June 17, 2026
Chapter 3 | A Knife in the Heart of My Freedom
The cops investigating Josette’s murder have a strategy. By the time Anthony goes on trial, only one eyewitness remains.
Award-winning investigative journalist and longtime Rolling Stone Magazine contributor Paul Solotaroff hosts the next entry in the acclaimed Bone Valley anthology: Bone Valley Season 5 | The Devil's Quarry.
New episodes are available every Wednesday.
Listeners can binge the entire season by subscribing to Lava for Good+ on Apple Podcasts.
Bone Valley Season 5: The Devil’s Quarry is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Rolling Stone Films and Signal Co. No1.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
00:00:00
Speaker 1: This series include sensitive and potentially distressing topics, including sexual assault and abuse involving children. Listener discretion is advised. Anthony Depicpo and Andy Kreevak were in County Lockup for months waiting separate trials. They weren't the most popular inmates on the block, given their charges the rape and murder of a twelve year old girl.
00:00:33
Speaker 2: One thing that's very hard for me to say is during this period of time, the guards and the inmates were urinating in my orange juice, and at some point I drank.
00:00:44
Speaker 1: That Anthony had acute guest writers from the rancid food in jail, and a scalp broke out in rashes from bathing and filthy water. More intolerable still was no, he didn't belong there. It had nothing to do with Joe's murder, and knew Andy had no pardon that either. Still, it was Andy who'd signed the confession that put him in this barrel, and so Anthony burned to get his best friend alone and soon to find out why he betrayed him. Eventually they met in the jail house library. There were guards nosing around, so they spoke and coated whispers. Andy said that When the cops brought him in, they browbeat him for hours. Pacstaldo and Bill Quick screamed in his face while one of them brandished his gun. They refused over and over to let him speak to a lawyer, what he used the John, or even call his father, and then they sent him in with their lie detector guy, an older cop named Dance Stevens. Stevens wired him up and interrogated him for hours, then told him he failed the polygraph. As Andy sat there sobbing, Castalda put a statement in front of him, a nine page statement written out by Bill Quick. As Anthony listened to his friend, he had a shock of recognition. It was exactly what the cops had tried to do to him before his lawyer burst in and stopped them. But Andy had no lawyer on retainer.
00:02:23
Speaker 2: And he was broken by Costaldo and Quick, and he was not leaving until he signed that statement.
00:02:32
Speaker 1: So now here they both were equally fucked. Nine months passed. Andy's try was up first.
00:02:44
Speaker 2: March nineteen ninety seven. Krevac picks his jury.
00:02:50
Speaker 1: Three weeks later, on April sixteenth, that jury came back with a verdict. Anthony paste in the common area waiting on Andy's return for a court.
00:03:02
Speaker 2: The day he came back, He's like, yo, I blew y'all. When the guy says, they blew that street talk for I lost for the trial. I blew trial. I remember he was walking right under the TV, just walked right by and said that shit.
00:03:17
Speaker 1: Anthony felt those words in the pit of his stomach. My fuck doesn't look good for me. Now they know Andrew Kreevac guilty of the murder, and the media was against me. Everybody was angry.
00:03:35
Speaker 2: And they knew how to use that. The newspaper was putting my picture with the biggest beard that I had against the girl when she was seven. So you got this tiny, tiny girl and this big big man. Everybody had an interest somehow in it, and everybody wanted and believed that was me.
00:04:01
Speaker 1: Next, it was Anthony's turn on the docket. He felt doomed in advance, and suddenly, weeks before his trial started, one of.
00:04:12
Speaker 2: The biggest things in this case happens. I get a call to the visiting room. Dominic Neglia walkstro well three hundred and fifty pounds of them.
00:04:23
Speaker 1: Domin Neglia, your recall was the third kid in the car when Putnam cops caught them with angel dust. You'll also recall those cops pulled them over moments after Dom stopped to make a phone call. Only Dom knows if he actually dialed his grandma as he claimed, or if he made that call to tip off the cops. In any case, Dom, it's something you want to get off his chest now.
00:04:48
Speaker 2: And he sits down and he's basically on the edge of tears. He's like, I feel bad about Andy. I think this is my fault. I made up the story. And he said, I told the police you said to me these things you didn't say to me, and now you guys killed this girl, and I want to take my story back.
00:05:11
Speaker 1: Tom spilled the story of how the cops coerced him. They showed up unannounced at his school, dragged him out of his special needs class so often that the principal banned them from campus. So then they pulled the same stunt at Olive Garden, where he worked after school. But the cops rousted him so often there and the manager fired him. And that wasn't all said down. Then there was the physical stuff. He said. Costaldo hit him in the back of the head with his handcuffs down on all fours. Dom screamed he would sue, but Castaldo looked at him and laughed, I don't know what you're talking about. We just saw you fall off your chair. Oh that's rich. Because Castaldo was finally caught on camera years later beating and stomping and choking a defendant whose hands and feet were padlocked. Castato lied through his teeth and said the attack never happened, but it was captured in glorious living color on the county's own security cameras. In the end, Dominic says he'd finally cave to make the torture stop. He fed the cops some names he'd heard Anthony say and said those guys were involved in Josette's murder. But now, said Dommy wanted to take it all back, to stand up in court and tell the truth, tell a jury that none of what he told the cops was true. No. Sooner did dom leave the jail house than Anthony called his lawyer. The lawyer had Dom write and sign a recantation, and it was all in writing.
00:07:02
Speaker 3: I got you.
00:07:03
Speaker 1: I'm going fucking on.
00:07:15
Speaker 3: My madness, laughter, my fears, sorrows, deaths are endless.
00:07:31
Speaker 1: This valley, my DearS, this is the Devil's quarry. By the time the cops were done with Dom, he'd lost count of the times they dragged him into talk. He'd also lost count of the stories he told them about the night of Joseph's murder. The details changed wildly every time he opened his mouth, but the kernel of those stories Anthony and Andy's involvement became the crux of the cases against them.
00:08:26
Speaker 4: The charges against twenty one year old Anthony to Pippo are first degree rape and second degree murder. To Pippo's trial is being held in the Putnam County Courthouse in Carmel. It's alleged to Pippo and another man, nineteen year old Andrew Cribbock, killed twelve year old Josette right on October fourth of nineteen ninety four.
00:08:43
Speaker 1: Anthony's case was tried in Carmel in the courthouse on the town's main road.
00:08:49
Speaker 2: It was the old courthouse, so it looked like the courthouse from a time to kill. It was like, you know, high ceilings, wood pillars, portraits of white men from the eighteen hundreds, and you know, and then also the judge looked like he was a white man from the eighteen hundreds.
00:09:07
Speaker 1: Judge brats Once again, Big Larry came through for Anthony. He paid over sixty seven grand up front to a primetime lawyer. His name was Bob Leader, and he had a certain swagger, having a reputation for being the rare attorney in Putnam County who won a murder case.
00:09:28
Speaker 2: Bob Leader looked like Saddam Lucine, Like you remember Sadam smoking a cigarette, you know, just calling people. Bob Leader's face was the same face. I trusted him. I felt like I had a shot.
00:09:50
Speaker 1: At a pre trial hearing, the Leader argued his motion to call Big Dom this witness as the original accuser. He argued Tom was essential to the case.
00:10:01
Speaker 2: He did try, really try to get dominic neglia understand, but the judge was just.
00:10:09
Speaker 1: Wasn't having it.
00:10:10
Speaker 2: He denied the application he used dominic neglia.
00:10:14
Speaker 1: Why did that judge an old sawhorse named Bill Bratz bar Dom from testifying. He said Dom's testimony was quote too conjectural, too collateral, that it didn't seem his word reasonable, and so he decided what the jury would weigh. Rather than leave that task up to the jury.
00:10:37
Speaker 2: So that just stuck the knife in the heart of my freedom. I was done.
00:10:44
Speaker 1: On day one of Anthony's trial, the Putnam DA went first. He told the jury a version of the story that Dom told a group of teens hanging out at the gas station in town, a night of partying gone off the rails in a van owned by Andy's dad, and the rape and murder of a twelve year old girl by Andy and Anthony. The DA declared he had a direct eyewitness who would testify to that. Her name was Denise Rose.
00:11:26
Speaker 5: So well, James her anclest, he's almost fair that the test wire about to give will read the truth and the whole.
00:11:32
Speaker 6: Truth, and nothing but the truth.
00:11:33
Speaker 7: So healthy God, Finally, when have you ready.
00:11:37
Speaker 1: Before we hear from Denise, the one person who claims to have seen Josette's murder. We're going to jump forward twenty years to an inquiry launched by Anthony's lawyers. The focus of that inquiry the handling of the Joset Right murder by the Putnam Sheriff's Office, or, to put a fine point on it, the handling of that case by investing Gator Castaldo and his partner Quick Weeks of depositions were taken in that probe. The lead lawyer for Anthony's team was Nick Preston.
00:12:12
Speaker 7: Fair to say, this is the biggest case of your career, Yes, sir, not even close right.
00:12:17
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, Now that's pack Castaldo, the eldest loving bruiser.
00:12:23
Speaker 7: It's it was. It was a horrific murder and rape of a twelve year old girl.
00:12:28
Speaker 6: Have rape a murder of a.
00:12:29
Speaker 7: Twelve year old child as bat as it gets, I would think so. But your job, that's all you were doing, Yes, sir, every day, all day.
00:12:39
Speaker 6: Yes, once once I've fund into a murder case.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: Yes, sorry, I'll remind you that Castaldo had never worked a murder before, and right from the start it showed that.
00:12:50
Speaker 7: Was your first murder case.
00:12:51
Speaker 8: Yes, sir, I did not have the experienced hands on. I was not a person that invests. He gave a lot of homicides.
00:13:02
Speaker 1: And this is Bill Quick talking. He was colely detective in Josette's murder and the one who hand wrote all the witness statements from teens allegedly in the van when Josette died. Quick was another old school lawman, though with his brush mustache and dustball Complexion. The lawman he most resembled was Wyat.
00:13:25
Speaker 8: Herb Well, I have certain rules I moved by.
00:13:29
Speaker 9: I've lived by these rules all my life and I brought that into law enforcement.
00:13:35
Speaker 7: What are those rules?
00:13:35
Speaker 1: He left?
00:13:36
Speaker 9: Those rules are basically that you do the right thing all the time, everything that you can do to do it properly.
00:13:44
Speaker 8: You can't make assumptions.
00:13:47
Speaker 1: According to Castaldo, the night the boys were busted for PCP, Dom volunteered a tip about the murder.
00:13:56
Speaker 6: Dominic Neglie told me about the van and the people that were there, and when he gave the name it of people. I wanted to speak to these people. Maybe they had information involving what could have happened, did you set.
00:14:08
Speaker 1: The details of Dom's story would vary wildly over time, but the gist of it was this, On the night of Joseph's murder, Sho's in the back of the van owned by Andy's dad with her in that van where Anthony and Andy and three other Putnam teens.
00:14:26
Speaker 8: A little street kids. They were all trouble every single work.
00:14:38
Speaker 1: The cops who were specially interested in one of those troubled teens, a girl named Denise Rose.
00:14:44
Speaker 6: I'm that the testimony are about to do with you the truth, the whole truth.
00:14:47
Speaker 7: And nothing but the truth.
00:14:48
Speaker 5: Yes, thank you.
00:14:51
Speaker 7: Good morning, Miss Rose, good morning. Have you ever had your deposition taken before?
00:14:57
Speaker 1: Anthony and Denise had been in grade school together and then in high school, their tasts for drugs brought them closer.
00:15:05
Speaker 2: Denise Rose was somebody in my same grade. I just knew Denise Rose from being in school, and then I kind of became more friendly with her, like they're in high school.
00:15:15
Speaker 1: High schools generally when the stoners find each other, and like Anthony, Denise had zero fear. She jump into a car to prowl the South Bronx alone, a short white girl looking for crack cocaine on some of the deadliest streets in America.
00:15:32
Speaker 2: I mean, we mutually enjoyed doing drugs, and we mutually enjoyed go you can get drugs. And then we would go to kind of cool places while we were doing drugs and go to the beach and go to the cliffs overlooking eighty four and like, you know, you smoke and you'd look out and it's kind of like, you know, you got like a pretty background to get it, you know, and you're tripping or you're you're smoking something you know you want to be in kind of these settings that are kind of nice.
00:15:59
Speaker 1: Denise had them over to her folks house for dinner, but it never turned romantic, says Anthony, except for one druggy night when they hooked up.
00:16:09
Speaker 2: I had moments of weakness and she was right there. I had a lot of hormones going on. I needed to get rid of them. But then I got on high and then I'm like, what am I doing. I'm saying I'm sorry, I can't and then I'm like, well, I got to go to this club tonight, but I don't want to be hanging out with you. So I put her down, and I think I put her down a little too hard.
00:16:31
Speaker 1: A few weeks after he told Dennie seedn't want to hang with her, Anthony tried to patch things up, not because he'd been racked by guilt, but because he needed a ride of the city that went about as well as you'd expect.
00:16:45
Speaker 2: I tried to call her and she was very dismissive, and I thought it was because of the way I kind of like broke it off.
00:16:51
Speaker 1: With her, But he didn't know was Denny's was talking to the cops or that Carmel, Hey, that really is a bitch. Twenty years later, Denise was one of the people deposed by Anthony's lawyers. Here she is in twenty nineteen, under questioning from Nick Breston.
00:17:15
Speaker 5: And when someone says to you, do you remember how many times you smoke crag? I wanted to say to him, do you remember how many times you wiped your ass?
00:17:22
Speaker 1: Since there were no recordings made at Anthony's trial, we're using the tape from this deposition to give you a sense of Denise's testimony, but to properly introduce her. Here's some facts about Denise's involvement with Anthony's case. Castaldo in Quick called her in the first time on April second, nineteen ninety six for perspective. That was five months after Joseph's body was found and five months after Anthony and Andy were busted for PCP. Castaldo and Quick talked to her for many hours that day statement, as Bill Quick wrote it down, made zero mention of a murder. At the end of it, Castaldo told her to keep her nose clean. Spoiler alert, she didn't. The very next day, Denise lost her shit. She was driving with some friends when she saw a girl she didn't like.
00:18:20
Speaker 5: Opposite she had a history with me.
00:18:23
Speaker 1: That girl named Elena was driving the car in front of her on the road her a report Elena made to police. Denise chased Elena through several towns and then battle ram the rear enda of her car. Elena told the cops that Denise got out of her car bashed in her window. Denise denied this, but well, here's Breston asking about her history with ball bats.
00:18:50
Speaker 10: You had gotten into some trouble before that by driving around having you or people in your car smashing mailboxes with the baseball back correct when he does that?
00:19:00
Speaker 3: So what?
00:19:04
Speaker 1: Denise was promptly arrested for ramming Elena's car and hit with four charges for it. One of those charges was a felony. She could have gotten seven years for that. Yet somehow, the day after she rammed the girl's car, Denise was stopped yet again in her car. This time the cops got her for erratic operation of her vehicle. She failed to feel sobriety test was arrested on the spot for DUI. That night, in the lockup, Denise made a big commotion.
00:19:39
Speaker 5: I was in there in a paper suit, and I was screaming at whoever is at the desk, I know something you don't know, and I said about I guess it was around two in the morning. I said, I want to speak to officer or investigator gestal though right now.
00:19:56
Speaker 10: So after you got arrested you one of the things you said was is get Castaldo here because I have more information to give him.
00:20:03
Speaker 1: Correct.
00:20:04
Speaker 5: Yes, I was trying to say, let me out of here, because I know about a murder.
00:20:08
Speaker 1: I knew the So Castaldo got out of bed and met with her in lock up. But according to both of them, they didn't talk about a murder. Denise says he was only there a few minutes.
00:20:19
Speaker 5: Three minutes, are you kidding me? Three minutes is not enough time to talk about a murder.
00:20:25
Speaker 1: Castaldo agrees they spoke that night, but not about Josette's murder. He says he woke up late at night to serve a restraining order from Elena.
00:20:34
Speaker 8: To do that, I went in the back. It was seconds I went in the back.
00:20:38
Speaker 6: She was dead and the rescue me remember something from way back, the best of my knowledge.
00:20:41
Speaker 5: I went there.
00:20:42
Speaker 6: She was giving the papers and I was out of there. I did not have a concisation.
00:20:46
Speaker 1: Okay, there's no tape of that encounter or scribble notes, so no way to know what they did discuss.
00:20:54
Speaker 10: By the way, Denise Rose never asked you for any favors, correct, and you never offered her any favors.
00:21:01
Speaker 5: Correct.
00:21:03
Speaker 1: But here's what we do now. Several hours after they met the lock up, Denise's bell was raised. She was allowed to go home in a day or two after that. Castalda says he was puttering around Carmel when he had an epiphany this. I do remember.
00:21:20
Speaker 6: We were driving down on Fair Street and I said to myself, we have to call the Niese falls back. I remember we were driving down Fair Street and I just said, I need to speak to her again. I just felt I needed to talk to her again. I thought she may have more information.
00:21:35
Speaker 1: The truth is He and Quick spoke to her many times after that. A couple of weeks later, according to Denise, she finally just sort of.
00:21:45
Speaker 5: Cracked myself anymore, okay, and I figured I didn't tell him the whole truth, so I better go there as soon as possible and tell them before I explode inside. I can't live with this and the family needs to know that. Josette's family needs to know it's not fair to them.
00:22:01
Speaker 7: Okay, I can deal.
00:22:03
Speaker 5: Does I have to get this off my chest.
00:22:08
Speaker 1: And so three weeks after she first talked to the cops, Denise met with Costaldo and Quick again. Castaldo says he got things started.
00:22:18
Speaker 6: I said, Denise, I know what happened. I said, I know what happened. To just set right, Denise had Right after I said that, she turns around. She banged. She says, they raped, they tied the gag, and they dumped her in the woods.
00:22:32
Speaker 1: Quick wrote out her statement that day. It said that Denise witnessed the rape and murder of Joseph Right. But what was omitted from that statement was something Costaldo said moments before she agreed to sign it.
00:22:47
Speaker 6: They said, you can get twenty five years to light a feel if you're a.
00:22:49
Speaker 8: Part of this crime.
00:22:51
Speaker 1: And so lickety split, and he signed that statement and puff all of her charges went away with Denise and Hand. The cops chased the other teens dom named. They hauled in Andy Kreevak again, but this time they threatened and coerced him for hours, then tricked him into signing a false confession, a confession accusing Anthony of Joseph's murder, and finally they arrested Anthony. To Pippo, by then there was no need to coerce or trick him. They had statements from four of his friends. Now, if all the cops had done was coerce these kids, there's a real chance that none of this comes to light. Cops in America coerced confessions all the time, and I would know. I've reported dozens of such cases over the years. But in this case, Costaldo and Quick would just get getting started because remember they had no forensics to bring to court, so the heat was really on them to make a murder charge stick. So they've bent or broke the law in a dozen different ways. Here's a major. For instance, it's standard procedure for cops to record interviews in cases involving serious crimes. Even back in the nineties, Putnam County had tape recorders to use without witnesses knowledge. But for these cops, we had audio tags, so we didn't use them. It was just the way I did things. Preston, Anthony's lawyer pounced on that point.
00:24:39
Speaker 10: The best way to record a witness interview or a suspect interview, is the tape record.
00:24:45
Speaker 1: No I disagreeed that. You disagrewed that.
00:24:47
Speaker 7: Okay, you don't recall ever being trained.
00:24:49
Speaker 6: On that and trained, Yes, sir, no I was trained that way. I don't think that's the best way.
00:24:54
Speaker 7: Okay, so let's stick with training first.
00:24:56
Speaker 1: Which brings us to point two in cop protocol, were no recording devices are available? Standard practices to have witnesses write out statements in their own words and handwriting. But again, that wasn't the way Castaldo and Quick did things. Castaldo was the one asking all the questions and Quick was the one writing the statements.
00:25:18
Speaker 6: You can understand it. Quick had an excellent penmanship, except that.
00:25:22
Speaker 1: Even that wasn't a hard and fast rule. Castaldo and Quick interviewed lots of people over the course of this investigation, and far too often nothing was written down. For example, they met with Denise many times after she first came into the station. They show better house to chat with her, but only three of their many sit downs with Denise were memorialized in writing.
00:25:49
Speaker 6: Sometimes didn't take no, sometimes you just took the statement.
00:25:53
Speaker 10: It sounds like unless a witness gave you a statement, agreed to sign a statement, you didn't necessarily document that that interview was conducted correct direction.
00:26:05
Speaker 1: I may not under oath. Quick admitted that there were things he didn't write down, things that didn't fit his narrative of the case. For example, some of Josette's friends said they saw Josette after October fourth, nineteen ninety four, the day the cops claimed she was raped and murdered. These were people who knew Josette well and who claimed to have talked to her at the Danbury Mall after that date. He wrote down some of these accounts, but Quick admits there were others he dismissed as rumors. You know, it was just totally ridiculous.
00:26:44
Speaker 7: You didn't write any of those rummers down, No, because we couldn't.
00:26:47
Speaker 8: We couldn't verify whether they were true or not.
00:26:50
Speaker 1: Well, you could have, you could have caused Okay, So no rumors allowed from local witnesses, got it, Except there was nothing but rumors to implicate Anthony and Andy, and all those got written down and placed in the final case file. But there's more. Not only did they fail to properly document their probe Castaldo in quick pit total ignorance. The most basic laws of evidence, take, for example, the Brady rule. Brady requires cops to turn over any evidence that comes up in the course of investigation that would help the defendant a trial, including information that would discredit police officers. It's been the law of the land since nineteen sixty three. In every cop in America knows about Brady. It's taught from week one at the academy. Alas said Castaldo under oath in twenty nineteen, that part of his training. Yeah, that part didn't stick. Herea is again under questioning by Nick Bruston.
00:27:56
Speaker 10: Now, would it be fair to say that you don't recall over receiving any train any of what's called exculpatory evidence or Brady material.
00:28:04
Speaker 7: You never heard those terms, right, I've heard the chistment.
00:28:06
Speaker 6: I don't remember getting training.
00:28:08
Speaker 3: What do they mean?
00:28:09
Speaker 6: I mean, I've just heard.
00:28:10
Speaker 3: I don't know.
00:28:10
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell you right now.
00:28:11
Speaker 7: Okay, do you know what exculpatory evidence means?
00:28:14
Speaker 1: Exclaim to me. I won't know if you know. No, Okay, but wait, there's more. In criminal law, there's something called impeachment evidence, evidence that shows that witnesses in the case may be untruthful or mistaken or unreliable, that too must be turned over to the defense. Only Costaldo didn't do that either.
00:28:36
Speaker 7: You know what impeachment evidence is? Yes, what is impeachment evidence?
00:28:43
Speaker 6: Well, basically trying to go to the President of the United States stand to teach him bring up charges against them.
00:28:52
Speaker 1: Yes, you heard that right. Pat Costaldo, senior investigator for the Putnam Sheriff's Office, thought impeachment pertained to the crome times of the President of the United States and not to the witnesses he manipulated to implicate Anthony to Pippoe. Costaldo was the lead detective in the rape murder case of Joseph Right, But as it turns out, he didn't at the least idea how legally do his job having established who the cops of their star witness were. Let's jump back to Anthony's trial in ninety seven. Denise Rose, you'll recall, had just taken the stand to tell the jury her version of events. This is what she swore to on the stand. On the night of October third, nineteen ninety four, the two boys pulled up to her house. She claimed, Andy was at the wheel of his dad's brown van, Anthony was in the passenger seat. She opened the slider to hop in.
00:29:59
Speaker 5: She says there were no seats in the back when he picked me up from my house.
00:30:04
Speaker 1: Sitting on the floor, she said, was twelve year old Josette right.
00:30:10
Speaker 5: She had on blue jeans, a brown jacket, and a white T shirt.
00:30:15
Speaker 1: Denise jumped in beside her. She said. Andy then drove to the Sitko station in town, where ten or twelve teens were loitering outside, smoking dope and pounding beers in full view of passing cop cars. A few hours later, she said, she got back in the van with Andy, Anthony and Josette, only now they were joined by two other teens, Bill McGregor and Adam Wilson. At that point, said Denise, she thought they were dropping her home. Instead, Andy took off in the other direction, northbound towards Field's Lane.
00:30:53
Speaker 5: I wanted to go home, and they didn't take me home. It took me to go kill a girl.
00:30:58
Speaker 1: Wasn't expecting that, Denise says. Andy stopped and parked on Fields Lame. It's a dirt road shortcut to Connecticut that's bounded on both sides by woods. That night, it was as black ast tar out. There no streets, no porch lights from houses because there were no houses, not back then, there weren't. Even the moon was dark that night. And as for the van's lights, it's dome lights, track lights, she says they weren't on either, But Denny exclaimed she saw everything that happened. Next, she said, the boys pulled out some PCP and smoked it in the back of the van, and then during a game of spin the bottle, Andy kissed Josette, said Denise. When Josette resisted, Andy threw her to the floor. He aanked her jeans and underwear over her sneakers.
00:31:57
Speaker 5: Her hands were swinging, and then he took her hands and put them like this in front of her.
00:32:03
Speaker 1: She showed jurors how he tied Josette's hands in front of her body.
00:32:08
Speaker 5: There was a rope in the van, just on the floor somewhere, and she.
00:32:12
Speaker 1: Claimed Andy shoved Josette's underwear and her mouth, then took her bra and tied it around her head, at which point she said he raped her just inches from Josette. Denise watched this all go down. At some point, she said, she protested.
00:32:30
Speaker 8: Leave her alone.
00:32:30
Speaker 5: She's just a baby.
00:32:33
Speaker 1: At that point, claimed Denise, Anthony leaned over screaming.
00:32:37
Speaker 5: He stood up and said, shut the fuck up with your necks, and.
00:32:41
Speaker 1: Then, according to Denise, he told Andy, yo, yo.
00:32:45
Speaker 6: Save some of that for me.
00:32:47
Speaker 5: It's my turn, save some of that for me.
00:32:50
Speaker 1: According to Denise, Anthony raped Josette next, and when he stopped, she said Josette wasn't moving, she was completely lifeless.
00:33:01
Speaker 5: They wrapped her nylon jacket around her waist, her brown niline jacket around her waist, and they carried her out.
00:33:10
Speaker 1: She said she sat in the van in silence while the boys carried Josette out the back doors. Denise said she sat there for fifteen or twenty minutes till the boys came back without Josette.
00:33:24
Speaker 5: And I asked, where's the girl. Someone said she's sleeping, she passed out, and the other one said, no, her mom's coming to pick her up.
00:33:33
Speaker 1: She claimed Anthony ordered her to keep her mouth shut or she'd be the next one dead. That was her explanation for why she kept mum till Costaldo dragged her in over a year later, drunk.
00:33:45
Speaker 5: Not no, no, no, no no, I didn't even tell a damn priest. I was petrified, like, my god, I'm going to die.
00:33:56
Speaker 1: Under cross examination, Denise claimed she just sat there after the boys left to bury Josette's body. The girl who cruised the South Bronx to buy crack, who admitted a smashing a CoP's mailbox with a bat, That girl just sat there and did nothing, nor did she attempt to flee when the two boys were in the woods. A trial, she conceded that the keys were right there in the ignition. All she'd had to do was start the van and drive it straight to the Sheriff's office. For all the holes in Denise's story, the jury found her persuasive, and particularly they were struck by the tiny detail she remembered, like the costume jewelry Josette was wearing the night she was in the van. But here's the thing. Denise also told the jury she had help with those details. The cops showed her all their evidence at the station before she signed a statement saying she witnessed Josette's murder.
00:35:00
Speaker 5: Billy Quick showed me the earring and the pendant, and I said, I remember that now, and it was and it came in a brown paper bag, and he said, I'd like to show you a few pieces of jewelry and some other things. And I said, okay, the brown jacket was in there, and the shoes, the jeans, and the earring, the pendant t shirt.
00:35:21
Speaker 1: If you're counting, that's the fifth rule those two cops broke. You don't show evidence to a witness, above all, not before they've given their statement. It's called witnessed hampering. And then somehow it gets worse.
00:35:38
Speaker 10: Now on April second, one of the things that Nostaldo did was he took you to the van and he opened the passenger door side so you could look inside it.
00:35:49
Speaker 7: Correct.
00:35:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, the cops took her down to their parking lot where they hit the brown van and custody. They let her look around the van's interior once again strictly forbidden. Oh. In another hole in Denis's story, that fan she claimed Josette was killed in. It wasn't even drivable when she went missing a trial. Anthony's lawyer put on a mechanic to testify to this.
00:36:18
Speaker 2: We put on the mechanic that said the van couldn't have been operationable because it had a crack drive shaft, it was on blocks. His flat tires there was a transmission problem, so it was inoperable on the night in question.
00:36:35
Speaker 1: But at Anthony's trial and several decades later, Denise stuck to her story.
00:36:42
Speaker 5: People wake up, I'm the one who saw the murder take place by Krebet and the Pippo.
00:36:56
Speaker 1: So let's recap. Denise claimed she'd witnessed the murder of Josette right in a van that couldn't have been driven at a location in the woods with no source of light on a completely moonless night. And what about the other teens allegedly in the van besides Denise and Andy and Anthony and Josette, both were teens that Anthony knew. One of them was Adam Wilson, a party hardy kid who also sold drugs and carmel. The other was Bill McGregor, a kid from nearby Brewster who was fighting his own battle with drugs. Before the trial, Putnam cops brought both of them in separately. They grilled each of them for many hours, then got them to sign statements the detective quick wrote out. At Anthony's trial, Adam Wilson took the stand and Recanada's statements of those cops. He testified they'd sweated him for twelve straight hours, denied him as right to make a phone call, warned him he'd either swear that he'd seen the murder or be charged as Josette's killer, And so he, like Dom and Andy, claimed that he too, signed a statement just to get out of that room. The second he got home, though, he called his mother and a lawyer, and Adam.
00:38:17
Speaker 2: Wilson is strong on a recantation.
00:38:20
Speaker 1: He had everything.
00:38:21
Speaker 2: They're losing nothing again by taking back omitting criminal perjury.
00:38:26
Speaker 1: Then the state put on Bill McGregor, the other teen who was allegedly in a van the night Josette was murdered. He mumbled, I guess when the DA asked if he'd been in the van that night, but undercut himself by saying he'd fallen asleep in the front seat. A gang rape and murder it happened two feet behind him, but for McGregor, he saw none of it. But it wasn't just the teens who didn't back Denise's story. The van itself yielded zero clues that a violent rape murder happened. There no DNA whatsoever, no blood, no hair, no skin cells, no fibers. That lass fact baffled even the cops.
00:39:07
Speaker 8: I couldn't understand how there could be that absence of events.
00:39:17
Speaker 1: When the jurors filed out to begin deliberations, Anthony sat there expecting the worst. Despite the glaring holes in the state's case.
00:39:28
Speaker 2: I'm going like this with my tie up and down, and I'm nervous. I'm trying to catch my breath. Guilty five point thirty PM.
00:39:38
Speaker 4: Had two rating what eases were guilty, and that's guilty of first degree rape and second degree murder.
00:39:45
Speaker 7: Anthony to Pippo and another man, Andrew Crivic.
00:39:48
Speaker 4: Were charged with the rape and murder of twelve year old Jezette Wright on October third, nineteen ninety four.
00:39:57
Speaker 1: Five weeks later, on the day was sentenced, Anthony had a Pippo got up to speak. He turned and looked directly at Susan Wright, Josette's mom, because.
00:40:07
Speaker 2: She's got a big eyes as it is, this angry woman. But her eyes were like three times normal eyes. It's just the way that her anger. If she could have killed me through her eyes, she would have. I said to Susan Wright, and I'm sorry you think I killed your daughter, And then I wouldn't stop fighting until you see I'm innocent.
00:40:28
Speaker 1: And I looked her in the eye when I said it.
00:40:31
Speaker 2: Now I got to go to state prison as a rapist, child, a pedophile, very deep shit saw, I'm like, well.
00:40:40
Speaker 1: Fuck it. When Anthony walked out of the courthouse that day, he flipped the camera's deuces.
00:40:47
Speaker 5: Convicted murderer Anthony de Pippo showed no signs of remorse, appearing unfazed after being sentenced to the maximum.
00:40:55
Speaker 4: Susan Wright, Josette's mother, told us the verdict moves her closer to closure and her daughter's death.
00:41:00
Speaker 5: If there was something worse than prison, I could we could do.
00:41:03
Speaker 7: That would be fine.
00:41:04
Speaker 6: But that's all we can do is put them away and they can't hurt anybody else, any other children.
00:41:11
Speaker 1: But Anthony knew something those reporters didn't, that he'd been framed by two lawless detectives. And as for the guy who'd actually killed Josette, he was still out there in the woods, stalking, obsessing, and sharpening his knife for another moonless night off Field's Lane. The Devil's Quarry is a production of Lava for Good in association with Rolling Stone Films and Signal Company Number One I'm Your Creator and host Paul Solatarov. Executive producers are Jason Flomm, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wardis, and Gilbert King from Rolling Stone Films. Our executive producers are Alexandra Dale and Sean Woods. Our producers are Gara Cornhaber, Hannah Beale, Jackie Pawley, Austin Smith, and Kathleen Horn. Our editor is Joel Lovell. Fact checking by Lucy Croning. Our sound designer is Brit Spangler, and our engineer is Austin Smith. Additional reporting by Kathleen Horrn. Original music arranged and produced by Alexis Quadrado at the Plaza Rojas Studio had a marketing and operations Jeff Cleiburn, publicist Nathaniel Baruch, art director Andrew Nelson, Social media manager Sarah Gibbons. Legal review provided by Claris Law and Gibson Dunn. Our theme song, One Who's Holding the Stars is performed by Alexis Quadrado at the Plaza Roja Studio, Vocals by Rob Reddy of California Corns written by Leo Schofield and Kevin Harrick at the Florida Department of Corrections Party Correctional facility,
Speaker 1: This series include sensitive and potentially distressing topics, including sexual assault and abuse involving children. Listener discretion is advised. Anthony Depicpo and Andy Kreevak were in County Lockup for months waiting separate trials. They weren't the most popular inmates on the block, given their charges the rape and murder of a twelve year old girl.
00:00:33
Speaker 2: One thing that's very hard for me to say is during this period of time, the guards and the inmates were urinating in my orange juice, and at some point I drank.
00:00:44
Speaker 1: That Anthony had acute guest writers from the rancid food in jail, and a scalp broke out in rashes from bathing and filthy water. More intolerable still was no, he didn't belong there. It had nothing to do with Joe's murder, and knew Andy had no pardon that either. Still, it was Andy who'd signed the confession that put him in this barrel, and so Anthony burned to get his best friend alone and soon to find out why he betrayed him. Eventually they met in the jail house library. There were guards nosing around, so they spoke and coated whispers. Andy said that When the cops brought him in, they browbeat him for hours. Pacstaldo and Bill Quick screamed in his face while one of them brandished his gun. They refused over and over to let him speak to a lawyer, what he used the John, or even call his father, and then they sent him in with their lie detector guy, an older cop named Dance Stevens. Stevens wired him up and interrogated him for hours, then told him he failed the polygraph. As Andy sat there sobbing, Castalda put a statement in front of him, a nine page statement written out by Bill Quick. As Anthony listened to his friend, he had a shock of recognition. It was exactly what the cops had tried to do to him before his lawyer burst in and stopped them. But Andy had no lawyer on retainer.
00:02:23
Speaker 2: And he was broken by Costaldo and Quick, and he was not leaving until he signed that statement.
00:02:32
Speaker 1: So now here they both were equally fucked. Nine months passed. Andy's try was up first.
00:02:44
Speaker 2: March nineteen ninety seven. Krevac picks his jury.
00:02:50
Speaker 1: Three weeks later, on April sixteenth, that jury came back with a verdict. Anthony paste in the common area waiting on Andy's return for a court.
00:03:02
Speaker 2: The day he came back, He's like, yo, I blew y'all. When the guy says, they blew that street talk for I lost for the trial. I blew trial. I remember he was walking right under the TV, just walked right by and said that shit.
00:03:17
Speaker 1: Anthony felt those words in the pit of his stomach. My fuck doesn't look good for me. Now they know Andrew Kreevac guilty of the murder, and the media was against me. Everybody was angry.
00:03:35
Speaker 2: And they knew how to use that. The newspaper was putting my picture with the biggest beard that I had against the girl when she was seven. So you got this tiny, tiny girl and this big big man. Everybody had an interest somehow in it, and everybody wanted and believed that was me.
00:04:01
Speaker 1: Next, it was Anthony's turn on the docket. He felt doomed in advance, and suddenly, weeks before his trial started, one of.
00:04:12
Speaker 2: The biggest things in this case happens. I get a call to the visiting room. Dominic Neglia walkstro well three hundred and fifty pounds of them.
00:04:23
Speaker 1: Domin Neglia, your recall was the third kid in the car when Putnam cops caught them with angel dust. You'll also recall those cops pulled them over moments after Dom stopped to make a phone call. Only Dom knows if he actually dialed his grandma as he claimed, or if he made that call to tip off the cops. In any case, Dom, it's something you want to get off his chest now.
00:04:48
Speaker 2: And he sits down and he's basically on the edge of tears. He's like, I feel bad about Andy. I think this is my fault. I made up the story. And he said, I told the police you said to me these things you didn't say to me, and now you guys killed this girl, and I want to take my story back.
00:05:11
Speaker 1: Tom spilled the story of how the cops coerced him. They showed up unannounced at his school, dragged him out of his special needs class so often that the principal banned them from campus. So then they pulled the same stunt at Olive Garden, where he worked after school. But the cops rousted him so often there and the manager fired him. And that wasn't all said down. Then there was the physical stuff. He said. Costaldo hit him in the back of the head with his handcuffs down on all fours. Dom screamed he would sue, but Castaldo looked at him and laughed, I don't know what you're talking about. We just saw you fall off your chair. Oh that's rich. Because Castaldo was finally caught on camera years later beating and stomping and choking a defendant whose hands and feet were padlocked. Castato lied through his teeth and said the attack never happened, but it was captured in glorious living color on the county's own security cameras. In the end, Dominic says he'd finally cave to make the torture stop. He fed the cops some names he'd heard Anthony say and said those guys were involved in Josette's murder. But now, said Dommy wanted to take it all back, to stand up in court and tell the truth, tell a jury that none of what he told the cops was true. No. Sooner did dom leave the jail house than Anthony called his lawyer. The lawyer had Dom write and sign a recantation, and it was all in writing.
00:07:02
Speaker 3: I got you.
00:07:03
Speaker 1: I'm going fucking on.
00:07:15
Speaker 3: My madness, laughter, my fears, sorrows, deaths are endless.
00:07:31
Speaker 1: This valley, my DearS, this is the Devil's quarry. By the time the cops were done with Dom, he'd lost count of the times they dragged him into talk. He'd also lost count of the stories he told them about the night of Joseph's murder. The details changed wildly every time he opened his mouth, but the kernel of those stories Anthony and Andy's involvement became the crux of the cases against them.
00:08:26
Speaker 4: The charges against twenty one year old Anthony to Pippo are first degree rape and second degree murder. To Pippo's trial is being held in the Putnam County Courthouse in Carmel. It's alleged to Pippo and another man, nineteen year old Andrew Cribbock, killed twelve year old Josette right on October fourth of nineteen ninety four.
00:08:43
Speaker 1: Anthony's case was tried in Carmel in the courthouse on the town's main road.
00:08:49
Speaker 2: It was the old courthouse, so it looked like the courthouse from a time to kill. It was like, you know, high ceilings, wood pillars, portraits of white men from the eighteen hundreds, and you know, and then also the judge looked like he was a white man from the eighteen hundreds.
00:09:07
Speaker 1: Judge brats Once again, Big Larry came through for Anthony. He paid over sixty seven grand up front to a primetime lawyer. His name was Bob Leader, and he had a certain swagger, having a reputation for being the rare attorney in Putnam County who won a murder case.
00:09:28
Speaker 2: Bob Leader looked like Saddam Lucine, Like you remember Sadam smoking a cigarette, you know, just calling people. Bob Leader's face was the same face. I trusted him. I felt like I had a shot.
00:09:50
Speaker 1: At a pre trial hearing, the Leader argued his motion to call Big Dom this witness as the original accuser. He argued Tom was essential to the case.
00:10:01
Speaker 2: He did try, really try to get dominic neglia understand, but the judge was just.
00:10:09
Speaker 1: Wasn't having it.
00:10:10
Speaker 2: He denied the application he used dominic neglia.
00:10:14
Speaker 1: Why did that judge an old sawhorse named Bill Bratz bar Dom from testifying. He said Dom's testimony was quote too conjectural, too collateral, that it didn't seem his word reasonable, and so he decided what the jury would weigh. Rather than leave that task up to the jury.
00:10:37
Speaker 2: So that just stuck the knife in the heart of my freedom. I was done.
00:10:44
Speaker 1: On day one of Anthony's trial, the Putnam DA went first. He told the jury a version of the story that Dom told a group of teens hanging out at the gas station in town, a night of partying gone off the rails in a van owned by Andy's dad, and the rape and murder of a twelve year old girl by Andy and Anthony. The DA declared he had a direct eyewitness who would testify to that. Her name was Denise Rose.
00:11:26
Speaker 5: So well, James her anclest, he's almost fair that the test wire about to give will read the truth and the whole.
00:11:32
Speaker 6: Truth, and nothing but the truth.
00:11:33
Speaker 7: So healthy God, Finally, when have you ready.
00:11:37
Speaker 1: Before we hear from Denise, the one person who claims to have seen Josette's murder. We're going to jump forward twenty years to an inquiry launched by Anthony's lawyers. The focus of that inquiry the handling of the Joset Right murder by the Putnam Sheriff's Office, or, to put a fine point on it, the handling of that case by investing Gator Castaldo and his partner Quick Weeks of depositions were taken in that probe. The lead lawyer for Anthony's team was Nick Preston.
00:12:12
Speaker 7: Fair to say, this is the biggest case of your career, Yes, sir, not even close right.
00:12:17
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, Now that's pack Castaldo, the eldest loving bruiser.
00:12:23
Speaker 7: It's it was. It was a horrific murder and rape of a twelve year old girl.
00:12:28
Speaker 6: Have rape a murder of a.
00:12:29
Speaker 7: Twelve year old child as bat as it gets, I would think so. But your job, that's all you were doing, Yes, sir, every day, all day.
00:12:39
Speaker 6: Yes, once once I've fund into a murder case.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: Yes, sorry, I'll remind you that Castaldo had never worked a murder before, and right from the start it showed that.
00:12:50
Speaker 7: Was your first murder case.
00:12:51
Speaker 8: Yes, sir, I did not have the experienced hands on. I was not a person that invests. He gave a lot of homicides.
00:13:02
Speaker 1: And this is Bill Quick talking. He was colely detective in Josette's murder and the one who hand wrote all the witness statements from teens allegedly in the van when Josette died. Quick was another old school lawman, though with his brush mustache and dustball Complexion. The lawman he most resembled was Wyat.
00:13:25
Speaker 8: Herb Well, I have certain rules I moved by.
00:13:29
Speaker 9: I've lived by these rules all my life and I brought that into law enforcement.
00:13:35
Speaker 7: What are those rules?
00:13:35
Speaker 1: He left?
00:13:36
Speaker 9: Those rules are basically that you do the right thing all the time, everything that you can do to do it properly.
00:13:44
Speaker 8: You can't make assumptions.
00:13:47
Speaker 1: According to Castaldo, the night the boys were busted for PCP, Dom volunteered a tip about the murder.
00:13:56
Speaker 6: Dominic Neglie told me about the van and the people that were there, and when he gave the name it of people. I wanted to speak to these people. Maybe they had information involving what could have happened, did you set.
00:14:08
Speaker 1: The details of Dom's story would vary wildly over time, but the gist of it was this, On the night of Joseph's murder, Sho's in the back of the van owned by Andy's dad with her in that van where Anthony and Andy and three other Putnam teens.
00:14:26
Speaker 8: A little street kids. They were all trouble every single work.
00:14:38
Speaker 1: The cops who were specially interested in one of those troubled teens, a girl named Denise Rose.
00:14:44
Speaker 6: I'm that the testimony are about to do with you the truth, the whole truth.
00:14:47
Speaker 7: And nothing but the truth.
00:14:48
Speaker 5: Yes, thank you.
00:14:51
Speaker 7: Good morning, Miss Rose, good morning. Have you ever had your deposition taken before?
00:14:57
Speaker 1: Anthony and Denise had been in grade school together and then in high school, their tasts for drugs brought them closer.
00:15:05
Speaker 2: Denise Rose was somebody in my same grade. I just knew Denise Rose from being in school, and then I kind of became more friendly with her, like they're in high school.
00:15:15
Speaker 1: High schools generally when the stoners find each other, and like Anthony, Denise had zero fear. She jump into a car to prowl the South Bronx alone, a short white girl looking for crack cocaine on some of the deadliest streets in America.
00:15:32
Speaker 2: I mean, we mutually enjoyed doing drugs, and we mutually enjoyed go you can get drugs. And then we would go to kind of cool places while we were doing drugs and go to the beach and go to the cliffs overlooking eighty four and like, you know, you smoke and you'd look out and it's kind of like, you know, you got like a pretty background to get it, you know, and you're tripping or you're you're smoking something you know you want to be in kind of these settings that are kind of nice.
00:15:59
Speaker 1: Denise had them over to her folks house for dinner, but it never turned romantic, says Anthony, except for one druggy night when they hooked up.
00:16:09
Speaker 2: I had moments of weakness and she was right there. I had a lot of hormones going on. I needed to get rid of them. But then I got on high and then I'm like, what am I doing. I'm saying I'm sorry, I can't and then I'm like, well, I got to go to this club tonight, but I don't want to be hanging out with you. So I put her down, and I think I put her down a little too hard.
00:16:31
Speaker 1: A few weeks after he told Dennie seedn't want to hang with her, Anthony tried to patch things up, not because he'd been racked by guilt, but because he needed a ride of the city that went about as well as you'd expect.
00:16:45
Speaker 2: I tried to call her and she was very dismissive, and I thought it was because of the way I kind of like broke it off.
00:16:51
Speaker 1: With her, But he didn't know was Denny's was talking to the cops or that Carmel, Hey, that really is a bitch. Twenty years later, Denise was one of the people deposed by Anthony's lawyers. Here she is in twenty nineteen, under questioning from Nick Breston.
00:17:15
Speaker 5: And when someone says to you, do you remember how many times you smoke crag? I wanted to say to him, do you remember how many times you wiped your ass?
00:17:22
Speaker 1: Since there were no recordings made at Anthony's trial, we're using the tape from this deposition to give you a sense of Denise's testimony, but to properly introduce her. Here's some facts about Denise's involvement with Anthony's case. Castaldo in Quick called her in the first time on April second, nineteen ninety six for perspective. That was five months after Joseph's body was found and five months after Anthony and Andy were busted for PCP. Castaldo and Quick talked to her for many hours that day statement, as Bill Quick wrote it down, made zero mention of a murder. At the end of it, Castaldo told her to keep her nose clean. Spoiler alert, she didn't. The very next day, Denise lost her shit. She was driving with some friends when she saw a girl she didn't like.
00:18:20
Speaker 5: Opposite she had a history with me.
00:18:23
Speaker 1: That girl named Elena was driving the car in front of her on the road her a report Elena made to police. Denise chased Elena through several towns and then battle ram the rear enda of her car. Elena told the cops that Denise got out of her car bashed in her window. Denise denied this, but well, here's Breston asking about her history with ball bats.
00:18:50
Speaker 10: You had gotten into some trouble before that by driving around having you or people in your car smashing mailboxes with the baseball back correct when he does that?
00:19:00
Speaker 3: So what?
00:19:04
Speaker 1: Denise was promptly arrested for ramming Elena's car and hit with four charges for it. One of those charges was a felony. She could have gotten seven years for that. Yet somehow, the day after she rammed the girl's car, Denise was stopped yet again in her car. This time the cops got her for erratic operation of her vehicle. She failed to feel sobriety test was arrested on the spot for DUI. That night, in the lockup, Denise made a big commotion.
00:19:39
Speaker 5: I was in there in a paper suit, and I was screaming at whoever is at the desk, I know something you don't know, and I said about I guess it was around two in the morning. I said, I want to speak to officer or investigator gestal though right now.
00:19:56
Speaker 10: So after you got arrested you one of the things you said was is get Castaldo here because I have more information to give him.
00:20:03
Speaker 1: Correct.
00:20:04
Speaker 5: Yes, I was trying to say, let me out of here, because I know about a murder.
00:20:08
Speaker 1: I knew the So Castaldo got out of bed and met with her in lock up. But according to both of them, they didn't talk about a murder. Denise says he was only there a few minutes.
00:20:19
Speaker 5: Three minutes, are you kidding me? Three minutes is not enough time to talk about a murder.
00:20:25
Speaker 1: Castaldo agrees they spoke that night, but not about Josette's murder. He says he woke up late at night to serve a restraining order from Elena.
00:20:34
Speaker 8: To do that, I went in the back. It was seconds I went in the back.
00:20:38
Speaker 6: She was dead and the rescue me remember something from way back, the best of my knowledge.
00:20:41
Speaker 5: I went there.
00:20:42
Speaker 6: She was giving the papers and I was out of there. I did not have a concisation.
00:20:46
Speaker 1: Okay, there's no tape of that encounter or scribble notes, so no way to know what they did discuss.
00:20:54
Speaker 10: By the way, Denise Rose never asked you for any favors, correct, and you never offered her any favors.
00:21:01
Speaker 5: Correct.
00:21:03
Speaker 1: But here's what we do now. Several hours after they met the lock up, Denise's bell was raised. She was allowed to go home in a day or two after that. Castalda says he was puttering around Carmel when he had an epiphany this. I do remember.
00:21:20
Speaker 6: We were driving down on Fair Street and I said to myself, we have to call the Niese falls back. I remember we were driving down Fair Street and I just said, I need to speak to her again. I just felt I needed to talk to her again. I thought she may have more information.
00:21:35
Speaker 1: The truth is He and Quick spoke to her many times after that. A couple of weeks later, according to Denise, she finally just sort of.
00:21:45
Speaker 5: Cracked myself anymore, okay, and I figured I didn't tell him the whole truth, so I better go there as soon as possible and tell them before I explode inside. I can't live with this and the family needs to know that. Josette's family needs to know it's not fair to them.
00:22:01
Speaker 7: Okay, I can deal.
00:22:03
Speaker 5: Does I have to get this off my chest.
00:22:08
Speaker 1: And so three weeks after she first talked to the cops, Denise met with Costaldo and Quick again. Castaldo says he got things started.
00:22:18
Speaker 6: I said, Denise, I know what happened. I said, I know what happened. To just set right, Denise had Right after I said that, she turns around. She banged. She says, they raped, they tied the gag, and they dumped her in the woods.
00:22:32
Speaker 1: Quick wrote out her statement that day. It said that Denise witnessed the rape and murder of Joseph Right. But what was omitted from that statement was something Costaldo said moments before she agreed to sign it.
00:22:47
Speaker 6: They said, you can get twenty five years to light a feel if you're a.
00:22:49
Speaker 8: Part of this crime.
00:22:51
Speaker 1: And so lickety split, and he signed that statement and puff all of her charges went away with Denise and Hand. The cops chased the other teens dom named. They hauled in Andy Kreevak again, but this time they threatened and coerced him for hours, then tricked him into signing a false confession, a confession accusing Anthony of Joseph's murder, and finally they arrested Anthony. To Pippo, by then there was no need to coerce or trick him. They had statements from four of his friends. Now, if all the cops had done was coerce these kids, there's a real chance that none of this comes to light. Cops in America coerced confessions all the time, and I would know. I've reported dozens of such cases over the years. But in this case, Costaldo and Quick would just get getting started because remember they had no forensics to bring to court, so the heat was really on them to make a murder charge stick. So they've bent or broke the law in a dozen different ways. Here's a major. For instance, it's standard procedure for cops to record interviews in cases involving serious crimes. Even back in the nineties, Putnam County had tape recorders to use without witnesses knowledge. But for these cops, we had audio tags, so we didn't use them. It was just the way I did things. Preston, Anthony's lawyer pounced on that point.
00:24:39
Speaker 10: The best way to record a witness interview or a suspect interview, is the tape record.
00:24:45
Speaker 1: No I disagreeed that. You disagrewed that.
00:24:47
Speaker 7: Okay, you don't recall ever being trained.
00:24:49
Speaker 6: On that and trained, Yes, sir, no I was trained that way. I don't think that's the best way.
00:24:54
Speaker 7: Okay, so let's stick with training first.
00:24:56
Speaker 1: Which brings us to point two in cop protocol, were no recording devices are available? Standard practices to have witnesses write out statements in their own words and handwriting. But again, that wasn't the way Castaldo and Quick did things. Castaldo was the one asking all the questions and Quick was the one writing the statements.
00:25:18
Speaker 6: You can understand it. Quick had an excellent penmanship, except that.
00:25:22
Speaker 1: Even that wasn't a hard and fast rule. Castaldo and Quick interviewed lots of people over the course of this investigation, and far too often nothing was written down. For example, they met with Denise many times after she first came into the station. They show better house to chat with her, but only three of their many sit downs with Denise were memorialized in writing.
00:25:49
Speaker 6: Sometimes didn't take no, sometimes you just took the statement.
00:25:53
Speaker 10: It sounds like unless a witness gave you a statement, agreed to sign a statement, you didn't necessarily document that that interview was conducted correct direction.
00:26:05
Speaker 1: I may not under oath. Quick admitted that there were things he didn't write down, things that didn't fit his narrative of the case. For example, some of Josette's friends said they saw Josette after October fourth, nineteen ninety four, the day the cops claimed she was raped and murdered. These were people who knew Josette well and who claimed to have talked to her at the Danbury Mall after that date. He wrote down some of these accounts, but Quick admits there were others he dismissed as rumors. You know, it was just totally ridiculous.
00:26:44
Speaker 7: You didn't write any of those rummers down, No, because we couldn't.
00:26:47
Speaker 8: We couldn't verify whether they were true or not.
00:26:50
Speaker 1: Well, you could have, you could have caused Okay, So no rumors allowed from local witnesses, got it, Except there was nothing but rumors to implicate Anthony and Andy, and all those got written down and placed in the final case file. But there's more. Not only did they fail to properly document their probe Castaldo in quick pit total ignorance. The most basic laws of evidence, take, for example, the Brady rule. Brady requires cops to turn over any evidence that comes up in the course of investigation that would help the defendant a trial, including information that would discredit police officers. It's been the law of the land since nineteen sixty three. In every cop in America knows about Brady. It's taught from week one at the academy. Alas said Castaldo under oath in twenty nineteen, that part of his training. Yeah, that part didn't stick. Herea is again under questioning by Nick Bruston.
00:27:56
Speaker 10: Now, would it be fair to say that you don't recall over receiving any train any of what's called exculpatory evidence or Brady material.
00:28:04
Speaker 7: You never heard those terms, right, I've heard the chistment.
00:28:06
Speaker 6: I don't remember getting training.
00:28:08
Speaker 3: What do they mean?
00:28:09
Speaker 6: I mean, I've just heard.
00:28:10
Speaker 3: I don't know.
00:28:10
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell you right now.
00:28:11
Speaker 7: Okay, do you know what exculpatory evidence means?
00:28:14
Speaker 1: Exclaim to me. I won't know if you know. No, Okay, but wait, there's more. In criminal law, there's something called impeachment evidence, evidence that shows that witnesses in the case may be untruthful or mistaken or unreliable, that too must be turned over to the defense. Only Costaldo didn't do that either.
00:28:36
Speaker 7: You know what impeachment evidence is? Yes, what is impeachment evidence?
00:28:43
Speaker 6: Well, basically trying to go to the President of the United States stand to teach him bring up charges against them.
00:28:52
Speaker 1: Yes, you heard that right. Pat Costaldo, senior investigator for the Putnam Sheriff's Office, thought impeachment pertained to the crome times of the President of the United States and not to the witnesses he manipulated to implicate Anthony to Pippoe. Costaldo was the lead detective in the rape murder case of Joseph Right, But as it turns out, he didn't at the least idea how legally do his job having established who the cops of their star witness were. Let's jump back to Anthony's trial in ninety seven. Denise Rose, you'll recall, had just taken the stand to tell the jury her version of events. This is what she swore to on the stand. On the night of October third, nineteen ninety four, the two boys pulled up to her house. She claimed, Andy was at the wheel of his dad's brown van, Anthony was in the passenger seat. She opened the slider to hop in.
00:29:59
Speaker 5: She says there were no seats in the back when he picked me up from my house.
00:30:04
Speaker 1: Sitting on the floor, she said, was twelve year old Josette right.
00:30:10
Speaker 5: She had on blue jeans, a brown jacket, and a white T shirt.
00:30:15
Speaker 1: Denise jumped in beside her. She said. Andy then drove to the Sitko station in town, where ten or twelve teens were loitering outside, smoking dope and pounding beers in full view of passing cop cars. A few hours later, she said, she got back in the van with Andy, Anthony and Josette, only now they were joined by two other teens, Bill McGregor and Adam Wilson. At that point, said Denise, she thought they were dropping her home. Instead, Andy took off in the other direction, northbound towards Field's Lane.
00:30:53
Speaker 5: I wanted to go home, and they didn't take me home. It took me to go kill a girl.
00:30:58
Speaker 1: Wasn't expecting that, Denise says. Andy stopped and parked on Fields Lame. It's a dirt road shortcut to Connecticut that's bounded on both sides by woods. That night, it was as black ast tar out. There no streets, no porch lights from houses because there were no houses, not back then, there weren't. Even the moon was dark that night. And as for the van's lights, it's dome lights, track lights, she says they weren't on either, But Denny exclaimed she saw everything that happened. Next, she said, the boys pulled out some PCP and smoked it in the back of the van, and then during a game of spin the bottle, Andy kissed Josette, said Denise. When Josette resisted, Andy threw her to the floor. He aanked her jeans and underwear over her sneakers.
00:31:57
Speaker 5: Her hands were swinging, and then he took her hands and put them like this in front of her.
00:32:03
Speaker 1: She showed jurors how he tied Josette's hands in front of her body.
00:32:08
Speaker 5: There was a rope in the van, just on the floor somewhere, and she.
00:32:12
Speaker 1: Claimed Andy shoved Josette's underwear and her mouth, then took her bra and tied it around her head, at which point she said he raped her just inches from Josette. Denise watched this all go down. At some point, she said, she protested.
00:32:30
Speaker 8: Leave her alone.
00:32:30
Speaker 5: She's just a baby.
00:32:33
Speaker 1: At that point, claimed Denise, Anthony leaned over screaming.
00:32:37
Speaker 5: He stood up and said, shut the fuck up with your necks, and.
00:32:41
Speaker 1: Then, according to Denise, he told Andy, yo, yo.
00:32:45
Speaker 6: Save some of that for me.
00:32:47
Speaker 5: It's my turn, save some of that for me.
00:32:50
Speaker 1: According to Denise, Anthony raped Josette next, and when he stopped, she said Josette wasn't moving, she was completely lifeless.
00:33:01
Speaker 5: They wrapped her nylon jacket around her waist, her brown niline jacket around her waist, and they carried her out.
00:33:10
Speaker 1: She said she sat in the van in silence while the boys carried Josette out the back doors. Denise said she sat there for fifteen or twenty minutes till the boys came back without Josette.
00:33:24
Speaker 5: And I asked, where's the girl. Someone said she's sleeping, she passed out, and the other one said, no, her mom's coming to pick her up.
00:33:33
Speaker 1: She claimed Anthony ordered her to keep her mouth shut or she'd be the next one dead. That was her explanation for why she kept mum till Costaldo dragged her in over a year later, drunk.
00:33:45
Speaker 5: Not no, no, no, no no, I didn't even tell a damn priest. I was petrified, like, my god, I'm going to die.
00:33:56
Speaker 1: Under cross examination, Denise claimed she just sat there after the boys left to bury Josette's body. The girl who cruised the South Bronx to buy crack, who admitted a smashing a CoP's mailbox with a bat, That girl just sat there and did nothing, nor did she attempt to flee when the two boys were in the woods. A trial, she conceded that the keys were right there in the ignition. All she'd had to do was start the van and drive it straight to the Sheriff's office. For all the holes in Denise's story, the jury found her persuasive, and particularly they were struck by the tiny detail she remembered, like the costume jewelry Josette was wearing the night she was in the van. But here's the thing. Denise also told the jury she had help with those details. The cops showed her all their evidence at the station before she signed a statement saying she witnessed Josette's murder.
00:35:00
Speaker 5: Billy Quick showed me the earring and the pendant, and I said, I remember that now, and it was and it came in a brown paper bag, and he said, I'd like to show you a few pieces of jewelry and some other things. And I said, okay, the brown jacket was in there, and the shoes, the jeans, and the earring, the pendant t shirt.
00:35:21
Speaker 1: If you're counting, that's the fifth rule those two cops broke. You don't show evidence to a witness, above all, not before they've given their statement. It's called witnessed hampering. And then somehow it gets worse.
00:35:38
Speaker 10: Now on April second, one of the things that Nostaldo did was he took you to the van and he opened the passenger door side so you could look inside it.
00:35:49
Speaker 7: Correct.
00:35:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, the cops took her down to their parking lot where they hit the brown van and custody. They let her look around the van's interior once again strictly forbidden. Oh. In another hole in Denis's story, that fan she claimed Josette was killed in. It wasn't even drivable when she went missing a trial. Anthony's lawyer put on a mechanic to testify to this.
00:36:18
Speaker 2: We put on the mechanic that said the van couldn't have been operationable because it had a crack drive shaft, it was on blocks. His flat tires there was a transmission problem, so it was inoperable on the night in question.
00:36:35
Speaker 1: But at Anthony's trial and several decades later, Denise stuck to her story.
00:36:42
Speaker 5: People wake up, I'm the one who saw the murder take place by Krebet and the Pippo.
00:36:56
Speaker 1: So let's recap. Denise claimed she'd witnessed the murder of Josette right in a van that couldn't have been driven at a location in the woods with no source of light on a completely moonless night. And what about the other teens allegedly in the van besides Denise and Andy and Anthony and Josette, both were teens that Anthony knew. One of them was Adam Wilson, a party hardy kid who also sold drugs and carmel. The other was Bill McGregor, a kid from nearby Brewster who was fighting his own battle with drugs. Before the trial, Putnam cops brought both of them in separately. They grilled each of them for many hours, then got them to sign statements the detective quick wrote out. At Anthony's trial, Adam Wilson took the stand and Recanada's statements of those cops. He testified they'd sweated him for twelve straight hours, denied him as right to make a phone call, warned him he'd either swear that he'd seen the murder or be charged as Josette's killer, And so he, like Dom and Andy, claimed that he too, signed a statement just to get out of that room. The second he got home, though, he called his mother and a lawyer, and Adam.
00:38:17
Speaker 2: Wilson is strong on a recantation.
00:38:20
Speaker 1: He had everything.
00:38:21
Speaker 2: They're losing nothing again by taking back omitting criminal perjury.
00:38:26
Speaker 1: Then the state put on Bill McGregor, the other teen who was allegedly in a van the night Josette was murdered. He mumbled, I guess when the DA asked if he'd been in the van that night, but undercut himself by saying he'd fallen asleep in the front seat. A gang rape and murder it happened two feet behind him, but for McGregor, he saw none of it. But it wasn't just the teens who didn't back Denise's story. The van itself yielded zero clues that a violent rape murder happened. There no DNA whatsoever, no blood, no hair, no skin cells, no fibers. That lass fact baffled even the cops.
00:39:07
Speaker 8: I couldn't understand how there could be that absence of events.
00:39:17
Speaker 1: When the jurors filed out to begin deliberations, Anthony sat there expecting the worst. Despite the glaring holes in the state's case.
00:39:28
Speaker 2: I'm going like this with my tie up and down, and I'm nervous. I'm trying to catch my breath. Guilty five point thirty PM.
00:39:38
Speaker 4: Had two rating what eases were guilty, and that's guilty of first degree rape and second degree murder.
00:39:45
Speaker 7: Anthony to Pippo and another man, Andrew Crivic.
00:39:48
Speaker 4: Were charged with the rape and murder of twelve year old Jezette Wright on October third, nineteen ninety four.
00:39:57
Speaker 1: Five weeks later, on the day was sentenced, Anthony had a Pippo got up to speak. He turned and looked directly at Susan Wright, Josette's mom, because.
00:40:07
Speaker 2: She's got a big eyes as it is, this angry woman. But her eyes were like three times normal eyes. It's just the way that her anger. If she could have killed me through her eyes, she would have. I said to Susan Wright, and I'm sorry you think I killed your daughter, And then I wouldn't stop fighting until you see I'm innocent.
00:40:28
Speaker 1: And I looked her in the eye when I said it.
00:40:31
Speaker 2: Now I got to go to state prison as a rapist, child, a pedophile, very deep shit saw, I'm like, well.
00:40:40
Speaker 1: Fuck it. When Anthony walked out of the courthouse that day, he flipped the camera's deuces.
00:40:47
Speaker 5: Convicted murderer Anthony de Pippo showed no signs of remorse, appearing unfazed after being sentenced to the maximum.
00:40:55
Speaker 4: Susan Wright, Josette's mother, told us the verdict moves her closer to closure and her daughter's death.
00:41:00
Speaker 5: If there was something worse than prison, I could we could do.
00:41:03
Speaker 7: That would be fine.
00:41:04
Speaker 6: But that's all we can do is put them away and they can't hurt anybody else, any other children.
00:41:11
Speaker 1: But Anthony knew something those reporters didn't, that he'd been framed by two lawless detectives. And as for the guy who'd actually killed Josette, he was still out there in the woods, stalking, obsessing, and sharpening his knife for another moonless night off Field's Lane. The Devil's Quarry is a production of Lava for Good in association with Rolling Stone Films and Signal Company Number One I'm Your Creator and host Paul Solatarov. Executive producers are Jason Flomm, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wardis, and Gilbert King from Rolling Stone Films. Our executive producers are Alexandra Dale and Sean Woods. Our producers are Gara Cornhaber, Hannah Beale, Jackie Pawley, Austin Smith, and Kathleen Horn. Our editor is Joel Lovell. Fact checking by Lucy Croning. Our sound designer is Brit Spangler, and our engineer is Austin Smith. Additional reporting by Kathleen Horrn. Original music arranged and produced by Alexis Quadrado at the Plaza Rojas Studio had a marketing and operations Jeff Cleiburn, publicist Nathaniel Baruch, art director Andrew Nelson, Social media manager Sarah Gibbons. Legal review provided by Claris Law and Gibson Dunn. Our theme song, One Who's Holding the Stars is performed by Alexis Quadrado at the Plaza Roja Studio, Vocals by Rob Reddy of California Corns written by Leo Schofield and Kevin Harrick at the Florida Department of Corrections Party Correctional facility,
