#025 Jason Flom with Anthony DiPippo

In November 1995, a hunter found the remains of 12-year-old Josette Wright in a wooded area of Putnam County, NY. She was reported to have been hog-tied with her hands and feet tied together behind her back, and her underwear had been shoved down her throat. Dominic Neglia, who was being investigated for drug charges, claimed that 18-year-old Anthony DiPippo and his friends were responsible for the rape and murder of Wright. Three of the accused teenagers testified against Anthony and Andrew Krivak, claiming that they were in Anthony’s van when he and Krivak raped and strangled the victim. Anthony denied his involvement with the crime, but in 1997 he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. In 2011, Anthony was ordered a new trial after it was discovered that his lawyer had also previously represented Howard Gombert, who a witness had reported seeing the victim get into a car driven by Gombert on the day she was last seen. Several other women came forward saying that they had also been sexually molested by Gombert in a similar fashion, with their limbs bound and with clothing stuffed in their mouths. These women were not allowed to testify in Anthony’s new trial, nor was Joseph Santoro, who was incarcerated with Gombert and had heard him talk about raping Wright, along with another young girl. Anthony DiPippo was again convicted in 2012, even though two of the three teenagers who had testified against him had recanted their testimonies, claiming that detectives had threated to charge them with the murder if they didn’t implicate Anthony DiPippo and Andrew Krivak. In 2016, Anthony was again ordered a new trial, and this time the testimonies of Santoro and the other women who had been assaulted by Gombert were admitted. Additionally, Dominic Neglia recanted his initial accusation against him. On October 11th, 2016, Anthony DiPippo was acquitted and released after serving 19 years in prison.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
I think we have the best legal system. It's just
the people that implement they get lost along the way
and forget what the job really is. He just kept
on trying to remind me that who was in authority,
who was in control, and how easy it was for
my body to be found in any reality of New

(00:24):
York City. It's a tough prison when you have the
guards going against you because they are the biggest gang
in the prison. They do that. They'll give a guy
a life sentence and go home in East Spaghetti like
it was nothing. And anybody that said, well, why would
you confess to something that you didn't do? My question
to them will be why wouldn't you confess when somebody's

(00:46):
threatening to kill your life? Judge, he said, how you feel?
I said, I'm okay. He said with the dad's you're lucky, Dan,
You're going home. This is wrong for conviction. Welcome back

(01:13):
to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam. Today's guest is a
larger than life character in every way. Anthony de Pippo.
Anthony de Pippo went behind bars as a nineteen year
old troublemaker, but insists he was never the killer they
said he was after twenty years in prison for a
crime the courts now say he did not commit. For
jury and Putnam County found him not guilty in the

(01:36):
rape and murder of twelve year old Josette Right. This
was his third trial of the same crime. The previous
convictions were overturned then on Tuesday and acquittal. The main
witness against him was a former girlfriend who said she
witnessed the attack, but the jury didn't buy. What we
learned at this trial is that the eye witness was incredible.
In the third trial, the defense was allowed to suggest
Howard Gombert is the real killer scene with the victims

(01:58):
shortly before her disappear. Yarns and currently in a Connecticut
prison on sex assault charges them. County District Attorney, though,
isn't backing down. He insists not guilty is not the
same as innocent. He was freed six months ago. Anthony,
welcome to the show. Great to be on the show.
Thank you for having me so. Anthony is a very
interesting guy. I've gotten to know him well over the

(02:20):
last several months since he's been out of prison. And
when I say he's a larger than life character, what
are you six five almost six six yea. He looks
like a gentle giant, so just gregarious and funny and
fun to be around. And so it really be lies
the incredible saga that you've lived through, how you came

(02:41):
out with your spirits so so strong and so positive,
and it gives me a lot of joy just hanging
around with you. So I'm glad to have you here.
Thank you. You know, I try to live in for
the moment and for the future and not in the past.
I did twenty years hopefully full accused of crimes I
didn't commit. And it's a privilege to be back in
societ Eddie. You know a lot of people in my

(03:01):
situation don't get to make a hear Yeah, that's true.
In fact that we'll get to it. The guy who
was wrongfully convicted with you is not here because he's
still locked up for the same crime, which is crazy
because you've been exonerated. And let's go back to the
time of the crime. I mean, you were still a kid, right,
which is which makes it extra tragic, right because the
fact that you lost those years. So you grew up

(03:24):
where in Carmel, New York, New York, nice place, pretty
nice place. It's pick of fences and people were just
living life. Is one of the safest communities according to
the state to live in. So you had a relatively
happy childhood growing up in Carmel and things are going
good to you. Play sports, you know, I was involved
in wrestling in school, and I wasn't involved with baseball

(03:46):
and football and none of that. But you know, I
was doing a lot of stuff that normal kids don't
and I did come to an age where you know,
I began experimenting with drugs and I kind of went
south on everything, and that kind of led me down
the path to how the police started to focus in
on me as a person of interest just because of
what I was doing. I mean, we weren't out threatening

(04:07):
people are robbing, people are committing a sexual assault crimes,
but you know, we were using and selling drugs, and
we were dressing up and we were playing a part,
you know, as the culture shows that. You know, when
you're a kid, you kind of go certain way. You're
listen to rap music listening, you easily influenced. His influences
affected me and I left school sort of like a

(04:27):
knock around guy. But you weren't hurting anybody, no, it
wasn't my goal. I didn't wake up in the morning
to say, oh, I'm gonna rape somebody, or I'm gonna
go rob somebody, I'm gonna hurt somebody. But at the
same time, we were youths. We were criminal thinkers. I mean,
it happens. I'm not a criminal thinker today. I like
to think of myself as a mature human being. And
many of us have had our transgressions at that age.

(04:50):
So things are going along pretty well. You're having your
different issues whatever, some of your teenage things that are
going on. You gotta get through, like a lot of people.
And then a crazy thing happens in the community, which
is a twelve year old girl was raped and murdered. Right,
we're talking now. Her name was Josette right right, And
this must have been big news in the community like that.

(05:11):
It was huge news. Who wasn't on newspapers. Everybody was
talking about it. The entire police forces in the community
got together and they were trying to solve this crime,
and it took a long time to find it, right,
thirteen months. She was last seen in October of and
her skeletal remains were found in November, and so they
find this girl in the woods. Rope is attached to her,

(05:34):
Her hands were bound behind her back. The right leg
was pulled up and the rope went around the neck
and sort of a half hog tied position. I don't
want to be graphic. Button. The underwear was inside of
her mouth and the brow was tied around her face
and she was found prone face down, and she decomposed
in that position. And this is where things start to

(05:56):
get really weird, right, because now you have a really,
I mean, I'm getting the shells thinking about it, really
terrifying scenario. It's the most horrible you can imagine everybody's
worst nightmare. A little girl, innocent found and having been
tortured and killed. And now the pressure mounts right the
cops they gotta find out who did it. But for

(06:16):
a lot of reasons, it was you know, re election
year for the sheriff, and so everybody wanted this case solved.
So they started looking at people, and one of the
people they were looking at was a guy named Howard Gombert,
who had later had confessed that he committed this crime
to several individuals. She was last seen getting into his
red car with the Connecticut license plates. Now the woman

(06:37):
I witnessed that seen this identified his photo out of
a photo ray as if anybody number two. He was
number two. I wasn't in the photo right, and I
didn't drive a red car. Howard Gombert did drive a
red car with Connecticut plates. So you have this girl
getting in the red car fifteen minutes after she walks
out of her house for the last time, which is
a stone store away from her home. Now she's not

(06:59):
seen again. The next time they find her, she's in
the woods in this condition. When I went to trial,
I didn't know about this guy, Howard Gobbert. My attorney
had previously represented him on a rape charge, so he
received the pre trial discovery material that implicated his former client,
this guy, Howard Gombert. It's out there for a second, right.
This is where things get really weird. The fact is

(07:19):
the attorney who was representing you had previously represented the
guy who was the actual suspect, which is totally unforbidden,
I mean, in unethical, not allowed, whatever you want to
call it. Any lawyer knows that they can't do that.
And in fact, he withheld information that he had that
would have implicated his former client and ended up screwing

(07:43):
and the most and I'm using a very nice word
for it, screwing you his current client. It's so backwards
and so conflicted and so fucked up honestly that people
can't even imagine that this goes on. But it does.
But let's go back to how this started, right, because
it started with guy named gomber So. But what we're
doing the week they found her remains, so they got

(08:05):
this eyewitness testimony. That week, they also interviewed people that
Howard Gombert knew. That they were saying was he was
trying to entice her into a babysitting job, and that
he was flirting with her, and he was acting strange
around her. So the cops are focusing on this guy Gombert.
But now we're driving along to Jersey City. We go

(08:26):
to a rave. Like I said, we were using and
selling drugs. We were coming back from this rave and
we get pulled over. Now while we were in the car.
President in the car was me dominic Neglia who was
a later informant, and Andrew Crievak, who became a co defendant.
We're in this car and we're talking just candidly about
they just found this girl in the Woods. So when

(08:46):
we got arrested, Dominic Neglia told the police that we
might have information on that case. So they whisked him
away and they promised to treat him with some special
treatment to get him off his drug charges or whatever
if he would be further given for me upon us
about what we were talking about. It was only sixteen, right,
he was seventeen. We were talking about basic newspaper knowledge.

(09:07):
We weren't talking about, you know, imply knowledge that we
actually he participated in his crime. So then what happened
from there was that dominic Negli was repeatedly pulled out
of his school, pulled out of his job, until he
got fired. He worked at the Olive garden until he
was brought to the police station for several hours of interrogation,
and this detective Costalo, Patrick Costalo and his saw the

(09:28):
detective William Quick. We're telling him they have to get
information against me, otherwise he's going to go to prison
for his charges. And they were paying him money and
they were beating him up at the same time. He said,
I don't want to do this anymore. He came to
a point where he says everything I said was a fabrication.
I don't want to do this anymore. So Castalo, who
was later indicted for this similar conduct, hit the guy

(09:50):
in the head with the handcuffs and spit on him.
So you ain't gotten one of the choice. So he
said fine. He came back and said, all right, they
wanted witnesses. I got your witness is Adam Wilson, Denise Rose,
and Bill McGregor. Supposedly this crime happened in the van
and they were there. So the cops took this information
and went to Denise Rose and threatened her with life
in prison for Yeah, we were seeing each other on

(10:14):
and off, and at the time shortly prior to her
given a statement, we were seeing each other. But then
I broke up with her, which you know, it's not
the cause of why she did this to me, but
it probably contributed because some women are scorn, you know,
they get a certain feelings towards something, and so she
became a witness against me. Now, remember what I told
you about how the body was tied up. She said,

(10:35):
the girl was gagged, their hands were tied in the
front and the rope was tied to nothing else. With
the forensic evidences contrary to that with the police were
mistaken because the finger bones not to be graphic here,
but the finger bones felt to the rib cage, so
they weren't a mistaken impression. The girl's hands were tied
in the front, so they spoon fed this to Denise Rose.
So Denise Rose parrots this, so she swears the hands

(10:56):
were tying the front. Now, if your hands are tying
the front and you're gagging in the mouth, then you're
being an attack to whatever you're gonna be able to
pull reach up to the amount to pull the gag
out and breathe. If the if the theory of death
is asphixiation. But we were later able to find out
that this guy, Howard Gombert, did this to ten other
girls with the same type of bondage and stuff. Why

(11:16):
did the cops, in your opinion, when they had the
guy who turned out to be the right guy, that's Gombert,
wrong guy, right? How do you want to talk about it?
They had the actual perpetrator, right, How did they go
so far wrong? They were interviewing him, they were interrogating him.
They had it right. All they had to do was,
I mean, this thing pretty much came with instructions right,
you had the red car, you had the witnesses, you had,

(11:39):
and then ultimately that it comes out that he's this
serial predator. Right. I don't know if they had that
information at that time, but why did they go off
of him? Like I said dominic Neglia and then from
Denise Rose and went on to Adam Wilson, who since
we can't it, and then Bill McGregor, who, since we
can't did supposedly the crime. That theory to crime was
that we got so high in a van we played

(12:01):
spin the bottle and the girl just wound up dead.
That Andy attacked the stuffed their mouth with the underwear
tighter hands in front, and then he went first for
a minute and a half, and then supposedly I went
first for a minute, and then supposedly we were supposed
to dump the body. Now this is all a fabrication
to begin with. But the people that were supposedly playing
spin the Bottle, who were falsely identified by dominic Neglia,

(12:22):
had recanted it. So Adam Wilson says, after a twelve
fift interrogation with Dan Stevens, the same guy that Cohorst,
Jeffrey Deskovic, was using a lot of detective test and
we all know that Jeffrey Deskovic is innocent because DNA
established the real killer and a real kill confessed. Gave
the same type a lot of detective tests to my
friend Adam Wilson, and he signed the paper. But immediately

(12:43):
we canted. Went to this probation officer the next day
said the story is untrue. I was not in a van.
The cops threatened me. They said I was going to
be charged as an accomplish or an accessory to murder
and I wouldn't be able to go home. So he
signed a statement and we can The next day Bill McGregor,
he recaned. It took him tenure is to recant, but
he recant. It gave us a sworn affter David that
cops threatening with accessory accomplished to murder unless he put

(13:07):
me in a van. And he said he never met
Josette right in his life, and he said he doesn't
know who Denise Rose was until ninety two years after
the crime, when the police introduced Denise Rose to him,
and they had Denise Rose trying to spoon feed him
the story while he's in the police department because he
only said he fell asleep during the crime and woke
up at home. This is making my head hurt, right,
So they have Gombert, right, and then this terrible sequence

(13:31):
of events happens where they pull you guys over and
then that turns into exactly what we just talked about.
But then at the same time they must have said,
all right, well, we're gonna let this guy Gombert go
because we think we got a different lead. Is that
basically how you understand it? Because it's so weird that
he asked a critical question, how did the focus shift
off Gombert to us? So Dominic Neglia and my view

(13:54):
was that shift. Is there anything more to it where
they protecting Gombert? I don't know. All I know is
that guilt was shift to actually innocent by the police,
who either did so maliciously or by mistake. But it
was done, and we wound up spending the next twenty
years and Andy Stole in jail for crimes we didn't commit.

(14:16):
I don't know why the cops wanted us so badly,
but it just happened. It was a twenty year struggle
to get out of prison, and God bless us. I'm
here and we're gonna get Andy out. Yeah, we're gonna
get him at The question is Gombert? What happened to him? So?
Can I just tell the story about Howard comers so
people can understand? All right? Howard Gombert is incarcerated now

(14:37):
for taking an eight year old girl in woods, threatening
her with death. I'm not going to name names because
these people are some of them are still living. He
threatens her with death the sexual assault sir. In the
last eleven years of his freedom, he was charged four
time series sex climbs on one girl he was abusing
from when she was eight to eighteen, would repeatedly tie
her up and put the underwear in her mouth and

(14:59):
tire hands behind her back with various things, including the rope.
He was sixty four days prior to the girl that
went missing. In my case, Joe's a right and this
is very critical right here, And this is how I
know Gomber is guilty, is that he abducted his other babysitter,
blonde hair, blue eyes, strikingly similar characteristics at knife point.
A knife was also found at the crime scene. He

(15:21):
jumps out of the trees and abducts her a knife point,
ties her hands behind her back and repeatedly sexually assault.
So I'm not going to identify no names here this.
But he put the underwear in hermount, he tied something
around her face. This is an identical modus operaman day
with a babysitter, and he was enticing Joe's at the
baby six. She quit. She went to the police department.

(15:43):
While the police report that night documented all this down,
documented this. She didn't identify Howard Gombert in the police
report because later she said she was scared. But she
did call us. We didn't know who she existed. She
did call us and said, this is what happened. Howard
Gambert did this to me. So she comes forward with
this if formation, the modus operandie is distinct and unique.
This wasn't an accident. This wasn't somebody who created the

(16:06):
girl around a gas station for two hours, like the
prosecution said, for the entire views and pleasure of the
town of Carmel. This is somebody that jumped out of
the darkness and fled back off into the night. Now,
I just want to build a little bit more on
Howard Gombert. Howard Gombert was also seen six months later
with Robin Murphy seventeen who's still missing, and Robin Murphy
they were seeing at this laundry matt they were together.

(16:28):
Years later, they would find Robin Murphy's underwear bearing her
d N a eight billion to one odds that it
was her DNA, and a trophy suitcase maintained by Howard
Gombert with some underwear from his other rape victims. Her
necklace what we believed to be her necklace was hanging
from his rear view mirror, and when the cops arrested
him for the last charge of the eight year old,
they found this material and they tested it. Now years

(16:50):
go by after that, he's incarcerated, serving time in the
McDougall Walker Correctional Facility, where he proceeds to tell a
fellow jail inmate that he had sex with Joe's at
right when she went missing, and that they'll never find
Robin Murphy's remains, and that they have material with Robin
Murphy's DNA on it, and that he was trying to
entice Joe's atte the babysit, and that he got her

(17:12):
in the car with the babysitting law. Now, all these
statements or declarations against penal interest made by Howard Gombert
in the Connecticut Correctional Institution, that are corroborated by proof
independent of the statements themselves, to attest to the trustworthiness
and reliability which culminated in my third reversal because of
the second child. That judge didn't allow any of this.

(17:32):
And you know, let the gerby hear the name Howard Gombert.
So there's a number of things here that anybody who
has any shread of decency and cares about women girls
in this case, right, the idea it's so fucking outrageous
that this guy was allowed by the authorities to go
free and went on to commit these unspeakable crimes against

(17:56):
these young women over and over again. It took them
so long to figure it out when none of those
things ever really needed to happen, if they would have
done it right the first time, forgetting for a moment
the fact that you were robbed of the best years
of your life, as was Crevac. But that's what never
ceases to blow me away about the idea that these

(18:17):
law enforcement people, whether it's prosecutors or cops in some cases,
or whatever it is, that they can sleep at night
knowing that they're locking up the wrong guy, and especially
in a case like this, and it's just a tragedy
that you see here and go. It could have been prevented.
It didn't have to happen. Others had to happen. They
had the guy. I mean, it wasn't like a big mystery.

(18:38):
They had the guys. I mean, I know you must
have had well, you had twenty years to think about this,
but I mean, you know, it's just it's so uh.
I can't um, I can't you know, I look at
it like this right, I'm home now. I was victimized
by not only the police department, with this guy. Howard
Gombert I had served his prison time. Andy is serving
his prison time. Collectively, it's forty one years in prison

(19:01):
that we're doing for this guy is heinous individual. Some
of these girls that he did this too, in my friends.
I don't know everybody that he did this tool, but
some of them were my friends. So we knew these
girls growing up and to find out years later that
this is what he did. Even Josette, I was friends
with the sisters. I was friends with the family, with
the family because they were be sled for so many years.

(19:24):
I have such sympathy for them. But you know, I
feel horrible that they feel a certain sort of way.
But you know, in certain cases, you know that some
families don't accept it as easily as others, and some
people want to know and some people don't. Well, because
let's think about it too, psychologically speaking, it's another terrible
shock to them to find out that the person that

(19:45):
they thought was the real perpetrator actually wasn't, and that
all these years the real guy had been allowed to
roam the streets and to pray on other people. So
that's got to be another thing to have already gone
through the unbelievably terrifying traumatic experience and then have to
process that. I could see where there there could just

(20:06):
be a breakdown and they could any but it's hard
for them to. I mean, I look, I could see
I can understand it. Intellectually, I can never understo one
that's ever has not been through it could possibly really
understand it. M Everything went wrong in your case typical

(20:31):
of many wrongful convictions. You had an incompetent defense attorney.
You had incentivized witnesses who lied on the stand, incentivized
in a lot of ways, right because they were being
literally given the carrot and the stick. They were either
being paid off or beaten up or threatened with being
charged with murder. That's a pretty strong incentive. Right, So

(20:52):
you got convicted in a separate trial from Creevac. Right,
you both got convicted. Creevak signed a nine page false
confession after he was given a lite detective tests by
the same individual, Daniel Steamers, that gave Jeffrey Vic his
lightest detective test preceding his false confession, which later was
proven false because DNA proved established. And let me just

(21:14):
say for the audience in case some people haven't heard
Jeffrey's story on wrong conviction. Jeffreys, a guy who was
wrongly convicted of sixteen years old of rape began murdering
a fifteen year old girl and the DNA proved from
the outset that he hadn't have done it. And then
on the back end, when he was finally released sixteen
years later, a DNA actually identified the real killer who confessed.

(21:35):
And we know that the guy that you're referring to
now is the detective that took his false confession, gave
him several cups of coffee, had him under the table
in a fetal position prior to given a statement. I
gave my co defendant Andrew Cuevack a lie detective test
preceding his false confession. The ironically about a lie detective
test is that the detective is allowed to lie about

(21:58):
the lie detective test, but we should be giving the
fucking lie detect attested the detective. I mean, it's it's funny,
but it's not. It's so weird to think that that
they can lie in the process of trying to get
you to confess to a crime. They can lie to
say anything. What they could say, we got your fingerprints,
they could say we have witnesses. They could say we
got blood or DNA or this, or you lie to
the lie detects you failed. They say whatever you want.

(22:19):
And we know that in certain cases they've even been able,
especially with a teenager which you were, which Jeffrey was,
They've been able in certain cases to convince people that
they actually did do the crime that they didn't do.
And so false confessions are really common in case it
is problematic though, I mean, of those cases that have

(22:39):
been established DNA proof actually innocent involved some sort of confession.
One out of every four people that goes into police
department that says they did it, we have to soume
they didn't do it. We have to look at it
closer because with that kind of statistics, that's demonstrating tremendous
floor in the criminal addresses system. So there has to

(23:01):
be some sort of way to collaborate these things. These
things should be taped from the beginning to the end,
not before the guy starts confessing, but in the minute
they bring a suspect into a police department for an interrogation,
they should turn on a camera. They should put a
tape recorder there, and if he's gonna say anything, everything
that he says, let be recorded, his denials, his emissions, everything.

(23:21):
Let's just not start the tape record and when he
starts confessing and then shut it off when you got
him to sign a paper. Right, it's not okay to
have this movie be edited by the detectives who are conductor,
which is basically what happens. Right, They get to choose
and selectively show the parts that they want to build
their case. By the way, the good news is that
this week New York State passed the law that we've

(23:43):
been fighting for so that the project another organizations, but
fighting for for so many years, where now videotaping of
interrogations it's a mandatory. And I think that we have
to pay respect to you and others who have gone
through this because without you being out there as you
have done on many occasions tell in your story, that
probably wouldn't have gone through because the human story is

(24:04):
what really I think in many cases gets the legislators
to understand that these are changes that need to be
made because these are things that happen to real people, write,
real people like you. I want to get to the
prison experience because it's so hard to even imagine what
it would have been like for you as a teenager

(24:27):
to be thrown into this situation where you're going to
a maximum security prison as a convicted rapist and murderer
of a twelve year old girl. Yeah, you're a big, strong,
tough guy, but still you're in a place that they
eat people alive in there, especially people who are convicted
of these type of crimes. How did you deal with this?

(24:49):
I mean, how could anybody deal with that? How how
do you hear? Like? How? I mean, it's amazing. Survival
is is man's number one instinct. I got the prison.
I ain't gonna lie I was he did that. I
don't know what I was entering. So I arrived at
the Schwanga Correctional Facility, which serious things happened there, but
it is soft. They're compared to most prisons, except but

(25:10):
for the fact they sent me into B one, which
was housing for all the most dangerous people in the
state that they have to keep a close eye on.
So when I arrived to prison, I didn't readily admit
what I was in prison for. When guys asked me,
I just blew it off. Robbery, murderous, that and the
other thing. And I just started to go with the flow.
When guys started to catch window what I was in

(25:32):
jail for, then problems started to happen. So I'm gonna
fight or a death situation? What am I gonna do?
There was pressure. I politicked mostly. I tried to avoid
violence and whenever I could, and eventually I got, you know,
the attention to certain guys. They saw my paperwork and
they gave me a shot, and so I started helping

(25:53):
other guys out. And in prison it's it's you know,
there's bloods, there's god bodies, which is the five percenters
is most hims. There's the Italians, Latin Kings, there's all
different sorts of sex. So I found my way in
with everybody, and I showed my paperwork and guys started
sticking up for me. And plus I I'm a big guy,
so guys didn't want to just straight out say, you know,

(26:15):
I had to pay money or this, that and the
other thing, as opposed to my co defended who was
recently cut two weeks ago. I mean it cut him
in the face. The guards is pressing up on him.
They're waving a newspaper around. He lost the recent appeal,
and they're telling all the inmates, you know what, he's
in jail. Four I was. I was able to politic
my way through it. But it always enjoy No. I
had trouble, and there was certain places where the guards

(26:37):
were worse than the inmates because you were transferred around
to different places. Yeah, and certain guards have more morals
and ethics that they think it's their ethical duty to
see to it that that we do hard time right.
And so obviously it is the hardest imaginable type of
time because in this country we don't focus on rehabilitation
as other Western countries that we focus on punishment, which

(27:00):
I think is backwards to except in the maybe the
most extreme cases, we could have a we could have
an intelligent discussion about that. But and in fact yours
was an extreme case except you were innocent. But that
being said, I don't believe that the sentence is somebody
the twenty five years of life in prison. Okay, we
can say maybe that's an appropriate sentence, maybe it should
be longer, maybe it should be shorter, But sentencing them

(27:21):
to be tortured, that's not what we do in America.
That's not appropriate. And the fact is that the way
we treat people in our prison system effectively is torture.
And I want to talk about privac because his story
deserves to be heard and people need to get involved.
Maybe they could write to him. If you tell people
if he's interested in right, always advocate for people to
write them. From time to time, I put his address

(27:44):
on the internet. I send him pictures. I try to
visit him when I can. It makes my heart to
see him. I bring him in high spirits. He's got
a great team. Professor at delpernar Jeoffrey Deskovic is behind him.
So he's got the support of our community, the innocence community,
and we want to see him out. We got his
case into the appellate division now and we're waiting for
a decision whether he can leave to appeal. Because I

(28:06):
was acquitted, so based on the same proof, which consists
of some new proof, he should be entitled to the
same shot that I was recently given. It's so strange, right,
So you've been acquitted, the actual perpetrator has been identified, arrested, convicted, right,
So what possible reason could they have to hold and
I don't know as much about his case I do,

(28:28):
by your right, well, it's the same, it's it's pretty
much the same, except he's got a confession. I do
not the false confession. I'm not. It's the political climate
in the community. A They placed their own interests above
the interests of justice, so if something happens, if their
colleague does something wrong, they cover up for it, being
they're worried about paying compensation. The county was already sued

(28:49):
by Jeff, They're being sued by other people right now
to other cases. So the local government wants to keep
this swept under the rug for as long as possible.
For However, means they can. So we're moving forward. And
if they don't want to accept it, if the Putnam
d A's office don't want to accept it, and he's
actually innocent, notwithstanding my induction into the National Registry of

(29:10):
his Honorees, notwithstanding the fact that the woeful conviction community
accepts me is it being actually innocent or we're just
gonna fight them to the nail And if they have
to roll over and we just have to just keep
on marching through, that's what's gonna happen, because I'm not
going to tolerate these people. All they want to do
is protect their own interests. This isn't just they should

(29:30):
accept responsibility. They have their killer, they have their guys,
they know who it is. There's DNA proof, there's a confession.
So now Anthony and they're thinking, now, well, maybe he
had something to do with it. Also, I mean, it
doesn't make any sense. This one is exactly a match.
I mean you don't have to be a skilled sleuth

(29:51):
or detective or kojack or whatever to figure this one out, right.
I mean, everything that you said leading up to this
point about how all the other crimes matched and the
DNA and everything It's like, obviously it was this sick
bastard Gombert, right who who did it? And so the
fact that you're your code defended is still rotting and
being you know, horribly abused and caught and everything else

(30:14):
in prison. To keep everybody up at night until this
guy is free, it doesn't make any logical sense. And
I agree with you, and I just want to go
a little bit more. We extended the olive branch to
the district Attorney's office. The prior district attorney, Atom Levy,
he actually contacted the Attorney General's office to reinvestigate our
case and was prepared to vacate my judgment in paperwork

(30:36):
that he and my attorneys had drafted together with the
Attorney general involved, based on proof that this guy costall
local horse perjured testimony, and based on proof to Howard
Gombert is the actual perpetrator. But he lost the election
to this new guy, Bob Tendy, who was in bed
with the Putnam County sheriff. That's the elected official down
there now. So instead of continuing to accept this olive ranch,

(31:00):
we could work together. We could solve the crime. You
could be heroes by being accountable and responsible and we're
not gonna forgive my language on you. When you let
us out, we're gonna pick you up, and we're gonna
try and help you look good. And as as long
as you do the right thing for us. He said
to the Attorney General, you could kick Rocks. I don't
need you another advocate for the defendant, and then proceeded

(31:20):
to go through the trial. Now at this point, I
made bill. I made a million dollars bill, so I'm free,
but I'm on house arrest. I had a handle bracelet
and I'm sitting there and I'm still waiting to find
out if this guy really wants to take a trial
or not. And he's all in. So he hires this guy,
Larry Glasser, who worked on the Plaxico Berber's case, the
football star. I'm not going to comment on what I

(31:41):
think of him. So he comes in. He's all balls
to the wall, hating us and saying all the fouless
things about us, and that we're definitely did it and
there's no possibility we're medicine, and proceeds to go to trial.
And I go through the third trial. This is the
third time I got two reversals. The first time was
the conflict interest from the attorney. In two thousand, two
thousand six, in the Court of Appeals granted me and
a new trial based on proof the Howard Gombert that

(32:04):
it was suppressed from the retrial judge. So I'm going
to trial and we picked a jury and they're being
horrible about it. And at the same time we did
all from La Branch we go into the trial. At
the end of the trial, the cluising the trial, I
had Market Nippolo works for Ben Brockman and Associates, and
Mark Baker, who also works for Ben Brockman. He did
appeal for John Gotti. Great attorneys, superior attorneys. They get

(32:29):
the best hearts. They came to the summer. The whole
summer they were spending at my house. We were working
in case. We did everything. So I'm waiting for the
jury verdict. That was five hours. I'm waiting for the
jury verdict, and I think, man, I'm not gonna win
this because I was beaten down my whole life. You know,
I was a victim of my whole life. So I
just think that this is another motion that I have

(32:50):
to go back to prison and come back try and
get it back. And forth time the jury comes out
with a not guilty verdict. So I'm having an artistack.
Jeffrey dysko Vik is in tears, giving me a bit caged.
I'm sitting in my heart's pound, and the lawyers are
in tears, my families in tears. I know the moment
that that was gonna happen. The judge looked when he
said he was about to read the verdict. He looked

(33:11):
towards the victims family and again I have great sympathy
for him, and he said, there will be no outburst
in his court. And this is before the jury guy
stood up. And this was like two or three seconds before.
I said, when he looked over there and didn't look
at us, I knew I was coming home. And I
came home and it was the greatest day in my life.
I mean I was. I lost bail during the period

(33:32):
of time I went back to the jail for whatever reason.
But that day, that was the day that I that
I made it home and I was finally free of this.
You're finally free. It's bitter sweet because you know as
well as anybody that this this poor guy, Andrew Creedback,

(33:53):
is as innocent as you are, and I know you're
not gonna really because I know the type of person
that you are, You're not really gonna be able to
experience the joy that you deserve until he's home as well.
But what was that like after you spent more than
half your life in prison? Right eighteen years old, when
you went in thirty thirty nine, when you came out

(34:16):
right because the trial proceedings and everything else, by the
time you actually went to prison, you were twenty right
arrested when you're eighteen. You spent more than half your
life in the system, and you come out, And what
is that like? You walk out? What does fresh air
smell like when you have it? Sat it? What does
freedom feel like? Where do you go? What was your
first instinct? Did you want a milkshake? What did you do?

(34:38):
You know what I mean? I wanted what everybody else wanted,
but it really wanted to spend time with my family.
There was a lot of shock because prisoner is drabb
your bland colors and just everything Like I went to
I went to bed and bath and I just looked
at the wall of toothpaste and comment, sorry, you've got
three choices of toothpaste. I'm looking at the toothpaste on
a wall, like what am I doing? How am I
supposed to make choices? And so even just going to

(35:01):
a gas station and being able to buy a soda
or seeing females walk around like in prison, you're around men.
I mean they got some women guards. But being able
to talk to girls, to speak to the opposite sex,
to be able to not be wearing state greens, not
being barked at orders, you know. But the first, the
first most important thing that I found coming home was

(35:24):
just being able to be with my family and appreciate
the love and respect that they showed me and give
back and have a good time, have a good meal.
We went to Red Lobster. What do you have? I
had the ultimate feast. I just wanted everything, and I've
been having the ultimate feasts i've been home. I'm on
a diet now, no carbs at all, so no more bread.
I went from to forty to seventy five and like

(35:46):
six months. Well, and I want to go back to
that because when we were together and we were hanging
out in Miami race like coincidentally we ended up in
the same city. We were having some dinner and we're
talking and among all the other horrible things about being
in prison, and I know you were just talking about
the food, and I know you don't get a vegetable,
you don't get a fruit, you get basically slopping that
it really is, I mean, bland, just terrible food. Some

(36:09):
of it's rotten. I mean, we know all those stories.
But the other thing that's unique to your case and
makes me really amazed that you're walking around upright, is
the idea that you're so big and the beds are
too small. Oh yeah, there's no bed that My feet
didn't hang off fun or I had to crunch up somehow.
I mean, it's I can't. I had back problems until

(36:31):
the day I came home. When I came home, my
back problems went straight away. It's not amazing. I had
disc up and down my back and now I haven't
had it one this pain, one sharp pain since I've
been home, and I've been working out. In prison, you
live on a mat like it's one inch thick, and
it's like you're living on a piece of steel. And
like you said, sometimes the walls don't fit a guy

(36:52):
six six they fit a guy maybe six ft. So
you have to crunch up and you have to you know,
finding way I slept after time, Yeah, I mean, because
you've got to just wake up with cramps and places
that they don't even know you have, places I can't
even imagine. On top I said, you know, as I
talked about, I mean, on top of the loneliness, the violence,
the lack of appropriate physical contact, all of it, it

(37:15):
just adds up to just such a total nightmare. But
I want to go back to prison for a second.
Was there a worst time and was there anything positive?
Was there one moment that you could think back. Was
there a connection you made with somebody on the inside.
Was there some moment of hope? Was I mean? There
was brotherhood when I was in Attica. We were living good,

(37:36):
we were cooking, we had pants, everybody had TVs. There
was commodity in the cell block where there was no problem.
Everybody knew who I was and everybody respected me, and
there was a brotherhood between us. But there was times
where prison guards would come to myself because they heard
out about anti dipeples in their jail and they decided
to break on my things and threaten me with debt.

(37:57):
And so I experienced that in certain is in like Sullivan.
It's a tough prison when you have the guards going
against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison.
When you have the guards going against you, you can't win.
So you have to walk on eggshells because anything you do.
If you decide one day, I'm going to fight the
guards because I don't like the pressure that they're putting

(38:18):
on me. You're gonna get more time. They're gonna send
you to prison. Inside of prison, you're gonna go to
the box, and then you're gonna get one in three
or seven more years. So I'm thinking of myself and
to these times that I was pressured that my family
loves me. They invested three million dollars since I've been
in cost way three million dollars into my criminal defense.
I would not be respectful if I got caught up

(38:41):
in some other things where they get me off, or
I want to say the word off. They proved I'm
actually innocent for this crime and I do something now
stupid that I can't come home. So at certain times
I stayed in myself. I bit my fist and I
just said I'm gonna eat this, and luckily I didn't
come across any situation where I had to do more time.
But there were times that I want to come out

(39:01):
myself and hurt something. I just made sure those days
were the days that I want to lock in because
I love my family, I love myself. I want to
go home. Is there a moment when you think back
where you experience any type of positive thing? I mean,
I know there were there's a lot of ups. In prison.
You become bipolar, so you would have severe depression, which

(39:24):
even if you're not bipolar as a person, you will
experience some sort of it. So there'll be great downs
when you lose your appeals and I peeled more than
twenty times. When you lose your appeals and you have
to go to the next step. But then there's great
hope if you know you're innocent and you're getting closer,
you get this high, this you floor high, like I'm

(39:44):
right there. And then when you win, even if you're
stolen prison, when you just would leave to appeal, you
don't even get the right to appeal. That brings you up.
When certain people write you, like ex girlfriends or loved ones,
that girls want to come see you and you've been
down for so long, there's ups in prison. You live
in life, so you just can't walk around for twenty
years saying this is an awful experience. I'm gonna hate myself,

(40:06):
I'm gonna hate everything in it. You got to try
to make the most of what you got, and that's
what I did. That's a very spiritual approach, very evolved,
and really, I think for those of us who hear
you speak, it's absolutely remarkable. And I think that the
Exonorees as a whole embody that attitude. And I've heard
some of the guys say and women say that for

(40:29):
the people who weren't able to get to that spiritual place,
if you want to call it, that, they're still stuck
in there because they sort of gave up hope. And
for you, you kept fighting. In a certain sense, you're lucky.
At me, you can't call yourself lucky, but it was unfortunately.
I had family with money, and then I I also
put in the work, so I was in the trenches
with them the whole way. When you came out, I

(40:50):
almost want to trace those steps. You come out, your euphoric,
you go into a car with your family. Everyone's ecstatic,
so happy to have you back because it's burden on
the family too when someone's wrongfully convicted, but drags everybody down,
anybody who loves you, of course, right, So then you
drive away. Where did you go first? You went home first.

(41:11):
I really didn't have an idea what we wanted to do.
So Jeff was there and so I wanted to go eat.
Nobody knew where we wanted to go eat. There was
about one of us and that were there that day.
Some people didn't even think there was gonna be a
verdict that day. And went home, one of my attorney's
almost crashing the side of the road. So they said,
you know, what do you want though? So Jeff's like,
let's go to real Lobster. I have waited to go
to rev Lobster for so long, so I just went

(41:33):
on his suggestion and it was great. We went over there,
we had drinks and while I was there. This was
one of the remarkable things. Was one of the guards
that was taking me to trial during the first trial
and nine was there. He's not a guard anymore, a
guy named Orphuser sans Angriria. He came up to me
and he's like, I want to, you know, just congratulate you.
I didn't know who he was, and this is I'm

(41:54):
just out a hot hour and a half and he's
shaking my head. So I'm like, thank you. You don't
remember me? Yeah, no, I was taking you to the
trial back then. I thought something was wrong. Back then.
Let me buy you a beer. So one of the guards,
one of the jailers that was taking me to my
original trial, who felt something was off, gave me a big,
tall blue moon with the little orange in it, and
I bang that back and it was just an experience. Man.

(42:17):
I'm very thankful for him. I trying to imagine how
good lobster taste after twenty years of terrible food, and
how good does beer taste after twenty years of no beer. So, Anthony,
there's a rather bizarre aspect of your post exoneration life
that really just boggles my mind. In spite of all
the other things you've been through which are so terrible,

(42:39):
now there's another indignity that the state is throwing at
you and you basically you can't get a driver's license,
is that right? Right? So I go to the Department
of Motor Vehicles and they told me you got outstanding tickets.
So I went to the Town courthouse to go pay
the tickets off. So they're telling me these tickets amount
to ten points on my license. These are tickets from

(42:59):
I know the signal was speeding. And you know, I'm
not debating whether I did these things or not. You know,
I was a dump thinker as a youth. But at
this point, now I come home twenty years, you figure
it would be resolved. And so now they're telling me
that I may have another additional year of suspended license.
That's like, all right, you were wrongfully convicted for twenty years,
but here a matter of fact, on top of I

(43:21):
have an additional year without a license to extend your
sentence or whatever. I mean, it's crazy. There's a statue
of limitations that almost all crimes except murder. I think
rapist ten years. I don't think traffic violations got statue limitations. Right,
It's unbelievable. I mean that you're coming out and you're
going away, but I've been locked up for twenty days,
and like that's all right. It's like saying that you
you know, I don't care if the door is locked.

(43:41):
You're still late, right, I mean, like, what are you
talking about? It's just I mean at a certain point,
the bureaucracy should grow a heart and say, Okay, you
know what, We're gonna make us a little exception here
for this guy. Okay, so, but that's not the case,
so it must be an unbelievable feeling. It's a lot
of culture shock. So I'm eating, I'm joining my life.

(44:03):
At the same time, when I look back on it,
I feel guilty because there's so many people that deserve
that that are still behind bars that I haven't made
at home. At the same time, I feel happy and
I enjoy the things that I'm enjoying now, and I
still got a lot more to go because I'm still
trying to reintegrate myself. I always look back and I say,
if I could just help one person, one person achieve

(44:26):
their freedom that don't deserve to be in prison. In
the back of my mind, I'm always thinking about people,
and I'm sure you get it to you know, everybody
needs help, and I wish, I wish I could help everybody.
I just wish anybody that could be reached I could reach.
You know, it's impractical to think that you can do that,
but if you can help one person or two people,
I think that benefits society as a whole, and that's

(44:47):
an incredible message. And certainly I try to spend my
days trying to figure out exactly that right, how can
I get one more Anthony to Pippo out be because
it's just an incredible, incredible feeling to see that transformation,
to see justice served after all these years, to see

(45:10):
somebody like you get their life back on track. You know,
I call it selfish altruism. I do it because it
makes me feel good. You've got a great passion for it,
and you know, it's very admirable the point you are
in your career, you don't need to be doing this,
but it's something that you don't out of love and
respect and trying to give back and find a solution
to a problem. It's very admirable. I think that your

(45:31):
dad was involved in this right with Inniscence Project. Well,
my dad was a supporter of the Inniscence Project. And
my dad who was my hero he still is. He
really instilled in my brother and I have a sense
of right and wrong and an idea that what you
do to make the world a better place to find
you as a person, not what you accomplish. He told
us do whatever you want to do, try to be

(45:52):
the best data, but just make the world a better place.
He goes, that's the meaning of success. And I wanted
to be a success in his eyes because I looked
up to him so much. I definitely credit him for
giving me this passion and he was his firm. Actually,
Scatting is a huge supporter of the Innocence Project, donates
thousands of pro bono hours, has been involved in some
very important exonerations and they're all important, but I mean

(46:14):
something that I have actually driven change systemically, and so
it's really full circle to be able to work in
this field, especially with his spirit hanging over and and guiding.
It's it's it, you know. And it's funny you said
I don't need to be doing it. I do need
to be doing it. I mean, this is what I
need to be doing. This is what I'm here for.
And I'm very lucky in a lot of ways, but

(46:35):
I'm very lucky to be in a position to be
able to help certain people and I want to help
as many as I can. And to get back to that,
I know a lot of people that are listening to
you speak right now are saying the same thing. They're saying,
how can I help? What can I do? And let's
let's start with the case of Andrew Kreevak. I mean
what can people do? All right? So anybody wishing to

(46:56):
contact Andrew Creevac may do so. Andrew creeve Act, please
do right to him. I know he'd love to hear
from you. And it's number nine seven A four two
three six Wendy Correctional Facility that w E n D
E three zero four zero Wendy Road in Alden, New
York one four zero zero four dash one seven And

(47:19):
we'll put this address on the website for a Rowful
Conviction podcast. So what could people do to help Andrew Creevac.
Just offer your support and become aware and I'll help
raise awareness. And then when his case comes up and
the opposite side or the adversaries start making comments, then
try to make comments back. We have attorneys for him.

(47:41):
He's being represented pro bono by Adel Bernard and Victor c.
Bos So he's got a great team. Jeffrey Deskovic, of
course we're behind him, or for moral support, anything you
could go, I think that will help us get us
over to home. Right now, the d A is being
stubborn again. They're placing their own interests above the interests
still of justice, the interest of justice for not only

(48:02):
Andrew Creevack and myself, but for the victims in this matter.
Joe's at right and the other girl, Robin Murphy, who
Howard Gombert also in my view killed. Based on what
I told you earlier, there are ways you can help
the actually innocent and anyway, I mean some you know,
there's some places you can donate, like did the Innocence
Project to the Jeffrey desk Vic Foundation with some people

(48:24):
don't have the money to donate. And when you don't
have the money to donate, you can always offer moral
support and always stay and it's alway's gonna And you
can go to the websites, go to the Jeffrey desk
of Vic Foundation and learn about their work. Go to
Innocence Project dot org. There's some instructions. There are things
you can do to get involved. Before we close, Anthony,
I always like to ask, is there anything else that

(48:46):
you want to share with the audience from your experience. Well,
I'm trying to do my best to try to help
people and trying to give back to the criminal addressice system,
to the wrongerful conviction community. I'm current working with the
Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation analyzing cases. I'm trying to determine who

(49:06):
we could help, who's reachable. There's a lot of innocence
people in there, but I'm trying to determine who's reachable.
At the same time, I'm going around and I encourage
people to try to do the same thing. I'm going around.
I'm lobbying lawmakers. I'm with it can happen to you.
Professor Bennett gershman On you may have heard of him.
We're trying to pass a piece of legislation creating a

(49:27):
Commission on a Prosecutorial Conduct, which would be an additional
grievance committee for prosecutors who have commitments conduct as a
form of deterrence. So prosecutors won't withhold evidence if they
know that there's gonna be a penalty aside from the
Greem's committee, or they won't only use perjured testimony. They
try to create some balance. You know, there's the system

(49:49):
works on checks and balances, and so you know, I'm
out there, I'm trying to lobby, I'm trying to work
you can help anyway with the wrongful Conviction and movement,
whether it's don't ain't more support anything, it's greatly appreciated.
And there's all the people that are in prison that
deserve to come home. If I could give my life
to bring ten people home, I probably would do it.

(50:11):
You guys said, just just give me one more day.
I'll go to have some fun, and then you could
come from my soul and attend all the free people
out that to deserve to be in prison. I would
probably do that. Don't forget to give us a fantastic
review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps. And

(50:33):
I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project, and I
really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important
cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to
Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate and
get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor
Hall and Kevin Wordis. The music on the show is
by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure

(50:54):
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