And he's all in. So he hires this guy, Larry Glasser, who worked on the Plaxico Burris case, the football star. I'm not going to comment on what I think of him. So he comes in, he's all balls to the wall, hating us and saying all the foulest things about us and that we definitely did it and there's no possibility we're innocent and proceeds to go to trial. And I go to a third trial. This is the third time. I got two reversals. The first time was the conflict of interest from the attorney in 2011. 2016, the court of appeals granted me a new trial based on proof that Howard Gombert did it, was suppressed from the retrial judge. So I'm going to trial and we pick a jury and they're being horrible about it. And At the same time, we did all from the olive branch. We go into the trial. At the end of the trial, the Kuznets trial, I had Mark Ignifilo, who works for Ben Brockman and Associates, and Mark Baker, who also works for Ben Brockman. He did appeal for John Gotti. Great attorneys, superior attorneys. They got the best hearts. They came this summer, the whole summer they were spending at my house. We were working on a case. We did everything. So I'm waiting for the jury verdict. Now, it's five hours. I'm waiting for the jury verdict. And I think... Man, I'm not going to win this because I was beaten down my whole life. You know, I was a victim my whole life. So I just think that this is another motion that I have to go back to prison and come back, try and get it back a fourth time. The jury comes out with a not guilty verdict. So I'm having an heart attack. Jeffrey Deskovic is in tears, gives me a big hug. I'm sitting here, my heart's pounding. The lawyers are in tears. My family's in tears. I knew the moment that that was going to happen. The judge looked when he said he was about to read the verdict. He looked towards... the victim's family. And again, I have great sympathy for him. And he said, there'll be no outbursts in this court. And this is before the jury guy stood up. And this was like two, three seconds before I said, when he looked over there and didn't look at us, I knew I was coming home and I came home and it was the greatest day of my life. I mean, I was, I lost bail during the period of time. I went back to the jail for whatever reason, but that day, that was the day that I, uh, that I made it home. And I was finally free of this, uh.

00:34:51
Speaker 1: You're finally free. It's bittersweet because you know as well as anybody that this poor guy, Andrew Krivak, is as innocent as you are. And I know you're not going to really, because I know the type of person that you are, you're not really going to be able to experience the joy that you deserve until he's home as well. But what was that like after you spent more than half your life in prison, right? 18 years old when you went in.

00:35:16
Speaker 4: Right.

00:35:16
Speaker 1: 38, 39 when you came out? I was 40.

00:35:18
Speaker 4: 40, right. 20 years.

00:35:20
Speaker 1: Right, because of the trial proceedings and everything else. By the time you actually went to prison, you were 20. Right. Right, arrested when you were 18. You spent more than half your life in the system. And you come out, and what is that like? You walk out. What does fresh air smell like when you haven't had any? What does freedom feel like? Where do you go? What was your first instinct? Did you want a milkshake? What did you do?

00:35:43
Speaker 4: I mean, I wanted what everybody else wanted, but I really wanted to spend time with my family. It was a lot of shock because prison is drab, you're bland colors, and just everything. I went to bed and bath, and I just looked at the wall of toothpaste. In commissary, you got three choices of toothpaste. So I'm looking at the toothpaste on a wall like, what am I doing? How am I supposed to make choices? And so even just going to a gas station and being able to buy a soda, or seeing females walk around. Like in prison, you're around men. I mean, they got some women guards, but being able to talk to girls, to speak to the opposite sex, to be able to not be wearing state greens, not being barked at orders. But the first most important thing that I found coming home was just being able to be with my family and appreciate the love and respect that they show me and give back and have a good time, have a good meal. We went to Red Lobster.

00:36:38
Speaker 1: What'd you have?

00:36:39
Speaker 4: I had the ultimate feast. I just wanted everything. And I've been having the ultimate feast since I've been home. I'm on a diet now, no carbs at all. So no more bread. I went from 240 to 275 in like six months.

00:36:52
Speaker 1: Well, and I want to go back to that because when we were together and we were hanging out in Miami recently, coincidentally, we ended up in the same city. We were having some dinner and we're talking and among all the other horrible things about being in prison. And I know you were just talking about the food. And I know you don't get a vegetable. You don't get a fruit. You get basically slop in there, right? It is.

00:37:10
Speaker 4: It really is.

00:37:11
Speaker 1: I mean, bland, just terrible food. Some of it's rotten. I mean, we know all those stories. But the other thing that's unique to your case and makes me really amazed that you're walking around upright is the idea that you're so big and the beds are too small. Oh, yeah.

00:37:28
Speaker 4: There's no bed that my feet didn't hang off on or I had to crunch up somehow.

00:37:32
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't.

00:37:34
Speaker 4: I had back problems until the day I came home. When I came home, my back problems went straight away.

00:37:39
Speaker 1: Isn't that amazing?

00:37:41
Speaker 4: I had disc up and down my back. And now I haven't had one disc pain, one sharp pain since I've been home. And I've been working out. In prison, you live on a mat. Like, it's one inch thick. And it's like you're living on a piece of steel. And like you said, sometimes the walls don't fit a guy 6'6. They fit a guy maybe 6 feet. So, you have to crunch up and you have to, you know. finding a way. I slept half the time.

00:38:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you got to just wake up with cramps in places that you don't even know you have places. I can't even imagine on top, as I talk about, I mean, on top of the loneliness, the violence, the lack of appropriate physical contact, all of it, it just adds up to just such a total nightmare. But I want to go back to prison for a second. Was there a worst time and was there anything positive? Was there one moment that you could think back? Was there a connection you made with somebody on the inside? Was there some moment of hope?

00:38:36
Speaker 4: I mean, there was brotherhood. When I was in Attica, we were living good. We were cooking. We had pans. Everybody had TVs. There was a camaraderie in the cell block where there was no problem. Everybody knew who I was and everybody respected me. And there was a brotherhood between us. But there was times where prison guards... would come to my cell because they heard out about Anthony DiPippo was in a jail and they decided to break all my things and threaten me with that. And so I experienced that in certain prisons like Sullivan. It's a tough prison when you have the guards going against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison. When you have the guards going against you, you can't win. So you have to walk on eggshells because anything you do, if you decide one day I'm going to fight the guards because I don't like the pressure that they're putting on me, you're going to get more time. They're going to send you to prison inside of prison. You're going to go to the box and then you're going to get one to three or seven more years. So I'm thinking to myself and to these times that I was pressured. that my family loves me. They invested $ 3 million since I've been incarcerated, $ 3 million into my criminal defense. I would not be respectful if I got caught up in some other thing where they get me off, or I won't say the word off, and they prove that I'm actually innocent for this crime. And I do something else stupid that I can't come home. So at certain times, I stayed in my cell. I bit my fist and I just said, I'm going to eat this. And luckily, I didn't come across any situation where I had to do more time. But there were times that I wanted to come out myself and hurt something. I just made sure those days were the days that I want to lock in because I love my family. I love myself. I want to go home.

00:40:15
Speaker 1: Is there a moment when you think back where you experienced any type of... positive thing? I mean, I know there were certain things.

00:40:23
Speaker 4: There was a lot of ups in prison. You become bipolar. So you would have severe depression, which even if you're not bipolar as a person, you will experience some sort of it. So there'll be great downs when you lose your appeals. And I appealed more than 20 times. When you lose your appeals and you have to go to the next step, but then there's great hope. If you know you're innocent and you're getting closer, you get this high, this euphoric high, like I'm right there. And then when you win, Even if you're still in prison, when you just wouldn't leave to appeal, you don't even got the right to appeal. That brings you up. When certain people write you, like ex-girlfriends or loved ones, the girls want to come see you and you've been down for so long, there's ups in prison. You live in life. So you just can't walk around for 20 years saying, this is an awful experience. I'm going to hate myself. I'm going to hate everything in it. You got to try to make the most of what you got. And that's what I did.

00:41:16
Speaker 1: That's a very spiritual approach, very evolved. And really, I think For those of us who hear you speak, it's absolutely remarkable. And I think that the exonerees as a whole embody that attitude. And I've heard some of the guys say and women say that for the people who weren't able to get to that spiritual place, if you want to call it that, they're still stuck in there because they sort of gave up hope. And for you, you kept fighting. In a certain sense, you were lucky. I mean, you can't call yourself lucky, but it was fortunate.

00:41:47
Speaker 4: I fought for my mind. I had family with money, and then I also put in work. So I was in the trenches with them the whole way.

00:41:53
Speaker 1: When you came out, I almost want to trace those steps. You come out, you're euphoric. You go into a car with your family. Everyone's ecstatic, so happy to have you back. Because it's a burden on the family, too. When someone's wrongfully convicted, it drags everybody down. Anybody who loves you, of course, right? So then you drive away. Where'd you go first? You went home first?

00:42:15
Speaker 4: I really didn't have an idea what we wanted to do. So Jeff was there. And so I wanted to go eat. Nobody knew where we wanted to go eat. There was about 20 of us that were there that day. Some people didn't even think there was going to be a verdict that day and went home. One of my attorneys almost crashed on the side of the road. So they said, you know, what do you want to do? So Jeff's like, let's go to Red Lobster. I have waited to go to Rev Lobster for so long. So I just went on his suggestion and it was great. We went over there, we had drinks. And then while I was there, this was one of the remarkable things was one of the guards that was taking me to trial during the first trial in 97 was there. He's not a guard anymore. A guy named Officer San Sanjaria. He came up to me and he's like, I want to, you know, just congratulate you. I didn't know who he was. And this is, I'm just out a hot hour and a half and he's shaking my, So I'm like, thank you. Oh, you don't remember me? Yeah, no, I was taken into the trial back then. I thought something was wrong back then. Let me buy you a beer. So one of the guards, one of the jailers that was taking me to my original trial, who felt something was off, gave me a big, tall blue moon with a little orange in it. And I banged that back. And it was just an experience, man. I'm very thankful for him.

00:43:24
Speaker 1: I'm trying to imagine how good lobster tastes after time. 20 years of terrible food. How good does beer taste after 20 years of no beer? So, Anthony, there's a rather bizarre aspect of your post-exaggeration life that really just boggles my mind, in spite of all the other things you've been through, which are so terrible. Now there's another indignity that the state is throwing at you. And basically, you can't get a driver's license. Is that right? Right.

00:43:50
Speaker 4: So I go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and they tell me, you got outstanding tickets. So I went to the town courthouse to go pay the tickets off. So they're telling me these tickets amount to 10 points on my license. These are tickets from 95. I failed the signal. I was speeding. And I'm not debating whether I did these things or not. I was a dumb thinker as a youth. But at this point now, I come home 20 years. You figured it would be resolved. And so now they're telling me that I may have another additional year of suspended license. That's like, all right, you were wrongfully convicted for 20 years. But here, matter of fact, on top of that, I have an additional year without a license to extend your sentence or whatever.

00:44:30
Speaker 1: I mean, it's crazy. There's a statute of limitations on almost all crimes except murder. I think rape is 10 years.

00:44:35
Speaker 4: I don't think traffic violations got statute of limitations. It's unbelievable, right?

00:44:39
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. I mean, you're coming out and you're going, wait, but I've been locked up for 20 days. They're like, that's all right. It's like saying to you, I don't care if the door is locked, you're still late, right? I mean, what are you talking about? It's just, I mean, at a certain point, the bureaucracy should grow a heart. And say, okay, you know what? We're going to make a little exception here for this guy. But that's not the case. So it must be an unbelievable feeling.

00:45:04
Speaker 4: It's a lot of culture shock. So I'm eating. I'm enjoying my life. At the same time, when I look back on it, I feel guilty. Because there's so many people that deserve that. That are still behind bars. That haven't made it home. At the same time, I feel happy and I enjoy the things that I'm enjoying now. And I still got a lot more to go because I'm still trying to reintegrate myself. I always look back and I say, if I could just help one person, one person achieve their freedom that don't deserve to be in prison. In the back of my mind, I'm always thinking about people. And I'm sure you get it too. You know, everybody needs help. And I wish I could help everybody. I just wish anybody that could be reached, I could reach. You know, it's impractical to think that you can do that. But if you can help one person or two people, I think that benefits society as a whole.

00:45:52
Speaker 1: And that's an incredible message. And certainly I try to spend my days trying to figure out exactly that, right? How can I get one more Anthony DePippo out? Because it's just an incredible, incredible feeling to see that transformation, to see justice served after all these years to see somebody like you get their life back on track you know i call it selfish altruism i do it because it makes me feel good you got.

00:46:22
Speaker 4: A great passion for it and you know it's very admirable the point you are in your career you don't need to be doing this but It's something that you do out of love and respect and trying to give back and find a solution to a problem. It's very admirable. I think your dad was involved in this, right, with the Innocence Project?

00:46:38
Speaker 1: Well, my dad was a supporter of the Innocence Project. And my dad, who was my hero, he still is, he really instilled in my brother and I a sense of right and wrong and an idea that what you do to make the world a better place defines you as a person, not wrong. what you accomplish. He told us, do whatever you want to do. Try to be the best at it, but just make the world a better place. He goes, that's the meaning of success. And I wanted to be a success in his eyes because I looked up to him so much. I definitely credit him for giving me this passion. And he was, his firm actually, Skadden, is a huge supporter of the Innocence Project, donates thousands of pro bono hours, has been involved in some very important exonerations. And they're all important, but I mean, some that have actually driven change systemically in And so it's really full circle to be able to work in this field, especially with his spirit hanging over and guiding. You know, and it's funny you said I don't need to be doing it. I do need to be doing it. I mean, this is what I need to be doing. This is what I'm here for. And I'm very lucky in a lot of ways, but I'm very lucky to be in a position to be able to help certain people. And I want to help as many as I can. And to get back to that, I know a lot of people that are listening to you speak right now are saying the same thing. They're saying, how can I help? What can I do? And let's start with the case of Andrew Krivak. I mean, what can people do?

00:48:00
Speaker 5: All right.

00:48:00
Speaker 4: So anybody wishing to contact Andrew Krivak may do so.

00:48:03
Speaker 1: Andrew Krivak, please do write to him. I know he'd love to hear from you. And it's number 97A4236, Wendy Correctional Facility. That's W-E-N-D-E 3040 Wendy Road in Alden, New York, 1-400-4-1187. And we'll put this address on the website for Wrongful Conviction Podcast.

00:48:28
Speaker 4: So what can people do to help Andrew Krivak? Just offer your support and become aware. And I'll help raise awareness. And then when his case comes up and the opposite side or the adversaries start making comments, then try to make comments back. We have attorneys for him. He's being represented pro bono. by Adele Bernard and Victor Cipos. So he's got a great team. Jeffrey Deskovic, of course, we're behind him. Offer moral support, anything he could do. I think that will help us get us over to home. Right now, the DA is being stubborn. Again, they're placing their own interest above the interest of justice. The interest of justice for not only Andrew Krivak and myself, but for the victims in this matter. Josette Wright and the other girl, Robin Murphy, who Howard Gombert also, in my view, killed based on what I told you earlier. there are ways you can help the actually innocent. Anyway, I mean, there's some places you can donate, like to the Innocence Project, to the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation, but some people don't have the money to donate. And when you don't have the money to donate, you can always offer moral support and always stay in somebody's corner.

00:49:34
Speaker 1: And you can go to the websites, go to the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation and learn about their work, go to innocenceproject.org. There's some instructions there of things you can do to get involved. Before we close, Anthony, I always like to ask, is there anything else that you want to share with the audience from your experience?

00:49:54
Speaker 4: Well, I'm trying to do my best to try to help people and trying to give back to the criminal justice system, to the wrongful conviction community. I'm currently working with the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation analyzing cases. I'm trying to determine who we could help, who's reachable. There's a lot of innocent people in there, but I'm trying to determine who's reachable. At the same time, I'm going around, and I encourage people to try to do the same thing. I'm going around. I'm lobbying lawmakers. I'm with It Can Happen to You. Professor Bennett Gershman, you may have heard of him. We're trying to pass a piece of legislation that creating the Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct, which would be an additional grievance committee for prosecutors who commit misconduct as a form of deterrence. So prosecutors won't withhold evidence if they know that there's going to be a penalty aside from the grievance committee, or they won't knowingly use perjured testimony. They try to create some balance. You know, the system works on checks and balances. And so, you know, I'm out there, I'm trying to lobby, I'm trying to work. If you can help any way, With the wrongful conviction movement, whether it's donate, moral support, anything, it's greatly appreciated. And there's other people that are in prison that deserve to come home. If I could give my life to bring 10 people home, I probably would do it. If God said, just give me one more day, I'll go have some fun, and then you could come for my soul and let 10 other free people out that deserve to be in prison, I would probably do that.

00:51:31
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts.

00:51:35
Speaker 4: It really helps.

00:51:37
Speaker 1: 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, Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at wrongfulconviction. and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company No. 1.