In 1995, two teens in Carmel, New York, were locked up for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. Meanwhile, a local criminal was allegedly terrorizing girls in the same town — even, according to testimony, using the same MO of the young girl's killer.
of a 12-year-old girl named Josette Wright. So was Krivak’s best friend, Anthony DiPippo, who served 20 years in maximum pens before winning an acquittal at retrial. In 1994, when Josette went missing, both men were all but children themselves. Krivak was 17, DiPippo 18; they’d soon join the list of casualties. Because the evidence adduced since 1997 points away from either of those boys being involved in Josette’s death, and the abduction and presumed killing of a second child, Robin Murphy.
LOST BOYS: Anthony DiPippo and Andrew Krivak would often hang out behind the Citgo in Carmel, or in the woods, “drinking 40s and smoking weed and cranking up the Wu [Tang] on a Tuesday.”As we cruise Carmel in his big-wheeled Benz, DiPippo points or nods to his old hang spots: “The Citgo after school, they’d let us drink a soda and smoke weed behind the station,” he says. “Behind the graveyard by Carvel, and the steps of the church on [Route] 52.
DiPippo was a freshman when he started getting high. A couple of years later, the weed was switched out for “wet,” an especially noxious strain of PCP. On weekends, there’d be a hundred kids wasted at a kegger up the hill at Barker’s Field. Most everyone he knew, the girls as well as the boys, was tossed out of school by 17. Josette Wright was tracing that path, as well — till someone raped and killed her at 12.
Tammy was exactly Gombert’s type: a short, pretty blonde going through a rough patch with her parents. Gombert, then 30, came to parties at Tammy’s house, after hiring her to babysit his daughter. Being 17, she let it slip that she’d sneak out late at night to meet her boyfriend.WAVE: Gombert is serving a 30-year sentence for molesting seven-year-old Laney B. and for raping her mom’s friend Paula.
Because he was the primary when Josette went missing, Castaldo caught her case as a homicide. Neither Castaldo nor his partner, Investigator William Quick, had ever worked a murder before. Their investigative training in Putnam County consisted largely of a classroom course. We can’t know for certain what they learned there, but we do know what theyIn 2019, when DiPippo sued them for rigging his wrongful conviction, Castaldo and Quick were forced to account for their conduct.
At length, Rose gave him a cockeyed statement that got key plot points wrong. She claimed the rape happened in DiPippo’s Bronco — a car he didn’t buy till months later. She claimed they were joined by a teen named Jason Gray, who’d actually been in jail that night. She claimed they were hanging at the diner, and barely mentions the Citgo station across the street. No matter that these lies were easily disproven; the cops crossed out her flubs and wrote in different details.
The murder of Josette Wright was front-page news, a cause of alarm among county parents. A second girl, Robin Murphy, had vanished in the spring of 1995 and was presumed dead. The pressure on PCS was immense. At least seven detectives were assigned to Josette’s case. Two of them — Anthony Nappi and Ronald Watkins — turned up lead after lead that pointed to Gombert.
The boys were arrested on July 1st, 1996, and charged with the rape and murder of Josette Wright. The story the prosecution landed on was this: On the evening of October 3rd, 1994, DiPippo and Krivak rang Rose’s doorbell and persuaded her to hang with them. Josette was in Krivak’s van already, sitting on the floor because the rear seats had been removed. The four kids drove to the Citgo station in town, where — according to Rose — there were 20 teens partying in the lot.
But it’s the next part of the narrative that really jumps the rails. Rose has claimed that she stayed in the van while the boys dragged the corpse to its resting place. She further claimed that there was a full moon out the night of October 3rd, 1994. That was how the boys were able to navigate woods that are treacherous and foreboding — in daylight. When I walked those woods, they were impassable.
Castaldo tricked the summer-school friend with a stub from an eyeglass store, dated September 30th, 1994. She’d gone there to get fitted for contact lenses, so that was when she’d seen Josette, Castaldo told her. He skipped over her second visit on October 7th, the day she actually saw Josette — four days after her supposed death-day. He pulled a similar stunt with the sixth-grade teacher. He and Quick pressed her again and again: Her statement didn’t sync up with their timeline.
For 20 years, DiPippo lost every way you can. He acted as his own lawyer in the early going, teaching himself the trade as he went along. “I learned from the few guys fighting their cases: You had to fuckin’ live at the law library,” he says. From his prison cell, he resolved to nail his betrayers, beginning with the lawyer who sold him out.
He was recovering in a Danbury hospital when Carmel police grilled him about Murphy. He admitted being the last person to speak to her, then lawyered up and refused to cooperate. But Murphy was never found and the case stalled out — though for no lack of pressure from Murphy’s family. It became a grim ritual in the local press: Every couple of years, her mom would denounce the cops and report her frantic efforts to learn the truth.
DiPippo was barely literate when he got to Shawangunk in 1997. But for a young man bent on freeing himself, jail was a place to learn to think as well as read, to interrogate the county that sent him down. By the time he finished his report to the attorney general — a forensic history that took him years and is a painstaking portrait of Gombert — he could write like a novelist, not a novice. He could also take a stab at the imponderable: why the cops in Putnam gave Gombert a free pass.
In the run-up to the 2012 trial, DiPippo presented everything he’d put together against Gombert. Affidavits from four victims, Gombert’s alleged confession to Santoro, and the trunk of panties seized from Paula’s. But the judge at his retrial blocked every shred of evidence against Gombert. Once again, DiPippo had to fight for his life in a courtroom tilted against him. Barred from even raising Gombert’s name to jurors, he lost his retrial in 2012.
With the stage now set to address those questions, Agnifilo called Gombert’s accusers. Laney B. talked about being raped at seven, then sobbed as she described what happened next. “He took pictures of my vagina, and he made me look,” she said. When she cried, “he just lit them on fire.” Getting off the stand, she was “destroyed,” she says. “I ran to the bathroom and was wailing so loud that security came to check on me. It was the rawest moment of my entire life.
“I don’t remember nothin’ till I got outside, then suddenly it hit me: color.” For 20 years, he’d lived in a wash of gray. He couldn’t stand the brightness as his family drove him home, the intensity of life pouring in. “When you’re drowning, all you see is the water,” he says. “Then someone throws a rope and drags you in the boat, but still all you see is that water.”
Brasil Últimas Notícias, Brasil Manchetes
Similar News:Você também pode ler notícias semelhantes a esta que coletamos de outras fontes de notícias.
Videos show New York, New Jersey under water as Hurricane Henri bears downCategory 1 Hurricane Henri unleashed torrential rain on the Northeast ahead of its expected landfall later today.
Consulte Mais informação »
Why L.A. Buyers Are Seeking New York City CondosBrokers are seeing a rush of Angelenos buying second places in the Big Apple, which is rebounding from the pandemic: “It feels like it’s going to be better than ever.'
Consulte Mais informação »
Flash flood warning in effect for New York CityA flash flood warning has been issued for parts of southern New York state — including New York City — and northeastern New Jersey as heavy rain continues to fall from Tropical Storm Henri
Consulte Mais informação »
Henri weakens after rains drench New York concertgoersA somewhat subdued Tropical Storm Henri spun over Rhode Island on Sunday, but not before a drenching rainstorm submerged a star-studded concert meant to mark New York City's emergence from the worst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Consulte Mais informação »
State Street is vacating New York City officesFinancial giant State Street Corp. is vacating its two New York City office locations.
Consulte Mais informação »
New York City declares state of emergency as Hurricane Henri heads to Northeast coastHenri has strengthened into a hurricane Saturday morning over the Atlantic on its way to the Northeast, the National Hurricane Center said.
Consulte Mais informação »