June 10, 2026
Chapter 7 | Lucky Tuna
Anthony makes the final case for his freedom.
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.
Click HERE to read more about this story from Paul Solotaroff in Rolling Stone Magazine.
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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.
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00:00:00
Speaker 1: This series include sensitive and potentially distressing topics, including sexual assault and abuse involving children. Listener discretion is advised. Mark Baker was that rarest of brand named lawyers, A delightful man who was loved by all who knew him. Baker, who died suddenly in a sleep in the summer of twenty twenty five, was a maker of miracles in court. His life's work was freeing the wrongly convicted men who spent decades drafting appeals from prison while writing to anyone they thought might help them. One of those men was Anthony to Pippo. In twenty thirteen, after a second conviction for the murder of Josette Wright, Anthony reached out to Baker through his stepdad. By then Big Larry was once again in a position to help his step son. Baker wasn't bothered by the two convictions. If anything, they moved him to take the case. While reporting the story in twenty twenty one, I'd meet Baker for lunch at his favorite watering hole, the Duncan Donuts on Johnson Avenue in Riverdale. There over the tune of fish they only made for him. He'd spend the first ten minutes cracking punchlines in Yiddish, ribbing me for marrying a blonde Chisa, and then he'd sit and explain how he'd used a DA's trick to win Anthony a third and final trial. In criminal law, there's something called Malineau rule. It allows the prosecution to bring a prior bad act to show that a defendant has a criminal mo What Baker did was flip that rule on its head. He went to New York's Court of Appeals. He wanted to raise the history of someone who wasn't on trial. That's someone, of course, being Howard Gombered. This was, to put it mildly, a moonshot plea. It had never succeeded in post conviction hearings, not New York, at least. Even Baker's partner, Mark Agnifolo, is a skeptic.
00:02:22
Speaker 2: I might even have said this on like, you're wasting your time. That's never gonna work. I mean, this is a horrible, horrible murder. It's old news. And Baker says, no, I'm right, I'm right. This is a sound legal theory. It doesn't matter that it's never really been done before. And he just pushed it and pushed it.
00:02:42
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, Baker argued his brief before the seven panel judge in Albany.
00:02:48
Speaker 3: Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, as.
00:02:53
Speaker 1: Baker had a half hour to persuade them that the judge at Pippo's retrial denied him due process by blocking new Gombert proof.
00:03:02
Speaker 4: He knew the deceased, he had a relationship with her. He had prior knowledge of all his victims. They were also found with clothing stuff down their throat, most were threatened with death, and two of them were also taken into the woods, just like in this case. Put that together, there's a painting.
00:03:21
Speaker 1: The Putnam DA thought so little of Baker's gambit that he'd sent a junior assistant to oppose him.
00:03:28
Speaker 3: May it please the court. My name is David Bishop, and I represent the people on this matter on appeal. I think.
00:03:35
Speaker 1: But as the assistant DA argued against allowing the gombered evidence to be heard a trial, a judge on the panel cut in.
00:03:44
Speaker 3: He knows her, He's driven in the car with her.
00:03:47
Speaker 5: He calls the the people have been prosecuted for death suckers.
00:03:50
Speaker 3: He's not a murderer, at least said now, as far as I know, really well, after.
00:03:58
Speaker 1: Forty five minutes the panel had learned saying that issue they're ruling and writing. Anthony waited and waited to see if he'd get the chance to argue his case again in front of a jury.
00:04:10
Speaker 6: I mean, it's happened, but I mean less than between fifty seventy five times. Maybe maybe in the United States, you know that somebody's gotten a third chance.
00:04:23
Speaker 1: For months, he woke up every day burning to know if the court's ruling had been posted more times a day two in the morning, twenty afternoon, I had my mom get on the computer, go to the Court of Appeals page and let.
00:04:37
Speaker 6: Me know it.
00:04:38
Speaker 5: Does it happen yet?
00:04:41
Speaker 6: And woo, man, it must have been solid sixty days And on one day there it was.
00:04:52
Speaker 1: In March of sixteen. His mom checked the court's website. The judges had just posted their ruling that morning to Pippo would get a third trial. The BUTTNADA set a date for that September. Baker and his trial partner Mark Agnifilo were incensed. There was no way that could prep for it in that short a timeline.
00:05:19
Speaker 2: Unless, of course, so I go to see Anthony Depippo for the first time, and I go alone. Baker can't go forever reason, and I sit down with him, and I spend five hours with him.
00:05:33
Speaker 1: That's Baker's partner, Mark Agnifilo. He'd driven up to meet his client and assess him face to face.
00:05:41
Speaker 2: And he talks NonStop for five hours. I've been around the block. I mean, I worked on the nine to eleven investigation. I was a process, I was a federal pro I was a state promising I know, bullshit from the real thing.
00:05:56
Speaker 7: And this was just as real as real can be.
00:05:59
Speaker 2: And so I sat there humbled, you know, listening to Anthony Depippo talked about his life in his case and his twenty year quest to vindicate himself, not just in hopes and dreams, but in individual pieces of evidence that he has meticulously assembled into binders.
00:06:20
Speaker 1: Over the decades. He'd compiled eleven binders of facts, entitled them the Gombert Books. Taken together, they told the history of a one man crime wave Gombert's a tax on Girls, dating back to the early eighties.
00:06:36
Speaker 2: And I sat there, I was like, remember that the old Maxell commercial, the guy sits in the chair on the you know, the sound of the you know audio tape makes his hair blow back.
00:06:45
Speaker 7: That was me with DiPippo.
00:06:48
Speaker 1: Agnifilod barely cracked volume one when he saw he had a secret weapon. Sure, his client looked like a hijacked tractor trailers, but he was also illegal savant.
00:07:00
Speaker 2: He's been doing eighteen hours a day every day for twenty years, and he is an encyclopedia.
00:07:07
Speaker 7: He knows this case better than any other human being can know this case.
00:07:12
Speaker 2: And I say to him at the end of that meeting, I said, we're gonna try this thing as soon as we can, because I have you and they don't. I am gonna sit with you every day, and you're just gonna teach me this case.
00:07:36
Speaker 8: You my madness, laughter, my sorrows, them are endless valley.
00:08:12
Speaker 5: This is the Devil's Quarry.
00:08:35
Speaker 1: In the run up to Anthony's third trial, his two lawyers, Mark Baker and Mark Agnifilo, agreed on the division of labor. Agnifilo, the born showman, would do all the talking, while Baker, the back room scholar, would take copious notes and strategize lines of attack. That first day of trial, Agnifilo surveyed the courtroom. He took a deep breath, rubbing his palms together. It was about to be showtime.
00:09:06
Speaker 2: There's no greater adventure than a trial. It's it's an adventure. It's the best adventure you can have inside, you know, it really is. I mean, to have any better adventure, you have to be in the mountains. And so if you're into it, and this is exhilarating and fun, and it's going to be so exciting. Yeah, I know it's a murder case, you know, but just come with me and we'll get there.
00:09:30
Speaker 1: You know.
00:09:30
Speaker 7: That's that's how.
00:09:33
Speaker 2: You engage a jury. They're really responsive to that. And if you're their tour guide, they're Therein.
00:09:43
Speaker 1: Robert Tendy, the DA went first. He stuck to the button and playbook in nineteen ninety seven, pending all the county's hopes on a single witness, Denise Rose. She was the only one who hadn't recanted her story. Here's that Nilo's summing up Tendee's statement.
00:10:03
Speaker 2: This is an easy case. We have an eyewitness. It happened in a van. There was an eyewitness to all of these events. She's going to tell you what she saw.
00:10:15
Speaker 1: Two decades had passed since Rose first signed a statement accusing Anthony of killing Josette, taking the DA's prompts Now, she rehashed the old narrative, the impromptu party at the Sigo station, the game of spin the bottle gone horribly wrong in the van, the rape of Josette by first Andy an Anthony. Then the boys disappear into the dark with Josette's body in return without her. Then it was Agnifilo's turn with Rose. Of all the criminal lawyers I've watched in action, Agnifilo is easily the most relaxed. His cross examinations are like dinner party chats, warm and convivial, even little aimless, just two folks getting to know each other. As he crossed Denise, he shocked everyone, including her, by gliding past the details of the crime. Instead, he delve deeply into her actions after the fact. Did she call the cops that night after she got home? No, well, what about calling in an anonymous tip?
00:11:24
Speaker 8: No?
00:11:25
Speaker 1: Did she tell her parents about what she just witnessed?
00:11:29
Speaker 3: No?
00:11:30
Speaker 1: Did you wake up the following morning and do any of those things? No, said Denise, I didn't.
00:11:38
Speaker 2: One of the things that you have to figure out as a lawyer, What does this person really want to say, and what she wanted to say she wanted to talk about when she was younger and she was in love with Di Pippo, and Pippo was, you know, maybe in love with her.
00:11:56
Speaker 1: So Agniffolo asked Denise what it was like dating Anthony, about how much fun they'd had together, And.
00:12:03
Speaker 2: I'm asking that she doesn't know where I'm going. I'm just like, and so you would be happy. It's I'm sure happiness because you guys had fun together. If you have a great sense of humor, I do, and so does he, does you know? And this one, this is seven months after you're saying you saw him kill a twelve year old, right, yeah about that? And I think that the Drews just looking at her like this is just crazy.
00:12:30
Speaker 1: Nanny asked Denise if she and Anthony had had sex after the night of Josette's murder. Yes, Denise admitted. And you wanted to have sex with him, he asked her. Yes, she admitted, And in fact, you said the day after the murder you went to Anthony's house to hang out. Yes, Denise admitted.
00:12:51
Speaker 2: So she wanted to tell the truth and this is the truth. But the truth is just absolutely inconsistent with having seen him kill a twelve year old.
00:13:02
Speaker 1: Then Agnifolo asked her about pack Costaldo, the cop who dragged her down to the station over and over without a parent or a lawyer present. On the stand, now, Denise admitted that Castaldo would just pop over to her house on weekends.
00:13:17
Speaker 2: Why why is Detective Castaldo coming to your house? Did you always talk about police business?
00:13:23
Speaker 9: No?
00:13:23
Speaker 7: Okay, well, now we're off and running.
00:13:28
Speaker 1: Agniffolo faced the jury when he asked her about those visits.
00:13:32
Speaker 7: This kind of culture of pressure.
00:13:34
Speaker 2: You know, bad things happening in small police interrogation rooms. You know in Putnam County. You know these are young ne'er do well kids. You know they can make their lives a lot easier if they're friends with the cops, or they can make their lives a lot harder if they're not.
00:13:53
Speaker 1: But Castaldo had done more than just pop by for his little chats with Denise. He'd also threaten her was twenty five to life, and now, having gutted roses credibility, it was time for the main event. How we're Gombert.
00:14:29
Speaker 2: When you took it all together, there was just this mountain of evidence as to what had happened, and how they could get something so wrong because all the indications are that Gombert's guilty of this crime, and he was never called to account, And so he called.
00:14:47
Speaker 1: Gombert's victims to the stand. For complex reasons, only two were permitted to testify. First, up with Sarah Linley, who was seven when Gombert attacked her in the woods off Squats Pond.
00:15:02
Speaker 10: My biggest thing with telling my story is I don't like upsetting other people. And it's hard because it's a hard story to tell.
00:15:13
Speaker 1: In a voice that wobbled and sometimes broke. She told the jury what Gumbert had done to her.
00:15:20
Speaker 10: So as I was telling it, I remember looking over and there was a woman who was crying, and it hurt me in that moment more seeing her crying because of what she was hearing than what I was saying, because I'm numb at that point to it. And then looking over and seeing Anthony and it just felt so fucking heavy, like is this even going to work? Am I helping?
00:15:46
Speaker 2: The courtroom changed? You know when they testified, there was just a shift in the kind of emotion coming from the jury, and the emotion fell in the courtroom.
00:16:02
Speaker 1: After Sarah left the stand. Rachel went up next. She'd been dreading this day for weeks and months. Actually, she'd been dreading it for decades.
00:16:13
Speaker 7: Anthony's trial was rough. They went in deep with the abuse with Howard.
00:16:19
Speaker 10: They were just very deep.
00:16:21
Speaker 1: Sobbing as she spoke. She told the jury what she'd suffered at Gomber's hands as a child, the rapes and the beatings, and the death threats he'd levied that secret spotty take her in those woods. And then Rachel told them about Gombert and Josette. How we'd met the child at Rachel's mother's place, how we'd threaten Rachel that if she ever left Carmel, he'd replace her with Josette and start by asking her to babysit his daughter, and how she Rachel stood up to him that day, ordering him to stay away from the girl. From his seat beside Agnifilo, Anthony could barely watch. Even the jurors averted their gaze. A few were openly weeping. I do remember.
00:17:11
Speaker 6: Trying to disassociate, and I was just listening for the key, the keystoff.
00:17:19
Speaker 1: It was about this point that Josette's mom jumped up and stormed out of the room, up.
00:17:26
Speaker 6: And left slammed the door in front of the jury as she did not listen to a single thing, and that really made it worse for her because another jury is like, this is the mom not listening, Maybe we should listen.
00:17:41
Speaker 1: And then those jurors heard from the original witness, the one who told the first big lie and in doing so, ruined the lives of two of his friends. Domin Neglia, you recall, was the oversized kid who'd been busted in the car with Anthony and Andy, the kid who'd fit Putnam cops story after story to get them off his back. He tried once before now to take it all back, but the judge at Anthony's first trial blocked him from testifying. Now, facing threats of perjury from Buttnam prosecutors, he took the stand and finally told his truth about being stalked and brutalized by Pat Castaldo, about getting fired from his job because of their pressure, and how he fed those two cops lie after lie so they would quote leave me alone and stop bullying me, stop coming to my school, stopped coming to my work, then stop hitting me. Several of the jurors were sobbing when Big Dom left the stand. One of them turned to Anthony with a look.
00:18:50
Speaker 5: We're with you.
00:18:52
Speaker 1: Stay strong, you're going home. But neither Anthony nor Agnifilo allowed themselves to trust it.
00:19:01
Speaker 7: You thought he was just gonna sit in jail until became an old man.
00:19:05
Speaker 1: And so Agnifilo pulled out every stop, even turning to superstition.
00:19:11
Speaker 2: Every day we had a tuna fish sandwich on toasted rye with letton tomato, like it's a it's a you know, superstition, Like once you do it and like oh wow, Like I had the tune of sandwich and today was a pretty good day.
00:19:25
Speaker 7: Then you have to have it the next day and that that's a pretty good day. Then you're done. You having tune fish sandwich to latrialins. So that's what we did.
00:19:32
Speaker 1: So each day Agnifilo ate his tuna fish sandwich, then went back to court and dismantled the DA's case until the sixth of October twenty sixteen, when he called upon the very last witness in the month long trial. The oft mentioned pack Castaldo.
00:19:51
Speaker 2: So that night I prepped for my Castaldo cross and I say to myself, it's possible. I sum up tomorrow, I go no it won't happen. He's not going to make me some up. I mean, I'm going to Castaldo's going to be on the stand all day, you know, I'm not going to sum up tomorrow.
00:20:09
Speaker 1: Agniffolo launched into his cross of Castaldo. Most of it concerned his treatment of the witnesses and the case. The jury had just heard. Those witnesses described Castaldo's coercion and trickery, but under oath, Castaldo denied all of it.
00:20:27
Speaker 7: He denied it, it didn't happen.
00:20:30
Speaker 2: Castaldo came across as just, you know, not honest, not a good police official, you know, not someone that the jury trusted.
00:20:41
Speaker 7: He was withholding he was cagey, and.
00:20:44
Speaker 2: That's the case detective, Like, that's the lead case detective doing these things, and that's how the evidence in the case ends. And so I thought that was really what I think the jury was left with that this is this is not the court of this case is I was gonna say corrupt. It's such a strong word, but is corrupted. You know, the core of the case is corrupted.
00:21:13
Speaker 1: It took six hours and every ounce of Agnifilo's energy to crack Castaldo's credibility.
00:21:21
Speaker 6: When he sat down I said, how you feel his hair is standing up like I can get my car and crossed into a tree.
00:21:29
Speaker 1: And just as Agnifilo is catching his breath and the judge turns to Agnifilo and says, all right, you could do your closing.
00:21:36
Speaker 6: Now, and Agniffhilo is like, what I just cross examined the biggest witness in this case.
00:21:45
Speaker 5: His hair is standing up. No break, judges, you're up.
00:21:52
Speaker 1: That was late in the day and Agnifilo hadn't prepped. He had to close his case now to the jury, you.
00:21:59
Speaker 2: Know, oh, man, like this is this is all, this is for all the marbles, you know, this is not just one of those things like I have to win.
00:22:11
Speaker 7: So I stand up and I just start talking.
00:22:15
Speaker 6: I mean, it's like he's such a prawl that he got it.
00:22:21
Speaker 7: He got it.
00:22:26
Speaker 1: Agniffolo got up and talked for an hour. The next morning, the DA gave his clothes and then the jury retired. Aweigh the facts.
00:22:35
Speaker 2: It was just so emotional and so just intense, like now I'm done. I don't talk to the jury ever again. If you had to say to me in thirty five years of doing this, what's the tired?
00:22:54
Speaker 7: Isn't the right words.
00:22:55
Speaker 2: What's the most beaten up you've ever been as trial lawyer? It's actually that moment.
00:23:03
Speaker 1: Thankfully, no one was so tired they hit a tree. All right, it's time to deliberate. So, because now I'm in custody, I have to go through the door with the guards, and so I had to sit in this room. In this room again, had that steel toilet, stainless steel toilet, stainless steel mirror, stainless steel sinc. The water tasted like something that was like really disgusting.
00:23:34
Speaker 6: The walls were.
00:23:35
Speaker 9: Painted a light light light, light blue white. Instead of a steel bench, it was concrete, and the door is like seven feet tall.
00:23:49
Speaker 6: And it's solid steel. It's just so dramatic. During the verdict, I'm not going back to the jail.
00:23:55
Speaker 9: I'm in this room. I'm eating in this room. I'm sitting in this room. So every time the jury has a question, this big door opens with this big key, and my door opens. My heart drops because this could be the verdict. But no, it's a jury question again. All right, Judge brings the jury out. Jury asked the question. The first question was does she have to be killed on October third?
00:24:25
Speaker 1: It's hard to overstate how heavy that question was. If the jury harbored doubts that Josette died on October third, the state's whole case collapsed, because that was the day Denise Rose claims she saw the murder in the van. Any question about when Josette died could nuke the timeline of Denise's story.
00:24:46
Speaker 6: I'm like, well, that's not the worst question. I go back in. They do this like four or five times. I forget how many times I'd have to.
00:24:53
Speaker 7: Go back, and the question started to get worse. So I'm at the table.
00:25:01
Speaker 6: And I look at Mark Igniffolo and I say to him, I said.
00:25:09
Speaker 1: Losing Anthony was the only one sweating through his shirt. Mark Baker was furiously scribbling notes to himself, sketching out the basis for another appeal and a fourth jury trial for Anthony. The next morning, the jury reached a verdict. Anthony and his lawyers were summoned back in. So there's a fine line between massive anxiety and exhilaration.
00:25:45
Speaker 6: It's just a state of mind. So I'm having both states of mind, and you know, I faced this before, you know, and I'm just confident in my fight. I'm scared because of the questions and the judges like how do you find and defend it on a rape ben a first degree not guilty, and everybody with applause. People were hugging me and like it's over. Yes, it was over. That you wouldn't have known it by Anthony's reaction. Over the course of five years, I've asked him countless times what he felt when he heard those words spoken, and each time I've gotten a response like the one you just heard. To this day, it says, though he doesn't trust that it's real, that he's been truly and finally cleared.
00:26:52
Speaker 1: Of this injustice. There's also the hardshell he built to survive prison, emotional armory he can't dressed, unbuckle and store in his garage. Still, the fact remained Anthony was finally a free man and could now go anywhere he wanted. The first he had to go retrieve his belongings at the jailhouse. Agnifolo meanwhile slipped out of the courthouse, ducking the scrum of reporters on the steps.
00:27:23
Speaker 2: When you leave the courthouse, there's a row of trees between like the grass of the courthouse and the parking lot. And for whatever reason, I go and I just go stand in the trees. Could have gone differently, you know, but it didn't. It went this way, and I just needed a second, you know, just to be by myself and take it all in.
00:27:51
Speaker 1: Do you remember when you were finally alone with Anthony.
00:27:55
Speaker 2: Yes, afterwards, Yeah, you really appreciate how big and strong a man he is when he hugs you. After being acquitted, he said, you realize, you know, I'm five ten and he's six six. Just he came out and he hugged me, and he's like, you know, we did it. You know we did it.
00:28:12
Speaker 8: You know.
00:28:12
Speaker 7: I'm like, you did it, man, you did it, You did it.
00:28:15
Speaker 2: I said, I was your co pilot. I said, I just listened to you a day to.
00:28:20
Speaker 7: Come to this decision. And Anthony is actually righting.
00:28:23
Speaker 10: He just walked out of jail.
00:28:25
Speaker 8: Freeman, Anthony tells, how.
00:28:26
Speaker 7: You're feeling right now.
00:28:27
Speaker 5: I'm a little bit of shock right now. I feel unbelievable. This is like the greatest moment of my life. I'm fucking going home.
00:28:35
Speaker 7: Holy shit.
00:28:42
Speaker 9: I was really just overstimulated by the color of the vehicle, the colors outside, because like prison, every cell is the same color. I'm driving where I grew up, past all these places. It was so green, the greenest I ever seen in the world. And this the smells like I hadn't been on grass, being near trees, you know, just the smells in the air.
00:29:16
Speaker 5: Animals.
00:29:19
Speaker 11: Yeah, I got the call. I slept in a soft bed. It was so soft, and the comforter was so soft.
00:29:39
Speaker 1: But in his first years of free, Tom Anthony felt unfree, afraid to leave the safety of his mother's house for fear that those cops were lurking. He couldn't run out for coffee without looking around corners or flinching each time he heard a siren. And then there were the looks he drew at the diner, the stairs of those mothers and their daughters. He might have just cleared his name in court, but not in the eyes of his neighbors. Meanwhile, the real struggle lay ahead. He recruited new lawyers to handle his civil suits, the ones he'd filed against the state in Butnam County for his twenty plus years of wrongful imprisonment.
00:30:28
Speaker 6: They took my energy years, they took my youth, They took I mean, they took twenty years. But I mean, if I were to just say I'm sit and be mad about that. I'm living in the past. You know, I want to live now and I want to live for the future.
00:30:47
Speaker 1: The States settled quickly and on reasonable terms. They cut him a check for five million. The money was nice, but it came with no acknowledgment, no apology from the governor or the Attorney general, no offer of treatment for his severe PTSD, or a counselor to help him map out a future, the future that seemed unfathomable without first addressing the past and what did that look like? Well, for starters, a backo went big enough to dig out the Putnam Sheriff's Office and expose the moral rotten its footings. What he and his lawyers found and went beyond their expectations corruptions so calcified you couldn't just carve it out. What you needed was an exorcist. That's next on the season finale of The Devil's Quarry. 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 Soltarov. 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 Garakornhaber, Hannah Beale, Jackie Pawley, Austin Smith and Kathleen Horne. 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 Horrant. Original music arranged and produced by Alexis Quadrado at the Plaza Rojas Studio at a marketing and operations Jeff Cleiburn, publisist Nathaniel Baruch, art director Andrew Nelson, Social media manager Sarah Gibbons. Legal review provided by Claris Law and Gibson Dunn. Our theme song, The One Who's Holding the Stars, is performed by Alexis Quadrado at the Plaza Rojas 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. Mark Baker was that rarest of brand named lawyers, A delightful man who was loved by all who knew him. Baker, who died suddenly in a sleep in the summer of twenty twenty five, was a maker of miracles in court. His life's work was freeing the wrongly convicted men who spent decades drafting appeals from prison while writing to anyone they thought might help them. One of those men was Anthony to Pippo. In twenty thirteen, after a second conviction for the murder of Josette Wright, Anthony reached out to Baker through his stepdad. By then Big Larry was once again in a position to help his step son. Baker wasn't bothered by the two convictions. If anything, they moved him to take the case. While reporting the story in twenty twenty one, I'd meet Baker for lunch at his favorite watering hole, the Duncan Donuts on Johnson Avenue in Riverdale. There over the tune of fish they only made for him. He'd spend the first ten minutes cracking punchlines in Yiddish, ribbing me for marrying a blonde Chisa, and then he'd sit and explain how he'd used a DA's trick to win Anthony a third and final trial. In criminal law, there's something called Malineau rule. It allows the prosecution to bring a prior bad act to show that a defendant has a criminal mo What Baker did was flip that rule on its head. He went to New York's Court of Appeals. He wanted to raise the history of someone who wasn't on trial. That's someone, of course, being Howard Gombered. This was, to put it mildly, a moonshot plea. It had never succeeded in post conviction hearings, not New York, at least. Even Baker's partner, Mark Agnifolo, is a skeptic.
00:02:22
Speaker 2: I might even have said this on like, you're wasting your time. That's never gonna work. I mean, this is a horrible, horrible murder. It's old news. And Baker says, no, I'm right, I'm right. This is a sound legal theory. It doesn't matter that it's never really been done before. And he just pushed it and pushed it.
00:02:42
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, Baker argued his brief before the seven panel judge in Albany.
00:02:48
Speaker 3: Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, as.
00:02:53
Speaker 1: Baker had a half hour to persuade them that the judge at Pippo's retrial denied him due process by blocking new Gombert proof.
00:03:02
Speaker 4: He knew the deceased, he had a relationship with her. He had prior knowledge of all his victims. They were also found with clothing stuff down their throat, most were threatened with death, and two of them were also taken into the woods, just like in this case. Put that together, there's a painting.
00:03:21
Speaker 1: The Putnam DA thought so little of Baker's gambit that he'd sent a junior assistant to oppose him.
00:03:28
Speaker 3: May it please the court. My name is David Bishop, and I represent the people on this matter on appeal. I think.
00:03:35
Speaker 1: But as the assistant DA argued against allowing the gombered evidence to be heard a trial, a judge on the panel cut in.
00:03:44
Speaker 3: He knows her, He's driven in the car with her.
00:03:47
Speaker 5: He calls the the people have been prosecuted for death suckers.
00:03:50
Speaker 3: He's not a murderer, at least said now, as far as I know, really well, after.
00:03:58
Speaker 1: Forty five minutes the panel had learned saying that issue they're ruling and writing. Anthony waited and waited to see if he'd get the chance to argue his case again in front of a jury.
00:04:10
Speaker 6: I mean, it's happened, but I mean less than between fifty seventy five times. Maybe maybe in the United States, you know that somebody's gotten a third chance.
00:04:23
Speaker 1: For months, he woke up every day burning to know if the court's ruling had been posted more times a day two in the morning, twenty afternoon, I had my mom get on the computer, go to the Court of Appeals page and let.
00:04:37
Speaker 6: Me know it.
00:04:38
Speaker 5: Does it happen yet?
00:04:41
Speaker 6: And woo, man, it must have been solid sixty days And on one day there it was.
00:04:52
Speaker 1: In March of sixteen. His mom checked the court's website. The judges had just posted their ruling that morning to Pippo would get a third trial. The BUTTNADA set a date for that September. Baker and his trial partner Mark Agnifilo were incensed. There was no way that could prep for it in that short a timeline.
00:05:19
Speaker 2: Unless, of course, so I go to see Anthony Depippo for the first time, and I go alone. Baker can't go forever reason, and I sit down with him, and I spend five hours with him.
00:05:33
Speaker 1: That's Baker's partner, Mark Agnifilo. He'd driven up to meet his client and assess him face to face.
00:05:41
Speaker 2: And he talks NonStop for five hours. I've been around the block. I mean, I worked on the nine to eleven investigation. I was a process, I was a federal pro I was a state promising I know, bullshit from the real thing.
00:05:56
Speaker 7: And this was just as real as real can be.
00:05:59
Speaker 2: And so I sat there humbled, you know, listening to Anthony Depippo talked about his life in his case and his twenty year quest to vindicate himself, not just in hopes and dreams, but in individual pieces of evidence that he has meticulously assembled into binders.
00:06:20
Speaker 1: Over the decades. He'd compiled eleven binders of facts, entitled them the Gombert Books. Taken together, they told the history of a one man crime wave Gombert's a tax on Girls, dating back to the early eighties.
00:06:36
Speaker 2: And I sat there, I was like, remember that the old Maxell commercial, the guy sits in the chair on the you know, the sound of the you know audio tape makes his hair blow back.
00:06:45
Speaker 7: That was me with DiPippo.
00:06:48
Speaker 1: Agnifilod barely cracked volume one when he saw he had a secret weapon. Sure, his client looked like a hijacked tractor trailers, but he was also illegal savant.
00:07:00
Speaker 2: He's been doing eighteen hours a day every day for twenty years, and he is an encyclopedia.
00:07:07
Speaker 7: He knows this case better than any other human being can know this case.
00:07:12
Speaker 2: And I say to him at the end of that meeting, I said, we're gonna try this thing as soon as we can, because I have you and they don't. I am gonna sit with you every day, and you're just gonna teach me this case.
00:07:36
Speaker 8: You my madness, laughter, my sorrows, them are endless valley.
00:08:12
Speaker 5: This is the Devil's Quarry.
00:08:35
Speaker 1: In the run up to Anthony's third trial, his two lawyers, Mark Baker and Mark Agnifilo, agreed on the division of labor. Agnifilo, the born showman, would do all the talking, while Baker, the back room scholar, would take copious notes and strategize lines of attack. That first day of trial, Agnifilo surveyed the courtroom. He took a deep breath, rubbing his palms together. It was about to be showtime.
00:09:06
Speaker 2: There's no greater adventure than a trial. It's it's an adventure. It's the best adventure you can have inside, you know, it really is. I mean, to have any better adventure, you have to be in the mountains. And so if you're into it, and this is exhilarating and fun, and it's going to be so exciting. Yeah, I know it's a murder case, you know, but just come with me and we'll get there.
00:09:30
Speaker 1: You know.
00:09:30
Speaker 7: That's that's how.
00:09:33
Speaker 2: You engage a jury. They're really responsive to that. And if you're their tour guide, they're Therein.
00:09:43
Speaker 1: Robert Tendy, the DA went first. He stuck to the button and playbook in nineteen ninety seven, pending all the county's hopes on a single witness, Denise Rose. She was the only one who hadn't recanted her story. Here's that Nilo's summing up Tendee's statement.
00:10:03
Speaker 2: This is an easy case. We have an eyewitness. It happened in a van. There was an eyewitness to all of these events. She's going to tell you what she saw.
00:10:15
Speaker 1: Two decades had passed since Rose first signed a statement accusing Anthony of killing Josette, taking the DA's prompts Now, she rehashed the old narrative, the impromptu party at the Sigo station, the game of spin the bottle gone horribly wrong in the van, the rape of Josette by first Andy an Anthony. Then the boys disappear into the dark with Josette's body in return without her. Then it was Agnifilo's turn with Rose. Of all the criminal lawyers I've watched in action, Agnifilo is easily the most relaxed. His cross examinations are like dinner party chats, warm and convivial, even little aimless, just two folks getting to know each other. As he crossed Denise, he shocked everyone, including her, by gliding past the details of the crime. Instead, he delve deeply into her actions after the fact. Did she call the cops that night after she got home? No, well, what about calling in an anonymous tip?
00:11:24
Speaker 8: No?
00:11:25
Speaker 1: Did she tell her parents about what she just witnessed?
00:11:29
Speaker 3: No?
00:11:30
Speaker 1: Did you wake up the following morning and do any of those things? No, said Denise, I didn't.
00:11:38
Speaker 2: One of the things that you have to figure out as a lawyer, What does this person really want to say, and what she wanted to say she wanted to talk about when she was younger and she was in love with Di Pippo, and Pippo was, you know, maybe in love with her.
00:11:56
Speaker 1: So Agniffolo asked Denise what it was like dating Anthony, about how much fun they'd had together, And.
00:12:03
Speaker 2: I'm asking that she doesn't know where I'm going. I'm just like, and so you would be happy. It's I'm sure happiness because you guys had fun together. If you have a great sense of humor, I do, and so does he, does you know? And this one, this is seven months after you're saying you saw him kill a twelve year old, right, yeah about that? And I think that the Drews just looking at her like this is just crazy.
00:12:30
Speaker 1: Nanny asked Denise if she and Anthony had had sex after the night of Josette's murder. Yes, Denise admitted. And you wanted to have sex with him, he asked her. Yes, she admitted, And in fact, you said the day after the murder you went to Anthony's house to hang out. Yes, Denise admitted.
00:12:51
Speaker 2: So she wanted to tell the truth and this is the truth. But the truth is just absolutely inconsistent with having seen him kill a twelve year old.
00:13:02
Speaker 1: Then Agnifolo asked her about pack Costaldo, the cop who dragged her down to the station over and over without a parent or a lawyer present. On the stand, now, Denise admitted that Castaldo would just pop over to her house on weekends.
00:13:17
Speaker 2: Why why is Detective Castaldo coming to your house? Did you always talk about police business?
00:13:23
Speaker 9: No?
00:13:23
Speaker 7: Okay, well, now we're off and running.
00:13:28
Speaker 1: Agniffolo faced the jury when he asked her about those visits.
00:13:32
Speaker 7: This kind of culture of pressure.
00:13:34
Speaker 2: You know, bad things happening in small police interrogation rooms. You know in Putnam County. You know these are young ne'er do well kids. You know they can make their lives a lot easier if they're friends with the cops, or they can make their lives a lot harder if they're not.
00:13:53
Speaker 1: But Castaldo had done more than just pop by for his little chats with Denise. He'd also threaten her was twenty five to life, and now, having gutted roses credibility, it was time for the main event. How we're Gombert.
00:14:29
Speaker 2: When you took it all together, there was just this mountain of evidence as to what had happened, and how they could get something so wrong because all the indications are that Gombert's guilty of this crime, and he was never called to account, And so he called.
00:14:47
Speaker 1: Gombert's victims to the stand. For complex reasons, only two were permitted to testify. First, up with Sarah Linley, who was seven when Gombert attacked her in the woods off Squats Pond.
00:15:02
Speaker 10: My biggest thing with telling my story is I don't like upsetting other people. And it's hard because it's a hard story to tell.
00:15:13
Speaker 1: In a voice that wobbled and sometimes broke. She told the jury what Gumbert had done to her.
00:15:20
Speaker 10: So as I was telling it, I remember looking over and there was a woman who was crying, and it hurt me in that moment more seeing her crying because of what she was hearing than what I was saying, because I'm numb at that point to it. And then looking over and seeing Anthony and it just felt so fucking heavy, like is this even going to work? Am I helping?
00:15:46
Speaker 2: The courtroom changed? You know when they testified, there was just a shift in the kind of emotion coming from the jury, and the emotion fell in the courtroom.
00:16:02
Speaker 1: After Sarah left the stand. Rachel went up next. She'd been dreading this day for weeks and months. Actually, she'd been dreading it for decades.
00:16:13
Speaker 7: Anthony's trial was rough. They went in deep with the abuse with Howard.
00:16:19
Speaker 10: They were just very deep.
00:16:21
Speaker 1: Sobbing as she spoke. She told the jury what she'd suffered at Gomber's hands as a child, the rapes and the beatings, and the death threats he'd levied that secret spotty take her in those woods. And then Rachel told them about Gombert and Josette. How we'd met the child at Rachel's mother's place, how we'd threaten Rachel that if she ever left Carmel, he'd replace her with Josette and start by asking her to babysit his daughter, and how she Rachel stood up to him that day, ordering him to stay away from the girl. From his seat beside Agnifilo, Anthony could barely watch. Even the jurors averted their gaze. A few were openly weeping. I do remember.
00:17:11
Speaker 6: Trying to disassociate, and I was just listening for the key, the keystoff.
00:17:19
Speaker 1: It was about this point that Josette's mom jumped up and stormed out of the room, up.
00:17:26
Speaker 6: And left slammed the door in front of the jury as she did not listen to a single thing, and that really made it worse for her because another jury is like, this is the mom not listening, Maybe we should listen.
00:17:41
Speaker 1: And then those jurors heard from the original witness, the one who told the first big lie and in doing so, ruined the lives of two of his friends. Domin Neglia, you recall, was the oversized kid who'd been busted in the car with Anthony and Andy, the kid who'd fit Putnam cops story after story to get them off his back. He tried once before now to take it all back, but the judge at Anthony's first trial blocked him from testifying. Now, facing threats of perjury from Buttnam prosecutors, he took the stand and finally told his truth about being stalked and brutalized by Pat Castaldo, about getting fired from his job because of their pressure, and how he fed those two cops lie after lie so they would quote leave me alone and stop bullying me, stop coming to my school, stopped coming to my work, then stop hitting me. Several of the jurors were sobbing when Big Dom left the stand. One of them turned to Anthony with a look.
00:18:50
Speaker 5: We're with you.
00:18:52
Speaker 1: Stay strong, you're going home. But neither Anthony nor Agnifilo allowed themselves to trust it.
00:19:01
Speaker 7: You thought he was just gonna sit in jail until became an old man.
00:19:05
Speaker 1: And so Agnifilo pulled out every stop, even turning to superstition.
00:19:11
Speaker 2: Every day we had a tuna fish sandwich on toasted rye with letton tomato, like it's a it's a you know, superstition, Like once you do it and like oh wow, Like I had the tune of sandwich and today was a pretty good day.
00:19:25
Speaker 7: Then you have to have it the next day and that that's a pretty good day. Then you're done. You having tune fish sandwich to latrialins. So that's what we did.
00:19:32
Speaker 1: So each day Agnifilo ate his tuna fish sandwich, then went back to court and dismantled the DA's case until the sixth of October twenty sixteen, when he called upon the very last witness in the month long trial. The oft mentioned pack Castaldo.
00:19:51
Speaker 2: So that night I prepped for my Castaldo cross and I say to myself, it's possible. I sum up tomorrow, I go no it won't happen. He's not going to make me some up. I mean, I'm going to Castaldo's going to be on the stand all day, you know, I'm not going to sum up tomorrow.
00:20:09
Speaker 1: Agniffolo launched into his cross of Castaldo. Most of it concerned his treatment of the witnesses and the case. The jury had just heard. Those witnesses described Castaldo's coercion and trickery, but under oath, Castaldo denied all of it.
00:20:27
Speaker 7: He denied it, it didn't happen.
00:20:30
Speaker 2: Castaldo came across as just, you know, not honest, not a good police official, you know, not someone that the jury trusted.
00:20:41
Speaker 7: He was withholding he was cagey, and.
00:20:44
Speaker 2: That's the case detective, Like, that's the lead case detective doing these things, and that's how the evidence in the case ends. And so I thought that was really what I think the jury was left with that this is this is not the court of this case is I was gonna say corrupt. It's such a strong word, but is corrupted. You know, the core of the case is corrupted.
00:21:13
Speaker 1: It took six hours and every ounce of Agnifilo's energy to crack Castaldo's credibility.
00:21:21
Speaker 6: When he sat down I said, how you feel his hair is standing up like I can get my car and crossed into a tree.
00:21:29
Speaker 1: And just as Agnifilo is catching his breath and the judge turns to Agnifilo and says, all right, you could do your closing.
00:21:36
Speaker 6: Now, and Agniffhilo is like, what I just cross examined the biggest witness in this case.
00:21:45
Speaker 5: His hair is standing up. No break, judges, you're up.
00:21:52
Speaker 1: That was late in the day and Agnifilo hadn't prepped. He had to close his case now to the jury, you.
00:21:59
Speaker 2: Know, oh, man, like this is this is all, this is for all the marbles, you know, this is not just one of those things like I have to win.
00:22:11
Speaker 7: So I stand up and I just start talking.
00:22:15
Speaker 6: I mean, it's like he's such a prawl that he got it.
00:22:21
Speaker 7: He got it.
00:22:26
Speaker 1: Agniffolo got up and talked for an hour. The next morning, the DA gave his clothes and then the jury retired. Aweigh the facts.
00:22:35
Speaker 2: It was just so emotional and so just intense, like now I'm done. I don't talk to the jury ever again. If you had to say to me in thirty five years of doing this, what's the tired?
00:22:54
Speaker 7: Isn't the right words.
00:22:55
Speaker 2: What's the most beaten up you've ever been as trial lawyer? It's actually that moment.
00:23:03
Speaker 1: Thankfully, no one was so tired they hit a tree. All right, it's time to deliberate. So, because now I'm in custody, I have to go through the door with the guards, and so I had to sit in this room. In this room again, had that steel toilet, stainless steel toilet, stainless steel mirror, stainless steel sinc. The water tasted like something that was like really disgusting.
00:23:34
Speaker 6: The walls were.
00:23:35
Speaker 9: Painted a light light light, light blue white. Instead of a steel bench, it was concrete, and the door is like seven feet tall.
00:23:49
Speaker 6: And it's solid steel. It's just so dramatic. During the verdict, I'm not going back to the jail.
00:23:55
Speaker 9: I'm in this room. I'm eating in this room. I'm sitting in this room. So every time the jury has a question, this big door opens with this big key, and my door opens. My heart drops because this could be the verdict. But no, it's a jury question again. All right, Judge brings the jury out. Jury asked the question. The first question was does she have to be killed on October third?
00:24:25
Speaker 1: It's hard to overstate how heavy that question was. If the jury harbored doubts that Josette died on October third, the state's whole case collapsed, because that was the day Denise Rose claims she saw the murder in the van. Any question about when Josette died could nuke the timeline of Denise's story.
00:24:46
Speaker 6: I'm like, well, that's not the worst question. I go back in. They do this like four or five times. I forget how many times I'd have to.
00:24:53
Speaker 7: Go back, and the question started to get worse. So I'm at the table.
00:25:01
Speaker 6: And I look at Mark Igniffolo and I say to him, I said.
00:25:09
Speaker 1: Losing Anthony was the only one sweating through his shirt. Mark Baker was furiously scribbling notes to himself, sketching out the basis for another appeal and a fourth jury trial for Anthony. The next morning, the jury reached a verdict. Anthony and his lawyers were summoned back in. So there's a fine line between massive anxiety and exhilaration.
00:25:45
Speaker 6: It's just a state of mind. So I'm having both states of mind, and you know, I faced this before, you know, and I'm just confident in my fight. I'm scared because of the questions and the judges like how do you find and defend it on a rape ben a first degree not guilty, and everybody with applause. People were hugging me and like it's over. Yes, it was over. That you wouldn't have known it by Anthony's reaction. Over the course of five years, I've asked him countless times what he felt when he heard those words spoken, and each time I've gotten a response like the one you just heard. To this day, it says, though he doesn't trust that it's real, that he's been truly and finally cleared.
00:26:52
Speaker 1: Of this injustice. There's also the hardshell he built to survive prison, emotional armory he can't dressed, unbuckle and store in his garage. Still, the fact remained Anthony was finally a free man and could now go anywhere he wanted. The first he had to go retrieve his belongings at the jailhouse. Agnifolo meanwhile slipped out of the courthouse, ducking the scrum of reporters on the steps.
00:27:23
Speaker 2: When you leave the courthouse, there's a row of trees between like the grass of the courthouse and the parking lot. And for whatever reason, I go and I just go stand in the trees. Could have gone differently, you know, but it didn't. It went this way, and I just needed a second, you know, just to be by myself and take it all in.
00:27:51
Speaker 1: Do you remember when you were finally alone with Anthony.
00:27:55
Speaker 2: Yes, afterwards, Yeah, you really appreciate how big and strong a man he is when he hugs you. After being acquitted, he said, you realize, you know, I'm five ten and he's six six. Just he came out and he hugged me, and he's like, you know, we did it. You know we did it.
00:28:12
Speaker 8: You know.
00:28:12
Speaker 7: I'm like, you did it, man, you did it, You did it.
00:28:15
Speaker 2: I said, I was your co pilot. I said, I just listened to you a day to.
00:28:20
Speaker 7: Come to this decision. And Anthony is actually righting.
00:28:23
Speaker 10: He just walked out of jail.
00:28:25
Speaker 8: Freeman, Anthony tells, how.
00:28:26
Speaker 7: You're feeling right now.
00:28:27
Speaker 5: I'm a little bit of shock right now. I feel unbelievable. This is like the greatest moment of my life. I'm fucking going home.
00:28:35
Speaker 7: Holy shit.
00:28:42
Speaker 9: I was really just overstimulated by the color of the vehicle, the colors outside, because like prison, every cell is the same color. I'm driving where I grew up, past all these places. It was so green, the greenest I ever seen in the world. And this the smells like I hadn't been on grass, being near trees, you know, just the smells in the air.
00:29:16
Speaker 5: Animals.
00:29:19
Speaker 11: Yeah, I got the call. I slept in a soft bed. It was so soft, and the comforter was so soft.
00:29:39
Speaker 1: But in his first years of free, Tom Anthony felt unfree, afraid to leave the safety of his mother's house for fear that those cops were lurking. He couldn't run out for coffee without looking around corners or flinching each time he heard a siren. And then there were the looks he drew at the diner, the stairs of those mothers and their daughters. He might have just cleared his name in court, but not in the eyes of his neighbors. Meanwhile, the real struggle lay ahead. He recruited new lawyers to handle his civil suits, the ones he'd filed against the state in Butnam County for his twenty plus years of wrongful imprisonment.
00:30:28
Speaker 6: They took my energy years, they took my youth, They took I mean, they took twenty years. But I mean, if I were to just say I'm sit and be mad about that. I'm living in the past. You know, I want to live now and I want to live for the future.
00:30:47
Speaker 1: The States settled quickly and on reasonable terms. They cut him a check for five million. The money was nice, but it came with no acknowledgment, no apology from the governor or the Attorney general, no offer of treatment for his severe PTSD, or a counselor to help him map out a future, the future that seemed unfathomable without first addressing the past and what did that look like? Well, for starters, a backo went big enough to dig out the Putnam Sheriff's Office and expose the moral rotten its footings. What he and his lawyers found and went beyond their expectations corruptions so calcified you couldn't just carve it out. What you needed was an exorcist. That's next on the season finale of The Devil's Quarry. 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 Soltarov. 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 Garakornhaber, Hannah Beale, Jackie Pawley, Austin Smith and Kathleen Horne. 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 Horrant. Original music arranged and produced by Alexis Quadrado at the Plaza Rojas Studio at a marketing and operations Jeff Cleiburn, publisist Nathaniel Baruch, art director Andrew Nelson, Social media manager Sarah Gibbons. Legal review provided by Claris Law and Gibson Dunn. Our theme song, The One Who's Holding the Stars, is performed by Alexis Quadrado at the Plaza Rojas Studio, vocals by Rob Reddy of California. Corns written by Leo Schofield and Kevin Harrick at the Florida Department of Corrections Party Correctional Facility
